Quebec Writers' Federation

King of Canada - World Premiere
2020-10-21 19:30 - 21:30, 2020-10-22 19:30 - 21:30, 2020-10-23 19:30 - 21:30, 2020-10-24 19:30 - 21:30, 2020-10-25 19:30 - 21:30, 2020-10-26 19:30 - 21:30, 2020-10-27 19:30 - 21:30, 2020-10-28 19:30 - 21:30 (America/New_York) and 1 more date | 397A Saint-Catherine St W, Montreal, Quebec H3B 1A4, 397A Saint-Catherine St W, Montreal, Quebec, H3B 1A4, Canada
Infinithéâtre is thrilled to welcome you home to the theatre with the world premiere of Paul Van Dyck’s tragicomic “King of Canada”!
Recently included as part of our “Infinite Playwrights’ Chat Room” series, “King of Canada” is a meta-theatrical political satire that puts William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada’s longest-serving prime minister, under the microscope. Part séance, part trial, the man and his actions are put to judgement. And with him, the actions of our nation. A look at the power of one, lifted by the will of many.
Ellen David and Brian Dooley, two celebrated stars of the Montreal theatre scene, perform in this playful yet biting examination of legacy. Dooley incarnates King, David brings many others to life; close to forty other characters including King’s mother, FDR, Churchill, Hitler, and three Irish terriers named Pat.
“King of Canada” will run from October 20th to November 1st at KIN Gallery. Tickets are limited, with a maximum audience size of 20 patrons per performance.
To purchase tickets, visit: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/116771405417

Writing What We Don’t (Yet) Know: Fiction
2020-10-21 20:00 - 22:00, 2020-10-28 20:00 - 22:00 | Online via Zoom
Workshop description TBA!

Write Like a Pro
2020-10-22 18:00 - 19:30 | Online – Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link
Writing can be an act of catharsis, a way of processing experiences during difficult times. Now, more than ever, we need to write our stories.
The Write Like a Pro workshop is designed to guide participants through the stylistic and technical elements that make a great piece of writing. It draws heavily from the art and craft of narrative non-fiction, but is relevant for anyone who wants to communicate more effectively through the written word. The nut of it is: How do you make your truth compelling to others?
Over the course of the workshop, we’ll cover: shaping ideas; planning and organising material; elements of storytelling; wordcraft and style; finding your voice; tough-love editing; and, finally, putting your work out there.
Now in its TENTH run, the Write Like a Pro workshop puts special focus on practising techniques we learn in class through the process of developing, writing, and polishing a short (500- to 1000- word) non-fiction piece by the end of the workshop. For most people, this requires setting aside an additional hour or so per week to write at home.
In each workshop, we’ll spend part of the time reviewing techniques and examples, and part of the time writing, sharing work, and providing feedback to others. Think of it like part writing class, part writing circle.
So, if you’ve been feeling the urge to write now more than ever, don’t hesitate to sign up.
Colleen Kimmett is a Montreal-based writer and journalist. Colleen’s work has been published in The Walrus, The Guardian, Al Jazeera America, Bright Magazine, In These Times, StatNews, Arctic Deeply, and beyond. Previously, she was a senior editor at The Tyee and a founding editor of The Discourse. Currently, she teaches a science communication course at McGill and is the community outreach coordinator for the Institute for Investigative Journalism.
For more details, please see event link.

Librairie D+Q presents Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch launching Knot Body
2020-10-22 19:00 - 20:30 | Online – Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link
Join us for the virtual launch of Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch‘s knot body, out now from Metatron Press! Our featured guest readers are Cason Sharpe and Faith Arkorful!
RSVP here: https://bit.ly/3il8C0p
Where and how can I purchase the books?
Why our webstore of course… We’ve got signed copies & we ship Canada-wide!
http://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/posts/webstore-faq
By purchasing your book at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly you help support 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. Your support is appreciated.
KNOT BODY
Bringing together poetry, essay, and letters to “lovers, friends and in-betweens,” Eli Tareq Bechelany-Lynch confronts the ways capitalism, fatphobia, ableism, transness, and racializations affect people with chronic pain, illness, and disability. KNOT BODY explores what it means to discover the limits of your body, and contends with what those limitations bring up in the world we live in.

Crafty Poetry
2020-10-22 20:00 - 22:00, 2020-10-29 20:00 - 22:00 | Online via Zoom
Workshop details TBA!

