Aritha comes from western Canada, the home of high skies and real cowboys, not to mention innumerable writers and their tall tales. A writer, reviewer, and teacher, she is fascinated by urban aesthetics and our contemporary restlessness.

Her vivacity is infectious, making her fiction appeal to readers from my wife’s mother through feminist activists to blokes like me. Her academic work is no less accessible, the tongue in her cheek means serious business. When Penguin Canada was looking for fictioneers to write histories for each of the Canadian provinces, there was only one choice when it came to Alberta.

She lives and works in Calgary and as Yorkshire Arts International Writer in Residence, Aritha worked with writers in Leeds, Sheffield and the East Riding who, when writing is difficult, hold onto those workshops and return to the page with Aritha’s mix of rigour, humour and pragmatism. The highlight of the residency was the work Aritha did with Amina Souleiman and the MAMA Sar group of Somali women writers in Sheffield producing the wonderful book of recipes for life, Footprint.

Aritha has published five novels: Judith, which received the Seal First Novel Award; The Tent Peg; No Fixed Address: An Amorous Journey; Places Far From Ellesmere; and Restlessness. Her two works of non-fiction, In Visible Ink and A Frozen Tongue explore elements of silence and seduction. Her most recent expedition into time and words is Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta, which won the Grant McEwan Author's Award. Her popular, creative and critical work has been translated into ten languages.