Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall graduated with degrees in both Honours English and Creative Writing from Concordia University, where he completed a novel and earned a place on the Dean’s list.

Since hitchhiking from Canada to Costa Rica at the age of 18, he has picked olives in Spain, painted villas in Italy, hopped freight trains in Arizona, taught English in Mexico and built a shack from scrap lumber on the edge of Lake Ontario, an experience that became the basis for his first book, Down to This. His non-fiction has also appeared in Saturday Night, Utne magazine, National Post and the Globe and Mail.

Forthcoming:

Screenplay for Down to This
(co-written with Paul Quarrington, for Shaftsbury Films)

Ghosted: A Novel
(Random House Canada)

Non-Fiction:

Down to This: Squalor and Splendour in a Big-City Shantytown
(Random House, 2004, Vintage 2005, Random House Australia, 2006)

• Shortlisted, Toronto Book Award, 2005
• Pearson Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize, 2004
• Shortlisted, Trillium Award, 2004
• Pearson Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize, 2004
• Shortlisted, Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize

Quotes:

“A truly amazing book, wonderfully written. All the time I was reading, I was either choked up or grinning from ear to ear. This is a stunning debut.”
     - Paul Quarrington, author of Whale Music and The Spirit Cabinet

“Some writers go to great lengths to write a book. They climb Mount Everest, follow armies into war zones, go undercover with a professional sports team or travel around the world on a motorbike, unicycle or other type of contraption. Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall has more guts than any of those writers.”
     - Edmonton Journal

“This is a genuine accomplishment, brilliantly balancing humour and horror, steadfastly refusing to stereotype or simplify. I have no idea who Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall really is, but he had a lot of guts to set out on this project, and he has even more talent to have pulled it off.”
     - National Post