LEON ROOKE is a novelist, short story writer, playwright, editor and critic. He has published 28 books, latest among these a novel, The Fall of Gravity, (2000). Painting the Dog: The Best Stories of Leon Rooke appears 2001. Nearly 300 short stories have been published.

His novel Shakespeare's Dog received the Governor General's Fiction Award, and his novel Fat Woman was short-listed for both the Governor General's and Books in Canada First Novel prizes and won the Paperback Novel of the Year Award. He has received the Canada-Australia Prize, given for overall body of work, as well as numerous other prizes and awards. He is represented in over 80 national and international anthologies.

He has taught or served as writer-in-residence at over a dozen Canadian and U.S. universities, and conducted workshops both in Canada and abroad. His work has been widely translated, most recently in Croatian, Italian, Japanese, and French. His critical work has been published extensively in Canada and the U.S., including the Washington Post Book World and the New York Times Book Review.

A feature film based on Rooke's novel, A Good Baby was recently released. In 2000, a stage adaptation of Shakespeare's Dog completed the first of a two-year tour of the Atlantic Seaboard by tall ship, with productions in sixteen port cities from Miami to New York City.

Rooke is the founder and artistic director of the popular Eden Mills Writers' Festival and lives in Winnipeg.