Quebec Writers' Federation

Graphic Novel Book Club: Grass
2019-12-04 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 176 Bernard West, Montréal, Québec, H2T2K2, Canada
Each month we host a Graphic Novel Book Club, open to all, during which we hang out and informally discuss a featured graphic novel. Our pick for September is GRASS by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim.
We will meet at La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly (176 Rue Bernard Ouest) on Wednesday, December 4th at 7 p.m. Join us for refreshments and collective insights!
ABOUT:
Grass is a powerful anti-war graphic novel, offering up firsthand the life story of a Korean girl named Lee Ok-sun who was forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese Imperial Army during the second World War – a disputed chapter in 20th century Asian history.
Beginning in Lee’s childhood, Grass shows the leadup to World War II from a child’s vulnerable perspective, detailing how one person experienced the Japanese occupation and the widespread suffering it entailed for ordinary Korean folk. Keum Suk Gendry-Kim emphasizes Lee’s strength in overcoming the many forms of adversity she experienced. Grass is painted in a black ink that flows with lavish details of the beautiful fields and farmland of Korea and uses heavy brushwork on the somber interiors of Lee’s memories.
Cartoonist Gendry-Kim’s interviews with Lee become an integral part of Grass, forming the heart and architecture of this powerful non-fiction graphic novel and offering a holistic view of how Lee’s wartime suffering changed her. Grass is a landmark graphic novel that makes personal the desperate cost of war and the importance of peace.
Grass is translated from Korean by Janet Hong, an award-winning writer and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. Her translations include Ancco’s Bad Friends (Drawn & Quarterly, 2018), Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale (Graywolf Press, 2017) and Ha Seong-nan’s The Woman Next Door (forthcoming from Open Letter Books in 2019). She is currently long listed for the 2018 PEN Translation Prize.
***We are offering a 20% discount on GRASS from now until the meeting date!***

Accent Open Mic
2019-12-04 19:30 - 22:30, 2019-12-18 19:30 - 22:30 | La Marche à côté, 5043 St-Denis, Montreal, Quebec, H2J 2L8, Canada
Accent Open Mic
La Marche à Côté, 5043 St. Denis
7:30pm, 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month.
accentseriesmontreal.wordpress.com

Accent Open Mic is a bilingual reading series that takes place at La Marche à Côté, (5043 St. Denis) on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month. Hosted by Devon Gallant and Luc-Antoine Chiasson, each night we feature 1 anglophone reader and 1 francophone reader along with an open mic. Sign up for the open mic starts at 7:30, show starts at 8pm. For more information visit: accentseriesmontreal.wordpress.com or on Facebook: @accentopenmic.

Everything Happens at Once: Your Page One
2019-12-04 20:00 - 22:00 | Atwater Library and Computer Centre, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Westmount, Quebec, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Photo credit: Marina Vulicevic
This workshop is intended for people interested in short- and long-form fiction who have begun puzzling out the beginnings of their stories. Limited to 12 participants.
In this fiction-writing workshop, we will get our stories to hit the ground running by working on our Page One. Short story or long-form fiction, all the elements of narration are thrown into play right away on the first page (okay, maybe a little on the second). The themes and problems of the piece are all present, stated or suggested, sometimes hidden. We will learn to do that: get out of the starting blocks fast, leaving our anxieties behind.
The “everything at once” approach means putting all the narrative elements into play simultaneously. Setting speaks for character, dialogue speaks for plot, the description of place speaks for the theme. All intertwined, not consecutive. Everything at once, like when you meet someone in real life, even if it takes time to understand what you first thought you knew.
We’ll look at the beginning page of works of fiction to see how others have handled their beginnings. That revolver on the dining room table – does it really have to go off, and who or what will be the target? When Dante admits in Sentence One, “Halfway through the journey of my life, I found myself lost in a forest dark,” what sort of darkness is this, and why is he telling us about it? The issue of who is talking to us, and why, will be essential to our Page Ones.
The object is to become more self-aware from the beginning, without turning into hyper-planners intent on deleting all spontaneity. The Page One approach is one of the antidotes to the anxieties of the beginning writer, since it stresses action: moving quickly, getting the elements in play, foreseeing eventual themes, helping answer the question, “Why does this story exist, and where is it going?”
Often the beginnings of stories wonder about their own existence. Tom O’Brien’s The Things They Carried meditates on the difficulty of telling a true war story. How can you tell if a war story is true? What is a war story anyway? Whom can we trust? This Page-One questioning launches the book.

