About the Poet Laureate

Evelyn Lau was born in Vancouver in 1971 and is the author of five volumes of poetry, two works of non-fiction, two short story collections and a novel, with works translated into a dozen languages worldwide. She is at work on her sixth collection of poetry.

Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, published when she was 18, was a Canadian bestseller and was made into a movie. You Are Not Who You Claim won the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award, and Oedipal Dreams was nominated for the Governor-General's Award for poetry. Her poems have been included in Best American Poetry and Best Canadian Poetry and have received a National Magazine Award. Her most-recent collection, Living Under Plastic, won the 2011 Pat Lowther Award for best book of poetry by a woman in Canada.