Writing Outside the Box: a Workshop on Edgy Fiction
2020-10-23 13:00 - 15:00, 2020-10-26 18:00 - 20:00 | Online – Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link
Interested in examining unsettling or edgy themes but don’t know how to get started? Nervous about writing outside the usual rules of CanLit? This workshop series is designed to help writers of any medium, genre or experience level learn to start pushing boundaries with their work.
Full of provocative exercises and frank discussion, these fun and interactive sessions will provide participants with tips and techniques that will help build confidence in working with the unusual, the taboo and the experimental.
Students will be asked to read aloud from their work and to provide feedback to other participants. Students will also receive written feedback from the instructor as the course progresses.
Tracey Waddleton is a Newfoundland writer living in Montréal. Her work has been published in Riddle Fence, NQ, the Cuffer Anthology and elsewhere. A finalist for the NLCU Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers and recipient of the 2015 Lawrence Jackson Writers’ Award, Waddleton’s work has been described as weird and wonderful minimalist dark realism. Her first book, Send More Tourists… the Last Ones Were Delicious, was published in July of 2019. She is the inaugural recipient of the Quebec Writers’ Federation Max Margles Writing Residency and is scheduled to spend a month writing in Dublin in 2021.
For details, please see event link.

Getting Published During a Time of Uncertainty
2020-10-24 13:00 - 15:00 | Online via Zoom

Content Marketing Demystified
2020-10-25 13:00 - 16:00 | Online via Zoom

DC Books Virtual Launch
2020-10-25 15:00 - 16:30 | Online – Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link
DC Books will be conducting a virtual book launch for its latest authors on Sunday, October 25th from 3 to 4:30 pm EST.
Featured will be Mariianne Mays Wiebe for the novel Kate Wake, Zsolt Alapi for his novel Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, and poet Greg Santos for his new collection Ghost Face.
The event will be held on Zoom and hosted by poet Jason Camlot. The Zoom link you will use to join the event will be emailed to you one day prior to the launch, and will be made public on the Livres DC Books Facebook Page on the day of the event. In the meanwhile, please save the date and time. Interested? Email dcbookscanada@gmail.com to receive your zoom link!

Writing About Controversial Topics: Nonfiction
2020-10-26 18:00 - 20:00 | Online via Zoom

Remembering: The Art and Craft of Memoir
2020-10-26 20:00 - 22:00 | Online via Zoom

Writing Memorable Characters for the Screen
2020-10-27 18:00 - 20:00 | Online via Zoom

APP Online: John Barton & Molly Peacock
2020-10-27 19:00 - 20:00 | Crowdcast
On Tuesday, October 27, the Atwater Poetry Project is delighted to present John Barton reading and in conversation with Molly Peacock. Barton’s twelfth collection of poetry is Lost Family: A Memoir (Signal Editions, Sept 2020). A collection of sonnets that has been ‘aided, abetted and enabled’ by Molly Peacock’s own explorations of the form, this event will see two of Canada’s finest poets explore mutual influence on form and technique (among other things). Join us for the last APP Online of 2020!
The Atwater Poetry Project is made possible with funding and support from the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Atwater Library and Computer Centre.
Link to join: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/app-online-john-barton-molly-peacock

New Reads Book Club: How To Pronounce Knife
2020-10-27 19:00 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Meeting ID: 831 6653 0803
Passcode: [REDACTED]
The New Reads Book Club focuses on contemporary literature and is hosted by Drawn & Quarterly staff members. The book club meetings take place every few weeks on ZOOM, and are open to all.
For our October 27th meeting, we will meet virtually at 7 pm to discuss Giller Prize nominated HOW TO PRONOUNCE KNIFE by Souvankham Thammavongsa!

‘Where can I purchase the book?’ – From our online store of course!
mtl.drawnandquarterly.com
By purchasing your book from 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. Your support is appreciated.
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HOW TO PRONOUNCE KNIFE
A young man painting nails at the local salon. A woman plucking feathers at a chicken processing plant. A father who packs furniture to move into homes he’ll never afford. A housewife learning English from daytime soap operas. In her stunning debut book of fiction, O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa focuses on characters struggling to make a living, illuminating their hopes, disappointments, love affairs, acts of defiance, and above all their pursuit of a place to belong. In spare, intimate prose charged with emotional power and a sly wit, she paints an indelible portrait of watchful children, wounded men, and restless women caught between cultures, languages, and values. As one of Thammavongsa’s characters says, “All we wanted was to live.” And in these stories, they do–brightly, ferociously, unforgettably.
A daughter becomes an unwilling accomplice in her mother’s growing infatuation with country singer Randy Travis. A boxer finds an unexpected chance at redemption while working at his sister’s nail salon. An older woman finds her assumptions about the limits of love unravelling when she begins a relationship with her much younger neighbour. A school bus driver must grapple with how much he’s willing to give up in order to belong. And in the Commonwealth Short Story Prize-shortlisted title story, a young girl’s unconditional love for her father transcends language.

