Nicole Brossard in Theory and Practice

Nicole Brossard is one of Canada’s most prolific and avant-garde writers, with more than thirty books to date and a dizzying list of awards to match. Her work is often sharply self-referential: saturated with the impossibility of a seamless translation and the problem of writing in a language already loaded with meaning, Brossard’s work is a meditation on how to write outside of a coded imaginary. While Brossard’s oeuvre has been associated with a postmodern aesthetic (in Mauve Desert, for example, references to the Beats work alongside a critique of the foundations of Western philosophy), her writing doesn’t render itself slick to the point of ineffectual.

Brossard will be in Toronto this Wednesday for two events. The first is a public lecture followed by a discussion from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Centre for Comparative Literature. Brossard will shift from theory to practice Wednesday evening in a bilingual reading at Mercer Union with Barbara Godard and writer, artist and Torontoist contributor Sharon Harris. The fun gets underway at 7:30 p.m.

Photo of Nicole Brossard by Caroline Hayeur.