Brenda Gunn wrote her first poem at the age of 62 when she retired after more than thirty years as an elementary and special ed teacher with Edmonton Public Schools. Her first book, Florilegia, is a collection of individually published and award-winning poems written between 2019 and 2024. Since earning a certificate in creative writing through the U of T, Brenda's poems have been published in local, national and international journals and anthologies, including Poetry X Hunger, US, Human to Human pandemic anthology UK, Ode to Chocolate, UK, San Francisco Creative Writing Institute's Dispatches from quarantine, Quilled Ink Review, South Africa, Canadian Stories, Edmonton Public Library's Capital City Press digital anthology and more. Brenda took first place in the 2025 TOPS long poem contest, with two poems receiving Honourable Mention, and her prose poem Being Joni Mitchell was printed on the back of Blindman Brewing beer cans in the summer of 2025! 

Brenda is a member of the Writers' Union of Canada, the League of Canadian Poets, the Ontario Poetry Society (TOPS), the Alberta and Saskatchewan Writers' Guilds, Parkland Poets of Stony Plain, the Edmonton Stroll of Poets, and Saint City Writers of St. Albert. She reads with Poetry in Motion at the Carrot Cafe, Nightingale at the Kasbar, Poetry and Canvas at Saint Albert Public Library, EPL's Snow Valley concert series, Parkland Poets and the Stroll's Haven reading series. She contributes to Parkland Poets, Saint City Writers and the Stroll's annual print anthologies, and volunteers with the board of the Stroll of Poets.  Brenda was chosen to receive the 2021 Alberta Writers' Guild Mary Bell Scholarship for a woman writer over the age of 50 to participate in their short fiction mentorship program with author Jill Robinson. She recently completed the 2026 Sage Hill spring fiction colloquium at Munester, Saskatchewan, with BC novelist Kevin Chong. Brenda is at work on a third poetry collection and a series of interconnected short stories.