Quebec Writers' Federation

So You’ve Written a Novel – Now What?
2025-04-22 18:00 - 20:00, 2025-04-29 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
The first time I typed THE END on a manuscript, I didn’t know what to do next. There’s a lot of information and encouragement on HOW to write a book, but not a lot on what to do after you’ve written the thing. And the advice you find online can be woefully misleading, confusing, or at its very worst —fraudulent.

This 8-week workshop aims to fully lay out the roadmap to traditional publishing for someone who’s finished, or is close to finishing a fiction manuscript. The journey of getting your story from your laptop to an actual book you can pick up at Indigo follows a very specific series of steps. From landing an agent, to signing with a publisher, to contract details, this course will take you, in minute detail, through every step, with a centerpiece intensive workshop formulating your all-important Query Letter, along with details on crafting your logline and your pitch kits.

Designed for absolute newbies to the world of publishing, this workshop will offer you tips and tactics to maximize your chances at every step, and by its end you should have the knowledge and confidence to approach this perilous enterprise knowing exactly what you need to do next. Because typing THE END is only the beginning.

There is no submission required prior to the first session, but participants will be expected to write loglines and query letters and share them with the group as the workshop progresses. They will also be expected to read and critique each other’s work.

Toronto-born, Montreal-based writer and illustrator Sherwin Sullivan Tjia has written many odd and eclectic books. Their 2005 collection of pseudohaikus, The World is a Heartbreaker, was a finalist for the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s A. M. Klein Award. Their 2010 graphic novel, The Hipless Boy, was a finalist for the Doug Wright Award for best emerging talent, as well as being nominated for 4 Ignatz Awards. Their 2011 Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style book from the POV of a housecat entitled You Are a Cat! won that year’s Expozine Award for best English-language book. Their latest graphic novel entitled Plummet is about a woman who wakes up one day to find herself in literal, perpetual freefall. It was optioned for animation and named one of CBC Books’ “Top 20 Graphic Novels of 2019.”

2025 Annual General Meeting
2025-04-22 19:00 | Adair Auditorium, Atwater Library, 1200 Atwater Avenue (top floor), Montreal, Quebec, H3Z 1T4, Canada
The 2025 Quebec Writers’ Federation Annual General Meeting will be held

Tuesday, April 22, 2025 at 7:00 pm EDTatAdair Auditorium, Atwater Library1200 Atwater Avenue (top floor)and online via Zoom

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 2025 to April 2026. If you wish to nominate someone for a position on the Board, or to put your own name forward, please contact Riley Palanca (riley@qwf.org) and request the Introduction for Potential Board Members document and a nomination form. Completed nomination forms, including the signatures of two other QWF members, must be submitted to Riley by Friday, April 11, 2025.

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.

Agenda

7:00-7:15: Schmoozing

7:15: Call to order

Report from the outgoing QWF President, Tawhida Tanya Evanson

Financial report, presented by the QWF Executive Director, Lori Schubert

Election or acclamation of new Board of Directors

Parting words from the incoming President, Crystal Chan

Registration

To register, fill out the RSVP form at the bottom of this page. Please indicate whether you will be attending in person or online via Zoom. If attending online, you’ll receive a link to the Zoom meeting a day or two before the meeting takes place.

Registration will close on Tuesday, April 22, at 5:00 pm ET. If you would like to register to attend after registration has closed, please contact John Wickham at john@qwf.org to be put on the attendance list. Please also indicate whether you will attend in person or on Zoom.

If you will be attending online, you will receive a link to the Zoom meeting the day before or day of the meeting, depending on when you register.

Make It Make Sense: Writing Memoir
2025-04-22 20:00 - 22:00, 2025-04-29 20:00 - 22:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Writing a story about something that really happened seems like it should be easy: after all, compared to something like fiction, a lot of the work is already done for you. You already know what happens! But as anyone who has attempted to make art about their own life and experience can attest, the practice can feel a lot more complicated when you actually get down to it. Life doesn’t always make sense — but a good story has to.

Led by Tara McGowan-Ross, the author of the Hilary Weston Prize-shortlisted memoir Nothing Will Be Different, Make It Make Sense is a workshop that engages directly with the complicated questions that can impede creativity when writing about real life. What makes memoir different from other kinds of nonfiction? Why does writing about yourself honestly so often feel like lying through your teeth? What are the ethics of writing about other people? And what gives me the right, in our complicated global environment, to take up space telling my own story at all?

