As a child, Brandt navigated through High German in church, Low German at home, and English in school. As an adult, she received a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Manitoba, and then became a very successful poet and nonfiction writer. In a 1993 interview with Janice Williamson, Brandt discussed how the culture in which she grew up was predominately oral; each language she spoke represented a certain culture with its own set of “narrative codes.” Brandt explained that “you jump from one [culture] to the other and don’t think about how come, when you’re speaking in Low German, you can make all kinds of semi-obscene jokes, but when you’re speaking English you can’t” (Williamson 36). Brandt then articulated her constant struggle with these cultural restrictions: “I tried from a very young age to translate from one to the other rather than keep them separate” (Williamson 36).

Brandt's father, a respected community member, was extremely articulate and knew most of the Bible by heart; however, he was almost entirely illiterate and discouraged his children from reading and writing. Fiction was the least acceptable form of literature because, as Brandt put it, “[fiction and writing is] a place of deceiving and a place of betrayal, and it was, and it is. I have found the reading and writing of fiction to be a violation of that oral sense of the world” (Williamson 38). Brandt goes on to discuss how, when she began to write, she felt honor bound to avoid all fiction and could therefore only write about a few memories. However, after discovering that most of memory is perspective and seeing elements of fiction as more useful in telling her story, she began to work against her deep-seated distaste of fiction and actually used it in her writing. Her first book of poetry, questions i asked my mother, acknowledges this tension. After her largely fictional poem, “missionary position,” in which she discusses her “dozen lovers," the line “just kidding ma” takes up the entire next page (Brandt, questions 33, 34). Brandt said, “The real violation going on in the book is much deeper, but there’s a response deflecting it onto that level of a superficial breach of the rules” (Williamson 38).

Brandt’s “breach of the rules” has had a major impact on her writing and in her personal life. According to Brandt, the most controversial part of her writing has been “exposing the violence toward young children in childrearing and the misogyny toward women in a community which calls itself pacifist" (Interview). Bringing these contradictions to light is an integral part of Brandt's life and work as a feminist Mennonite writer. Brandt left her home at the age of 17 to pursue her own dreams; she received a Bachelor of Theology from Canadian Mennonite Bible College, a B.A with honors from the University of Manitoba, an M.A. from the University of Toronto, a PhD in English Literature from the University of Manitoba, and published her first book of poetry in 1987 (Hostetler 78; “Manitoba”). 

Since then, Brandt has continued to push the line of traditional acceptability in her brilliantly bold and exposing poetry. Brandt said, “I've never thought of my poems as intending controversy: our Mennonite heritage is filled with all kinds of painful and scandalous contradictions, and sensitive people growing up in that context will necessarily suffer them in painful ways” (Interview). This tension with her home community came to a head around 1998, when she was shunned, which she describes as “an excruciating experience.” Brandt has not written directly and specifically about her shunning because it is still too painful.

Brandt's bold confrontation of contradictions--not only within the Mennonite community but within society at large--coupled with her incredible skill and beauty as a poet and writer makes Brandt one of the best-known Mennonite poets today. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award in 1987, the McNally Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year in 1990, and the Canadian Authors Association National Poetry Award in 1995. She was a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 1987 and 1995 and was short-listed for the Dillions Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1988 and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2004. She has published two nonfiction works and five books of poetry, including her latest book Now You Care. Brandt also served as the poetry editor of Prairie Fire, and was one of the founding members of the feminist editorial collective Contemporary Verse II. Brandt has been a Writer in Residence at the University of Alberta, an Assistant Professor of Canadian Literature and Lecturer at the University of Winnipeg, and is currently Associate Professor of Canadian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor (Hostetler 78; Canadian Poets; “Griffin”; “Manitoba”).