Quebec Writers' Federation

Parliament of Owls
2021-05-10 08:00 - 2021-05-21 17:00 (America/New_York)
Online research residency for writers and artists to learn about birds in a small group. We will meet ornithologists and birders from around the world.

The Lighter Side of Memoir Writing
2021-05-09 14:00 - 16:00, 2021-05-02 14:00 - 16:00, 2021-04-25 14:00 - 16:00 | Online via Zoom
Workshop details TBA!

Argo Zoom Reading Series: Verse, Prose & Song Thursday
2021-05-06 19:00 - 21:00 | Online via Zoom
Argo Zoom Reading Series: Verse, Prose & Song Thursday
May 6, 2021 7 PM to 9 PM Free
Featuring: Harold Hoefle, Ilona Martonfi, Gloria Macher, Zoe Shaw, John Kerkhoven, Susan Doherty, Sandra Sjollema, H. Nigel Thomas
Hosts: Adele-Elise Prevost & Moti Lieberman 514.931.3442
Curator: Ilona Martonfi ilona.martonfi@sympatico.ca

Please email events@argobookshop.ca for the Zoom link

Harold Hoefle is a poet; his collection, The Night Chorus, was published in 2018 by McGill-Queen’s University Press.
International Award Winner, Gloria Macher has published 6 books and also in The Nashwaak Review, In/Words Magazine and Kola Magazine.
Zoe Shaw is a writer and editor from Montreal. She is the Managing Editor of carte blanche.
Ilona Martonfi is an editor, poet, curator & activist, her most recent poetry book is Salt Bride (Inanna, 2019). Forthcoming, The Tempest (Inanna, 2022).
John Kerkhoven is a blues and roots harmonica player and singer. Among his current projects is an exploration of fiddle tunes.
Susan Doherty is the winner of the QWF’s Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction 2019 for The Ghost Garden (Random House Canada).
Sandra Sjollema is a widely published poet and the author of two poetry chapbooks, including Life times two (Cactus Press, forthcoming).
H. Nigel Thomas is an award-winning author of dozens of essays and books. His latest book is the novel Easily Fooled.

https://www.argobookshop.ca/

Librairie D+Q presents Lee Lai launching Stone Fruit
2021-05-06 19:00 - 20:00 | Online
Join us to celebrate the release of Lee Lai‘s debut original graphic novel, Stone Fruit. Lee is joined in conversation by poet Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch.
Find the book here: https://bit.ly/39pON6B
More information about the event here: https://bit.ly/3dhAS3p

Popular Writing for Academics with Colleen Kimmett
2021-05-06 16:00 - 17:30, 2021-04-29 16:00 - 17:30, 2021-04-22 16:00 - 17:30 | Online – Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link
This workshop is for scientists, researchers, and those who want to bring their specialized knowledge and expertise to a wider audience. Over four weeks, you’ll learn about key differences in academic and popular writing, tools for narrowing down and shaping ideas, practical writing techniques, and where and how to pitch non-academic writing. Participants have the option of joining an additional six-week intensive workshop focused on developing a specific piece from beginning to end.
Workshop sessions are online through Zoom videoconference.
Schedule: Thursdays, April 22, 29, May 6, 13 from 4 pm – 5:30 pm

True Reads Book Club - Gay Bar: Why We Went Out
2021-05-04 20:00 - 21:30 | Online via Zoom
VIA ZOOM Meeting ID: 845 5830 7388
Passcode: [REDACTED]
Come discuss the best new Non-Fiction books with our True Reads book club! This month, we’ll be discussing Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton Lin.
Where and How Can I purchase the book?
Find the book here: https://bit.ly/3fSab8f
More info on our webstore here:
http://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/posts/webstore-faq
We Ship Canada-wide!
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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GAY BAR: WHY WE WENT OUT
Strobing lights and dark rooms; throbbing house and drag queens on counters; first kisses, last call: the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression—whatever your scene, whoever you’re seeking. But in urban centers around the world, they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: What was the gay bar? How have they shaped him? And could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it?
In Gay Bar, the author embarks upon a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub, and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, he time-travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970s to a warren of cruising tunnels built beneath London in the 1770s; from chichi bars in the aftermath of AIDS to today’s fluid queer spaces; through glory holes, into Crisco-slicked dungeons and down San Francisco alleys. He charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out—and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever.
The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the connection between place and identity—a tale of liberation, but one that invites us to go beyond the simplified Stonewall mythology and enter lesser-known battlefields in the struggle to carve out a territory. Elegiac, randy, and sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember.

Media Relations 101 for the Arts – The Basics in a Six-Hour Workshop
2021-05-04 18:00 - 20:00 | Online via Zoom

Teen Book Club: Shadow and Bone
2021-04-30 18:00 - 19:30 | Online via Zoom
VIRTUAL MEETING – VIA ZOOM
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82936206716
Meeting ID: 829 3620 6716
Passcode: [REDACTED]
Join us at la Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly for our Teen book club! Our April pick is Shadow and Boneby Leigh Bardugo. No olds, please.
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.
Where and How Can I purchase the book?
Find it here: https://bit.ly/2P7Cft0
More info on our webstore here:
http://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/posts/webstore-faq
We Ship Canada-wide!
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.

Speculative Fiction: Creating and Writing Alternative Worlds
2021-04-29 20:00 - 22:00, 2021-04-22 20:00 - 22:00 | Online via Zoom

SpeakUp: Fight the Power
2021-04-29 19:00 - 21:00 | Zoom
English will follow.
GRATUITE
SpeakUp: L’Échange Interactif de Poésie de Montréal
Poètes : Hugh Hazelton, Deanna Smith, Rana Bose
AVEC SPEAKUP, LE PUBLIC EST ENGAGÉ
Toutes les personnes présentes reçoivent une copie du poème
La poète lit le poème, suivi de 15 à 20 minutes de discussion
Le poète lit le poème une dernière fois
Visitez notre page Facebook pour plus de détails.
Contactez-nous pour vous inscrire et recevoir le lien Zoom: MTLSpeakUp@gmail.com
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FREE EVENT
SpeakUp: The Montreal Inter-Active Poetry Exchange
Poets: Hugh Hazelton, Deanna Smith, Rana Bose
A POETRY READING WITH A DIFFERENCE: AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT
Each audience member receives a copy of the poems
Poet reads poems, followed by 15 to 20-minute discussion on the poem
Poet reads poem a final time
Visit our Facebook page for more details.
Contact us to register and receive the Zoom link: MTLSpeakUp@gmail.com

The Three-Act Theory of Life (and Screenwriting)
2021-04-29 18:00 - 20:00, 2021-04-22 18:00 - 20:00 | Online via Zoom

Fiction: Reconstructions of Reality
2021-04-28 20:00 - 22:00, 2021-04-21 20:00 - 22:00 | Online via Zoom

QWF Annual General Meeting
2021-04-28 19:00 - 20:30 | Online – Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link
The Annual General Meeting of the Quebec Writers’ Federation will be held
DATE/TIME: Wednesday, April 28, 2021 at 7:00 p.m.
PLACE: Zoom (register to receive link)
At the meeting, the President will review the year’s activities and the Executive Director will present the financial report. An election will be held for the Board of Directors for the coming year – April 2021 to April 2022. If you wish to to nominate someone for a position on the Board, or to put your own name forward, please send in a completed nomination form (request a form from riley@qwf.org) by Wednesday, April 7.
Please note that you must be a member in good standing to be eligible to run for the board, nominate someone for the board, or vote at the AGM.
On the agenda:

Schmoozing from 7:00 to 7:15
Report from the QWF President, Christopher DiRaddo
Financial report, presented by the Executive Director
Election or acclamation of new Board of Directors

Registration:
To register, please send an email to riley@qwf.org with “AGM” in the subject line. Be sure to include your full name in the body of the message. You will receive a Zoom link to participate in the week before the meeting.

Join your board at the Annual Meeting and bring your ideas!
Find out about volunteer opportunities!
Enjoy the social interaction!

Telling Tales: Long-form Journalism for Mainstream Media
2021-04-28 18:00 - 20:00 | Online via Zoom

Beginnings, Openings, Origins: A Poetry Workshop
2021-04-27 20:00 - 22:00 | Online via Zoom

Poetry Book Launch: Because the Sun by Sarah Burgoyne and Exhibitionist by Molly-Cross Blanchard
2021-04-27 20:00 - 21:00 | Online via Zoom
Join Coach House Books on April 27th at 8PM EST for the launch of two amazing collections of poetry: Exhibitionist by Molly Cross-Blanchard and Because the Sun by Sarah Burgoyne. There will be readings from both poets followed by a discussion and your chance to ask a question.

About the books:

Camus’s Meursault and Thelma and Louise meet up under the blazing sun. Vexed by the ‘unremarkable star’ that ‘presses’ Camus’s Meursault to commit murder, Because the Sun considers the blazing sun as a material symbol of ambient violence – violence absorbed like heat and fired at the nearest victim. Likewise, as a friendship between women confronts gendered aggression in Thelma and Louise, the sun becomes the repository of pain, the high noon that pushes us through desert after desert. Because the Sun’s pastiche of voices embodies both stylistic and formal relentlessness by teasing out tonalities that blend and merge into each other, generating a blinding effect, like looking into the sun.

Smart, raunchy poems that are sorry-not-sorry. “Sticky, sad, and sultry, Exhibitionist is a merry-go-round circling back to the tender, awkward parts of ourselves. Molly Cross-Blanchard allows her poems to ask the reader out for ice cream, to fart at a dinner party, to sprawl out on a chaise lounge, stare through a dusty skylight and whisper that they think they may love you. And that love will be unmistakably mutual. ” —Mallory Tater, author of The Birth Yard and This Will Be Good

The event will be hosted in Zoom Webinars. The event link will be sent over email one hour before the start of the event. Please register here.

Crafting Kick-Arse Tales for Kids and Teens
2021-04-26 20:00 - 22:00 | Online via Zoom

Atwater Poetry Project Online
2021-04-26 19:30 - 21:00 | Online
Where do you carry a poem? In your mind? In your heart? In your backpack? In your memory, your past, your belly, your spine, your relations, your future?
Join us on Monday, April 26 for a celebration of Poem In Your Pocket Day//la Journée du poème à porter with poets Moni Brar, Greg Santos, and Eleonore Schönmaier, at 730pm (EDT). We are delighted to mark the opening of the 2021 Atwater Poetry Project Online with this collaborative event with the League of Canadian Poets, and La poésie partout, exploring how the heft – or the lightness – of poetry is borne.
Register now for the event on the APP Crowdcast. We hope to see you there.

Poetry reading with Kaie Kellough and Oana Avasilichioaei
2021-04-24 16:00 - 17:00 | Online via Zoom
The Centre des arts de Stanstead welcomes poets Oana Avilisichioaei and Kaie Kellough on April 24th at 4pm for the start of spring.

APRIL 24th POETRY READING WITH
OANA AVASILICHIOAEI AND KAIE KELLOUGH

Poets Oana Avasilichioaei and Kaie Kellough will read from their work during an hour-long event on Zoom, with host Shelley Pomerance, presented by the Centre des arts de Stanstead on Saturday, April 24 at 4pm.

Oana Avasilichioaei interweaves poetry, translation, photography, sound, and performance to explore an expanded idea of language, polyphonic structures, and borders. Her six collections of poetry and poetry hybrids include Eight Track (Talonbooks, 2019, finalist for the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry) and Limbinal (Talonbooks, 2015). She has created many performance/sound works, written a libretto for a one-act opera, and translated ten books of poetry and prose from French and Romanian, including Catherine Lalonde’s The Faerie Devouring (Book*hug 2018), which was awarded the QWF’s Cole Foundation Prize for Translation) and Bertrand Laverdure’s Readopolis (Book*hug, 2017), fpr which she received a Governor General Literary Award for Translation). She is physically based in Montreal and virtually at oanalab.com.

Kaie Kellough is a poet, fiction writer, and sound performer. He has written for small and large musical ensembles and has performed internationally. His most recent book of poetry, Magnetic Equator (McClelland and Stewart, 2019) won the 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is currently working on sound and text.

All are invited to join us by visiting the Facebook page of the Centre des arts de Stanstead at www.facebook.com/CentreArtsStanstead where the link for the event can be found. For more information, please contact Sharda Guptar at shardaguptar@outlook.com.

