Peri Phillips McQuay first learned to take joy in nature through the inspiration of her Canadian artist parents, Ken Phillips and Marie Cecilia Guard.

For thirty years McQuay and her conservation educator husband, Barry, were fortunate to live and work at Foley Mountain, an eight-hundred-acre conservation area of forests, ponds, and granite ridges in eastern Ontario, Canada.

Deeply committed to nature, art, and social justice, she has been a professional writer for over thirty years. She is the author of two published books, The View From Foley Mountain, a book of nature meditations, and A Wing in the Door: Life With a Red-tailed Hawk, the story of a human-imprinted hawk, as well as numerous essays, articles, book reviews and a weekly column, published in the Kingston Whig-Standard Magazine.

Educated at the University of Toronto (Hon. Philosophy and English), and a member of The Writers’ Union of Canada and ASLE, her credits include Country Journal, Harrowsmith, Bird Watcher's Digest, The Snowy Egret, Seasons, The Fiddlehead, Herizons and Brick. 

She has completed two novels: Towards Home, the story of a woman's journey of self-discovery through nature and art and The Famous Flower Garden, featuring reconciliation  in the extraordinary setting of the old mill home of a dying artist, and a ruined garden.

Peri McQuay is also the author of The Country of Home, the true story of the finding, designing and building of "Singing Meadow", a country property, where simplicity and reverence for nature are key.