Funny Boy (Violet Hour Book Club)
2019-12-07 15:00 - 16:30 | Never Apart, 7049 Rue Saint-Urbain, Montreal, Quebec, H2S 3H4, Canada
Join us for the next meeting of the Violet Hour Book Club, a reading group devoted to modern and classic works of LGBTQ literature. The book we will be discussing is Funny Boy (1997) by Shyam Selvadurai.

Launch of Ethel Meilleur’s “Funny Girl”
2019-12-07 19:00 - 21:00 | YWCA, Salle Holden-Fisher, 1355 boulevard Réné Lévesque, Montreal, Quebec, H3G 1T3, Canada
Ethel Meilleur will read from her first chapbook, Funny Girl, published by Sky of Ink Press.
Music by Brian Campbell
Finger food, wine, refreshments
Admission free
Ethel Meilleur’s Funny Girl is absolutely a must-read:
Lusty in lung and busty in breath, these poems are
gusty with gusto. You gotta read em aloud, shout em out,
and bust out laughin–appropriately–when you comprehend
the gutsy Black, back-country wisdom, the Africadian,
aphoristic backtalk, and the bluesy narratives that the poet
throws down. These lyrics are hoe-down, show-down, and
get-down at sundown. Only a serious Funny Girl can deliver
lines like these: “Wrap me in your personality / and roll me
off your tongue // open your mouth and let the river run through /
while I fish into your taste buds.” Mmm, mmm, mmm. Amen,
Amen, Amen-Ra, Rah-Rah-Rah.
George Elliott Clarke
7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2016 & 2017)

2019-12-09 17:00 - 19:00 | McGill Art Hive, 3700 rue McTavish, 1st Floor, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1Y2, Canada
Please join McGill’s Institute for Human Development and Well-being (IHDW) in partnership with Poetry Matters, for a participatory art-making workshop on manifestos as a poetic form
This is neither a lecture nor a seminar – rather, it’s an opportunity to work together in a collective environment of exploration and play on making manifestos, considered as an art form, genre, and way of thinking about aesthetic and cultural change.

The workshop will take place in McGill’s Art Hive space, on the first floor of the Education Building. Please come prepared to work and play with crayons, Sharpies, folded paper, ideas, dreams – and to collaborate with others on making manifestos.
When: Monday, December 9, 5-7
Where: McGill’s Art Hive | Education Building, 3700 McTavish | 1st Floor
Program: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1On-QSEBVZCB8PQWQdCGf7ulu84ytRcMQ/view

There will be snacks and beverages. We do not have accommodations for child care, but this is a kid friendly event, so please feel welcome to bring the young ones.
Beautiful poster thanks to Ramy Gorgis of the IHDW.

Manifestos As A Poetic Form
2019-12-09 17:00 - 19:00 | McGill Art Hive, 3700 rue McTavish, 1st Floor, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1Y2, Canada
Please join McGill’s Institute for Human Development and Well-being (IHDW), in partnership with Poetry Matters, for a participatory art-making workshop on manifestos as a poetic form
This is neither a lecture nor a seminar – rather, it’s an opportunity to work together in a collective environment of exploration and play on making manifestos, considered as an art form, genre, and way of thinking about aesthetic and cultural change.

The workshop will take place in McGill’s Art Hive space, on the first floor of the Education Building. Please come prepared to work and play with crayons, Sharpies, folded paper, ideas, dreams – and to collaborate with others on making manifestos.
When: Monday, December 9, 5-7
Where: McGill’s Art Hive | Education Building, 3700 McTavish | 1st Floor
Program: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1On-QSEBVZCB8PQWQdCGf7ulu84ytRcMQ/view

There will be snacks and beverages. We do not have accommodations for child care, but this is a kid friendly event, so please feel welcome to bring the young ones.
Beautiful poster thanks to Ramy Gorgis of the IHDW.

