Orphaned during her university years, Catherine Graham discovered poetry through grief. She says, "My connection to loss is connected to place, the water-filled limestone quarry I grew up beside. In the beginning of my poetic journey, in my book Pupa (Insomniac Press, 2003), the quarry was in the physical world, a place outside of me. The journey took a turn in my second book, The Red Element (Insomniac Press, 2008), beginning my creative detachment from the quarry as a physical place. Now, with Winterkill, the quarry lives inside me. It is my imagination. The real has become the imaginary. Grief and nostalgia have been transformed into ducks, cottonwood trees, soap opera ladies, storms, and lost yelps."