In Brenda Brooks' first novel, Gotta Find Me An Angel (Raincoast, 2005), a 35-year-old film projectionist at a second-run cinema in Toronto is haunted by the ghost of a friend who died long ago. One night she addresses a lament to that ghost, recounting her failed attempts at finding love.

Brenda Brooks' second novel, Honey (ECW, 2019), described as modern noir, concerns a re-ignited passion for a wild and charismatic childhood friend named Honey, who suddenly reappears soon after the funeral of 24-year-old Nicole Hewett's father, who was killed in a car accident. Brooks says this tale of perilous romance was partially inspired by the return, in 2010, of a scrapbook of poems and photographs that she had sheepishly given to her high school writing teacher on the last day of school. The return to her, some thirty years later, of her youthful writing by the family of the deceased teacher "renewed in me a longing to express something about desire, memory and loss."

Brooks lives on Salt Spring Island. She has been shortlisted for the 2006 Ferro-Grumley Award for Fiction and a finalist for the 2005 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award.

DATE OF BIRTH: 15/03/52

PLACE OF BIRTH: Rivers, Manitoba

ARRIVAL IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: 1992

BOOKS:

Honey (ECW 2019) $19.95 978-1-77041-497-6. Novel
Gotta Find Me An Angel (Vancouver, BC: Raincoast Books, 2005). Novel
Somebody Should Kiss You (Charlottetown, PEI: Gynergy Press, 1990)
Blue Light in the Dash (Vancouver, BC: Polestar, 1994)


ANTHOLOGIES:

By Word of Mouth. ed. Lee Fleming. Charlottetown, PEI: Gynergy, 1989.
Tidelines. ed. Lee Fleming. Charlottetown, PEI: Gynergy, 1991.\
Tomboys!
. (Eds. Lynne Yamaguchi & Karen Barber). Los Angeles, CA: Alyson Publications, 1995
Poems Between Women -- Four Centuries of Love, Romantic Friendship, and Desire. (Ed. Emma Donoghue). Columbia University Press, NY, 1997
Constellations -- Twenty Years of Stellar Poetry from Polestar. Vancouver,, 2001
The Dominion of Love -- An Anthology of Canadian Love Poems. (Ed. Tom Wayman). Harbour Publishing, 2001
In Fine Form -- The Canadian Book of Form Poetry. (Eds. Kate Braid and Sandy Shreve). Vancouver: Polestar, 2005
Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poetry. Mother Tongue Press: Editor Fertig and Rhenisch, 2009

[BCBW 2019] "Poetry"