Writers Out Loud: Navigating the Impacts of Bill 96

A graduate of the National Theatre School’s playwriting program and long-time arts activist, Guy Rex Rodgers was co-founder of the Quebec Drama Federation (QDF) and the Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF), was a member of the founding board of le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) and founding Executive Director of the English-Language Arts Network (ELAN).  In 2015 he was appointed a companion in l’Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec. Since leaving ELAN in 2020, Guy has written and directed eight documentary films about Anglos in Quebec in collaboration with MAtv, the National Film Board of Canada and CBC. He also writes a monthly column about culture, politics and history for The Montrealer magazine.

Shailee is a writer and graduate student originally from India. She recently completed her master’s thesis, investigating the politics of queer representation in postcolonial Indian theatre, at the department of English at McGill University. Her book, Sita and Helen—a graphic novel for young adults published by Tulika Books—hit the shelves earlier this year. In May, her paper on Rahul Varma’s play Counter Offence was published in the International Association of Theatre Critics’ peer-reviewed journal, Critical Stages/ Scènes critiques. It explores the effects of the linguistic politics propagated by Bill 96 on theatre culture in Montréal by focusing on the anglophone, diasporic work of Teesri Duniya Theatre company.

Christopher Neal is a journalist and communications professional. He has been a freelance correspondent in Latin America, and a staff writer at the Montreal Gazette and Ottawa Citizen. He has also held  communications leadership positions in Canada’s federal development aid agency, and at the World Bank, where he helped guide strategic communications for economic policy, data and research, operations in Latin America, energy and climate change. Since returning to Montreal from Washington DC in 2016, he has served on the boards of the Quebec Community Groups Network and Quebec Writers’ Federation, for which he drafted and presented a brief on Bill 96. He is currently Vice-President of the McGill Community of Lifelong Learning and President of the Canadian International Council’s Montreal chapter. His 2022 book, The Rebel Scribe – Carleton Beals and the Progressive Challenge to US Policy in Latin America, was short-listed for the Mavis Gallant Award for Non-Fiction.

Vanessa R. Sasson is a professor of Religious Studies in the Liberal Arts Department of Marianopolis College where she has been teaching since 1999. She is also a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State and Research Member at CERIAS at UQAM. She has published a number of articles and book chapters, is the author of The Birth of Moses and the Buddha: A Paradigm for the Comparative Study of Religions (Sheffield University Press, 2007) and editor or co-editor of a number of academic volumes, including Little Buddhas: Children and Childhoods in Buddhist Texts and Traditions (Oxford University Press, 2013), Jewels, Jewelry, and Other Shiny Things in the Buddhist Imaginary (Hawaii University Press, 2021), and most recently with Kristin Scheible, The Buddha: A Storied Life (Oxford University Press, 2023). Yasodhara and the Buddha (Bloomsbury, 2021) is her first academic novel; it is followed by The Gathering (Equinox 2023), which focuses on the women’s request for ordination. Another is sure to follow.