Shani Mootoo, a critically acclaimed writer and visual artist, was born in Ireland in 1957 to Indra and Ramesh Mootoo. Even though Mootoo was talented at writing from an early age, her practice was discouraged by her father because of the recurring theme of homosexuality in her poems, and she chose to express herself through visual art. According to Mootoo, she was a victim of sexual abuse as a child and found solace in expressing herself through her artwork. As a local psychiatrist visited her exhibition “This Is Our Little Secret” at the Surrey Art Gallery, he requested that she bring her paintings and poems of sexual abuse to the Stave Lake Minimum Security Prison for Sex Offenders, where she confronted the convicts with her works and experience. In 1980, she earned a BFA in Fine Arts from the University of Western Ontario and pursued her master’s in English and Theatre from the University of Guelph in 2010. She is a noted visual artist whose art and video works have received international recognition.