The Aerial Letter

What characterizes women as a group is our colonized status. To be colonized is not to think for oneself, to think on behalf of "the other," to put one's emotions to work in service of "the other." In short, not to exist. Nicole Brossard is known internationally for her writings on writing, on feminism, and on lesbian existence. This edition released for a new wave of feminist outrage is a book full of spirit, energy, insight, and chutzpah. She is a major voice in contemporary literature with incisive and hard-hitting essays about feminist imagination and culture. I believe there's only one explanation for all of these texts: my desire and my will to understand patriarchal reality and how it works, not for its own sake but for its tragic consequences in the lives of women, in the life of the spirit. Years of anger, revolt, certitude, and conviction are in The Aerial Letter; years of fighting against the screen which stands in the way of women's energy, identity, and creativity. —Nicole Brossard

Born in Montréal in 1943. Poet, novelist, and essayist, twice Governor General’s Literary Award winner for her poetry. Nicole Brossard has published more than forty books since 1965. Many among those books have been translated into English: Mauve Desert, Lovhers, The Blue Books, Installations, Museum of Bone and Water, Yesterday at the Hotel Clarendon, and Notebook of Roses and Civilization (shortlisted for the 2008 Griffin International Poetry Prize). She has cofounded and codirected the avant-garde literary magazine La Barre du Jour (1965-1975), has codirected the film Some American Feminists (1976) and coedited the acclaimed Anthologie de la poésie des femmes au Québec (1991, 2003). She has also won le Grand Prix de Poésie du Festival international de Trois-Rivières in 1989 and in 1999. In 1991, she was awarded le Prix Athanase-David (the highest literary recognition in Québec). She is a member of l’Académie des lettres du Québec. She received the W.O. Mitchell in 2003 Prize and the Canadian Council of Arts Molson Prize in 2006. Her work has influence a whole generation poets and feminists and has been translated widely into English and Spanish and as well in other languages. In 2010, she was made an officer of the Order of Canada and in 2013 a chevalière de l’Ordre national du Québec. In 2019, she received The Griffin Prize for a Life Achievement. Her most recent book in English is Avant Desire: a Nicole Brossard reader published by Coach House Book (Toronto) in 2020.