Johanna Skibsrud was born in Nova Scotia and received her BA in English Literature at the University of Toronto, her MA in English and Creative Writing from Concordia University in Montreal, and her PhD in English Literature at the Université de Montréal. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Arizona. She is the youngest writer to ever receive the Scotiabank Giller Prize, which she won for her debut novel The Sentimentalists.