Shirley Geok-lin Lim was born in Malacca, Malaysia. Her Crossing the Peninsula won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize; she has published four more volumes of poetry, including What the Fortune Teller Didn't Say (West End Press, 1998). She has also published three short story collections, two novels, and a memoir, Among the White Moon Faces, which received the American Book Award for nonfiction. She is professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara.