For the reader of contemporary literature, The Aerial Letter is a contribution of major significance. Combining twelve pieces developed since the mid-Seventies, it challenges feminist cultural experience and imagination. Brossard's reflections on writing and the emergence and survival of lesbian identity are hard hitting and incisive.

Nicole Brossard was born in Montréal in 1943. Twice Governor General’s Award winner for her poetry, she has published more than thirty books since 1965. Many have been translated into English: Mauve Desert, The Aerial Letter, Picture Theory, Lovhers, Baroque at Dawn, The Blue Books, Installations, Museum of Bone and Water, Fluid Arguments, Notebook of Roses and Civilization and White Piano. She has co-founded and co-directed the literary magazine La Barre du Jour (1965-1975), co-directed the film Some American Feminists (1976), and co-edited the acclaimed Anthologie de la poésie des femmes au Québec (1991 and 2003).
She is an officer of the Order of Canada, chevalière of the National Order of Quebec, and a member of l’Académie des lettres du Québec. She has twice won the Trois-Rivières International Poetry Festival Grand Prix Québecor (1989 and 1999). In 1991 she was awarded le Prix Athanase-David (the highest literary recognition in Québec). Her work has been widely translated into English and Spanish and is also available in many other languages, including German, Italian, Japanese, Slovenian, Romanian, Norwegian, Catalan, and Portuguese. Two anthologies of her work in English have appeared: Selections: the poetry of Nicole Brossard (2010) and Mobility of Light (2009), with another planned for publication in 2020.
Nicole has been awarded le Prix international de la littérature francophone Benjamin Fondane, le Prix du CIÉF for International Francophone Studies, the W.O. Mitchell Prize, and the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize. In 2015, she was included in the dictionary Le Petit Robert des noms propres. In 2018, she was the recipient of the first Violet Prize awarded by the Blue Metropolis Festival. Mauve Desert has been presented as a multidisciplinary creation in 2018 and is slated for an opera adaptation in 2020-21.
In 2019, an anthology of her poetry in Portuguese and a translation of Mauve Desert in Catalan will be published. Her most recent book in English is an art chapbook titled A Cappella with illustrations by Mauricio Corteletti, translated by Erín Moure and Robert Majzels.

Nicole Brossard's profile page

Marlene Wildeman is a fiction writer and translator, who has been living in Montreal since 1978. Originally from British Columbia, Marlene has published short stories, poetry, articles, and book reviews. Her story “One Became a Roofer” is part of the anthology Dykeversions, and her “Lesbian Lovebirds and Their Ways” was published in The Guide to Gracious Lesbian Living. Marlene also teaches English as a second language.

Marlene Wildeman's profile page

"A friend said to me with considerable fervour that she had read The Aerial Letter and had loved it. Such a strong emotional response to a book of theory may seem strange, and yet I too have read and loved these texts. Their extraordinary texture and the zany peregrinations of the words have brought me pleasure, insight and joy; they offered me warm complicity."— “Louise H. Forsyth, Professor, Department of Women's and Gender Studies, University of Saskatchewan