Evelyn Lau was born in Vancouver in 1971. She is the author of four volumes of poetry, two works of non-fiction, two short story collections and a novel. Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, published when she was 18, was a Canadian best seller and was made into a CBC movie starring Sandra Oh in her first major role. Lau's prose books have been translated into a dozen languages worldwide. You Are Not Who You Claim won the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award; Oedipal Dreams was nominated for the Governor-General's Award. Her work has appeared in over a hundred literary magazines, garnering four Western Magazine Awards and a National Magazine Award. She has also won the Air Canada Award for Most Promising Writer and the Vantage Women of Originality Award. Her poems have been included in the Best American Poetry and Best Canadian Poetry series. She has read from and discussed her work at literary festivals and universities around the world; she presently freelances as a mentor to aspiring writers through UBC's booming Ground and SFU's Writing and Publishing Program.