Alistair MacLeod was a revered Canadian novelist, short story writer, and academic. Born on July 20, 1936, in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, he passed away on April 20, 2014, in Windsor, Ontario.

MacLeod's writing is renowned for its powerful evocation of Cape Breton Island's rugged beauty and the resilient character of its inhabitants, many of whom are descendants of Scottish immigrants. His stories, rich with ancestral memories, explore the struggle to reconcile the past and present.

Though celebrated as a master of the short story, MacLeod's 1999 novel No Great Mischief was voted Atlantic Canada's greatest book of all time, winning several literary prizes, including the 2001 International Dublin Literary Award.

In 2000, his short story collections The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories (1986) were republished in Island: The Collected Stories. MacLeod likened his fiction writing to playing an accordion, explaining, "When I pull it out like this, it becomes a novel, and when I compress it like this, it becomes this intense short story."

He taught English and creative writing for over three decades at the University of Windsor, while spending summers writing in Cape Breton. MacLeod's birthplace was Canadian, his emotional heartland Cape Breton, his heritage Scottish, but his writing is of the world.

MacLeod earned his BA and B.Ed from St. Francis Xavier University and his MA from the University of New Brunswick. He completed his PhD at the University of Notre Dame, specializing in British literature of the nineteenth century, and taught briefly at Indiana University before his long tenure at the University of Windsor.