About Connie T. Braun

Connie T. Braun instructs creative writing, and mentors undergraduate writers and editors, and has published two books of non-fiction and two poetry chapbooks along with journal articles and essays. Much of her writing is grounded in the war-refugee and immigrant experience of World War II, resonant today in her explorations of memory and witness, the silences and language of trauma, the sites of geographical and spiritual displacement and belonging, and the pervasive paradoxes inherent in being human. Her academic and personal essays, poetry, and reviews, appear in various journals and anthologies, and her poetry has been set to musical compositions. She is a full member of the League of Canadian Poets, among other writing associations, and lives in Vancouver.

I am a poet, memoirist, speaker and instructor and have written and published many manuscripts of diverse genres including poetry, memoir, book reviews and academic papers. I hold a Master’s in Humanities degree, and a Master's in Fine Arts (MFA) (Creative Writing) from the University of British Columbia, with Susan Musgrave and Wayne Grady as my advisors in poetry and nonfiction, and, in addition, I have taken masterclasses, workshops and retreats with renowned writers and poets including poet Carolyn Forché and Patricia Hampl. 

Born and raised in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, I have lived on the beautiful traditional ancestral unceded shared territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations; of the Sumas First Nation and Mastqui First Nation; and ancestral unceded lands of the Syilx/Okanagan People.

Artist Statement.

My poetry and prose is a continuous exploration of memory and witness, the silences and language of trauma, the sites of displacement and belonging—geographical and spiritual—and the connections between sorrow/lament and hope, attesting that a poet’s work is to see, not look away, that attention is a form of prayer and petition, with an aesthetic that affirms life, or, as Anne Michaels states, that “the shortest poem is a name.”