Donald Brackett is a Vancouver-based culture critic, curator, and author who writes about art, music, and movies and designs film programs for Cinematheque.

 

Born in Toronto, he was active as a visual artist and writer for many years, publishing poetry in small literary journals while undertaking three parallel career paths that nourished his overall style and ethos, one that privileges a kind of drastic diversity. He worked in the publishing and retail book fields as a distributor/buyer for major chains. He worked in advertising, promotion and public relations. And he translated that experience into the non-profit art domain, becoming Executive Director of the Professional Art Dealers Association of Canada and The Ontario Association of Art Galleries and Museums, and a corporate consultant managing art collections for large clients.

 

As an arts journalist, he wrote regular critiques for high-profile newspapers and magazines, in addition to being the culture critic for CJRT-FM, where he appeared weekly for ten years to discuss books, films, and exhibitions and to conduct interviews with authors, artists and curators. He has been concentrating on longer-form literary projects, and has published six books on musical artists including Marianne Faithfull, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks, Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones, Tina Turner, and Aretha Franklin. His latest book Yoko Ono: An Artful Life, was just released by Sutherland House.

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His is currently working on Double Solitaire, a book about a family relative, Charles Brackett, and the thirteen brilliant films he wrote and produced with his partner and collaborator, Billy Wilder, with a special focus on their last award-winning masterpiece, Sunset Boulevard, in 1950. And the first volume of his ebook series, Breathing Room: Short Books for Busy Times, will be available through House of ShAkE soon.