Quebec Writers' Federation

The Art of the Short Story
2022-11-10 18:00 - 20:00, 2022-11-03 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to all.

Limited to 12 participants.

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

Open to writers of all levels, this 10-week workshop is an investigation of the modern short story. What exactly is a story? What distinguishes it from an anecdote, or a lie? Most of us recognize a good one when we meet it on the page. It moves us, often unexpectedly, to laughter or tears. And it marks us, reaching inside us and shifting, sometimes subtly and other times with a jolt, our views about ourselves and the world. The best stories articulate truths that we hadn’t, until the moment of reading, thought to put into words.

There is no set of rules for how to write a good story. Each writer has to find their own way, and each story demands fresh experiments. Writing is like living. It requires close listening and relentless improvisation. The best way to learn how to write a good story is to read one. In this workshop, we’ll read “In the Cart” (1897) by Anton Chekhov, and investigate Chekhov’s views about this genre. We’ll also look at his technique: how he used elements like detail, narrative point of view, and speech to create a story strong enough to withstand the tests of time and translation. Over a century after Chekhov’s death, his stories are still read and loved in places totally unlike Czarist Russia. What secrets can his work reveal to us in 21st-century Quebec?

Our first four meetings will be devoted to discussing “In the Cart” (accessible online; also translated as “The Schoolmistress,” and “A Journey by Cart”). Exercises relating to various elements of craft will be offered. The last six meetings will be reserved for workshopping our own stories and continuing the exploration of what exactly a story is, and how to write one.

Claire Holden Rothman is a Montreal writer, translator, and fiction editor who has published two collections of stories and three novels. The Heart Specialist (2009) was long-listed for The Scotia Bank-Giller Prize, and My October was long-listed for the Giller and short-listed for the Governor General’s Award. Her most recent novel, Lear’s Shadow, was short-listed for Quebec’s 2020 Jacob Isaac Segal Award, and won the 2019 Vine Award for Jewish Canadian Fiction. For many years, Claire taught English literature and creative writing at Marianopolis College. She has also taught fiction workshops at McGill and Bishop’s Universities.

Playwriting 101: A Playwriting Intensive
2022-11-09 20:00 - 22:00, 2022-11-02 20:00 - 22:00 | Online via Zoom
Open to all.

Limited to 12 participants.

This workshop will be conducted via Zoom.

Playwriting is an artform about curiosity, obsession, energy, entertainment, transformation, and illumination. It’s about inspiration, dedication, and practice. It’s about following your impulses and shaping those impulses; about creating a series of freedoms and constraints that focus inspiration into a text that can be used as a blueprint for performance. Unlike most other forms of writing, a play text must leave space for other creators to bring their artistry to the work. Director, actors, designers and technicians eventually fill in those spaces left by the writer to transform what is on the page into a three-dimensional performance that necessitates an audience for it to be fully realized. Having written plays that have been staged throughout Canada and beyond (Stratford Festival, Shaw Festival, Soulpepper Theatre, Segal Centre, Centaur Theatre), Erin Shields has developed a number of exercises, strategies and best practices to imagine, explore, and write plays.

Playwriting 101 is an invitation for writers of other genres to try their hand at playwriting and for playwrights to deepen their practice. Throughout this eight-week workshop, participants will bring their own particular understanding of story, character, and theme to the table, to explore how to apply those same skills to the art of playwriting. Each class will focus on one of the following dramatic elements: character, conflict, desire, premise, form, plot, and structure. Through conversations, focused exercises, and sharing work, participants will gain an understanding of how to organically and technically write a play. The process will alternate focus each class between the micro elements (character, dialogue) and macro elements (theme, story structure), as writers gradually learn how to build the world of the play with nuanced characters.

During these eight weeks, participants will write. A lot. By the end of the workshop, writers

will have a strong understanding of the basic elements of a play and how to use those elements to write their own play.

Erin Shields (www.erinshields.ca) is a Canadian playwright. Most of her work highlights the negation or misrepresentation of women in classical texts by adapting these stories through a feminist lens for a contemporary audience. Erin’s adaptation of Paradise Lost premiered at The Stratford Festival of Canada and won the Quebec Writers Federation Prize for Playwriting. Erin won the 2011 Governor General’s Award for her play If We Were Birds, which premiered at Tarragon Theatre. Other theatre credits include: Jane Eyre (Citadel Theatre), Piaf/Dietrich (Mirvish Productions/Segal Centre),The Lady from the Sea (The Shaw Festival). Upcoming productions include Queen Goneril for Soulpepper Theatre and Ransacking Troy for The Stratford Festival.

Facebook: Erin Shields

Instagram: shieldserin1

Website: www.erinshields.ca

Your Story, Embodied
2022-11-09 18:00 - 20:00, 2022-11-02 18:00 - 20:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to storytellers of all levels of experience.

