Carol Bruneau is the author of eleven books: four short story collections, After the Angel Mill (1995), Depth Rapture (1998), A Bird on Every Tree (2017), shortlisted for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the Dartmouth Book Award; and Threshold (2024); one nonfiction book, No Ordinary Magic: the Art of Laurie Swim (2023), shortlisted for the APA Best Book Published in Atlantic Canada Award; and six novels. These include Brighten the Corner Where You Are (2020), nominated for the IMPAQ Dublin Literary Award; A Circle on the Surface (2018), winner of the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction; These Good Hands, a novel based on the life and art of Camille Claudel; Glass Voices (2007), named a Globe and Mail Best Book, German translation Glasstimmen (2010); Berth (2005); and Purple for Sky (2000), US edition A Purple Thread for Sky (2001), winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the Dartmouth Book Award.

In numerous starred reviews, Bruneau has been praised by Quill & Quire as a master of the short story form and “a first-class storyteller who uses words magically” (Quill & Quire), and by bestselling author Lesley Crewe as “a marvel.”

Giller-Prize shortlisted author Leo McKay Jr. calls Bruneau’s most recent collection “stories of great power and insight,” and says, “Bruneau illuminates her fictional world with a light so clear and bright that in it we can see into the shadows of our own world, into the usually unuttered spaces between human action and intent, between what we mean to each other and our usually inadequate attempts to articulate that meaning. And the source of that light,” he notes, “is Bruneau’s powerfully controlled language…every sentence perfect unto its purpose.”

She has been writing since childhood; her professional writing career spans thirty years. Her stories, reviews and articles have appeared nationwide in anthologies, print and online journals and newspapers.

She has appeared at various literary festivals including TIFA (Toronto International Festival of Authors), the Vancouver Writers’ Festival, Eden Mills, the Northrop Frye Festival, the Cabot Trail Authors’ Festival, the Lunenburg Literary Festival, the Margaree Literary Festival, Read-by-the-Sea, FogLit, AfterWords Literary Festival and the Winterset Festival.

The recipient of four Canada Council grants in support of her fiction, Bruneau has been Writer in Residence at Acadia and Dalhousie Universities, and taught writing for the arts for many years at NSCAD University. Having led workshops throughout the Maritimes and mentored new and emerging writers through the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program since the program’s inception, she continues to teach workshops in fiction writing at various levels for the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.

Bruneau lives and works in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Mi’kmaki/Nova Scotia.