2021 Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival: The challenges of our times?
2021-04-24 10:00 - 2021-05-02 19:00 | Online
April 24 to May 2, 2021, the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival will open its virtual doors for its spring program.
Over a hundred national and international invitees to tackle a thought-provoking theme: the challenges of our times.
Over fifty panels, debates, interviews—complete with fresh points of view on subject that interest you:
– Writers of a wounded Lebanon
– Souleymane Bachir Diagne: Africa and the West: Pacified Memories?
– David Grossman: “Trenchant Witness”
– Who are we? Where are we coming from? Indigenous voices of the moment
– Life in SLOW motion: the world around the corner
– Do writers ever really perish? Mathieu Lindon on Hervé Guibert
– Javier Cercas: The novel in search of the past/Palabras que profundizan el pasado
– All People Share the Same Rights
– A Teen Author’s Take on Loving and Supporting a Sibling With Autism

An Evening with Donna Morrissey
2021-04-23 19:00 - 20:30 | Online
The Knowlton Literary Association is pleased to announce an evening webinar with national bestselling author Donna Morrissey, on April 23 at 7 p.m.
Pluck: A Memoir of a Newfoundland Childhood and the Raucous, Terrible, Amazing Journey to Becoming a Novelist is scheduled to be released this fall. It is a deeply personal reflection of a woman who left her isolated Newfoundland community at age 16, eager to explore the world. Her path was difficult, from the death of a teenaged brother who followed her to Alberta’s oilfields, to mental illness, marriage, divorce and working in a fish processing plant to support her two young daughters. Ultimately Morrissey landed on her feet as one of Canada’s most prominent writers, having penned six national bestselling novels.
Many of Morrissey’s stories are drawn from her own varied life experiences, combining darkness and light, levity and sadness into her tale, as the indomitable spirit and humour that sustains her.
An inspiring and insightful memoir, Pluck illustrates that even when you find yourself unravelling, you can find a way to spin the yarns that will save you–and delight readers everywhere.
Sponsored by the Writers’ Union of Canada, this live webinar brings Morrissey, who attended the 2017 Knowlton Literary festival, back virtually to our local audience.

The Fine Arts Reaching Room (FARR) presents a Poetry Workshop featuring Andrea Abi-Karam
2021-04-23 14:00 - 15:30 | Online
April 23rd, 2pm, 2021

Facebook link: https://fb.me/e/23qikporZ
Zoom link: https://concordia-ca.zoom.us/j/83397277408

The FARR (“we”) are beyond excited to be able to host Andrea Abi-Karam, trans, arab-american punk poet-performer phenom, author of EXTRATRANSMISSION and co-editor of We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, for an artist talk and performance workshop, thusly rounding out a year’s worth of truly wild, streamed programming.

On April 23rd, 2pm, come learn how to help your performance texts feel less alone at night. Through a collective workshop-like experience, led by veteran performer and generous soul Andrea Abi-Karam, we will be collectively working through the intricacies of the performance of poetic text. Yes, it will probably be vulnerable. Yes, it will probably be life-altering. No, shirt and shoes are not required.
For the enhancement of your own experience, please bring a “text” (read: not limited to capital P poetry) you’d like to workshop performance for, and take a minute to watch a few of Andrea’s past performances:
HOLD MY HAND – https://vimeo.com/388381222
(source text: https://www.baestjournal.com/andrea-abi-karam)
ABSORPTION – https://vimeo.com/290588081
Introduction to WWIA – https://lithub.com/what-is-the-project-of-trans-poetics-now/
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Andrea Abi-Karam is a trans, arab-american punk poet-performer cyborg. They are the author of EXTRATRANSMISSION (Kelsey Street Press, 2019) a critique of the U.S. military’s role in the War on Terror, Villainy (Nightboat Books, September 2021), and with Kay Gabriel, they co-edited We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat Books, 2020). They are a leo obsessed with queer terror and convertibles.

Voices in the Dark: Writing the Braided Essay
2021-04-22 17:30 - 19:00 | Online – Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link
In this free 90-minute craft workshop, delivered on Zoom, Kasia Van Schaik will lead participants through the process of writing a personal essay using a braided technique: a form of nonfiction wherein the writer interweaves multiple threads and through-lines of material, each on a different subject, connecting the personal with the political. In this way, the braided form allows us to think about the ways in which we are linked to our larger environments and ecosystems. The workshop will include a craft talk, writing tips, and creative exercises, so bring a pen and paper! A short question and answer period will follow.

The workshop is open to all interested participants; no creative nonfiction writing experience is necessary. There is no registration fee, but you must register to attend.

This workshop is co-produced by the Quebec Writers’ Federation and CBC Montreal.