Limited to 12 participants.

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

Have you ever sat captivated by a stranger standing on a stage recounting true events from their life? Did you get caught up in the tension of the room, waiting with everyone else to find out what would happen next? Ever wonder what it would be like to hold an audience’s breath in the palm of your hand?

You can. You already have everything you need: your body.

Join Lukas and Emma, two seasoned and engaging storytellers, for eight weeks of exploration into using your body to craft and perform your own true-life stories.

The objectives of this workshop are to:

Equip participants to prepare and perform a five-minute true story with no notes and no props.Facilitate and support exploration of emotionally charged material in search of unique stories.Harness the inherent strength of your body – the vessel for sharing your stories.Examine the tenets of storytelling, including finding your narrative, conflict, and other essential elements of storycraft.

These intimate sessions will involve a mixture of group discussion, critical analysis of stories, and workshopping participants’ own stories with the goal of embodying an original five-minute story for invited guests at the final session. Stories will be workshopped in groups as well as one-on-one with facilitators and fellow workshop participants.

Each week will focus on a particular theme with a corresponding body part, with story examples to support each theme and illustrate the foundations of storytelling. By week 3, participants should have a story in mind that we will work on for the final presentation.

Lukas Rowland is a writer, storyteller, and bodywork practitioner. He has told many stories with Confabulation, where he is producer and communications coordinator. He was selected for the QWF Mentorship Program in 2020, where he studied under Carousel author April Ford as a fiction mentee. He curated and produced an evening of queer stories for the Violet Hour. Though he has lived in and around Montreal these past 14 years, he comes from Southern Louisiana, where storytelling is part of every Cajun’s life. You can find him on Twitter @lukaslikeswords and on Instagram at @luka2ndfloor and at lukasrowland.com.

Emma Lanza is a born-and-bred Montrealer with a background in storytelling, theatre performance, and arts management. She earned her Master’s degree in Library Science and currently works in medical research administration. A self-proclaimed fat bisexual babe, Emma is a staunch believer in fat liberation and radical self-love and she wants you to know you look fabulous in that outfit! She has performed at Confabulation, YARN, The Wiggle Room, Concordia University, and Grownups Read Things They Wrote As Kids. She founded the bi-monthly Fattie Book Club @fattiebookclub and can be found on Instagram @emma_lanza and on Twitter @emmalanza.

The Art of Writing Speculative Fiction
2022-11-08 20:00 - 22:00, 2022-11-01 20:00 - 22:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to all.

Limited to 12 participants.

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

Speculative Fiction, a literary genre that can encompass anything from science-fiction and fantasy to magic realism, slipstream, alternate history, horror, steampunk, fairy tales and fables, dystopia, and surrealism, has been with us for as long as we’ve been telling stories. In recent years, it has grown in importance as writing genres continue to cross and blur, and even the most conventional writers of literary fiction experiment with speculative tools as a means to add wonder and power to their tales.

This workshop is open to both new and experienced writers, whether of speculative fiction or of other genres. In each session of this eight-week workshop, we will delve into a different topic and/or element of craft. The sessions will typically include a presentation, examples from the work of experienced writers, an in-depth, participative discussion, and a hands-on exercise. In addition, each participant will have the opportunity to present their own work of speculative fiction—be it a short story or an excerpt from something longer—for detailed discussion and feedback. There will be clear ground rules for workshopping that are designed to ensure that our discussions remain constructive and respectful at all times.

Some of the topics that the workshop will cover include:

What is speculative fiction and what distinguishes it from other types of fiction? What are its special powers and challenges?Questions of content and your story’s four limbs: idea, world, character, plot;Questions of structure and your story’s bones: point-of-view and narration, chronology, tense, tone;Special focus on world-building;Special focus on character-building, voice, and dialogue;What kind of story are you writing? What are you trying to say?How to edit and improve your speculative fiction and prepare it for publication.

Su J Sokol is a social rights advocate and a writer of speculative and interstitial fiction. Originally from Brooklyn, xe now resides in Montréal. Sokol is the author of Cycling to Asylum (2014), long-listed for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic; Run J Run (2019); and Zee (2020), finalist for the Janet Savage Blachford Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Sokol’s short work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies. This summer, Sokol’s debut novel was translated into French and published under the title Les lignes invisibles by VLB Imaginaire. Check out Sokol’s website at www.sujsokol.com

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Instagram: cycling2asylum

Twitter: cyclingtoasylum

(Un)broken: Leveraging the Poetic Line
2022-11-08 18:00 - 20:00, 2022-11-01 18:00 - 20:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to all.

Limited to 12 participants.

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

With few exceptions, poets have access to one tool that other writers do not: the line. A defining feature of its genre, the poetic line plays many roles in shaping a poem’s character. The line can serve simultaneously as pacing device, secondary grammar, image container, rhythm driver, and spotlight for sound.

