Brett, Brian

Brian Brett, former chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada and a journalist for four decades, is best known as a poet, memoir writer, and fictionist.

He is the author of twelve books including the poetry collection, The Colour Of Bones In A Stream, and the novel, Coyote: A Mystery. His memoir, Uproar’s Your Only Music, was a Globe and Mail’s Book Of The Year selection by Ronald Wright: “The most exciting Canadian book I’ve read all year.” His best-seller, Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life, won numerous prizes, including the Writers’ Trust annual award for best Canadian non-fiction book.

His new poems: To Your Scattered Bodies Go won the CBC poetry prize in 2011. A collection of poems and prose poems about an endangered watershed in the near-arctic, The Wind River Variations has just been released.

He is currently completing the third of a trilogy of memoirs, Tuco and The Scattershot World: A Life With Birds.