Barry Dempster is the author of two novels, a children's book, three volumes of short stories and eighteen collections of poetry. He has been nominated for the Governor General's Award twice; for his first book, Fables for Isolated Men, and for The Burning Alphabet, which won the Canadian Authors Association Award for poetry. In 2010 and 2015, he was a finalist for the Ontario Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and in 2014, he was nominated for the Trillium Award for his novel, The Outside World.