This workshop aims to foster a sense of confidence and capacity in a genre that is both highly marketable arts entertainment and powerful personal reflective practice. Participants will be asked to think critically about memoir from the perspective of both writer and reader in a discussion-based environment that features short lectures, collaborative dialogue, peer editing, and revision to foster a sense of ease in one of the most fraught and risky modes of self-expression.

Make It Make Sense is designed for writers of all skill levels who feel they are psychologically blocked in their memoir-writing practice. Participants will be encouraged to develop a solid foundation of confidence and understanding so that they can live with the sense of uncertainty (or even danger) that often makes this genre so challenging and exciting. Participants will be required to write a short piece for peer editing and workshop with their cohort and encouraged to revise that same piece based on feedback. Not all revised pieces will be workshopped.

Listening for the Poem
2025-04-23 18:00 - 20:00, 2025-04-30 18:00 - 20:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
This workshop engages poetry through a listening practice.

Listening shifts attention away from prosaic sense-making and toward poetic meaning-making. Through listening, we can quiet our inner editorial voice, make unexpected leaps of thought, create new patterns of association, and attune to the fullness—the timbre, tone, and sway—of any given moment.

Developing a listening practice also carves out dedicated time, space, and attention for writing. Listening permits an encounter between you and your voice, which emerges when you do not self-consciously construct it. Listening halts self-critical chatter, allowing you to tune in to your natural rhythms, embodied knowledge, and inner language.

You will be invited to engage in a directed listening experience, on your own time, before each workshop. During this experience, you will compose the poems that will be brought into workshop, which will be spent reading new poems aloud and providing feedback on one another’s writing. The idea is that you will bring in new work during each session to share, with writing taking place on your own time. Consequently, this is a writing-intensive workshop. Short readings and audio files will be assigned, and participants will need a recording device for one exercise (phone is OK).

The workshop will fully engage the intellect and life experiences of all the writers in the room as we talk shop about craft, poetics, and more. New work is privileged to demonstrate the limitless potential we have within us to create poetry—the potential to hear poetry in everyday life.

Jay Ritchie is an English PhD candidate at McGill University and holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of Listening in Many Publics (Invisible Publishing, 2024), which was a finalist for the QWF’s A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry, and Cheer Up, Jay Ritchie (Coach House Books, 2017). He has taught creative writing at UMass and Bishop’s University. His writing and music have appeared in Maisonneuve, SAND, on CBC Radio One, WMUA Amherst, Frozen Section Radio, at the PHI Centre, and he performs expanded poetry readings using portable cassette players and field recordings.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job…Yet: Freelance Writing for Print and Internet
2025-04-23 19:00 - 21:00, 2025-04-30 19:00 - 21:00 | Online via Zoom
The Internet has boosted demand for articles, photo features, website text, and niche content for both online and print outlets. The technical skills to post, blog, tweet, and upload are common – especially amongst the younger generation!

Less common, however, is the combination of these skills with the ability to write clear, concise, targeted, interesting, and well-structured prose suitable for small screens, short attention spans, F-pattern skim reading, and search engines.

Conducted by a professional journalist, author, freelance writer and PR lecturer, this workshop is designed to enhance the communications skills of freelancers, publicists, bloggers, and other writers. It will also help you acquire the business and survival smarts you’ll need if you want to earn money from your writing.

Variations of this workshop have been delivered online and live, for credit and non-credit purposes at McGill University, UCLA, Shaanxi University, and various arts groups.

Through discussions, examples, simulation exercises, and peer review, workshop sessions are conducted in a “real-life” context that aims to get participants published after the course.

Exercises are written and reviewed during sessions to mediate feedback and prepare participants to work within time limits. The instructor will set a main homework assignment, to be reviewed before it’s submitted for publication:

A third-person profile, based on an interview, which describes an interesting person, their occupation and achievements.

or

A researched, first-person narrative analyzing a subject of topical interest.

Sessions will cover all aspects of choosing, planning, pitching, writing, and editing the article.

Participants enrolling in this workshop should have a clear idea why they want to write, what they want to write, and for whom. They should also consider whether they intend to sell their writing to external outlets, give it away, or use it for personal, career/business development.

