Linda Spalding was born and raised in Kansas before immigrating to Canada in 1982 from Hawaii. She is the author of The Purchase, which won the Governor-General’s Literary Award in 2012. She has written three earlier novels and two works of non-fiction: The Follow, which was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Awards and the Pearson Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize; and more recently the wonderful and chilling Who Named the Knife. She is a recipient of the Harbourfront Festival Prize for her contribution to the Canadian literary Community. She lives in Toronto, where she is an editor of Brick magazine.