Creating A QWF Workshop: Best Practices
2020-11-08 10:00 - 12:00, 2020-11-01 10:00 - 12:00 (America/New_York) | Online via Zoom
Workshop details TBA!

Crafty Poetry
2020-11-05 20:00 - 22:00, 2020-10-29 20:00 - 22:00 | Online via Zoom

Librairie D+Q presents Leanne Betasamosake Simpson launching Noopiming
2020-11-05 19:00 - 21:00 | Online – Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link
Join us for the virtual launch of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson‘s new book Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies.
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.
NOOPIMING: THE CURE FOR WHITE LADIES
Award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson returns with a bold reimagination of the novel, one that combines narrative and poetic fragments through a careful and fierce reclamation of Anishinaabe aesthetics.
Mashkawaji (they/them) lies frozen in the ice, remembering a long-ago time of hopeless connection and now finding freedom and solace in isolated suspension. They introduce us to the seven main characters: Akiwenzii, the old man who represents the narrator’s will; Ninaatig, the maple tree who represents their lungs; Mindimooyenh, the old woman who represents their conscience; Sabe, the giant who represents their marrow; Adik, the caribou who represents their nervous system; Asin, the human who represents their eyes and ears; and Lucy, the human who represents their brain. Each attempts to commune with the unnatural urban-settler world, a world of SpongeBob Band-Aids, Ziploc baggies, Fjällräven Kånken backpacks, and coffee mugs emblazoned with institutional logos. And each searches out the natural world, only to discover those pockets that still exist are owned, contained, counted, and consumed.
Cut off from nature, the characters are cut off from their natural selves. Noopiming is Anishinaabemowin for “in the bush,” and the title is a response to English Canadian settler and author Susanna Moodie’s 1852 memoir Roughing It in the Bush. To read Simpson’s work is an act of decolonization, degentrification, and willful resistance to the perpetuation and dissemination of centuries-old colonial myth-making. It is a lived experience. It is a breaking open of the self to a world alive with people, animals, ancestors, and spirits, who are all busy with the daily labours of healing — healing not only themselves, but their individual pieces of the network, of the web that connects them all together.
Enter and be changed.

Argo Zoom Reading Series : Verse, Prose & Song
2020-11-05 19:00 - 21:00 | Online via Zoom
Argo Zoom Reading Series : Verse, Prose & Song
Brian Campbell, Ilona Martonfi, Barry Webster, Cora Siré, Kelly Norah Drukker, Tom Abray, Flavia Cosma, Su J. Sokol
Argo Bookshop 1915 Ste. Catherine St. West
https://www.argobookshop.ca/
Hosted by Adele-Elise Prevost & Moti Lieberman 514.931.3442
Curator Ilona Martonfi ilona.martonfi@sympatico.ca
Thursday, November 5, 2020 7 PM-9 PM
Please email events@argobookshop.ca for the Zoom link

Indigenous Spirituality in Poetry
2020-11-05 18:00 - 19:00 | Online via Zoom
In this presentation, Louise Bernice Halfe (Sky Dancer) will read a selection of her work and discuss the ways in which spirituality operates in her own writing as well as how it manifests in Indigenous poetry more generally.
Halfe’s first published poetry appeared in Writing the Circle: Women of Western Canada. She has since published four collections: Bear Bones & Feathers (1994, winner of the Canadian People’s Poet Award and finalist for the Spirit of Saskatchewan Award), Blue Marrow (1998, finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, Pat Lowther Award, and Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award), The Crooked Good (2007) and her most recent collection Burning in this Midnight Dream (2016, winner of three Saskatchewan Book Awards and the League of Canadian Poets Raymond Souster Award).
In September 2020, she received the 2020 Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence.
This event is part of the Spirituality as Land, Story and Relation series presented by the Department of Theological Studies with the support of the Faculty of Arts and Science. Visit the series page to view the full line-up of speakers for Fall 2020.

Writing What We Don’t (Yet) Know: Fiction
2020-11-04 20:00 - 22:00, 2020-10-28 20:00 - 22:00 | Online via Zoom
Workshop description TBA!

Gay Reads Book Club: Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
2020-11-04 19:00 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Join the Gay Reads book club to discuss classic and contemporary literature by LGBTQ2IA+ authors. We’ll read across genres to uncover queer sensibilities, alternative canons, and exciting new voices. In a previous era, the club met every two months at La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly with host Kathleen Fraser. These days we’re meeting VIRTUALLY, via Zoom!
At our next meeting, Wednesday, November 4th, at 7 PM EST, we’ll discuss PAUL TAKES THE FORM OF A MORTAL GIRL by Andrea Lawlor.
Where and How Can I purchase the book? From our online store:
We Ship Canada-wide! & we deliver by bike to select postal codes 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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PAUL TAKES THE FORM OF A MORTAL GIRL
It’s 1993 and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines, and is a flaneur with a rich dating life. But Paul’s also got a secret: he’s a shapeshifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Paul transforms his body and his gender at will as he crossed the country––a journey and adventure through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure.
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a riotous, razor-sharp bildungsroman whose hero/ine wends his/her way through a world gutted by loss, pulsing with music, and opening into an array of intimacy and connections.

Silver Pins: Novel Writing Workshop
2020-11-04 18:00 - 20:00, 2020-10-28 18:00 - 20:00 | Online via Zoom

Review, Refine, Submit: Strategies for Writing Short Prose
2020-11-03 20:00 - 22:00, 2020-10-27 20:00 - 22:00 | Online via Zoom

Writing Memorable Characters for the Screen
2020-11-03 18:00 - 20:00, 2020-10-27 18:00 - 20:00 | Online via Zoom

Take a Second Look: Poetry Editing Workshop
2020-11-03 14:00 - 16:00 | Online – Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link
An early draft is often a diamond in the rough. Writers polish their writing through revision. Whether you’re writing for your personal archives or publication, taking a second look at your work will create tighter writing.
During the workshop, we will discuss three features of a poem—words, lines, and titles. We will look at poems by acclaimed poets for practical examples of our discussion. Participants will revise three poems. Before the start of the workshop, participants will be asked to send Blossom three poems they plan to edit during the workshop.
Blossom Thom is a poet and editor. She is the author of #HashtagRelief (Gaspereau Press, 2017) and her poetry has appeared during art collaborations and in literary magazines and anthologies including Poetic Notions: A Weaving of Poetry and Visual Arts, Kola: A Black Literary Magazine, and Montréal Serai. A mentorship with George Elliott Clarke set the groundwork for her work-in-progress and was supported by a Professional Development for Artists Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Please see event link for further details.

Remembering: The Art and Craft of Memoir
2020-11-02 20:00 - 22:00 | Online via Zoom

Writing About Controversial Topics: Nonfiction
2020-11-02 18:00 - 20:00 | Online via Zoom

King of Canada - World Premiere
2020-11-01 19:30 - 21:30, 2020-10-31 19:30 - 21:30, 2020-10-30 19:30 - 21:30, 2020-10-29 19:30 - 21:30, 2020-10-28 19:30 - 21:30, 2020-10-27 19:30 - 21:30 | 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

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.

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).

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.

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.

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