Workshop schedule

Week 1

Course introduction

Overcoming writer’s block and generating story ideas

Choosing the right topic at the right time

Differences between print and online writing

Week 2

Analysis of techniques, tone, and content of publications

Inverted pyramid writing

Researching and selecting relevant material

Search engine optimization

Online vs print reading patterns

Week 3

Writing catchy leads, headings, and subject lines

Basic writing structures

Show don’t tell – writing for the senses

Similes, metaphors, allusions, and other writing devices

Cutting jargon and superfluous words

Week 4

Interviewing techniques and psychology

Turning an interview into a profile

Use of quotations

Choosing a publication for your article

Pitching stories

Week 5

Working with editors

Building your network

Caption writing

Sourcing, choosing, and editing pics

Travel writing

Week 7

Writing as a business

Quoting for jobs

Tax and invoice issues

Marketing

Self-publishing, hybrid publishing

Week 8

Course review

Preparation to submit workshop article for publication

Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival
2025-04-24 08:00 - 2025-04-27 17:00 | Hotel 10, 10 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, H2X 4C9, Canada
April 24-27, 2025Hotel 10, 10 Sherbrooke St. W., MontrealOnline starting April 14

The Blue Metropolis Festival is one of the largest multilingual literary events in North America. Each year, writers from Quebec, Canada, and around the world converge on Montreal for the event. Festival-goers are treated to live interviews, roundtable discussions, public readings, debates, masterclasses, readings, and writing workshops. Every year, the festival is structured around several strong themes that bear testimony to a keen social awareness and to a passion for literature in all its richness.

The 2025 Edition

Time, The Tree, The Page

The Blue Metropolis Festival brings together Time, The Tree, and Literature for its 27th edition, proposing an exploration of patience, transformation, and the delicate balance between nature, culture, and humanity.

The Tree, a silent witness to centuries, embodies both the patience of time and the memory of the world. “Trees are their own language; it is their form that speaks, their entire form that carries their meaning,” writes Alexis Jenni, inviting us to reflect on our relationship with time, literature, and the environment.

Time slips away, accelerates, is wasted, and savored. It is both a threat and a promise, urgency and contemplation. It shapes nature as much as it shapes our lives. Writing takes time; reading does too. Could time be a gift we give ourselves?

Once more, public discussions, roundtables, debates, readings, master classes, and podcasts will provide a rich display for both authors and the public to enjoy.

2025 Festival

Dual Book Launch & Poetry Reading at Librairie Pulp Books & Café with Louise Marois, Manahil Bandukwala, D.M. Bradford, Faith Paré, and Misha Solomon
2025-04-24 19:00 - 21:00 | Librairie Pulp Books & Cafe, 3952 Wellington Street, Montreal, Quebec, H4G1V3, Canada
Ring of Dust by Louise Marois, translated by D.M. Bradford, and Heliotropia by Manahil Bandukwala will have a dual book launch and reading at Librairie Pulp Books & Café. Join Louise Marois, D.M. Bradford, Manahil Bandukwala, and special guests Faith Paré and Misha Solomon, for a night of poetry reading.

Doors open at 6:45pm.

2025 Queer Reading Series
2025-04-25 19:30 - 2025-04-26 23:00 | Centaur Theatre, 453 St. Francois-Xavier, Montreal, Quebec, HZY 2T1, Canada
Produced by Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal in partnership with Centaur theatre, the Queer Reading Series continues for its 6th year showcasing the works of emerging Queer playwrights. Taking place on April 25 and 26th at 7:30PM at Centaur Theatre, and curated by Jesse Stong, this two-day event will feature public readings of two works in-progress by Gabrielle Banville and Anton May. Following the Saturday performance, join us for a night of music and celebration, featuring cool beats from QRS-Alumni Blxck Cxsper.
Both readings will be presented with live captioning, and the talkbacks will be presented with auto-generated captioning, for accessibility purposes.
The Queer Reading Series is a FREE event. Donations help us keep our programming free to artists, and will be gratefully accepted at the door.
Join us to celebrate the power of queer storytelling in the theatre and support emerging Queer artists.

Shut Up & Write! with QWF (Virtual)
2025-04-26 10:00 - 12:30 | Online – Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link
Saturday, April 26, 2025, 10:00 am–12:30 pm ETOnline via Zoom—RSVP below to receive the Zoom link

Looking for some dedicated, quiet writing space?

Register below to do all that writing you’ve been meaning to do. Using the Pomodoro technique, participants write in 25-minute bursts, with 5-minute breaks in between.

This event is for QWF members only. Not a member? Learn about becoming a member.