Carmen Maria Machado launches IN THE DREAM HOUSE
2019-12-09 19:00 - 20:30 | La Sala Rossa, 4848 St. Laurent Boulevard, Montreal, Quebec, H2T 2R5, Canada
Join us for an evening with National Book Award Finalist & Guggenheim Fellow Carmen Maria Machado
Librairie Drawn & Quarterly presents:
Carmen Maria Machado launches In The Dream House
La Sala Rossa, 4848 St Laurent Blvd, Montreal, QC H2T 1R5
lundi 9 décembre à 19h
Tickets:
Book + Ticket Combo: $24.95+ tx
*Includes 1 General Admission + 1 Copy of IN THE DREAM HOUSE by Carmen Maria Machado (to be picked up at the event)
General Admission : $15+tx
(Présentation en anglais)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carmen Maria Machado is the author of Her Body and Other Parties , which was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. She lives in Philadelphia with her wife.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties.
In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.
And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope–haunted houses, erotica, bildungsroman–in which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations about the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.
Machado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, Star Trek and Disney villains, fairy tales, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.

Slantwise to the Truth: Navigating Narrative Nonfiction
2019-12-09 20:00 - 22:00 | Atwater Library and Computer Centre, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Westmount, Quebec, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Photo credit: Niamh Malcolm
All levels are welcome. Limited to 12 participants.
“Tell all the Truth but tell it slant/success in Circuit lies” — let poet Emily Dickinson’s words inspire you as we navigate narrative nonfiction, writing that takes the best elements of fiction, applies those to facts, and ends with compelling stories.
In this workshop you will take your own “big idea” and add to it week-by-week until at the end of eight sessions you’ll have a draft narrative essay of 2,000 words or more. Each meeting will be split between discussing one of six elements necessary for good narrative nonfiction and workshopping participants’ writing. This will be supported by readings related to the discussion and to the week’s assigned writing. Below is an outline covering six weekly discussions. Two additional weeks are left open to allow for flexibility – perhaps there will be spillover from a previous week’s discussion or perhaps by consensus we’ll toss in another idea to discuss or take extra time to workshop participants’ work.
Please note that this workshop will not focus on memoir writing. Although memoir falls into the category of narrative nonfiction, I encourage participants to look beyond it when considering their writing for these eight weeks.

Double Bill: Dark Red by: Willow Cioppa & Cry Baby by: Kalale Dalton-Lutale
2019-12-10 19:30 - 2019-12-15 15:00 | Montreal arts interculturels, 3680, rue Jeanne-Mance, Montreal, Quebec, H2X 2K5, Canada
For the first time ever, Black Theatre Workshop & Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal will be presenting 2 one-act plays in a special Double Bill presentation at the MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels). BTW places the spotlight on two of our Artist Mentorship Program playwright alumni’s recent work.
About Dark Red by Willow Cioppa
Calliope is a young woman on the cusp of a complete meltdown. Alone in her apartment, she writes a single letter addressing every man she’s ever fucked, blurring them all together to create one beast, representative of all her trauma. Addressing this man in a vulgar, crass, and brutally honest text, Calliope unravels her experiences of heartache and abuse, searching for closure in songs, books, memories, and liquor. Dark Red is a viscous, textural exploration of what it means to lick our own wounds and heal ourselves, moving past our brokenness and reclaiming our pain in order to move forward.
About Cry Baby by Kalale Dalton-Lutale.
So you have these memories, right? And they’re all sort of hanging above your head like a tangled mobile. Pieces of songs that remind you of your dad in college, the smell of chlorine, your mother’s hand writing, a card you made for your sister.
In Kalale Dalton-Lutale’s Cry baby we watch as a young woman unravels. Relying on her personal archive as source material, Dalton-Lutale’s (2016) work offers the audience a non-linear piece of theatre. By resurrecting the archive, she unveils the framework of love that has shaped her into the person she is today. Prompted by falling in love for the first time, the playwright reflects on her own Blackness, family, and womanhood. Cry baby asks us “how can we be whole when a part of us is missing?”

