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.
​
​
​