"Nigel Jenkins was born and brought up on a farm in Gower in 1949. He was a newspaper reporter in the English Midlands before studying literature and film at the University of Essex. He has travelled extensively, working on a circus in the States before returning to live in Wales in 1976. Since then he has earned his living as a writer and lecturer, and currently lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Wales Swansea. He has written two stage plays, and has published many books of both poetry and prose. Nigel Jenkins won the Arts Council of Wales 1996 Book of the Year prize with his travel book Gwalia in Khasia. He was also joint editor of The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales and Another Country: Haiku Poetry from Wales.