George Bowering was born in Penticton, British Columbia, in 1935. After serving as a photographer in the RCAF, Bowering attended the University of British Columbia. There he met Frank Davey, Fred Wah, David Dawson and James Reid, with whom he started TISH. He later founded Imago and is a contributing editor for Open Letter. Bowering has taught at the University of Calgary, the University of Western Ontario, and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Bowering is well recognized as one of Canada's most prolific writers of poetry, short stories, and novels with over forty titles. Bowering won the 1969 Governor General's Literary Award in the poetry category for his works The Gangs of Kosmos and Rocky Mountain Foot. He won the GG for fiction in 1980 for his novel Burning Water. Beginning on November 8, 2002, George Bowering was appointed the first Canadian resident poet to Parliament Hill for a two-year term.