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Magazine
“Do it for yourself, your people, and your land”
An interview with the judges of Briarpatch’s 13th annual Writing in the Margins contest: Helen Knott, Juliane Okot Bitek, and Kevin Settee.
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Online-only
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.
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Online-only
boots
the Similkameen they say are the strong
the frayed the twisted, the worn, we feel that -
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Online-only
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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Online-only
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.