The Zoom link will be sent out a day or two before the session.

Please note that these sessions are designed for silent writing, rather than discussing or getting feedback on work.

10:00–10:25: Writing 110:25–10:30: Break10:30–10:55: Writing 210:55–11:00: Break11:00–11:25: Writing 311:25–11:30: Break11:30–11:55: Writing 411:55–12:00: Break12:00–12:25: Writing 5

To receive the Zoom link, RSVP below. You will receive the Zoom link a few days before the session.

Note: RSVPs for virtual Shut Up & Write! sessions close 24 hours before the session begins. If there is no option to RSVP, RSVPs are closed.

Imagination –Writing Dialogue for the Stage Workshop
2025-04-26 11:00 - 12:30 | Morrin Centre, 44 Chaussée des Écossais, Quebec City, Quebec, G1R 4H3, Canada
April 22-27, 2025, 11:00 am-12:30 pm ET

Join us for this Imagination festival workshop!

How does dialogue work in the theatre, and how does it relate to character and action? Join playwright Leanna Brodie for this workshop to find out! With a mix of theory and hands-on exercises, explore various approaches to writing for multiple voices and generating text for the stage.

Photo by Kristine Cofsky

Leanna Brodie is an award-winning performer and writer whose plays include The Vic, For Home and Country, The Book of Esther, and Schoolhouse, which have been performed across Canada. Most recently, Salesman in China, written in collaboration with Jovanni Sy, premiered at the Stratford Festival and National Arts Centre to great acclaim, winning the Quebec Writers’ Federation Prize for best new play. Brodie is also a leading translator of Québécois and Franco-Canadian playwrights.

Organized by the Imagination Writers’ Festival in partnership with QWF’s Writers Out Loud series.

Writers Out Loud: To Care for the Earth—In Conversation with Alice Irene Whittaker
2025-04-26 14:30 | Hotel 10, 10 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, H2X 4C9, Canada
Novelist Ian Thomas Shaw interviews author Alice Irene Whittaker to explore the profound act of finding home in nature at a time of heartbreaking change. In her book, Homing: A Quest for Care for Myself and the Earth, Alice Irene weaves the wisdom of leading environmentalists with her journey of embracing nature’s cycles in a cabin in the woods, where she strives to shed perfectionism and cultivate a life rooted in regeneration and care.

Part of QWF’s Writers Out Loud series. Presented in partnership with the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival.

Imagination Writers' Festival: Sabrina Reeves
2025-04-26 14:30 - 15:30 | QC
April 26, 2025, 2:30-3:30 pm ET

Enjoy an interview with Sabrina Reeves, author of Little Crosses, at this Imagination event!

Photo by Tony Chong

Sabrina Reeves grew up in Boston and New York and currently lives in Montreal. Her artistic practice has primarily been in writing performance texts and plays. She founded the performance company Bluemouth Inc., with whom she has written and staged over a dozen original works and performed at festivals and theatres all over the world. In 2018, she completed an MFA in creative writing at Concordia University, where she was awarded the Dean of Arts and Sciences Award for Excellence in Creative Writing. Her first novel, Little Crosses, was published in March of 2024 by House of Anansi Press and was awarded the Concordia University First Book Prize and the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for fiction.

Host : Leila Paddack-Trudel

Organized by the Imagination Writers’ Festival in partnership with QWF’s Writers Out Loud series.

Launch! Fred Anderson with Gordon Weekes on great Black music of the Civil Rights era
2025-04-26 16:00 - 18:00 | Librairie Résonance, 40 rue Beaubien Est, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Librairie Résonance, Livres Baraka, and Arts in the Margins present the launch of Fred Anderson’s memoir, Eyes Have Seen, From Mississippi to Montreal (April 1, Livres Baraka), along with special guest Gordon Weekes, host of Anatomy of Caribbean Music, 1690 AM, CJLO.COM.
To mark the launch, Fred and Gordon will be in conversation about the music that shaped the Civil Rights era. Nina Simone. Charles Mingus. John Coltrane. Sweet Honey in the Rock. Richie Haven. Roberta Flack. Oscar Peterson. Odetta.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase and to be autographed. Free and all are welcome!
Saturday, April 26, 4 pm
LIBRAIRIE RÉSONANCE, 40 rue Beaubien Est
STM public transport: Beaubien metro station
Bus stop (north, St-Laurent at Beaubien): #51440
Bus stop (south, Clarke at Beaubien): #51411
ABOUT
Eyes Have Seen at Livres Baraka: https://www.barakabooks.com/catalogue/eyes-have-seen
Librairie Resonance: https://www.librairieresonance.com
Arts in the Margins: https://artsinthemargins.org