In contemporary free verse, attention is often paid to breaking the line. While valuable, this thinking locates a line’s gravitational pull largely at its end, sometimes excluding other possibilities. Lines, after all, are made as well as broken. And through this making, a poem’s fingerprint takes shape.

This generative poetry workshop offers poets of all levels the chance to develop a broader and more nuanced understanding of how poems derive power from the line’s possibilities—including, but also extending beyond, its breaking. We’ll consider first lines, line integrity, flavours of enjambment, and the line as both sound-vessel and gloss. We’ll also reflect on what happens between lines by thinking about juxtaposition, stanza, and pacing.

Overall, the goal is to support participants in enhancing their free verse at the line level as they generate new work. Participants can expect to draft four to six new poems and have at least one poem workshopped by the group. Early sessions will involve generative writing prompts and craft discussions, while later sessions will focus on workshopping. To anchor our craft discussions, we’ll look at work from a variety of contemporary poets. Writers should bring one of their own poems to the first session as a way of introducing themselves and their work.

Sarah Wolfson is the author of A Common Name for Everything, which won the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Canadian and American journals such as The Walrus, The Fiddlehead, TriQuarterly, Prairie Fire, CV2, Michigan Quarterly Review, and PRISM international. Her work has earned notable mention in Best Canadian Poetry and funding from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan. Originally from Vermont, she now lives in Montreal, where she teaches writing at McGill University.

@SarahWolfson1 (Twitter)

https://www.facebook.com/sarah.wolfson.14 (Facebook)

Writing About Trauma (Without Being Super Annoying)
2022-11-07 20:00 - 22:00, 2022-10-31 20:00 - 22:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to all.

Limited to 12 participants

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

There was a time when bad things would happen to me, and I would be like, this is so terrible, my life is so awful. Then, I became a writer. Now, when bad things happen to me, I think: this kind of thing is so awful… for people who are not writers. This is going to make such a good essay.

Being a writer is a superpower. Writers are often uniquely sensitive, which can make us vulnerable — but that sensitivity, when channelled appropriately, can turn into our greatest strength. When we learn to transmute our challenging, painful, and even traumatic experiences into art, we learn a very real kind of invulnerability: a capacity to spin agony into gold, a way in which we are always safe, always on top, and can always have the last word. At its best, this skill can allow us to wrest power back from our worst experiences and literally pave a road to fame, fortune, healing, and transcendence. There are, however, a few essential skills we must learn along the way.

In this eight-week workshop, Montreal-based poet and nonfiction writer Tara McGowan-Ross will take the participants on a journey through their shadows, mistakes, betrayals, and heartbreaks, towards the end of creating a powerful and transformative piece of work. She will cover subjects ranging from basic critical thinking and how to apply it, to how to create a safe container for your difficult feelings, to the ethics of writing nonfiction, which inevitably includes other people with opinions and boundaries — to injecting the kind of skill, humour, and humanity required of a work so that it may avoid the most common pitfall of writing trauma narratives: being, like, super annoying.

Tara McGowan-Ross is an urban Mi’kmaw multidisciplinary artist and writer. She graduated from Concordia University’s philosophy program with a minor in Creative Writing in 2016. She is the author of poetry collections Girth and Scorpion Season, and the memoir Nothing Will Be Different. She has served on numerous editorial boards, including Goose Lane’s Icehouse imprint, and has been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry and Anthologie de la poésie actuelle des femmes au Québec. She lives in Montreal, where she is a theatre critic, a rebel educator, a Substack columnist, and the host of Drawn & Quarterly’s Indigenous Literatures Book Club.

girthgirl.ca

taramcgowanross.substack.com

@girthgirl (Instagram/Twitter)

Advanced Memoir: The Second Draft
2022-11-07 18:00 - 20:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
This workshop on memoir is designed for people who have already studied at the intermediate level with Elaine Kalman Naves. Don’t be daunted by the “advanced” label. If you’ve completed an intermediate workshop with Elaine and are interested in writing, reading, and talking about memoir, you are at a level to benefit from this workshop.

As of now, we plan to host this workshop in-person at the QWF office, with some slots open for remote participation.

Though you need not be working on a book-length narrative, you will be expected to have a specific project in mind. It can be something you were working on in a previous workshop or something entirely new.

During the course of the eight-week workshop, you will have the opportunity to submit a piece of up to 3000 words, and with luck you will have a chance to present a second time. (More details about this once we get rolling.)

Instead of a text, you will have the opportunity to read some fine memoirs, and the long lead-up to this fall workshop will give you a chance to do some advance reading. Please give priority in your summer reading to the terrific memoirs by the four writers who will be guest lecturers over the course of the session. (See below.) Once we have established who the actual workshop participants will be, we will also supply you with a list of suggested optional works to enjoy over the course of the summer.

The emphasis will be on student input. Participants will not only be presenting their own work to the group but will also be expected to give careful reading of each other’s pieces in order to provide vital critical feedback. This element of the program is equally important to the writing. As in the past there will also be in-class exercises and discussion of topics of writerly interest. In a new departure, we will start critiquing participants’ pieces at the very first session. Participants who volunteer to present early in the session will be much appreciated! Getting a head start will make it possible to present second drafts. Again, we will work out these details ahead of time once the class list is established.

Here are the names of the guest lecturers and their respective titles:

Mark Abley, The Organist

Linda Leith, The Girl from Dream City

Harriet Alida Lye, Natural Killer

Robyn Sarah, Music, Late and Soon

And please don’t forget that William Zinsser’s On Writing Well is useful to have as a reference at your fingertips!

To apply, please send the following to riley@qwf.org no later than July 6, 2022.

A 3- to 5-page double-spaced writing sample (nonfiction or fiction) that you feel is representative of your abilities.A paragraph or two outlining the writing project you plan to pursue in the workshop.

Elaine Kalman Naves is a long-time literary journalist and the author of seven non-fiction titles, and of a novel. She is a two-time recipient of the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction, the winner of two Canadian Jewish Book Awards, and of a Canadian Literary Award for Personal Essay. Her memoir Journey to Vaja: Reconstructing the World of a Hungarian-Jewish Family has been made into a documentary film. Elaine’s novel, The Book of Faith, was nominated for the Leacock Prize for Humour. She has led workshops at the QWF since their inception in 1998. To find out more about Elaine, visit her website athttp://www.elainekalmannaves.com/

Spoken Word – An Introductory Workshop
2022-11-05 10:00 - 16:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to all.

Limited to 12 participants.

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

In this introductory workshop, participants will craft a spoken word performance based on their own lived experience. Before attending, participants are encouraged to think of a few topics or experiences they would like to write about. The workshop will begin with video examples of spoken word performances and a number of writing exercises. Memory and recollection will then be used as starting points to create pieces that are vivid and relatable, and sharing will be encouraged at every stage of the writing process. The act of remembering, and creative writing as remembering, is like time travel – if you wanted to bring your reader with you on this journey, how would you describe what happened? Which of the five senses would you lean on? There will be time for discussion as well as silent periods dedicated solely to writing. Participants will receive guidance in using similes, metaphors, images, alliteration, and other poetic devices to further enhance their writing. They will also be encouraged to play with form, structure, and punctuation in a step-by-step process, as they write pieces that will reflect who they are and the experiences they have lived.

Once the pieces are written, participants will participate in a number of performance exercises. They will explore how their voices, facial expressions, gestures, and movements can make their performances unique and bring their poems to life. Tone, inflection, volume, and emotion will be explored as tools to help tell a story.

The objective of the workshop is for each participant to write a poem and present it to the group. Since this is an introduction to spoken word, the challenge inherent in writing and sharing personal stories will be openly addressed. Participants’ bravery and vulnerability will be celebrated and encouraged in a warm and supportive atmosphere. Participants will come away with a finished piece and a better understanding of how to tell the stories that are most important to them.

Liana Cusmano (they/them/iel/lu), aka Luca and BiCurious George, is a writer, poet, spoken word artist and filmmaker. They are the 2018 and 2019 Montreal Slam Champion and runner-up in the 2019 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam Championship. Liana has presented their work in English, French, and Italian across North America, Europe, and Asia. They wrote and directed the film Matters of Great Unimportance (2019), screened at the Blue Metropolis Festival, and also wrote the film script for La Femme Finale, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival (2015). Their first novel, Catch and Release, was published by Guernica Editions.

Instagram: l_cantoncusmano

Facebook: Liana Cusmano

Twitter: @L_CantonCusmano

Holiday Book Fair Opening Cocktail
2022-11-04 16:30 - 18:00 | Atrium, McConnell Building, Concordia University, 1400 de Maisonneuve Boulevard West, Montreal, H3G 1M8, Canada
Part of the 2022 Holiday Book Fair

Free, no registration required

Following the book fair events in the 4TH SPACE, attendees are invited to join us for a wine and cheese reception in the McConnell Atrium, with guest speakers Bert Archer, Montreal Gazette editor-in-chief, and special guest author Stanley Péan. Guests are invited to mingle, peruse and purchase books throughout the reception.

In accordance with public health guidelines, mask wearing is optional, though strongly encouraged. The Concordia Atrium is accessible from the Maisonneuve entrance, with an elevator located at metro level for those travelling underground. This event is in-person only and will not be live-streamed.

