Brick #104 (Winter 2020)

Editors: Dionne Brand, David Chariandy, Laurie D. Graham, Michael Helm, Liz Johnston, Martha Sharpe, Rebecca Silver Slayter, and Madeleine Thien

Brick is an international literary journal published twice a year out of Toronto. With a focus on literary non-fiction—and a willingness to stray when our hearts are taken—the magazine prizes the personal voice and celebrates life, art, and the written word with the most invigorating and challenging essays, interviews, translations, memoirs, belles lettres, and unusual musings we can get our hands on.

In this issue:

Teju Cole renders Norway in fragments

Eleanor Wachtel interviews Kiese Laymon

Souvankham Thammavongsa pulls the trigger

Christina Sharpe on beauty, Blackness, and book lists

Ubah Cristina Ali Farah finds the words for escaping conflict

Theresa Kishkan’s fractured path

Novelist Graciliano Ramos’s mayoral report from Palmeira dos Índios (trans. Padma Viswanathan)

Hiromi Goto meets kin on contested ground

Aga Maksimowska finds Sergei Dovlatov

Aminatta Forna revisits a chimpanzee escape

Joe Woodward has never been to Spain

A conversation with Rawi Hage and Rachid Al-Daif

Kaitlin Ruether on trees, combustion, and her brother

Joanne Leow replays life under dictatorship

Alex Leslie tours the Neon Museum

Judy Fong Bates remembers Wayson Choy

Poetry by Ken Babstock and John Steffler

Fiction by Yan Ge and Adania Shibli (trans. Adam Talib)

A translation exercise featuring Rawi Hage, Canisia Lubrin, Erín Moure, Yan Ge, Oana Avasilichioaei, Geetha Sukumaran, Kweli Jaoko, Francine Merasty, John Martial Merasty, Gregory Gan, Ana Lorena Leija, Marta Kucza, and Han Yujoo

Plus artwork by Guy Laramée, Nick Burdan, Gregory Gan, and Christian Ordoñez