Tag: Writing In The Margins

An interview with the judges of Briarpatch’s 13th annual Writing in the Margins contest: Helen Knott, Juliane Okot Bitek, and Kevin Settee.

my name will be Truth 
and i’ll introduce myself 
with every story i tell

What does it mean to pass or not to pass as a trans person? I am, I am, I am. 

the Similkameen they say are the strong
the frayed the twisted, the worn, we feel that

A photo essay on displacement, grief, and Land Back in the Philippines

We song our stories – put them to a beat, draw the melancholy out of them, voices like droplets squeezed out of a braided dish rag on an open balcony.

Sophie didn’t mean to die. She had simply arrived at the point where she was prepared to try anything to feel better.

An interview with the judges of Briarpatch’s 12th annual Writing In The Margins contest: Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, Jessica Johns, and Randy Lundy.

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.