Explore other 2022 Holiday Book Fair events here, and discover more English-language books written, published, or translated in Quebec at ReadQuebec.ca.

Jazz Stories: En Direct
2022-11-04 15:00 - 16:30 | 4TH SPACE, McConnell Building, Concordia University, 1400 de Maisonneuve Boulevard West, Montreal, Quebec, H3G 1M8, Canada
Part of the 2022 Holiday Book FairFree, no registration requiredIn person and live-streamed (see details below)

In this Holiday Book Fair feature event, author and Radio Canada personality Stanley Péan will discuss his new book Black and Blue: Jazz Stories with host Jason “Blackbird” Selman. They will be joined by Anita Anand (A Convergence of Solitudes), Rana Bose (Shaf and the Remington), and Kasia Van Schaik (We Have Never Lived On Earth) for a musically inspired session of improvised live writing, projected on the 4th Space screens.

In-person event details

In accordance with public health guidelines, mask wearing is optional, though strongly encouraged. The 4th Space is fully accessible from the Maisonneuve entrance, with an elevator located at metro level for those travelling underground.

Live streaming details

The event will be live-streamed to our YouTube account, no prior registration is required. Tune in at 3 pm on November 4, 2022, to view and participate in the Q&A via the chat function.

Explore other 2022 Holiday Book Fair events here, and discover more English-language books written, published, or translated in Quebec at ReadQuebec.ca.

Stanley Péan is the author of eight novels, a couple of essays (mostly about jazz) and eight short story collections, including the upcoming Crépusculaires (Éditions Mains libres, 2022). Since the summer of 2009, he has been piloting the program Quand le jazz est là every week night on ICI Musique, Radio-Canada’s all-music radio network. The original French version of Black and Blue: Jazz Stories was awarded the Prix Victor-Barbeau for best essay by l’Académie des lettres du Québec in 2020. Last Summer, the Festival international de Jazz de Montréal has presented Péan the Bruce-Lundvall Award, given annually to a non-musician who has left a mark on the world of jazz or contributed to the development of the music, through the media, the concert or record industries. Black and Blue: Jazz Stories will be available for purchase at the Véhicule Press table at the Holiday Book Fair, or online here.

Jason “Blackbird” Selman is a Montreal born poet, trumpet player and community worker. He is the author The Freedom I Stole (2007, Cumulus Press), Africa As A Dream That Travels Through My Heart (2016, Howl) and co-editor of the poetry anthology Talking Book (2006, Cumulus Press) which chronicles the writings of Kalmunity Vibe Collective (of which he is a founding member). He works as a teaching artist, conducting poetry workshops in schools across the Montréal area and beyond. His work is grounded in the themes of ethno-musicology, surrealist expression, love and the intersection of masculinity and emotional vulnerability.

Anita Anand is not the Minister of Defense, merely her namesake. She is an ESL teacher, literary translator and author from Montreal. Her first book, Swing in the House and Other Stories, won the QWF-Concordia University First Book Prize. A Convergence of Solitudes is her first novel, which will be available for purchase at the Librairie Paragraphe Bookstore table at the Holiday Book Fair, or online.

Rana Bose is a novelist, poet, playwright and retired professional engineer. He is a founding editor of montrealserai.com. His fourth novel, Shaf and the Remington, was released on September 25, 2022, and will be available for purchase at the Baraka Books table at the Holiday Book Fair, or online here. His third novel, Fog, was awarded the Best Canadian Fiction for 2019, by the Miramichi Reader.

Kasia Van Schaik is the author of the linked story collection, We Have Never Lived on Earth, and the poetry chapbook, Sea Burial Laws According to Country. Her writing has appeared in the LA Review of Books, CBC Books, The Rumpus, Maisonneuve Magazine, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. A postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University, Kasia is currently working on a book of cultural criticism entitled Women Among Monuments and is also co-editing an essay collection, Shelter in Text, which interrogates the relationship between the physical and textual spaces we inhabit. Kasia lives in Tiohti:áke (Montreal).

Eight Voices: Finalists for the QWF Spoken Word Prize
2022-11-04 13:00 - 14:30 | 4TH SPACE, McConnell Building, Concordia University, 1400 de Maisonneuve Boulevard West, Montreal, Quebec, H3G 1M8, Canada
Part of the 2022 Holiday Book FairFree, no registration requiredIn person and live-streamed (see details below)

In an exciting world premiere, the eight finalists for the inaugural Quebec Writers’ Federation Spoken Word Prize will offer short performances showcasing their talents. The prize is open to all forms of spoken word performance, from storytelling to sound poetry, hip hop, and dub. Presented by the Quebec Writers’ Federation and Concordia’s SpokenWeb project, the event will be hosted by poet and SpokenWeb director Jason Camlot. For more information on the performers, see the finalist list below.

