Glen Sorestad was born in Vancouver in 1937. His parents moved back to Saskatchewan in 1947 and he went to a rural school in east-central Saskatchewan near Buchanan and graduated from Sturgis Composite High School. After a year working in a bank, he spent a year as a study-supervisor in the Kerrobert School Unit near the Alberta border and the following year attended Saskatoon Teachers College. He began his teaching career in Yorkton in 1957.

In 1960 he married Sonia Talpash and he taught school in Brooks, Alberta for a year before entering the College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan, graduating with his B.Ed(with honors) in 1963. He taught once again in Yorkton from 1963 until 1967 when he and his family moved to Saskatoon where he taught at Alvin Buckwold School for two years before joining the English Department of Evan Hardy Collegiate in 1969. He served as English Program Co-ordinator for a number of years at Evan Hardy and established the Creative Writing program there. He was a key figure in organizing the ground-breaking Prairie Writers Workshop at Evan Hardy Collegiate and during his teaching career was responsible for bringing many notable Canadian writers into Evan Hardy classrooms.

In 1981 Sorestad decided to quit teaching in order to devote more time to his writing career which had, over the years, seen him establish a national reputation as a poet, fiction writer, editor and publisher. He continues to live in Saskatoon and earn his living as a writer, editor, anthologist and public speaker. His career has taken him all over North America and to various countries of Europe. He is the author of eighteen books of poetry, many short stories, and he is a co-editor of many well known anthologies. He has given well over three hundred public readings of his poetry in every province of Canada, in many parts of the United States, and in Europe (including at a reception held in his honour at the residence of the Canadian Ambassador in Oslo and broadcast on Norway's public radio network). In 2001 he was one of a small number of poets invited to read at an international poetry reading in Lahti, Finland, and the following year was invited to read his work at the Vilenica Poetry Festival in Slovenia.

Sorestad has been an active member of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild since it was formed in 1970 and was given a Founders' Award by the Guild in 1990. He is also an active member of the Writers Union of Canada and in 1998 was honoured with Life Member status in the League of Canadian Poets. Sorestad represented Canada at the 2002 Vilenica Writers' Gathering in Slovenia and read his poetry in Ljubljiana Castle.

In 1975 Sorestad and his wife, Sonia, co-founded the literary publishing house, Thistledown Press, in Saskatoon. Over the years Thistledown became known as one of the finest literary publishers in Canada. Sorestad retired as President in January 2000 after 25 years and over 200 literary titles published, many of which were translated and published in different foreign countries.

In November of 2000 Sorestad was appointed the first Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan and served in that role from 2001 to 2004.

In November 2001 he received the Saskatoon Book Award for his poetry book, Leaving Holds Me Here. He was awarded the Queen�s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003.

Glen Sorestad's works copyright © to the author.