Billie Livingston is a Vancouver-based poet, fiction writer and essayist. The Vancouver-based writer is a novelist, essayist and poet. Her books include the novels Going Down Swinging and One Good Hustle. Livingston is the 2017 recipient of the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award​, a $25,000 prize given to a mid-career writer in recognition of a "remarkable body of work."

Livingston answered four questions for CBC Books.

"'Ah, grow up!' Seriously, I don't know if I would want to tell her what to do. I'm happy in my life and if I were to change anything, who knows how it would alter the course of things. Besides, that little twerp wouldn't listen to me anyway."

"Reading a few hundred good — or bad — novels can teach you more about writing than any how-to book possibly could. Just read your brains out and read as broadly as you can. Find out what kind of writing gets your pulse going, what you're passionate about."

"'Use the AIC method: Ass In Chair.' It's the only way a book is going to get written. 'Write what you're afraid of' is helpful too. Fear can be paralyzing. The more you give in to it, the more you lose the truth of yourself — and the truth of yourself is, paradoxically, what you need most when writing fiction."

"I'm writing a story that involves a gambler right now — a recovering gambler. So I've been going to Gambler's Anonymous and Gam-Anon meetings. It's been fascinating. I'm a big believer in doing research in person whenever possible. If I'm going to learn how a particular group of people talk and think, part of my job is to get out there and be with them."