In-person event details

In accordance with public health guidelines, mask wearing is optional, though strongly encouraged. The 4th Space is fully accessible from the Maisonneuve entrance, with an elevator located at metro level for those travelling underground.

Live streaming details

The event will be live-streamed to our YouTube account, no prior registration is required. Tune in at 1 pm on November 4, 2022, to view and participate in the Q&A via the chat function.

Explore other 2022 Holiday Book Fair events here, and discover more English-language books written, published, or translated in Quebec at ReadQuebec.ca.

Caitlin Murphy is a writer, director, and dramaturg. She has performed in one-woman shows, stand-up and sketch comedy, and a web-series she created called Mothers Try. Caitlin has also written and directed plays and short films and recently launched a digital collection of her pandemic-related art, Candy for Covid.

Debbie Braide is an energy and development specialist, spoken word poet, World Economic Forum Global Shaper, and British Chevening alumna. An Abuja Literary Society Poetry Slam Champion, she has performed for such organizations as the United States Embassy and VSO International. She is committed to sustainable development and gender equity.

Erín Moure is a poet and poetry translator. Her most recent work includes Chus Pato’s The Face of the Quartzes (Veliz, 2021) and her own chapbooks Retooling for a Figurative Life (Vallum, 2021) and Arborescence (Columba, 2022). Her translation of Chantal Neveu’s This Radiant Life (Book*hug, 2020) won the 2021 Governor General’s Award for translation.

Johanne Pelletier is a storyteller with work featured in Canada and the US. She is the winner of the GRIT 99-Second Story Grand Slam, the producer of Good Gyn-Bad Gyn: Women’s Health Stories, and an amateur boxing judge. She teaches storytelling to scientists and start-ups.

Liana Cusmano (Luca/BiCurious George) is a writer, poet, spoken word artist, and filmmaker. They were the 2018 and 2019 Montreal Slam Champion and runner up in the 2019 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam Championship. Their first novel, Catch and Release (2022), was published by Guernica Editions.

Lucia De Luca is an English teacher and spoken word poet. She was a finalist at the 2021 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam and recently participated in Brickyard Spoken Word’s mentorship program. As an organizer, she brought McGill University its first slam and, in the summer of 2022, oversaw the Grove Campus Poetry Show.

Raïssa Simone is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). She has competed at numerous national poetry slams and been invited to perform at multiple spoken word shows, including the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, Toronto International Poetry Slam, Hillside Festival, and When Sisters Speak.

Roen “Blu’Rva” Higgins is an award-winning spoken word poet, educator, speaker, and creative evangelist. As the founder of The Elevated Creative, her mission is to elevate others through creative literacy and help them find their flow and tap into their genius zone.

Thank you to our generous funders, partners, and sponsors!

Holiday Book Fair
2022-11-04 11:00 - 2022-11-05 17:00 | Atrium, McConnell Building, Concordia University, 1400 de Maisonneuve Boulevard West, Montreal, H3G 1M8, Canada
After two years of virtual and hybrid book fairs, the Holiday Book Fair is back in person!Produced by the Association of English-language Publishers of Quebec (AELAQ) in partnership with the Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF), the Holiday Book Fair presents a stellar lineup of new works from local publishers, authors, and translators, plus a full program of hybrid literary events and author signings.The book fair itself is open Friday and Saturday, November 4–5, 11 am–5 pm. Special events—including a wine and cheese, hybrid readings and discussions, and a launch party for the Montreal Review of Book‘s Fall issue—will occur in the days leading up to and alongside the book fair, starting November 2.

VIEW SCHEDULE AND BOOKS FOR SALE

Writing Outside the Box: A Workshop on Edgy Fiction
2022-11-03 20:00 - 22:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to writers of all experience levels.

Due to the content in some of the exercises, this workshop is restricted to participants aged 18+.

Limited to 12 participants

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

Looking to shake up your process? Interested in breaking the rules a little? Designed to inspire unique approaches to creative writing, this workshop will help squash your inner editor and provoke your inner rebel, giving you the confidence you need to write more openly and honestly.

Over the course of eight weeks, participants will delve into the work of unconventional writers like Italo Calvino, Kelly Link, John Elizabeth Stintzi, and George Saunders. You’ll learn tips and techniques for producing work quickly and fearlessly. You’ll dabble with ekphrasis, magic realism, and second-person perspective, and you’ll hone your ability to give and receive constructive feedback in a wildly creative working environment.

This is a fun, provocative, and productive workshop that’s generated award-winning fiction and long-term friendships. It is suitable for writers of any experience level, from the shy beginner to the established professional, working in any medium or genre. And while filled with lesson-based exercises and guided assignments, this workshop is happily (and willfully) anti-academic. Participants are not taught writing theory but are encouraged to develop their skills through the acts of reading and writing alone. Here, you learn by doing.

