Birk Sproxton was a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and novelist who lived in Red Deer

Red Deer, Alberta

Red Deer is a city in Central Alberta, Canada. It is located near the midpoint of the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor and is surrounded by Red Deer County. It is Alberta's third-most-populous city – after Calgary and Edmonton. The city is located in aspen parkland, a region of rolling hills...

, Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

.

Born in Flin Flon, Manitoba

Manitoba

Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...

, Sproxton studied in Winnipeg

Winnipeg

Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...

 before moving west to Alberta. He taught creative writing

Creative writing

Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...

 at Red Deer College

Red Deer College

Red Deer College is a public comprehensive community college of approximately 7,000 students located in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. Established in 1964, RDC was built for a smaller semi-rural community but, in the four and a half decades since its founding, the city has grown into the third largest...

for over three decades, while working on his own projects. One of his later works, Phantom Lake, North of 54, won both the Margaret McWilliams Local History Award as well as Grant MacEwan Alberta Author Award. He was also an editor, having completed The Winnipeg Connection: Writing Lives at Mid-Century in the year before his death.

Selected bibliography

• Headframe (1985), ISBN 0-88801-099-0
• The Hockey Fan Came Riding (1990), ISBN 0-88995-056-3
• The Red-Headed Woman with the Black Black Heart (1997), ISBN 0-88801-216-0
• Headframe: 2 (2006), ISBN 0-88801-317-5