Morgan Parker Launches Who Put This Song On? w/ Monique Polak
2019-12-11 19:00 - 21:00 | La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 176 Bernard West, Montréal, Québec, H2T2K2, Canada
Morgan Parker (Magical Negro, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce) talks about her first young adult novel, Who Put This Song On?, in an on-stage interview with author Monique Polak (The Taste of Rain).
ABOUT THE BOOK :
In the vein of powerful reads like The Hate U Give and Girl in Pieces, comes poet Morgan Parker’s pitch-perfect novel about a black teenage girl searching for her identity when the world around her views her depression as a lack of faith and blackness as something to be politely ignored.
Trapped in sunny, stifling, small-town suburbia, seventeen-year-old Morgan knows why she’s in therapy. She can’t count the number of times she’s been the only non-white person at the sleepover, been teased for her “weird” outfits, and been told she’s not “really” black. Also, she’s spent most of her summer crying in bed. So there’s that, too.
Lately, it feels like the whole world is listening to the same terrible track on repeat—and it’s telling them how to feel, who to vote for, what to believe. Morgan wonders, when can she turn this song off and begin living for herself?
Loosely based on her own teenage life and diaries, this incredible debut by award-winning poet Morgan Parker will make readers stand up and cheer for a girl brave enough to live life on her own terms—and for themselves.

Argo Reading Series: Solstice Fest
2019-12-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Argo Bookshop, 1915 Ste. Catherine Ouest, Montreal, Quebec H3H 1M3, Montreal, Canada
Argo Reading Series: Solstice Fest
Geneviève Lacombe, Ilona Martonfi, Gloria Macher,
Brian Campbell, Mike Di Sclafani, Danielle Wong,
R.M. Cutler, Mark Foss, Marc-Alexandre Chan,
Colleen Gray, Harry Rajchgot
Argo Bookshop 1915 Ste. Catherine St. West
https://www.argobookshop.ca/ Hosted with Moti Lieberman
Artistic Director Ilona Martonfi ilona.martonfi@sympatico.ca
Thursday, December 19, 2019 7 PM-9 PM at the door $6
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts,
and the League of Canadian Poets.”
FACEBOOK EVENT
Dec 19
THU
Argo Reading Series : Solstice Fest

Chanukah Storytime and Activity!
2019-12-29 11:00 - 12:00 | La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 176 Bernard West, Montréal, Québec, H2T2K2, Canada
Join us at La Petite Librairie D+Q on Sunday December 29th at 11 am for a Chanukah storytime followed by an activity in which kids are invited to make their own dreidel pencil topper!
This event is free and open to all.

2020 Foresight - What's on at Argo?
2020-01-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Argo Bookshop, 1841A Ste-Catherine St. West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Have your eye on the calendar for what exciting books might be coming out in 2020? Come join us here at the Argo for a look at some of the work that’s slated to be released this year.
Find out some of the things that we’re excited about sharing with you, and share titles that you’re interested in! Beat back the cold with some good book discussion to kick off the new year. Snacks will be provided as well!

Teen Book Club: Who Put This Song On? by Morgan Parker
2020-01-10 18:00 - 20:00 | La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 176 Bernard West, Montréal, Québec, H2T2K2, Canada
Join us on Friday January 10th at 6 pm to discuss Morgan Parker’s debut YA novel Who Put This Song On? at our Teen Book Club hosted by Gigi Devlin. Pizza will be served. All attendees must have the assigned book, or one book in the assigned series.
This is a book club for teenagers, with a median age of 13-16 or grades sec 1-5–all kids must be in secondary school. There will be a different book every meeting. The focus is to provide teenagers a safe space to learn to discuss and express thoughts and ideas about literature among their peers without parents or teachers.
***We are offering a 20% discount on WHO PUT THIS SONG ON? from now until the meeting date!***

