Alissa York has lived all over Canada and now makes her home in Toronto with her husband, writer/filmmaker Clive Holden. Her award-winning short fiction has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies. Her collection, Any Given Power, published by Arbeiter Ring Publishing in 1999. Her first novel, Mercy, published by Random House Canada in 2003, was a Canadian bestseller. The J.M. Meulenhoff Dutch edition appeared later that year, and the US edition was released in fall, 2004, by Delphinium Books. York has recently completed a novel entitled Effigy, to be published by Random House Canada and J.M. Meulenhoff in 2007. The French edition of Mercy will also be published in 2007 by Editions Gallimard.