There is no submission required prior to the first session. Participants will be expected to share fiction with the group as the workshop progresses.

This is the perfect way to kickstart a project, rejuvenate your existing process, or to simply step outside of your comfort zone by experimenting with new approaches to creativity.

Come play with the weird kids of creative writing. (One of us. One of us.)

Trepassey-born writer Tracey Waddleton splits her time between the island of Newfoundland and the island of Montreal. Her first book, Send More Tourists… the Last Ones Were Delicious, was published by Breakwater Books in July of 2019 and won the 2020 ReLit Award for Short Fiction. She is the inaugural recipient of the Quebec Writers’ Federation Max Margles Writing Residency and is spending/spent the month of August writing in Dublin, Ireland in 2022.

www.traceywaddleton.com

Instagram: @bartlebomb

Twitter: @traceywaddleton

Facebook: www.facebook.com/tracey.waddleton

Edit like an Editor: How to Edit Your Own Prose
2022-11-03 19:00 - 21:00 | Online via Zoom
This workshop is open to all levels of writers who have a prose manuscript they want to work on.

Limited to 12 participants.

This workshop will be conducted via Zoom.

Using tips, tricks, and hands-on exercises, workshop participants will learn about the different types of editing (including developmental editing, line editing, copyediting, and fact checking) and how to see their own work with fresh eyes.

Through reading, discussion, and exercises, this workshop will cover:

How to see your own work with an editor’s eyeSpotting common problems (info dumping, “as you know, Bob” explanations, insufficient conflict, misunderstanding genre conventions, etc.)Understanding character development (goals and motivation)How to make the most out of dialoguePoint of view, and common problems with point of view (e.g. head hopping)

This workshop is geared toward book-length manuscripts, including short story and essay collections. Applicants must submit an excerpt from their manuscript (maximum 25 pages) along with a short description of the whole project in order to be considered for the workshop. After registering below, you have until September 9 to send your document(s) to workshops@qwf.org, with “For Maria Turner” in the subject line.

By the end of the workshop, participants will have an in-depth editorial plan for their manuscript and have a solid understanding of the different types of editing and how to apply them to their own work.

Maria Schamis Turner is a freelance editor specializing in developmental editing and line editing for fiction and creative nonfiction. She is a founding editor and previous editor-in-chief and creative nonfiction editor of the literary magazine carte blanche. She worked for 10 years on literary projects for CBC Radio, including as an editor for Canada Writes. She was also the producer of the true story storytelling series This Really Happened and has taught numerous workshops on storytelling, writing, and editing.

Turneredits.com

Twitter: @turnmaria

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turnmaria

Atwater Poetry Project: Holiday Book Fair Special Edition
2022-11-03 19:00 - 20:00 | Atwater Library and Computer Centre, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Westmount, Quebec, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Part of the 2022 Holiday Book FairFree, no registration requiredIn person and live-streamed (see details below)

Join us for a special edition of the Atwater Poetry Project series, in the Adair Auditorium of the Atwater Library and Computer Centre. This evening of new writing will feature poets Prathna Lor (Emanations), River Halen (Dream Rooms), and Trynne Delaney (the half-drowned), with readings moderated by APP curator, Faith Paré.

In-person event details

Space is limited; first come, first seated. In accordance with public health guidelines, mask wearing for in-person events is optional, though encouraged. The Atwater Library and Adair Auditorium are accessible by elevator. Be sure to use the entrance on 4023 Tupper Street, around the corner from Atwater Avenue. For elevator access, use the accessible entrance in the alley off Tupper.

Live streaming details

The event will be live-streamed to our YouTube account, no prior registration is required. Tune in at 7 pm on November 3, 2022, to view and participate in the Q&A via the chat function.

Explore other 2022 Holiday Book Fair events here, and discover more English-language books written, published, or translated in Quebec at ReadQuebec.ca.

River Halen is an award-winning, transgender writer of Catalan and Danish descent living in Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. Their poems and essays dealing with relation, ecology, transformation, and sexuality have been published widely in Canada, as well as in the U.S., Australia, and in translation in Japan. Their first book, Match, was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and their most recent book, Dream Rooms, a collection of essays and poems, includes works selected for Best Canadian Essays and was praised by the Bay Area Reporter as “unique and mesmerizing.” Visit their website, Facebook, or Instagram.

Part essay, part poem, part fever dream journal entry, Dream Rooms is a book about personal revolution, about unravelling a worldview to make space for different selves and realities. Set in the years that led up to author River Halen coming out as trans, this collection concerns itself with what sits on the surface of daily life, hidden in plain view, hungry for address—what it means to take a stranger’s pet rabbit to the vet in a year of accelerating extinctions, to lose your clothes to a moth infestation then buy a duvet made of fossil fuels, to learn your bookshelf is full of work written by rapists and rape apologists, to consider a birth control device as a narrative about bodies and their possibilities, then pull the string. Deeply queer and trans not only in its content but in its thinking, Dream Rooms invites readers to that place in consciousness where fear and desire, hidden information and common knowledge brush up against each other and are mutually transformed.

