Contributor Biographies for Brick 86

Margaret Atwood’s latest novel is The Year of the Flood. “Flying Rabbits” is part of an in-progress work on science fiction.

Baziju is a pen name of Roo Borson and Kim Maltman. “Box Kite” is from a manuscript in progress, also called Box Kite.

John Berger is an artist, essayist, novelist, and critic. His many books include Ways of Seeing, the fiction trilogy Into Their Labours, and most recently, From A to X: A Story In Letters, published by Verso Books in 2008.

Dionne Brand is the poet laureate of the City of Toronto. Her latest volume of poetry is Ossuaries. She is also University Research Chair and Professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.

Brian Brett is a poet, fiction writer, critic, and journalist. His works include The Colour of Bones In A Stream, Tanganyika, The Fungus Garden,Coyote, Uproar’s Your Only Music, and Trauma Farm. As part of the Salt Spring Collective, he has also completed a CD of his “Talking Songs” called Night Directions for the Lost, produced and arranged by Ramesh Meyers. He lives with his family on his farm on Salt Spring Island.

New Zealand poet Kate Camp is the author of four collections, all from Victoria University Press: Unfamiliar Legends of the Stars, Realia, Beauty Sleep, and The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls. She also writes and broadcasts on classic literature, including in the essay collection Kate’s Klassics.

Kevin Connolly is the author of four collections of poetry, most recentlyRevolver. His poetry and arts journalism have appeared in Brick, Books in Canada, the Toronto Star, Chicago Review, and Eye Weekly, among others. He is also the poetry editor for Coach House Books in Toronto.

Yohannes Edemariam lives in Toronto. He has written for Harper’s, Seed,rabble.ca, and other publications.

Charles Foran, a long-time contributor to Brick, is the author of nine books. Mordecai: The Life and Times, is published this autumn by Knopf Canada.

John Geiger is the author of Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and the Dream Machine and Nothing is True Everything is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin (2004). His latest book, The Third Man Factor, has been published in fourteen countries.

Marybeth Hamilton is a writer, editor, and yoga teacher-in-training who lives in Columbus, Ohio. Her most recent book is In Search of the Blues.

Saskia Hamilton is the author of two collections of poetry, As for Dreamand Divide These, and is the editor of The Letters of Robert Lowell and the co-editor of Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. She teaches at Barnard College, Columbia University, and lives in New York.

Jim Harrison is a novelist and poet is often confused for an old Mexican.

Laird Hunt is the author of four novels including, most recently, Ray of the Star. His translation of Oliver Rohe’s novel Terrain Vague is forthcoming this fall from Counterpath, and Marick Press will imminently reissue his first book, The Paris Stories.

Eric Karpeles works as a painter and also as a writer on the intersection of visual imagery and language. He is the author of Paintings in Proust and translator, from the Italian original, of Proust’s Overcoat.

Elizabeth Legge is chair of the Department of Art at the University of Toronto. In 2005 she was visiting professor at the Humanities Centre at Johns Hopkins University, conducting seminars on Michael Snow. She has written on Dada, Surrealism, and contemporary British and Canadian art, including a book Michael Snow: Wavelength, published by Afterall/MIT in 2009.

Richard Mabey, author, conservationist, and broadcaster, is one of Britain’s leading writers on nature. From his ground breaking Food for Free to his magnificent Flora Britannica, he has led the way in a passionate and personal new kind of writing about the land, the trees, plants, and creatures that surround us, while alerting us to their fragility. He is a director of Common Ground and contributes regularly to The Independent,Guardian, The Times, Country Living, and the BBC Wildlife magazine.

Walter Murch is a film editor, sound designer, director, and amateur astronomer. His pioneering sound and picture editing work on films include The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, and Cold Mountain. He is author of In the Blink of an Eye, a book about the craft of film editing, and is the subject of The Conversations by Michael Ondaatje.

Tara Quinn is the outgoing assistant editor of Brick. She lives in Scotland.

Michael Redhill is a playwright, novelist, and poet. He is also the publisher of Brick.

Michael Sell is a working artist whose imagery ranges from extreme figurative representationalism to poetic abstraction. A graduate of the Art Center College of Design, he has had his oil pastel work exhibited to acclaim across the United States.

Ann Scowcroft’s first collection of poems, The Truth of Houses, will be published by Brick Books in 2011. Quebec has been home for a while, but she presently works in Haiti.

David Thomson is the author of Have you Seen? A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films, and a memoir, Try to Tell the Story. His latest book is the fifth edition of the Biographical Dictionary of Film.

Colm Tóibín is the author of six novels, including The Master andBrooklyn, and a volume of stories Mothers and Sons. His new book of stories The Empty Family will be published by McClelland and Stewart in January 2011. He is Leonard Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University.

Jay R. Tunney, the son of Gene Tunney, has written magazine articles and essays for publications worldwide, including The New York Times Magazine, and the Asian Wall Street Journal. He is a member of the Governors’ International Advisory Council for the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, and is Vice President of the International Shaw Society,

Eleanor Wachtel has hosted the CBC Radio program Writers & Companysince its inception in 1990. She has published four books, most recentlyRandom Illuminations: Conversations With Carol Shields,and Original Minds. She’s also the host of “Wachtel on the Arts” on Ideas.

Keri Walsh is the editor of The Letters of Sylvia Beach, published by the Columbia University Press in 2010. She is an assistant professor in the Literature Department at Claremont McKenna College in Los Angeles.