Nino Ricci was born in 1959 in Leamington, Ontario. He earned a B.A. from York University in 1981, and a M.A. from Concordia in 1987. He spent two years teaching in Nigeria with CUSO, and one year studying in Florence. He served as one of the directors of PEN Canada from 1990-96, and as President during 1995-96. Ricci has won the Winifred Holtby Prize for Best Regional Novel for Lives of the Saints; the Betty Trask Award for Fiction; the F.G. Bressani Prize for Prose; the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Governor General's Award, for Fiction.