The Gabriel Safdie Event: Jerusalem of the Mind—The Groundwork for the Day After
2025-04-27 14:30 | Hotel 10, 10 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, H2X 4C9, Canada
Sunday, April 27th, 2025, 2:30 pm ET

Part of the 2025 Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival

How do we continue living through endless conflict in the Middle East? How do we lay the groundwork for the day after? What role do we have as writers, poets, storytellers and journalists in the arduous and grassroots task of dialogue toward peace building? We must first explore ways toward building empathy among enemies.

A discussion on the current Middle East among a scholar, a poet, a writer, and a filmmaker.

Participants: Danae Elon, Yacov Rabkin, Moustafa Bayoumi, Ehab Lotayef

Moderator: Kareem Shaheen

Imagination – Leanna Brodie
2025-04-27 14:30 - 15:30 | Morrin Centre, 44 Chaussée des Écossais, Quebec City, Quebec, G1R 4H3, Canada
Sunday, April 27, 2025, 2:30-3:30 pm ET

Enjoy an interview with Leanna Brodie, author of Salesman in China, at this Imagination event!

Photo by Kristine Cofsky

Leanna Brodie is an award-winning performer and writer whose plays include The Vic, For Home and Country, The Book of Esther, and Schoolhouse, which have been performed across Canada. Most recently, Salesman in China, written in collaboration with Jovanni Sy, premiered at the Stratford Festival and National Arts Centre to great acclaim, winning the Quebec Writers’ Federation Prize for best new play. Brodie is also a leading translator of Québécois and Franco-Canadian playwrights.

Host: Michael Bourguignon

Organized by the Imagination Writers’ Festival in partnership with QWF’s Writers Out Loud series.

Imagination – Literary Notes
2025-04-27 16:00 - 17:30 | Morrin Centre, 44 Chaussée des Écossais, Quebec City, Quebec, G1R 4H3, Canada
Sunday, April 27, 2025, 4:00-5:30 pm ET

Discover three poets at our Literary Notes event during the Imagination festival!

The Morrin Centre joins forces with the Ligue d’improvisation musicale de Québec (LIMQ) to present a notewordy concert. Tune in to listen to readings by Jes Battis, Domenica Martinello, and Derek Webster, accompanied by music improvised and performed by musicians from the LIMQ which captures the spirit of their poetry books.

Jes Battis teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Regina. They are the author of The Winter Knight with ECW Press, the Occult Special Investigator series with Penguin, and I Hate Parties, their debut book of poems with Nightwood Press. Their work has been included in Canada Reads, and shortlisted for the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and the Sunburst Award for Candian Literature of the Fantastic. The Winter Knight won both an Independent Publisher’s Award and an Indie Foreword Award. Jes is currently working on two projects: a nonfiction book on the film Labyrinth, and a queer romance novel that combines witchcraft with the cozy mood of Schitt’s Creek.

Photo by Gino Visconti

Domenica Martinello is the author of All Day I Dream about Sirens (Coach House Books, 2019) and Good Want (Coach House Books, 2024) and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The title poem of her most recent collection, “Good Want,” won the Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize in 2023. For her prose writing, Domenica won the carte blanche 3Macs Prize (2017) for a genre-bending work of literary criticism on Elena Ferrante, and has published reviews and criticism in The Globe & Mail, The Montreal Review of Books, Canadian Notes & Queries, and elsewhere. Domenica has been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry 2019 and Best Canadian Poetry 2025 (Biblioasis, forthcoming), and her work has been supported by The Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. She lives in Montreal.

Photo by Saleema Nawaz Webster

Derek Webster received an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, where he studied with Carl Phillips, and is the founding editor of award-winning arts magazine Maisonneuve. His first book of poems, Mockingbird (Véhicule Press) was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award for best poetry debut in Canada and his second collection, National Animal, recently won the 2024 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. In the words of Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Diane Seuss, “National Animal embodies the body politic, entangled in war and estrangement, and the human animal caught in a vanishing natural world. From Joni Mitchell to Blanche DuBois, and in forms that range from the sonnet to an epic, physics-driven creation myth, Webster uncovers the universe’s capacity to ‘equilibrate’ without a modicum of sentimentality.” Webster lives in Montreal and Toronto. His work can be read at derekwebsterwriter.com.

