Dionne Brand (born 7 January 1953) is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and documentarian. She was Toronto's third Poet Laureate from September 2009 to November 2012. She was admitted to the Order of Canada in 2017 and has won the Governor General's Award for Poetry, the Trillium Prize for Literature, the Pat Lowther Award for Poetry, the Harbourfront Writers' Prize, and the Toronto Book Award. Biography Dionne Brand was born in Guayaguayare, Trinidad and Tobago. She graduated from Naparima Girls' High School in San Fernando, Trinidad, in 1970, and emigrated to Canada. She attended the University of Toronto and earned a BA degree (English and Philosophy) in 1975 and later attained an MA (1989) from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). Brand currently resides in Toronto. She identifies openly as a lesbian. Career Her first book, Fore Day Morning: Poems, came out in 1978, since then Brand has published numerous works of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, as well as editing anthologies and working on documentary films with the National Film Board of Canada. She has held a number of academic positions, including: Assistant Professor of English, University of Guelph (1992–94) Ruth Wynn Woodward Professor in Women's Studies, Simon Fraser University Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Writer-in-Residence, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York (2004–05) Distinguished Poet for the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Chair, Vancouver Island University (2006) She is currently Professor of English at the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph where she also holds a University Research Chair. In 2017 she was appointed as poetry editor of McClelland & Stewart, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada. Brand is also a co-editor of Toronto-based literary journal Brick. Writing Brand explores themes of gender, race, sexuality and feminism, white male domination, injustices and "the moral hypocrisies of Canada" Despite being often characterized as a Caribbean writer, Brand identifies as a "black Canadian". She has contributed to many anthologies opposing the violent killings of Black men and women, the massacre of 14 women in Montreal, and racism and inequality as experienced by Aboriginal women of Canada, particularly Helen Betty Osborne's death in the Pas. A Map to the Door of No Return In Dionne Brand's piece, A Map to A Door of No Return, she explores intergenerational trauma and post memory. Brand, using a variety of different elements, explores her own experiences through an autobiographical perspective as