Graphic Novel Book Club: The Hard Tomorrow
2020-01-15 19:00 - 20:00 | La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 176 Bernard West, Montréal, Québec, H2T2K2, Canada
Each month we host a Graphic Novel Book Club, open to all, during which we hang out and informally discuss a featured graphic novel. Our pick for January is THE HARD TOMORROW by Eleanor Davis.
We will meet at La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly (176 Rue Bernard Ouest) on Wednesday, January 15th at 7 p.m. Join us for refreshments and collective insights!
ABOUT:
Hannah is a thirty-something wife, home-health worker, and antiwar activist. Her husband, Johnny, is a stay-at-home pothead working—or “working”—on building them a house before the winter chill sets in. They’re currently living and screwing in the back of a truck, hoping for a pregnancy, which seems like it will never come. Legs in the air, for a better chance at conception, Hannah scans fertility Reddits while Johnny dreams about propagating plants—kale, tomatoes—to ensure they have sufficient sustenance should the end times come, which, given their fragile democracy strained under the weight of a carceral state and the risk of horrible war, doesn’t seem so far off. Helping Hannah in her fight for the future is her best friend Gabby, a queer naturalist she idolizes and who adores her. Helping Johnny build the house is Tyler, an off-the-grid conspiracy theorist driven sick by his own cloudy notions of reality.
Told with tenderness and care in an undefined near future, Eleanor Davis’s The Hard Tomorrow blazes unrestrained, as moments of human connection are doused in fear and threats. Her astute projections probe at current anxieties in a cautionary tale that begs the question: What will happen after tomorrow?
***We are offering a 20% discount on THE HARD TOMORROW from now until the meeting date!***
By purchasing your book at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly you help support free events like this one, independent publishing and retailing, our neighborhood, and authors both local and from around the world who depend on independent bookstores for their livelihood. You also get to take advantage of a great discount! Your support is appreciated.

Eloisa Aquino launches The Life & Times of Butch Dykes
2020-01-16 19:00 - 21:00 | La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 176 Bernard West, Montréal, Québec, H2T2K2, Canada
Come meet Eloisa Aquino and learn about the history behind the zine series, The Life and Times of Butch Dykes. There will be a short talk followed by a Q&A session.
THE LIFE & TIMES OF BUTCH DYKES is a compilation of zines published by Eloisa over the past decade. With drawings, stories, and quotations showing the great contributions as well as little, human details about their lives, it’s perfect for people of all genders seeking role models or to learn or teach history through its unsung heroes.
ELOISA AQUINO is a Brazilian-Canadian artist and zinester who lives and works in Montreal, where she runs the micro-press B&D Press. She was born in São Paulo (Brazil), where she made zines and worked as a journalist and translator, and moved to Montreal in order to pursue a Master’s in Media Studies. Eloisa’s work is focused in non-fictional illustrated narratives on queer topics, especially stories and histories at the margins.

Open Mic #14 @ Argo
2020-01-16 19:00 - 21:00 | Argo Bookshop, 1841A Ste-Catherine St. West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
It’s your time to shine! We’ll be hosting our fourteenth open mic night since our reopening. Come share stories, poetry, music, or whatever suits your fancy!
Let us know you’re planning to come at events@argobookshop.ca – we try to accommodate walk-ins, but if you want to be sure of a spot, please let us know in advance.
But you can also take your chances coming the day of to lay it on us!
See you there.

Kai Cheng Thom Launches I Hope We Choose Love
2020-01-17 19:00 - 21:00 | La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 176 Bernard West, Montréal, Québec, H2T2K2, Canada
Join us for the Montreal launch of Kai Cheng Thom’s I Hope We Choose Love!
I HOPE WE CHOOSE LOVE
What can we hope for at the end of the world? What can we trust in when community has broken our hearts? What would it mean to pursue justice without violence? How can we love in the absence of faith?
In a heartbreaking yet hopeful collection of personal essays and prose poems, blending the confessional, political, and literary, acclaimed poet and essayist Kai Cheng Thom dives deep into the questions that haunt social movements today. With the author’s characteristic eloquence and honesty, I Hope We Choose Love proposes heartfelt solutions on the topics of violence, complicity, family, vengeance, and forgiveness. Taking its cues from contemporary thought leaders in the transformative justice movement such as adrienne maree brown and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, this provocative book is a call for nuance in a time of political polarization, for healing in a time of justice, and for love in an apocalypse.
KAI CHENG THOM is a writer, performer, and community healer based in Toronto, Treaty 13 territory. She is the winner of the 2017 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LBGT Writers and a two-time Lambda Literary nominee. She has published widely, including the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: a Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir, a poetry collection a place called No Homeland, and children’s book From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea.

