The Unpublished City: Volume II

by Dionne Brand (Editor), Canisia Lubrin (Editor), Dionne Brand (Editor)

Orient yourself in the city with these nineteen works of creative non-fiction that offer a different, more multifarious wayfinding. In this second volume of The Unpublished City, imagination is the means by which these writers find detours, shortcuts and convergences. Even as they are inventing and imagining the city, these emerging Toronto-based writers find themselves marked through tender and violent encounters. For them, the city is more than backdrop, but a witness, an accomplice and a lover.This anthology's maps of experience bring us beyond the city's limits to the cul-de-sacs and vertical dimensions of Mississauga, Vaughan, North York and Scarborough. They follow buried creeks and migratory bird corridors, they chase highs and confront colonial landmarks, they navigate waiting rooms and prop up fallen strangers. Shaped by the city, their visions also shift and plot its architectures of living in an endless symbiosis.The Unpublished City Volume II features work by Jennifer Tamanique Batler, DM St. Bernard, Lue Boileau, Angela Britto, Fathima Cader, Rachel Chen, Aylan Couchie, Nehal El-Hadi, Ryanne Kap, Emily Macrae, T�a Mutonji, E. Martin Nolan, Oubah Osman, Deepa Rajagopalan, Natasha Ramoutar, Wayne Salmon, Zoe Imani Sharpe, Leanne Toshiko Simpson and Julia Zarankin. With a foreword by Tracey Lindberg.

72 pages, Paperback

Published September 20, 2018

About the author

As a young girl growing up in Trinidad, Dionne Brand submitted poems to the newspapers under the pseudonym Xavier Simone, an homage to Nina Simone, whom she would listen to late at night on the radio. Brand moved to Canada when she was 17 to attend the University of Toronto, where she earned a degree in Philosophy and English, a Masters in the Philosophy of Education and pursued PhD studies in Women’s History but left the program to make time for creative writing.

Dionne Brand first came to prominence in Canada as a poet. Her books of poetry include No Language Is Neutral, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, and Land to Light On, winner of the Governor General’s Award and the Trillium Award and thirsty, finalist for the Griffin Prize and winner of the Pat Lowther Award for poetry. Brand is also the author of the acclaimed novels In Another Place, Not Here, which was shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Award, and At the Full and Change of the Moon. Her works of non-fiction include Bread Out of Stone and A Map to the Door of No Return.

What We All Long For was published to great critical acclaim in 2005. While writing the novel, Brand would find herself gazing out the window of a restaurant in the very Toronto neighbourhood occupied by her characters. “I’d be looking through the window and I’d think this is like the frame of the book, the frame of reality: ‘There they are: a young Asian woman passing by with a young black woman passing by, with a young Italian man passing by,” she says in an interview with The Toronto Star. A recent Vanity Fair article quotes her as saying “I’ve ‘read’ New York and London and Paris. And I thought this city needs to be written like that, too.”

In addition to her literary accomplishments, Brand is Professor of English in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.

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Reviews

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toronto has such a wealth of talent

[Chantelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Ambrose" by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard was my favourite piece!