Novel Essentials: The Art & Craft of Long-Form Fiction
2025-04-28 18:00 - 20:00, 2025-05-05 18:00 - 20:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Have you had an itch to write a novel, but haven’t known how to tackle such a large project? Now is the perfect time to dust off your ideas! This workshop is a boot camp for budding writers eager to turn their novelistic dream into a reality. From iron-clad structures and story tropes to the ins-and-outs of how character motivation pushes a great plot, this 10-week intensive workshop will impart professional tips and tricks-of-the-trade essential to bringing long-form fiction to life.

The workshop will focus on practical knowledge not covered in a typical writing workshop: initial idea development; a deep dive on novelistic structure; how to build the perfect plot; character development and motivation; scene development; and how to handle secondary and tertiary characters, to name a few. Each week, you will learn one or more essential techniques and/or theories, as well as participate in short, practical exercises that will help you build your novel. As you master the elements, you will have opportunities to develop and workshop your original novel concepts.

While an emphasis will be placed on long-form writing, all writers looking to master essential elements of fiction writing are encouraged to attend. You do not require prior workshop experience or an idea for a novel to take this workshop. Participants interested in developing fiction of all kinds are more than welcome!

L. E. Sterling (Erin Vollick, also published under L. E. Vollick) is the author of numerous novels spanning contemporary, Young Adult, fantasy, science-fiction, dystopian and romance genres. Her hit series, the True Born Trilogy, was optioned for television, and True Born, the first novel in the trilogy, was recognized internationally with the 2017 Athena Award® in Young Adult literature. With a B.A. and M.A. in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in Literature, Sterling taught creative writing and literature for many years. She has appeared at BookCon NYC, the LA Times Festival of Books, and Ad Astra.

Craft Meets Magic: The Alchemy of Short Fiction
2025-04-28 20:00 - 22:00, 2025-05-05 20:00 - 22:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Is there an art form more maddening than the short story? Demanding the complexity of a novel, the lyricism of a poem, and the economy of a joke, the work is tedious and the rewards (for most of us) are slim. Still, for us cursed few, the short story is an addictive nut to crack. After all, there’s little more thrilling than the prose of a writer who can do more with a handful of pages than most can do with 300. The complexity of a novel! The lyricism of a poem! The economy of a joke!

Join us, if you dare, for an 8-week workshop where participants will share and critique each other’s work with an eye towards craft. Specifically, we will ask ourselves questions like, “What are characters made of?” “How is a plot built?” “Do I really need to describe everything?”

Equally important to studying these questions will be putting them aside, as we celebrate and cultivate the magic that makes art artin the first place–that intangible whatever that defines our passion for fiction. After all, what else do we have to keep us warm as we trudge through draft to draft?

As time allows, we’ll also read stories by published authors like ZZ Packer, Donald Barthelme, Jhumpa Lahiri, Joy Williams, and George Saunders. Participants will be asked to read and prepare responses to a short story (distributed from me by email) prior to our first meeting.

Frankie Barnet is the author of Mood Swings (McClelland & Stewart), which was a finalist for the Grand prix du livre de Montréal; Kim: A Novel Idea (Metatron); and An Indoor Kind of Girl (Metatron). Her work has appeared in places such as PRISM International, EVENT, Joyland, The Erotic Review, and Biblioasis’ Best Canadian Short Stories Anthology. She has an MFA from Syracuse University and lives in Montreal.

Business Skills for Creative Souls Artists’ Conference: Embrace Uncertainty and Create Opportunity
2025-04-29 13:00 - 17:00 | Unitarian Church of Montreal, 5035 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, Canada
Calling all Quebec artists: whether you paint, sculpt, perform, write, or explore creativity in other ways, you’re invited to the Business Skills for Creative Souls Artists’ Conference: Embrace Uncertainty and Create Opportunity.
Join us on April 29 for an inspiring afternoon hosted by Sonali Karnick (CBC/Radio-Canada’s All in a Weekend), where we’ll explore how embracing the unknown can open new doors for your art and your career.
You’ll hear directly from working artists and arts professionals about the risks they’ve taken, the challenges they’ve faced, and how they’ve used change as a catalyst for growth. Whether you’re just starting out or are well-established, this conference will help you find clarity and inspiration in times of uncertainty.
Highlights include a keynote from Patrick Corrigan, General Director of Opéra de Montréal, plus practical sessions on SEO, networking, and grant writing. You’ll also hear from a panel of dynamic Quebec artists and have the chance to connect during a casual networking mixer.
A post-conference debrief on May 1 with Artist Coach Caroline Gauthier offers space to reflect and continue the conversation.
Early Bird registration ends Friday, April 11—save $10 when you register now.
Attend in person or online. Presentations will be in English.
Register here: https://tinyurl.com/3f7cf2am

