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    Quest of identity

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

  • Online-only

    notes of joy from the margins

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

  • Online-only

    boots

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

  • Magazine

    Desire path

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

  • Magazine

    Sand

    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.

  • Magazine

    Cause of death

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

  • Three portraits are side-by-side. Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, a Palestinian woman, is standing in front of a blurred city landscape. She is wearing a black ribbed v-neck sweater and her long, black hair is tied back in a sleek ponytail. She has a small gold nose ring on her left nostril and she's wearing eyeliner, mascara, and red lipstick. Jessica Johns, a light-skinned Cree woman, stands in front of a blurred fall backdrop and is looking straight at the camera. She has shoulder-length, wavy, light brown hair and blue eyes. She is wearing a navy blue collared jumpsuit accessorized with a black leather bolo tie with silver embellishments. She has a silver, triangular septum piercing and colourful tattoos of plants on her left arm.  Randy Lundy, a Cree man, is tilting his head to the right. He has short, black, recently buzzed hair, brown eyes, and a clean-shaven face. He is wearing a grey t-shirt. In the background is a clear blue sky, trees, and a wooden fence.
    Magazine

    “We inhabit a land; the land inhabits us”

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

  • Magazine

    The Deep

    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.

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    The residents of the Happiness Inn

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

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    Indigo sun

    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.

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    That things can change

    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.

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    brief and brazen - homo######philia in #########

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

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    Amber Dawn, jaye simpson, and Jeff Bierk on ethics, futures, and rejection in art

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

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    Clock me like one of your French girls

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

  • Magazine

    Land Back Camp: Our Voices

    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.

  • Magazine

    We are the boat’s people

    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. 

  • Two headshots of people looking at the camera. On the left, a person with long hair and brown skin wears a red leather jacket with her arm draped over a red couch. On the right, a person with glasses, long beaded earrings, and lop gloss, leans back against a wall.
    Magazine

    The literal – and literary – futures we build

    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.

  • Magazine

    FOR THE DREAMERS

    “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.

  • Magazine

    johnnie walker walks

    “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.

  • Magazine

    A nursery tale of the sea

    “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.