Dionne was born in Trinidad and has lived in Canada since 1970. She attended the University of Toronto, where she earned her B.A. in English and Philosophy and her M.A. in the Philosophy of Education, and worked on a Ph.D. in Women's History. She has taught English Literature and Creative Writing at Guelph, York, and Toronto universities, and has been Writer in Residence both at the University of Toronto and at the Halifax City Regional Library. She has taught poetry writing at West Coast Women and Words Summer School in Vancouver and at Humber School of Writing in Toronto.

Dionne has published seven books of poetry since 1978 as well as books on racism and on Black women's history in Canada, and has edited anthologies, reports and magazines. Her stories and poems have appeared in many literary magazines and in over a dozen anthologies, and her work is featured in American women's studies and Black studies courses.

Her eight volumes of poetry include Land to Light On which won the Governor General's Award for Poetry and the Trillium Award for Literature in 1997. The Globe and Mail said of her poetry, "Every once in a rare while a book of poetry - because it is poetry - appears on the literary landscape and breaks your heart .... The impeccably crafted sequence contains the spirit and soul of human fealty, which acts as a shield against the brutality of human history." Brand's most recent volume is called thirsty.

Dionne Brand's fiction includes the acclaimed novel In Another Place Not Here - a 1998 New York Times notable book - and Sans Souci and Other Stories. Her most recent title At the Full and Change of the Moon is a novel spanning six generations, two wars and the violence of the late twentieth century. It was a Los Angeles Times Notable Book of the Year, 1999.

Her works of non fiction include Bread Out Of Stone, a book of essays for which Adrienne Rich called her "a cultural critic of uncompromising courage, an artist in language and ideas, an intellectual conscience for her country." A Map to the Door of No Return, her latest, is a meditation on blackness in the diaspora. Dionne is living in Toronto.