Pauline Stainer is a freelance writer and tutor. After many years in rural Essex and then on the Orkney island of Rousay, she now lives at Hadleigh in Suffolk. Crossing the Snowline (Bloodaxe Books, 2008) is her first new collection since The Lady & the Hare: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2003), which draws on five previous books, as well as a new collecton, A Litany of High Waters. Along with The Lady & the Hare, her collections The Honeycomb, Sighting the Slave Ship and The Ice-Pilot Speaks were all Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Her fourth collection, The Wound-dresser’s Dream, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award in 1996. Pauline Stainer received a 2009 Cholmondeley award for her poetry.