Bronwen Wallace

Who was Bronwen Wallace?

Bronwen Wallace was a Canadian poet and short story writer.

Wallace was born in Kingston, Ontario. She attended Queen's University, Kingston. In 1970, she moved to Windsor, Ontario, where she founded a women's bookstore and became active in working class and women's activist groups. In 1977, she returned to Kingston, where she worked at a women's shelter and taught at St. Lawrence College and Queen's. She wrote a weekly column for the Kingston Whig-Standard. In 1988, she was writer-in-residence at the University of Western Ontario.

Her collections testify to her social activism involving women's rights, civil rights, and social policy. A primary focus of her work was violence against women and children.

In a series of letters published in 1994 as Two Women Talking: Correspondence 1985-1987, Wallace and poet Erin Mouré discuss feminist theory. Mouré defends the language philosophers who demonstrate that our speech, and the concepts expressible in language, governs our knowledge and actions. However, Wallace disagreed that language-centred writing rescues women from the patriarchy, claiming that it can be easily co-opted by patriarchs.