Paul Hiebert was born at Pilot Mound, Manitoba in 1892. His father started a store in Altona where Hiebert attended school. He graduated from United College in 1916 with Honours in Philosophy and later obtained an M.A. in Gothic and Germanic Philology from the University of Toronto. In 1922, he received a second Masters, this time in Chemistry and Physics from McGill University. He completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry at McGill University in 1924. Hiebert then returned to Manitoba where he taught Chemistry at the University of Manitoba for twenty-eight years. Later in life he became a minister for the United Church. Hiebert began writing poetry as a child to pass time while working in his father's store. He wrote his first and best known novel, Sarah Binks, in 1947 for which he won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 1948. In 1966, the sequel, Willows Revisited, won second place in the same competition. He also wrote Tower in Siloam (1966), Doubting Castle (1976), For the Birds (1980) and Not as the Scribes (1984), along with numerous articles on a variety of subjects published in newspapers and periodicals. Despite his success as a humorist and author of fiction, he regarded his philosophical writings as his finer achievements. On retirement from the university in 1953, he moved to Carman, Manitoba, with his wife Dorothy. Paul Hiebert died in 1987.