Shut Up & Write! with QWF
2020-01-18 10:00 - 12:30 | Atwater Library and Computer Centre, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Westmount, Quebec, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Looking for some dedicated, quiet writing space?
Register below to do all that writing you’ve been meaning to do at the Atwater Library. Using the Pomodoro technique, participants write in 25 minute bursts, with 5 minutes break in between.
This event is for QWF members only. Not a member? Learn about becoming a member.
Please note that these sessions are designed for silent writing, rather than discussing or getting feedback on work.

1000 – 1025: Writing 1
1025 – 1030: Break
1030 – 1055: Writing 2
1055 – 1100: Break
1100 – 1125: Writing 3
1125 – 1130: Break
1130 – 1155: Writing 4
1155 – 1200: Break
1200 -1225: Writing 5

Familiar Constellations Reading
2020-01-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Galerie du Viaduc, 5806 St Laurent Blvd, Montreal, Qc, H2T 1T3, Canada
“Familiar Constellations,” will be held at Galerie du Viaduc (5806 blvd. St. Laurent, in Mile End) this coming Sunday, January 19th, at 7 pm. Nine poets will be reading, and there will be drinks and snacks to share.Poster final Familiar Constellations[1]

Make Friends with the Mic: Literary Events 101
2020-01-20 18:00 - 20:30 | Espace Pop, 5585 ave du Parc, Montreal, Quebec, H2V 4S8, Canada
Make Friends with the Mic: Literary Events 101
Monday January 20th, 6-8:30 PM
Espace Pop, 5585 Ave. du Parc
Does giving a reading fill you with anxiety? Do you fear having to adjust a mic stand? Do you want your literary events to run smoothly and drama-free? If so, this workshop is for you! Led by experienced sound technician and voice teacher Pamela Hart, the hands-on session will teach you how to improve your reading skills and overcome common problems at live events, in a supportive and low-pressure environment.
You’ll learn:
-mic technique, mic stand placement and adjustment
-breath control, projection and other tips for live readings
-how to run a basic sound setup
-technical troubleshooting
This workshop is recommended for:
-Writers who want to get better at giving live readings
-Anyone who hosts literary events, panel discussions, or live interviews
Workshop limited to 20 people. Please come with something to read—it doesn’t have to be your own work, just something you can practice with.
Pamela Hart is an audio engineer and vocalist. She has worked in live sound, recording, education, installation and radio in her audio field, and is currently working in audiobooks. She is a performing and recording vocalist, most recently singing in Mich Cota’s Algonquin opera Wàsakozi. She is the founder and co-director of Montreal’s Forever Chorus.

True Reads Book Club: How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
2020-01-20 19:00 - 21:00 | La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 176 Bernard West, Montréal, Québec, H2T2K2, Canada
Come discuss the most interesting books in new Non-Fiction with our True Reads book club! Happening every 4-6 weeks hosted by Librairie Drawn & Quarterly staff.
For our JANUARY meeting, we’ll be reading HOW TO DO NOTHING by Jenny Odell. The book club will meet at La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 176 Bernard Ouest at 7pm. This month’s meeting is hosted by Drawn & Quarterly Children’s Coordinator Kennedy Rooke. Join us for discussion and drinks!
**We offer a 20% discount on HOW TO DO NOTHING by Jenny Odell from now until the meeting date.*
ABOUT THE BOOK
“A complex, smart and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto.”—Jonah Engel Bromwich, The New York Times Book Review
Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing. But in a world where our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity . . . doing nothing may be our most important form of resistance.
So argues artist and critic Jenny Odell in this field guide to doing nothing (at least as capitalism defines it). Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. Once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress.
Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we read so often, How to do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book is a four-course meal in the age of Soylent.
*By purchasing your book at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly you help support free events like this one, independent publishing and retailing, our neighborhood, and authors both local and from around the world who depend on independent bookstores for their livelihood. You also get to take advantage of a great discount! Your support is appreciated.*

