Earle Birney has created a unique memoir that spans four decades. By linking together book reviews, magazine articles, editorials, and radio broadcasts with reminiscences of his childhood, education, and early teaching and writing career, Birney presents the reader with an exciting view of the early days of modern Canadian literature. He writes of meeting and corresponding with Bliss Carmen, Raymond Souster, A.J.M. Smith, P.K. Page, Malcolm Lowry, Pierre Berton, George Woodcock, and James Reaney among others--a pantheon of Canadian writers.

Earle Alfred Birney, OC, Ph.D, FRSC (13 May 1904 - 3 September 1995) was a distinguished Canadian poet. He was twice winner of the Governor General's Award for Literature (for David and Other Poems, 1942, and for Now Is Time, 1945).