Although Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall has lived in Toronto for the past 10 years, and Montreal for the decade before that, he grew up in Vancouver. Bishop-Stall has been working as an author, freelance journalist, and teacher for more than 20 years. His work has appeared in most major publications in Canada, including Maclean’s, Walrus, and Saturday Night. His first book was an account of a year spent living with the homeless in Toronto’s infamous Tent City. Down to This: Squalor and Splendour in a Big-City Shantytown (Random House, 2004) was nominated for the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, Trillium Award, City of Toronto Book Award, and 2005 Pearson Writers’ Trust of Canada Non-Fiction Prize.
The following year, he was awarded the Knowlton Nash Journalism Fellowship at Massey College and also played the role of Jason – a bad-mannered, well-dressed journalist – on CBC-TV’s The Newsroom. His first novel, Ghosted, was nominated for the 2011 Amazon First Novel Award.
The column on fatherhood he writes for Sharp magazine has been nominated for the National Magazine Award’s Best Column three years in a row. He has taught more than 50 writing courses in Creative Non-Fiction, Writing the Memoir, and Writing the Novel at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies, hosted the International Festival of Authors, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, and served as a guest lecturer at festivals, universities, and colleges both in Canada and abroad, and been the subject of dozens of radio, print, and TV interviews. He is currently writing a work of non-fiction memoir.