Lisa Alward's stories have won the Fiddlehead Prize and the Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award and have appeared in Best Canadian Stories and The Journey Prize Stories as well as such journals as The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, Exile, and untethered. She was born and grew up in Halifax and worked in literary publishing in Toronto in the late 80s before moving with her family to Vancouver and ultimately to Fredericton, where she lives with her husband, John. Her debut collection, Cocktail, was published by Biblioasis in September 2023. It received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and was long-listed for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and is presently a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the New Brunswick Mrs. Dunster's Award for Fiction.