Joanne Gallant is a writer and nurse living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her debut book, A Womb in the Shape of a Heart (Nimbus Publishing), won the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award for Non-Fiction. She is currently the President of the Board of Directors for the Writer’s Federation of Nova Scotia and is in her second year of her MFA in creative fiction and the University of King's College. When she isn’t working, Joanne is most often playing board games with her eight-year-old son and husband or finding time to sew and paint. She takes painting classes from an 83-year-old teacher who once described Joanne’s painting as, “Not the worst in the class."