Randy Nikkel Schroeder was born in small-town Minnesota, but grew up Mennonite in Alberta's deep south. As a young man he fled north for the High Arctic and, psychologically, never came back.
His latest novel, Arctic Smoke (NeWest Press), is available everywhere that fine books are sold. It is accompanied by a "soundtrack" EP by The Tarsands, his side project with fellow NeWest author, Niall Howell. Randy is also the author of Crooked Timber: Seven Suburban Faerie Tales (Green Magpie Press), over fifty published short stories, and numerous works of non-fiction, which are, by all accounts, quite dull.
Schroeder has been singer, guitarist and mandolinist for the band Uncle Zugg since 2016, and, more recently, for the Psychedelic band Zuggenfunk. In the 1980s, he was co-founder of the curiously popular Lethbridge indie band, The Groovy Twins. Through tape-trading and other mysterious pre-Internet cultural practices, The Groovy Twins became a staple of underground radio, party scenes and cultic activity from Vancouver to Cape Breton Island to Montana.
In his spare time, he is Professor of English, Languages and Cultures at Mount Royal University.