Canadian writer and artist Heather Spears was educated at the University of British Columbia, The Vancouver School of Art and the University of Copenhagen. She is divorced and has 4 children. She has lived in Denmark since 1962. She has held over 75 solo exhibitions and published 11collections of poetry and 3 novels of speculative fiction (1991-96), the Moonfall Trilogy. Specialising in drawing children, in particular premature and other threatened infants, she travels widely and has drawn in hospitals in the Middle East, Europe and America. She has 3 books of drawings: Drawn from the Fire (89) Massacre (90); and Line by Line (02). Drawings from the Newborn (86), The Panum Poems (96) and Required Reading (00) contain both poems and full-page drawings. She has illustrated numerous books and articles; and also draws courtroom, dance, theatre and childbirth. Most recently published is a novel of documentary crime fiction titled The Flourish (04).

"mastery of line and movement,"... "the sureness of her hand and the sympathy of her eye. She writes poems in the same way."

"Coming into a book of Heather Spears' poems is to take your life in your hands. Nothing is hidden, the poem follows a line like a sketch, but it is a line which traces a crack in the cosmos."

"She goes looking for trouble, you could say, and finds it in almost every medium."

Residing in Denmark, Heather Spears makes annual reading and lecture tours to Canada. As a practising draughtsman and teacher she has thought deeply about drawing and visual perception, and has completed a book on creativity, The Creative Eye, (Arcturus 2007). She is preparing a series of manuals of modelling and drawing the human head and on drawing the figure in motion. She continues medical drawing projects and hospital residencies, her latest being at St. Olav's Hospital, Trondheim, Norway (02) and University Hospitals, Edmonton (04).

She has attended numerous literary conferences and festivals both as participant and Artist-in-Residence, including Hay-on Wye (97), Mantua Fesitvaletteratura (97 and 98) and The Cheltenham festival (92, 93, 99, 00, 01, 02, 03). She was Visiting Writing Professional, University of Windsor (99), and Visiting Lecturer in the Humanities, Dalhousie Medical School (99) and Biomedical Communications, University of Toronto (04).

Heather Spears is a member of PEN, The League of Canadian Poets, The Writers' Union of Canada, SF Canada, The Society of Authors, and Tegnernes Forbund (Danish Graphic Artist's Federation).

The Heather Spears archive is housed at the University of British Columbia in
Vanouver and is available for use by researchers and others interested. Many of Heather Spears’s drawings have been purchased by the Welcome Trust. Many other images can be found in the Wellcome Library of images, and are available for reproduction /publication.