Author Dionne Brand helms new Alchemy program at publishing giant

Dionne Brand, a formidable figure of Canadian poetry, is set to helm a new publishing program.

Brand will act as editorial director of Alchemy by Knopf Canada, and will work alongside Lynn Henry, the imprint’s publishing director, and Martha Kanya-Forstner, its publisher.

Knopf says the program will release two to three titles each year, both fiction and non-fiction.

It says the program’s mandate is to “remake what is literary,” with books that say something about our times — be it the climate crisis or political instability — through a decolonialized lens.

Brand describes the publishing program as a “collaboration/experiment” and says she hopes it will help answer how books can intervene in today’s world.

Brand is a member of the Order of Canada, a prolific poet and novelist, and from 2014 to 2021 was poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart, which, like Knopf Canada, is an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 1, 2022.

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