Dionne Brand

Dionne Brand is a poet, writer, filmmaker, educator, and activist born in Guayaguayare, Trinidad and Tobago. She moved to Canada in 1970 to study at the University of Toronto, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy in 1975, followed by a master’s degree in the philosophy of education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in 1989. She is best known for her poetry and has published more than ten collections, including Land to Light On (1997), which won both the Trillium Book Award and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. Dionne Brand’s poems are distinguished by their formal and linguistic experimentation and convey, with honesty and intensity, the life and struggles of a Black immigrant woman in Canada. Brand has also written and co-directed documentaries for the National Film Board of Canada, notably Older, Stronger, Wiser (1989) and Sisters in the Struggle (1991), both of which portray influential Black Canadian women. Alongside her creative work, she has taught literature and currently holds a research chair in English and creative writing at the University of Guelph. A committed social activist, she critiques structures of political and economic power and denounces racism and discrimination against women and gay and lesbian communities. She is also one of the founding members of Our Lives, the first Canadian periodical devoted to Black women.