Shorter of Breath is the first novel by Ken Eckert, who is a native of Edmonton, Canada living in South Korea. As an English professor most of his writing is academic, including articles on medieval romance, Chaucer, and (post)modern literature, with a recently published book, Middle English Romances in Translation (Sidestone, 2015). He is an alumnus of Memorial University in Newfoundland and University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he studied Chaucer alongside creative writing students such as Alissa Nutting (Tampa) and Juan Martinez (Best Worst American).