Birgit Bunzel was born and raised in Oberhausen, an industrial city in the Ruhr Valley. She left Germany in the 1980s, and has since lived in Taiwan, China, America, and now in Hong Kong. She teaches Chinese and Comparative Literary Studies at the City University of Hong Kong. She won the International Proverse Prize for Poetry in 2012 for her first collection Shadows in Deferment, which contains poetry marked by frequent moves and many travels, and by inscriptions from different places, cultures, and people. This second collection turns her encounters into spiritual journeys that begin in bewilderment and end in bliss. Birgit Bunzel has previously published poems in Mad Poets Review, Clockwise Cat, Kavya Bharati, Cerebration, International Literary Quarterly, Asian Cha, Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts, and, among others, in Poetry Against Terror: A Tribute to the Victims of Terrorism. Besides writing, she likes painting, reading, and photography.