Portia Carryer grew up in northern California. Before she began writing poetry, her studies in medieval religious history took her to Scotland and England and back.

She's here in the land of Canadians to write some poems and settle her mind in the wilderness. Having lived in a wide variety of places - from Germany to Scotland to Illinois to California, Portia is interested in how landscape and place appear in (and sometimes dominate) her writing. Her work also skirts the edge of narrative, combining a past as a fiction writer/storyteller with poetry.

She rarely travels anywhere without her copies of Adrienne Rich's collected poems, Lynda Hull's three books, or Robert Hass' Human Wishes.