Jacob Wilde became fascinated with insects before he could read and write. His love of creative writing developed soon after. From ages 9-11, Jacob wrote a restaurant review column for a local newspaper. As a teenager, Margaret Atwood presented him with the Grand Prize for a youth short story contest. He also dug up a lot of ant nests and tasted a species or two. As an undergraduate, he published several poems in Carolyn Smart’s Lake Effect series, and he went to India with the University of Guelph to observe insects and get eaten by ground leeches. He kept himself sane through his PhD in microbiome science at the University of Guelph by writing poems about bugs. He is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, still researching microbes, still writing bug poems.
