Follow this link to watch a recording of the event from Wednesday Nov. 25th!
Join us as we kick off the Read Quebec: Holiday Book Fest with an online version of this much-loved, fast-paced literary variety show. Fifteen writers from a range of genres will keep things hopping by reading from their new work—for only two minutes each! After each writer reads, they will contribute to a collaborative text that will be read aloud at the end of the show—with élan!—by host Nisha Coleman.
With: Breezy, Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch, April Ford, Nathan Caro Frechette, Dani Jansen, Andreas Kessaris, Richard King, Justin Ling, Rachel McCrum, Saleema Nawaz, Hazel Jane Plante, stephanie roberts, Greg Santos, Lauren Turner.
Sponsored by Penguin Random House Canada.
This event will be transcribed live. Brief instructions on how to access the live transcript will be provided at the event.
Nisha Coleman is a Montreal-based writer, storyteller, translator and musician. She is the author of the memoir Busker: Stories from the Streets of Paris.
Breezy is a queer Métis and settler writer, artist and art educator. Breezy holds an M.Ed from the Harvard Graduate School of Education focused on trauma-informed teaching practices. She has worked with creative violence prevention, restorative justice and arts-based enrichment programming in schools. She currently works as a pedagogical consultant, helping others connect, heal, find joy and grow through making.
Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch is a queer Arab poet living in Tio’tia:ke, whose work has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2018, GUTS, carte blanche, the Shade Journal, New Quarterly, Arc Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. Their book, knot body, was published by Metatron Press September 2020, and their upcoming book, The Good Arabs, will be published by Metonymy Press in 2021.
April Ford is a Montréal queer writer. Her books include a debut novel and Winner of the 2020 International Book Awards for LGBTQ Fiction, Carousel (Inanna Publications), and Death Is a Side-Effect: Poems (Frog Hollow Press).
Nathan Caro Fréchette is a queer transgender sequential artist, publisher, and author living in Gatineau. He has published over a dozen short stories, both graphic and prose, as well as five novels, three graphic novels, and two works of nonfiction.
Dani Jansen is an English and drama teacher. Her debut novel, The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life, was released in September.
Andreas Kessaris is a graduate of Dawson College and Concordia University, where he earned a BA in communications and English. His writing has appeared on Suite101.com, in the literary journal The Write Place, and on the Montreal entertainment website Curtainsup.tv. The Butcher of Park Ex is his first book.
Richard King is a Montreal writer of mysteries, the author of five novels with a sixth, Banking on Life, scheduled for release in April 2021. He is a recovering bookseller and historian.
Justin Ling is an investigative freelance journalist. He has written for the Globe & Mail, Foreign Policy, VICE News and everyone in between, and hosted CBC’s The Village podcast.
Rachel McCrum is a poet and performer, originally from Northern Ireland. Her first collection, The First Blast to Awaken Women Degenerate (2018, Stewed Rhubarb Press), was published in a bilingual edition, Le premier coup de clairon pour réveiller les femmes immorales with Mémoire d’encrier in September 2020.
Saleema Nawaz is the author of two novels, most recently, Songs for the End of the World. Her first novel, Bone and Bread, won the Quebec Writers’ Federation Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the 2016 Canada Reads competition.
Hazel Jane Plante is a writer, musician, cat photographer, and librarian. Her debut novel, Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) (Metonymy Press, 2019), was recently given a Lambda Literary Award for Trans Fiction.
stephanie roberts is the Quebec-based, Panama-born, author of the poetry collection rushes from the river disappointment (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020) nominee for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. Critically praised, her work has been widely featured in publications such as Poetry, Arc Poetry Magazine, Room, EVENT Magazine, CV2, The /tƐmz/ Review, Atlanta Review, and Verse Daily. Winner of Black Mountain Press’s The Sixty-Four: Best Poets 2018, she grew up stateside. Contact IG: @ringtales, www.oceansandfire.com
Greg Santos is the Editor in Chief of carte blanche magazine. His newest book is Ghost Face (DC Books, 2020).
Lauren Turner is a disabled poet and author of the full-length collection, The Only Card in a Deck of Knives (Wolsak & Wynn, 2020) and the chapbook, We’re Not Going to Do Better Next Time (knife | fork | book, 2018). She won the 2018 Short Grain Contest and was a finalist for the 2017 3Macs carte blanche Prize.