In celebration of #BlackHistoryMonth, I'm featuring a BIPOC writer for every day of February. And as a special treat for subscribers to my newsletter, each week one lucky reader will win a copy of a book from all seven featured writers. Not a subscriber yet? Scroll to the bottom of this page, and sign up!
No list of Canadian writers could be complete without the incomparable Ms. Brand included. She is, of course, an award-winning Poet Laureate, editor, teacher, activist, film-maker and writer. Dionne Brand's voice has graced the Canadian literary landscape since I was a teenager, which is to say, almost forever.
Her first book of poetry, FOREDAY MORNING: Poems, was published in 1978 and she has never looked back. Today I read that she is moving on from her role as poetry editor for McClelland & Stewart, a position she has held since 2017, and so what better time to celebrate her work? Over the years Dionne Brand has explored everything from gender to race to inequality and the moral hypocricies of life in Canada.
Her most recent novel, THEORY, was published in 2018, followed by her poetry collection THE BLUE CLERK in 2019.
Each of my newsletter readers now has a chance to win a copy of one of Dionne Brand's books, along with a copy of Jen Sookfong Lee's book, and of the final five featured writers this week. If you haven't yet subscribed, sign up at kcdyer.com for your chance to win!
More soon...
~kc