| Editors | Michael Ondaatje, Michael Redhill, Michael Helm, Linda Spalding, Esta Spalding, and Rebecca Silver Slayter; Contributing editors are Robert Hass, Anne McLean, Tara Quinn, and Colm Tóibín |
|---|---|
| Categories | Literary magazine |
| Frequency | Biannually |
| Publisher | Nadia Szilvassy |
| First issue | 1977 |
| Country | Canada |
| Based in | Toronto |
| Language | English |
| Website | www.brickmag.com |
Brick is a literary magazine published twice a year, based in Toronto. It is primarily – but not exclusively – a journal of literary non-fiction. Issues include personal essays, book reviews, memoirs, interviews, obituaries, letters, photography, a few poems, and occasionally fiction. The magazine has a tendency to celebrate venerable authors who otherwise lack broad popularity, such as John Hawkes, Patrick Leigh Fermor, and Fielding Dawson.
Brick was founded in London, Ontario by Stan Dragland and Jean McKay in 1977. It was originally devoted to reviews of books, mainly Canadian. In 1985, the magazine was taken over by Linda Spalding and Michael Ondaatje who gradually transformed it into a journal of literary non-fiction with an emphasis on the personal essay. Among the many writers whose work has appeared in Brick are Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Lethem, Jeffery Eugenides, John Ralston Saul, John Berger, Pico Iyer, Russell Banks, Lydia Davis, Chris Ware, Tomas Tranströmer, Jonathan Safran Foer, Mahmoud Darwish, Haruki Murakami, Czesław Miłosz, Zadie Smith, Annie Proulx, Marilynne Robinson, Alice Munro, Sharon Olds, Margaret Avison, W.S. Merwin, Christian Bök, bp nichol, Barbara Gowdy, Ian McEwan, Michael Chabon, Mavis Gallant, Orhan Pamuk, Jaspreet Singh, Richard Ford, Jim Harrison, Robert Creeley and many others.
Notable interviews have featured J. M. Coetzee, Walter Tevis, Tony Kushner, Leonard Cohen, Werner Herzog, José Saramago.
Brick has also featured major contributions by people from outside the literary world, including film editor and sound designer Walter Murch, artist Robert Rauschenberg, contemporary violinmaker Joseph Curtin, magician Max Maven, filmmaker Guy Maddin, thespian Simon McBurney, neurologist Oliver Sacks, conductor Daniel Barenboim, urban design activist Jane Jacobs, documentarian Nelofer Pazira, lawyer Clayton Ruby, postmodern dancer and choreographer Douglas Dunn, and theoretical physicist Lee Smolin.