Born in Hawksbury, Ontario, in 1945, but raised mainly in British Columbia, Tom Wayman graduated with a BA from the University of British Columbia and an MFA in English and Creative Writing from the University of California at Irvine in 1968. Since that time he has worked as a writer-in-residence and faculty member at a variety of institutions. He worked as a writer-in-residence at the University of Windsor (1975-76), University of Alberta (1978-1979), Simon Fraser University (Spring, 1983), and University of Toronto (Spring 1996). He has taught at Colorado State University (1968 -
69), Wayne State University (1976-77), David Thompson University (1980-82), Banff School of Fine Arts (Summers, 1980, 1982), Kootenay School of Writing (1984-87), Okanagan College and Okanagan University College (1990-91, 1992-95), Kootenay School of the Arts (1991-92, 1995-98), and Kwantlen College and Kwantlen University College, Surrey (Fall 1983, 1988-present) . His work career has included a number of blue-collar and white-collar jobs in Canada and the United States. Wayman is also a founder of both the Kootenay School of Writing and the Vancouver Industrial Writers Union. Tom Wayman is widely known as a work poet well versed in work writing in North America. He has written, compiled and contributed to many books and periodicals. His printed collections of poetry include Waiting for Wayman (1973), Money and Rain (1975), Living on the Ground (1980), Introducing Tom Wayman : Selected Poems (1973-80), The Face of Jack Munro (1986), In a Small House on the Outskirts of Heaven (1989), I'll be Right Back : New & Selected Poems 1980-1996 (1997), and The Colours of the Forest (1999) . He has edited a variety of anthologies
including Beaton Abbot's got the Contract (1974), A Government Job at Last (1976), Going for Coffee (1987), East of Main : An Anthology of Poems from East Vancouver (1989), Paperwork (1991) and The Dominion of Love, contemporary Canadian love poems (2001). He also has poems in many Canadian and U.S. anthologies.