Trynne Delaney is a writer currently based in Tiohtiàh:ke (Montreal). They hold a Master of Arts in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Calgary. Their work appears in The Puritan, CV2, Carte Blanche, GUTS, WATCH YOUR HEAD, and the League of Canadian Poets’ chapbook These Lands: a collection of voices by Black Poets in Canada, edited by Chelene Knight. They grew up in the Maritimes. the half-drowned, a poetic novella, was published by Metatron Press in spring 2022. Visit their website, and Twitter.

the half-drowned is a vision of a future at the end of the world where what survives is the shapeshifting love of family both given and chosen. Drawing on the Afro-diasporic ancestral knowledge of water and the urgency of desire, Delaney builds a glittering, speculative world where community holds through grief, where we must choose to fend for ourselves while also caring for others. the half-drowned is a genre-bending novella that crafts a polyphony of voices to speak to and through our lives and dreams in order to reach for the unspoken and unsayable and make it heard.

Prathna Lor is a poet, essayist, editor and educator, who has published in Canadian Literature, DIAGRAM, C Magazine, Jacket2, Poetry is Dead and Plenitude Magazine, among others. Lor is Poetry Editor at Shrapnel Magazine and holds a PhD from the University of Toronto. They live in Montreal, QC. Visit their website.

Emanations (Wolsak & Wynn 2022) is a meditation on the spirit of disaster, both personal and collective. Pushing always against commodification, against a consumable narrative, Prathna Lor charts the depths of the self, searching for an internal music. With a lyric style that emerges from the ruins of unwanted life, Prathna Lor has created a debut collection that is radiant to touch.

Montreal Review of Books—Fall 2022 Issue Launch
2022-11-02 19:00 - 20:30 | Ursa Montreal, 5589 Park Avenue, Montreal, Quebec, H2V 4S8, Canada
Part of the 2022 Holiday Book FairFree, no registration requiredIn person and live-streamed (see below for details)

Join us for the launch of the Fall Issue of the Montreal Review of Books, with readings by featured authors Alexei Perry Cox (PLACE), Neil Smith (Jones), and Toula Drimonis (We, the Others). Hosted by Montreal Review of Books editor Malcolm Fraser.

In-person event details

Space is limited; first come, first seated. In accordance with public health guidelines, mask wearing for in-person events is optional, though encouraged. Ursa MTL is at garden-level and have a small set of stairs leading into the venue. They unfortunately do not have a ramp, but we are happy to help accommodate folks to the best of our ability. Please let us know if you require assistance with the stairs. Doors will open at 6:30 pm.

Live streaming details

The event will be live-streamed to our YouTube account, no prior registration is required. Tune in at 7 pm on November 2, 2022, to view and participate in the Q&A via the chat function.

Explore other 2022 Holiday Book Fair events here, and discover more English-language books written, published, or translated in Quebec at ReadQuebec.ca.

We look forward to seeing you on November 2nd!

Toula Drimonis is a Montreal-based opinion columnist, writer and news producer. A former news director for TC Media, she has reported and written on politics, social justice, and women’s issues for national and international publications. She has worked in television, radio, and print in all three of her languages, and has appeared on TV as both panelist and contributor to English and French-language current-affairs and cultural news shows.

Alexei Perry Cox is a writer and teacher and organizer. She is the author of Night 3 | اليوم الرابع (Centre for Expanded Poetics), Re:Evolution (Gap Riot Press), Finding Places to Make Places (Vallum), as well as the full length collection Under Her (Insomniac Press). PLACE is now out from Noemi Press. Her poetry and criticism has graced the pages of a wide variety of publications, including Jouranl Safar (جورنال سفر), Arc Poetry Magazine, Moko Magazine, Carte Blanche and The Georgia Review. At the core of her makings is the belief that we imagine relationally, sometimes with words and sometimes with graze.

Neil Smith is a Canadian writer and translator. His novel Boo, published in 2015, won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Boo was also nominated for a Sunburst Award and the Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award, and was longlisted for the Prix des libraires du Québec. Smith published his debut book, the short story collection Bang Crunch, in 2007. It was chosen as a best book of the year by the Washington Post and the Globe and Mail, won the McAuslan First Book Prize from the Quebec Writers’ Federation, and was a finalist for the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Three stories in the book were also nominated for the Journey Prize. Smith also works as a translator, from French to English. The Goddess of Fireflies, his translation of Geneviève Pettersen’s novel La déesse des mouches à feu, was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award for translation.

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