MAX WYMAN is a Vancouver writer and one of Canada's leading cultural commentators. His most recent book is The Black Tulip Conundrum, a nanotech/espionage thriller--his first venture into fiction. Among his other books are Dance Canada: An Illustrated History, named one of Canada's 125 great books of the twentieth century, and The Defiant Imagination: Why Culture Matters, a passionate manifesto asserting the central importance of the arts and culture to modern society. A former member of the board of the Canada Council for the Arts, he served from 2002-2006 as President of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. For his services to the arts he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2001, and received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Simon Fraser University in 2003. He has also been known to act, with appearances in The X-Files, Millennium, The Lone Gunmen, and the movies Letting Go and Frankie and Hazel, in which he played Mischa Barton's ballet-master.