Strange Futures Book Club: The Fifth Season
2020-01-21 19:00 - 21:00 | La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 176 Bernard West, Montréal, Québec, H2T2K2, Canada
The Strange Futures book club focuses on sci-fi and speculative fiction by QT/BIPOC writers. “Strange Futures” speaks to the unknown worlds that are to come–but also to the strangeness that is ascribed to marginalized voices, and how such strangeness can actually be generative, challenging, discomforting, and revolutionary. Hosted by Helen Chau Bradley, the book club meetings take place every two months, and are open to the public.
On Tuesday, January 21st we’ll assemble at the Petite Librairie Drawn + Quarterly (176 Bernard O.) at 7 PM to talk about N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season. Join us for discussion and drinks!
**We offer a 20% discount on The Fifth Season from now until the meeting date.**
*By purchasing your book at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly you help support free events like this one, independent publishing and retailing, our neighborhood, and authors both local and from around the world who depend on independent bookstores for their livelihood. You also get to take advantage of a great discount! Your support is appreciated.*
///////////////////////////////////////
THE FIFTH SEASON
This is the way the world ends…for the last time.
It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world’s sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.
This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.

Lisa Robertson Launches The Baudelaire Fractal
2020-01-22 19:00 - 21:00 | La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 176 Bernard West, Montréal, Québec, H2T2K2, Canada
Join us for the Montreal launch of The Baudelaire Fractal, the debut novel from acclaimed poet Lisa Robertson!
THE BAUDELAIRE FRACTAL
A debut novel by acclaimed poet Lisa Robertson, in which a poet realizes she has written the works of Baudelaire. One morning, the poet Hazel Brown wakes up in a strange hotel room to find that she’s written the complete works of Charles Baudelaire. Surprising as this may be, it’s no more surprising to Brown than the impossible journey she’s taken to become the writer that she is. Animated by the spirit of the poète maudit, she shuttles between London, Vancouver, Paris, and the French countryside, moving fluidly between the early 1980s and the present, from rented room to rented room, all the while considering such Baudelairian obsessions as modernity, poverty, and the perfect jacket. .. Part memoir, part magical realism, part hilarious trash-talking take on contemporary art and the poet’s life, The Baudelaire Fractal is the long-awaited debut novel by the inimitable Lisa Robertson.
LISA ROBERTSON
Poet and essayist Lisa Robertson has held residencies at the California College of the Arts, Cambridge University; University of California, Berkeley; UC San Diego; and American University of Paris. Her books include Cinema of the Present, Debbie: An Epic (nominated for the Governor General’s Award in Canada), The Men, The Weather, R’s Boat (poetry) and Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture (essays). Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip (Coach House) was named one of The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2010, and was longlisted for the 2011 Warwick Prize for Writing. She currently lives in France.

Tommy Schnurmacher - Atwater Library Lunchtime Series
2020-01-23 12:30 - 13:30 | Atwater Library and Computer Centre, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Westmount, Quebec, H3Z 1X4, Canada
For the Atwater Library Lunchtime Series, veteran CJAD broadcaster Tommy Schnurmacher discusses his memoir Makeup Tips from Auschwitz: How Vanity Saved My Mother’s Life. The book tells the story of how his Jewish mother got two top Nazis to save her life and the powerful impact that had on their relationship.
With Q&A and discussion. Coffee and biscuits served.
Copies of the book will be on sale.
FREE. Donations welcome.
Atwater Library, 1200 Atwater Ave. at Ste-Catherine (métro Atwater). 514-935-7344.

Poetry Matters with christian favreau, M.W. Jaeggle, & Rebecca Salazar
2020-01-23 19:00 - 21:00 | Anticafé Vieux-Port, 406 rue Notre-Dame E, Montreal, Quebec, H2Y 1C8, Canada
Please join Poetry Matters for an evening with poets christian favreau, M.W. Jaeggle, and Rebecca Salazar, exploring questions of trauma, grief, healing, and gratitude.

