Tag: Writing In The Margins

If you’re like me, your path out of this prison will follow the path of grief: denial, anger, negotiation, depression. But only acceptance and behavioural modification open the Big Locked Door. The staff say you are here to get better, but you are here to mourn your illusion of sanity.

In Niagara Falls, Ontario, low-income seniors are left with no choice but to move into an uninhabitable motel: the Happiness Inn.

granny’s voice cracks when she calls. “when you coming home baby?” i am burrowed in darkness to be reborn. fingers stained ink indigo, daddy’s prison letter is scratched on paper like he already faded into the massive metal mouth that consumed him before we met.

As far as being a good Indian, well, I don’t know. Some people look at me as good. Some people look at me as bad. It doesn’t bother me. I am what I am. And I’m proud of what I am.

Best of Regina winner of the 2021 Writing in the Margins contest.

An interview with the judges of Briarpatch’s 11th annual Writing In The Margins contest.

I’ve never seen myself. I still don’t, only a peripheral glimpse: of potential, of hope, of becoming, of future.

Portraits of the Indigenous people and settlers of O:se Kenhionhata:tie, the camp that reclaimed land in Victoria Park and Waterloo Park for six months of 2020.

Without the war, we would still be the boat’s people, Má. We try to find land, where the joyful people are, but we only surround ourselves with water. 

Briarpatch editor Saima Desai talks to two judges of our Writing in the Margins contest about Idle No More and MMIWG, ethical kinship, writing queer sex, and their forthcoming work.

“In the palm of my hand, I delicately finger a pair of unfamiliar ID cards printed on worn pieces of coloured paper, yellow and salmon pink. The faded type reveals they were issued in the spring of 1941 with approval from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.” Creative non-fiction winner of the Writing in the Margins contest.

“my father can’t kill us because respectable brown man / because i’m his name / because service worker / because why kill me when he can / make me / kill myself?” Poetry runner-up of the Writing in the Margins contest.

“There is a Sunday quietness / to the sea with just one diseased whale with sad, ulcerous eye / and her dead calf swirling around the tepid / teacup of brown water.” Best of Regina winner of the Writing in the Margins contest.

An interview with Writing in the Margins judges Gwen Benaway, Alicia Elliott, and Jalani Morgan

“She points, / here’s Canada, here’s home, caught in a ganglion / of lakes. Our cupped hands cradle continents in turn.” Poetry winner of the 2017 Writing in the Margins contest

“After his release, he cannot listen to loud noises, cannot sleep through the night; for a long while, he believes they will still come for him.” The creative nonfiction winner of our 2017 Writing in the Margins contest.

Best hometown entry of the 2017 Writing in the Margins contest!

Honourable mention, creative non-fiction, of the 2017 Writing in the Margins contest!

The honourable mention (poetry) of our seventh annual writing contest

An exclusive interview with this year’s Writing in the Margins contest judges, Janet Rogers and Fathima Cader.