Di Brandt’s poetry has received many awards, including the Gerald Lampert Award, the McNally Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year Award and the CAA National Poetry Award. She has been twice shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award and has been nominated for the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Pat Lowther Award. Now You Care is her fifth collection of poetry and has also been shortlisted for the 2004 Trillium Book Award and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Among her other publications are questions i asked my mother (1987); Agnes in the sky (1990); mother, not mother (1992); Wild Mother Dancing: Maternal Narrative in Canadian Literature (1993); Jerusalem, beloved (1995) and Dancing naked: Narrative Strategies for Writing Across Centuries (1996). Selected anthologies include Section Lines: A Manitoba Anthology (1988); Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Literature (Oxford University Press, 1996) and Uncommon Wealth: an Anthology of Poetry in English (Oxford University Press, (1996).

Brandt grew up in Reinland, a Mennonite farming village in south central Manitoba and was one of the first women writers to break the public silence of Mennonite women in Canada. She taught English and Creative Writing at the University of Winnipeg from 1986-1995, and currently teaches Creative Writing and Canadian Literature at the University of Windsor. She recently spent a year living and writing in Berlin. She is a former poetry editor of Prairie Fire and a founding member of the feminist editorial collective of Contemporary Verse II. [from the Griffin Poetry Prize website]