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When: Thursday, January 23, 7pm-9pm
Where: Anticafé Vieux-Port, 406 Notre-Dame St. East, Montreal, Quebec H2Y 1C8

How can wellness be imagined for and by survivors of ongoing, intersectional trauma? Addressing trauma as experienced by individual, chronically ill bodies and on an ecological scale, these poems turn to secular ritual and magic as ethical structures that may permit healing to coexist and engage politically with complex harms.

Rebecca Salazar (she/they) is the author of the knife that justifies the wound (Rahila’s Ghost) and Guzzle (Anstruther Press), a poetry editor for The Fiddlehead and Plenitude magazines, and a PhD candidate living on the unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik and Mi’kmaq peoples.

You think that because you understand “one” that you must therefore understand “two” because one and one make two. But you forget that you must also understand “and.”—Sufi parable

For far too long we have othered nature; the distinction between humans and the land has only bolstered illusions of authority and hierarchy. If, as Phyllis Webb suggested, poetry cannot change the world, it can change individual consciousness—starting with the poet’s—in efforts to understand the “and” between “one” and “one.” This reading explores ecological grief, the responsibility of connection, and gratitude.

christian favreau is a poet and activist living in Montréal (Tiohtiá:ke). His work has appeared in The McGill Daily Literary Supplement and Vallum. His forthcoming book of poetry with JackPine Press will be available in late 2020.

In “Talking to Grief,” poet Denise Levertov depicts grief as a stray dog desiring the companionship of the speaker—suggesting that taking ownership of grief transforms both the emotion and those experiencing it. In dialogue with Levertov, Jaeggle’s Night of the Crash, a sequence of poems on the death of the narrator’s son, proposes that wellness is only antithetical to grief when grief is denied its history.

M.W. Jaeggle’s poetry has appeared in The Antigonish Review, Contemporary Verse 2, The Dalhousie Review, Vallum, The Veg, and elsewhere. He is author of two chapbooks, Janus on the Pacific and The Night of the Crash. While pursuing an MA at McGill, Mike served as Poetry Editor at Scrivener Creative Review and was awarded the Mona Adilman Prize in poetry. Currently Poetry Editor at Montreal Writes, he lives in Vancouver.

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For further information on Poetry Matters, please see https://www.mcgill.ca/poetrymatters/

Suggestions for upcoming sessions very welcome – and please spread the word to any others who might be interested.

Indigenous Literatures Book Club: ʔbédayine
2020-01-28 19:00 - 21:00 | La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 176 Bernard West, Montréal, Québec, H2T2K2, Canada
The Indigenous Literatures Book Club focuses on work by indigenous writers from around the world. Hosted by Tara McGowan-Ross, a Mi’kmaq multidisciplinary artist and writer, the meetings will take place every 4-6 weeks and are open to all.
For our January meeting, we will gather at La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly (176 Bernard O.) at 7 pm to discuss ʔBédayine by Kaitlyn Purcell.
ʔBÉDAYINE
In Edmonton, Ronnie learns what it is to be a young Indigenous woman, almost-alone in the city; unable to hear herself over its noise, see through the glare of its lights to find the ground beneath her feet. Stories of addiction, self-discovery, and the love of a good friend come together to form ʔbédayine, Kaitlyn Purcell’s breathtaking debut.
**We offer a 20% discount on ʔBédayine from now until the meeting date.**
By purchasing your book at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly you help support free events like this one, independent publishing and retailing, our neighborhood, and authors both local and from around the world who depend on independent bookstores for their livelihood. You also get to take advantage of a great discount! Your support is appreciated.

Visual Arts Centre Reading Series
2020-01-28 19:30 - 21:30 | Visual Arts Centre, 350 Avenue Victoria, Westmount, Quebec, H3Z 2N4, Canada
Visual Arts Centre Reading Series Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Rhonda Mullins, Ilona Martonfi, Rana Bose,
Tommy Schnurmacher, Andrea Lake (music),
Devon Gallant, Jason Santerre, Willow Loveday Little,
Mike Di Sclafani, Alejandro Saravia
350 Victoria Avenue, Westmount
www.visualartscentre.ca
Artistic Director Ilona Martonfi
ilona.martonfi@sympatico.ca
co-hosted with Mike Di Sclafani
Doors 7 PM Readings 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM
At the door $6
An Evening of Poetry & Prose & Music