Lunch & Learn with QWF
2025-04-30 12:00 - 13:00 | Online – Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link
Wednesday, April 30, 2025, 12:00–1:00 pm ETOpen to all—register for Zoom link

Looking to learn more about QWF, what we do, and how we can help you as a writer?

Join us for the next Lunch & Learn with QWF!

In this quarterly online orientation session, we provide a deep dive into our many programs and services and how we can help you in your writing journey. Whether you’re new to QWF, want to learn about a particular program, or simply want to meet the team, we welcome you to join us.

Riley Palanca (Membership Services Coordinator) will discuss QWF programs and services for emerging and aspiring writers, including our mentorship program, Shut Up & Write writing sessions, and writing workshops.

Lori Schubert (Executive Director) will explain QWF programs and services for more established writers, including the Writers in the Community program, the Hire a Writer Directory, and the QWF Awards.

John Wickham (Communications Officer) will provide a brief tour of the website, highlighting sections and resources that are particularly useful to QWF members.

Free and open to all. We hope to see you there!

To get the Zoom link: Fill out the registration form. You’ll receive the Zoom link by email shortly thereafter.

If you have trouble registering or joining the meeting, contact John at john@qwf.org.

Lunch & Learn with QWF is our quarterly orientation series to welcome new members and provide an overview of QWF’s activities. The next one after April 30 will be on July 15. Learn more about our Lunch & Learn series.

REGISTER NOW

A LITERARY HARVEST: CANADIAN WRITING ABOUT WINE AND OTHER LIBATIONS – BOOK LAUNCH by Longbridge Books, Blue Metropolis
2025-05-01 17:00 - 19:00 | Librairie Paragraphe Bookstore, 2220 McGill College Ave, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 3P9, Canada
A LITERARY HARVEST: CANADIAN WRITING ABOUT WINE AND OTHER LIBATIONS – BOOK LAUNCH
by Longbridge Books, Blue Metropolis
With A LITERARY HARVEST, editors Licia Canton, Giulia De Gasperi and Decio Cusmano present the writing of 42 authors, giving us diverse perspectives on drinking (and making) wine. Imbibed with humour and tragedy, the unique drinking voices fermenting in A LITERARY HARVEST form a potable Canadian literature. The volume includes prose and poetry by Quebec writers Carmine Starnino, Carolyne Van Der Meer, Veena Gokhale, Heather McGuire, Penelope Laurence, Renée Cohen, Domenic Cusmano, Victoria Dickenson, Amanda Feder, Earl Murphy, Mariam S. Pal, Laura Sanchini.
Join us for the Blue Met launch hostd by Liana Cusmano. Thursday, May 1 at 5 p.m. at Paragraphe Bookstore. https://bluemetropolis.org/event/a-literary-harvest-canadian-writing-about-wine-and-other-libations-book-launch-lancement/

Shut Up & Write! with QWF (In Person)
2025-05-02 12:30 - 15:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Friday, May 2, 2025, 12:30 pm–3:00 pmFree, In PersonQWF Office (Room 3, 1200 Atwater Ave., Westmount)

Register for the session by filling out the RSVP form below.

Looking for some dedicated, quiet writing space?

Join us for an in-person Shut Up & Write session at the QWF office!

Do all that writing you’ve been meaning to do, and meet a few of your fellow QWF members. Using the Pomodoro technique, participants write in 25-minute bursts, with 5-minute breaks in between.

This event is for QWF members only. Not a member? Learn about becoming a member.

Please note that these sessions are designed for silent writing, rather than discussing or getting feedback on work.

12:30–12:55: Writing 112:55–1:00: Break1:00–1:25: Writing 21:25–1:30: Break1:30–1:55: Writing 31:55–2:00: Break2:00–2:25: Writing 42:25–2:30: Break2:30–2:55: Writing 5

To register, RSVP below.

