Alden Nowlan was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, in 1933. Though he was largely self-taught, he was a prolific writer who published poetry, plays, short stories, and novels. He received a Governor General's Award in 1967 for Bread, Wine and Salt (1967), and in the same year won a Guggenheim Fellowship. He became the writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick in 1969, a position he held until his death in 1983.