Brick: A Literary Journal, Summer 2020

by Dionne Brand (Editor), David Chariandy (Editor), Laurie D. Graham (Editor)

back cover text:
Jenny Erpenbeck returns to her East Berlin childhood
Michael Ondaatje and Edwidge Danticat celebrate Toni Morrison
Anne Carson's letter from prison
Lina Meruane assumes a new identity in Palestine
Jan Zwicky on Jane Jacobs and the problem with humankind
kid teo reckons with Cambodia's War Remnant Museum
Eleanor Wachtel interviews Masha Gessen
John McIntyre remembers Bo Huston and the writing of the HIV/AIDS epidemic
Madeleine Thien and Yoko Tawada talk translation
Howard Norman on his final visit with artist Jake Berthot
Rob Winger accidentally makes it new
Juan Gabriel Vásquez considers a life spent in story
Erin Wunker on the utility of boredom
A photo essay and conversation with Teju Cole and Joe Penney
Poetry by Brandi Bird, Louise Erdrich, Yam Gong, and Dean Rader

140 pages, Paperback

Published June 22, 2020

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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