Brenda Barrie

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Brenda Barrie is a Canadian poet and novelist, author of the 2005 novel The Binding and the 2004 poetry collection Fast Forward/Full Stop

Barrie was born in Winnipeg as Brenda Barrie Gallis, and educated primarily at the Yiddish-language I.L. Peretz Folk School and St. John's High School. She began writing professionally almost straight out of high school (after a few months in nurse's training at Children's Hospital) when she was hired as an advertising copywriter by Simpsons-Sears, and then by the Hudson's Bay Company, the department stores.

In 1963 she married Winnipeg-born Sid Bursten, then a reporter and features writer for The Calgary Herald, and worked for the Hudson's Bay Company and then Time Magazine, both in Calgary. She and her husband went on to work in Edmonton, Indianapolis, and Madison, Wisconsin, before returning to Winnipeg in 1976.

Her husband was hired to run The Jewish Post, and when the editor's post became vacant he hired her. Considering that having two Burstens on the masthead might look like nepotism, she decided to drop her married name and use "Brenda Barrie"; she's been known professionally by this name ever since.

She was editor of the first Winnipeg real-estate magazine, feature writer for The Winnipeg Tribune, founding editor of The Downtowner weekly newspaper, marketing director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and Community Relations Director of the Winnipeg Jewish Community Council. While with the WJCC she graduated in classics from the University of Winnipeg, completing an educational trek that started at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and continued at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Winnipeg.

In 1991 she was appointed executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council/Anti-Defamation League of Minnesota and the Dakotas and moved to Minneapolis, moving on to Orange County, California in 1993, and then to Baltimore in 1998. In 2005 she moved back to Laguna Woods, California, and became executive director of the Beth Shir Sholom synagogue in Santa Monica.

In 2000 she graduated with an M.A. in Creative Writing from Hamline University, Minnesota's oldest university. Her M.A. thesis was an earlier version of her first published novel, The Binding. Her thesis committee included Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist Carol Shields, then Chancellor of the University of Winnipeg.

Brenda has two daughters, both married and living in Winnipeg with their husbands and a total of nine children.