WAYNE JOHNSTON was born and raised in Goulds, Newfoundland. His bestselling novels include The Divine Ryans, A World Elsewhere, The Custodian of Paradise, The Navigator of New York, Baltimore's Mansion, and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. His first book, The Story of Bobby O'Malley, won the WH Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, published in 1998, was nominated for sixteen national and international awards including the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, and was a Canada Reads finalist defended by Justin Trudeau. His most recent book is Jennie's Boy, a memoir of six life-or-death months of his childhood. He lives in Toronto.