Getting to the QWF Office

Our office is located on the top floor of the Atwater Library and Computer Centre, in Room 3.

Address: 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3Westmount, QC H3Z 1X4

Closest Metro: Atwater Station

Closest Bus lines: 24, 63, 90, 104, 138, 144, 150

Accessibility:

The QWF Office is fully accessible by wheelchair from the side entrance on Tupper Street. Once inside, there is an elevator to the second floor, where the QWF office is.

Learn more about the office location and accessibility.

If you registered and can no longer attend, please email john@qwf.org to notify us.

Subverting the Canon: Writing Plays As Though Race, Class, Gender and Sexual Orientation Mattered
2025-05-03 12:00 - 2025-05-11 16:00 | QC
With Corrina Hodgson

Subverting the Canon: Writing Plays as if Race, Class, Gender and Sexual Orientation Mattered is an innovative workshop designed to challenge conventional storytelling and enable playwrights to craft narratives that reflect the diversity of human experience. Focusing on perspectives historically marginalized in traditional theatre, participants will explore how inclusivity and authenticity can enhance the impact of their work.

This workshop is essential to fostering a vibrant artistic community. At a time when audiences demand stories that resonate with the complexities of contemporary life, it’s essential that playwrights are able to address themes of identity and social justice. By offering writers a space where they can hone their craft while exploring these crucial issues, the workshop cultivates voices capable of engaging, educating and inspiring.

In this workshop, participants will learn theory in the first two sessions with the trainer, receive a writing assignment to complete during the week, then return to theory and practice in week 2.

Dates: May 3, 4 + 10, 11 2025Location: In person location TBD & Over Zoom upon requestTime(s): 12-4 PMRegistration Fee: $45Number of Participants: 8

Writers Out Loud: A Night of Trans Joy
2025-05-06 19:00 - 20:30 | Librairie Pulp Books & Cafe, 3952 Wellington Street, Montreal, Quebec, H4G1V3, Canada
The Quebec Writers’ Federation invites you to Writers Out Loud: A Night of Trans Joy—an evening of literary conversation and community celebration.

Join us as we hear from four exciting and talented Quebec writers. Author and moderator Chris Bergeron will sit down with writers Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay, Blxck Cxsper, and Lenore Claire Herrem to discuss their work, their experiences of trans joy, and how those experiences colour their writing. A Q&A with the audience will follow the panel discussion.

RSVP on Facebook

Photo by Geneviève Charbonneau

Chris Bergeron is diverse and fluid: after beginning a career in journalism and eventually winding up at the helm of the weekly cultural magazine Voir, she now dedicates her artistic vitality to Cossette, a leading global marketing agency. She offers speaking engagements on leadership, diversity, inclusion, and trans rights. Chris lives in Montreal.

Photo by Julie Langenegger

Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay lives in Montreal (Tiohtià:ke) and is a writer, poet, actress, and advocate for trans rights. She published a poetry collection, Les secrets de l’origami and has written for several magazines and publications, including Lettres Québécoises, Estuaire, XYZ, Moebius and Le Devoir as a columnist. Her children’s book La voix de la nature was nominated for the Prix du Livre Jeunesse des Bibliothèques de Montréal. Her first novel, La fille d’elle-même, won the Prix des Libraires du Québec 2022 and is distributed in Europe with JC Lattès and in English as Dandelion Daughter with Véhicule Press. The translation was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award ’24. This year, the book will be translated into Spanish. She is currently working on the sequel to the novel.

Blxck Cxsper is a multidisciplinary artist, storyteller, and cultural disruptor based in Montréal. Known for their genre-bending music that blends hip-hop, R&B, and Afro-Caribbean influences, Cxsper uses sound as a tool for emotional transformation and political resistance. They are the founder of Trans Trenderz, a record label dedicated to uplifting transgender musicians and building equity in the music industry. Blxck Cxsper is also a writer, actor, and director and is currently working on a novel that expands the fictional universe of Blxck Cxsper—a former superhero turned vigilante fighting against institutional corruption to protect the marginalized.

Lenore Claire Herrem is a transdisciplinary artist from Saskatoon and has been working in Tio’Tia:Ke (Montréal) since 2013. Formally trained in theatre performance, she also works in studio arts, animation, digital art, video art, and performance art. She works under the character name Sandy Bridges for cabaret and web series, and Precious Puppies is the name of her humble animation & merchandising empire.

RSVP on Facebook
