Alan Cumyn Contributor residences (city, state or country if outside the US or Canada):Ottawa writer Alan Cumyn is the author of seven highly acclaimed but wildly different novels, all published in the last ten years. Burridge Unbound and Man of Bone, which both won the Ottawa Book Award and were respectively shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Trillium Award, explore issues of the struggle for personal dignity in the face of human rights abuses. His first novel for children, The Secret Life of Owen Skye, won the Mr. Christie's Book Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award. He is also the author of Losing It, a darkly funny exploration of madness and a satire on modern sexual mores, Waiting for Li Ming, a cross-cultural romance set in China, and Between Families and the Sky, a coming-of-age story. His latest novel is The Sojourn, set in the trenches of Ypres and the streets of London in 1916. Alan has an M.A.

in Creative Writing from the University of Windsor, where he studied under Alistair MacLeod, and he has taught English in China and Indonesia. He also worked for eight years for the Immigration and Refugee Board in Ottawa, researching and writing on international human rights issues. For the past two years he has been Chair of the Writers in Prison Committee for PEN Canada. He is married and has two children.