Bertrand Bickersteth is an educator who also writes poetry and plays. In 2021, CBC named him a writer to watch. His collection of poetry, The Response of Weeds, won both the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. He lives in Calgary, teaches at Olds College, and writes about Black identity on the Prairies.