Speed Dating for Writers and Publishers!
Located in the Gallery, Casa d’Italia
Writers, bring your pitch and get ready to present it to a range of local publishers. This edition will focus on poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Introduce yourselves, and then you’ll have three minutes to tell your publisher “date” what your book is all about. Don’t forget to leave time for questions or a little discussion. When the bell dings, move to the next available seat and do it again. Whether you find a home for your manuscript or not, you’ll make contacts and gather information that may serve you now and in the future.
With:
- Fiona Jeffries
- Lis McLoughlin
- Connie McParland or Michael Mirolla
- Manahil Bandukwala
Moderated by Remy Attig
Remy Attig, PhD, is the executive director of the Quebec Writers’ Federation. Prior to joining QWF, Remy worked as an associate professor of sociolinguistics and translation, where their research focused on minority/minoritized language communities. In a pre-academic life, they worked as the senior director of operations at the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), the operations manager of the David Suzuki Foundation, and the executive director of Projet 10 / Project 10, Montreal’s longest-running organization supporting 2SLGBTQIA+ youth. Through their research, teaching, writing, and activism, Remy demonstrates that the way people tell their stories, and the language(s) they choose to use, are often as important as the message they share with the world.
Manahil Bandukwala is the author of Heliotropia (Brick Books 2024; shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award, the Raymond Souster Award, and the Ottawa Book Award, and winner of the Archibald Lampman Award) and MONUMENT (Brick Books 2022). She was selected as a Writer’s Trust of Canada Rising Star in 2023. She is currently Managing Editor for Brick Books. See her work at manahilbandukwala.com.
Connie Guzzo McParland, President and Co‑director of Guernica Editions, holds a BA in Italian Literature and an MA in Creative Writing from Concordia University. She is the author of the novels The Girls of Piazza d’Amore (2013) and The Women of Saturn (2017), the latter translated into Italian as Le donne di Saturno (2019). Her nonfiction work includes the biography An Opera in 3 Acts, translated into French as Un opéra en 3 actes (2021). She also translated The Twelfth Room, the English edition of La Dodicesima Stanza. Her latest work, Stitch by Stitch, Punto per punto, De fil à aiguille, launching in March 2027, is a collection of stories and testimonials about Italian immigrant women who laboured in the garment industry in Quebec.
Her writing has been recognized with numerous distinctions, including the Concordia University David McKeen Award in Creative Writing (2008) for her thesis Girotondo; a shortlist nomination for the Quebec Writers’ Federation First Book Award for The Girls of Piazza d’Amore (2013).
Fiona Jeffries (she/her) is an Acquisitions and Development editor at Fernwood Publishing, a worker-run independent book publisher that focuses on critical perspectives across a range of subjects and voices. In keeping with Fernwood’s mission, her editorial work is wide ranging and informed by her academic training and activist commitments.
Lis McLoughlin, PhD is the founder and director of NatureCulture® www.nature-culture.net, a publishing company through which she directs the Writing the Land® Project www.writingtheland.org, which pairs poets with conserved lands, and creates anthologies sold for land conservation. Lis has degrees in Civil Engineering, Education, and Science and Technology Studies. She lives off-grid in Northfield, Massachusetts and part-time in Montréal, Québec.