Review, Refine, Submit: Strategies for Writing Short Prose
2020-10-27 20:00 - 22:00 | Online via Zoom

Silver Pins: Novel Writing Workshop
2020-10-28 18:00 - 20:00 | Online via Zoom

Indigenous Literatures Book Club: Winter Counts
2020-10-28 19:00 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
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 next meeting, we will gather virtually on October 28th at 7pm to discuss WINTER COUNTS by David Heska Wanbli Weiden.
Where and How Can I purchase the book? Via our webstore of course: http://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/posts/webstore-faq
We Ship Canada-wide & deliver to some postal codes near the store in Montreal!
By purchasing your book at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly you help support 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. Your support is appreciated.
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WINTER COUNTS
A groundbreaking thriller about a vigilante on a Native American reservation who embarks on a dangerous mission to track down the source of a heroin influx.
Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that’s hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil’s nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop.
They follow a lead to Denver and find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity. He realizes that being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost.
Winter Counts is a tour-de-force of crime fiction, a bracingly honest look at a long-ignored part of American life, and a twisting, turning story that’s as deeply rendered as it is thrilling.

Spiritual Reclamation/Ceremony: Healing from Intergenerational Trauma
2020-10-29 18:00 - 19:00 | Online via Zoom
Drawing on trauma theory, epistemology, and education for social justice, Suzanne Methot‘s lecture describes how Indigenous spirituality moves us from woundedness to interrelatedness – and how that process becomes a healing story. The Cartesian emphasis on thinking leads us to an individual, alone with their thoughts. Living a spiritual life requires us to look outward, to the world and our place within it. Canada needs a healing story.

Suzanne Methot is a Nêhiyaw (Cree) writer, editor, educator and community worker born in Vancouver, British Columbia and raised in Peace River, Alberta. Her work has been published in anthologies including Steal My Rage and Let the Drums Be Your Heart. She has worked in the non-profit sector, in the classroom, and in advocacy and direct-service positions in Indigenous community-based agencies. She is co-author of the textbook Aboriginal Beliefs, Values, and Aspirations. Her most recent book is titled Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing (ECW Press, 2019).

Librairie D+Q presents Anne Helen Petersen launching Can't Even
2020-10-29 19:00 - 20:30 | Online – Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link
Join us for the virtual launch of Anne Helen Petersen‘s new book Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
RSVP here: https://bit.ly/2GeLtiN
Where and How Can I purchase the books? Why our webstore of course… We ship Canada-wide!
http://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/webstore
By purchasing your book at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly you help support 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. Your support is appreciated.
CAN’T EVEN: HOW MILLENIALS BECAME THE BURNOUT GENERATION
An incendiary examination of burnout in millennials—the cultural shifts that got us here, the pressures that sustain it, and the need for drastic change.
Do you feel like your life is an endless to-do list? Do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram because you’re too exhausted to pick up a book? Are you mired in debt, or feel like you work all the time, or feel pressure to take whatever gives you joy and turn it into a monetizable hustle? Welcome to burnout culture.
While burnout may seem like the default setting for the modern era, in Can’t Even, BuzzFeed culture writer and former academic Anne Helen Petersen argues that burnout is a definitional condition for the millennial generation, born out of distrust in the institutions that have failed us, the unrealistic expectations of the modern workplace, and a sharp uptick in anxiety and hopelessness exacerbated by the constant pressure to “perform” our lives online. The genesis for the book is Petersen’s viral BuzzFeed article on the topic, which has amassed over eight million reads since its publication in January 2019.
Can’t Even goes beyond the original article, as Petersen examines how millennials have arrived at this point of burnout (think: unchecked capitalism and changing labor laws) and examines the phenomenon through a variety of lenses—including how burnout affects the way we work, parent, and socialize—describing its resonance in alarming familiarity. Utilizing a combination of sociohistorical framework, original interviews, and detailed analysis, Can’t Even offers a galvanizing, intimate, and ultimately redemptive look at the lives of this much-maligned generation, and will be required reading for both millennials and the parents and employers trying to understand them.
