John Barton is a poet, essayist, editor, and writing mentor. His thirty books, chapbooks, and anthologies include For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin: Selected Poems; We Are Not Avatars: Essays, Memoirs, Manifestos; Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay Male Poets; and The Essential Douglas LePan, which won a 2020 eLit Award. Lost Family, his twelfth book of poetry, was nominated for the 2021 Derek Walcott Prize. Winner of tree Archibald Lampman Awards, an Ottawa Book Award, a CBC Literary Award, a National Magazine Award, he was born in Edmonton and raised in Calgary, He lives in Victoria, where he was the city’s first queer poet laureate