Shane Book is a poet and filmmaker. He was educated at New York University; the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His first poetry collection, Ceiling of Sticks, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award and was a Poetry Society of America “New Poets” Selection. His second, Congotronic, won the Archibald Lampman Award, was a Kuhl House Poets Selection, and was a finalist for the Canadian Authors Association Award, Ottawa Book Award and 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize. His two short films, Dust and Praise & Blame have screened at numerous film festivals worldwide, including the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, Orlando Film Festival, Black Star Film Festival, Delhi International Film Festival and the Hollywood Black Film Festival. The recipient of many screenwriting and directing prizes, his other honours include fellowships to the Telluride Film Festival, the Flaherty Film Seminar, the MacDowell Colony and Cave Canem; a New York Times Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Charles Johnson Prize, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Teaching-Writing Fellowship, The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize and a National Magazine Award.