The Read Quebec Book Fair returns to Casa d’Italia December 5-6, 2026! Join us for special events, author signings, and the latest releases from Canadian writers and publishers. 

Produced by the Association of English-language Publishers of Quebec (AELAQ), the Fair celebrates the vibrancy of English-language writing, publishing, and translation in Quebec. 

Taking place in the historic Casa d’Italia, the Fair will present a full weekend of programming, including a Lightning Round with local poets, an event with graphic novelists Lee Lai and Arizona O’Neill, and a conversation with Everyday Reconciliation authors Derek Aronhie:nens Montour and Elin Sandberg Miller. We’ll also be hosting another edition of Speed-dating for Writers and Editors, where up-and-coming and seasoned wordsmiths will have the opportunity to deliver their pitches directly to publishers, as well as a panel discussion on publishing in translation.

The Fair will offer plenty of fun for young booklovers in the cozy, book-filled Babar Kids’ Nook both days, and a storytime reading with Gillian Sze.

Stick around for our 5 à 7 opening cocktail on Saturday for delicious hors d’oeuvres and a chance to connect with Montreal’s vibrant literary community.

Casa d’Italia is located at 505 Jean-Talon East, and is fully accessible to wheelchairs and strollers. The Fair takes place on the second floor, accessible via stairs or elevator. Take the entrance on Berri Street, across the street from Jean-Talon metro (exit Jean-Talon Nord).

Schedule

Saturday December 5, 2026

December 5, 2026
11:15 am – 12:15 pm
Rotunda

Linda Leith Publishing Showcase

• With:
  Toula Drimonis
• Alex Costa
• Don Macdonald
• Rebecca Morris
• Michael Foy
• Oren Safdie
• Janet Torge
• David Homel
• Natalie Southworth

Moderated by Linda Leith

Linda Leith Publishing will present their local authors of the season, along with some recent stars. Short readings from a variety of genres will be followed by mingling and book signing. 

Alex Costa has degrees in biology and dentistry from McGill University. Born and raised in the neighbourhood of North Toronto, she grew up near the ravines that inspired this story. She now lives in Montreal with her husband Mark, also a dentist, her two sons, and a big shaggy dog named Rookie who has excellent teeth. The first in a planned trilogy, The Roughling is her first novel. www.alexcosta.ca 

The author of the 2022 bestseller We, the Others, 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. 

Michael Foy was born and raised in Surrey, British Columbia. He holds degrees in psychology and education from Simon Fraser University. His fiction has appeared in Grain Magazine, The Nashwaak Review, QWERTY, Literally Stories, Blank Spaces, Canadian Shorts II, and other journals and anthologies. His story “The Questions Run” received an Honourable Mention in the Riddle Fence Fiction Contest. He lives in Montreal with his wife and two daughters. www.michaelfoy.ca

David Homel was born in Chicago in 1952 and left the city in 1970 for Paris, living in Europe the next few years on odd jobs. He has published ten novels, from Electrical Storms (1988) to The Teardown, which won the Paragraph Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction in 2019, and most recently, Private Number (2025). He has also written young adult fiction with Marie-Louise Gay, directed documentary films, worked in TV production, been a literary translator, journalist, and creative writing teacher. He has translated four books for Linda Leith Publishing: Bitter Rose (2015), The Last Bullet Is For You (2016), Nan Goldin: The Warrior Medusa (2017) and Taximan (2018). Lunging into the Underbrush (2021), also with LLP, was his first book of non-fiction. He lives in Montreal.

Don Macdonald worked for over 20 years as a journalist in Winnipeg, Montreal and Quebec City. His first novel, Omand’s Creek, was an Amazon bestseller that the Montreal Gazette praised as “the best Canadian crime debut in recent memory.” He lives in Montreal. www.donmacdonald.ca

Originally from Guelph, Rebecca Morris lives in Montreal. She earned an M.A. in French from Dalhousie, had three children in three years and taught high school before turning to writing full time. Rebecca’s short stories have won several awards, including the Malahat Review Open Season Award and the Humber Literary Review Emerging Writers Fiction contest. She is a Banff Centre alumna, recipient of a Canada Council Arts grant and an active member of the Quebec Writers’ Federation, where she has taught workshops on short fiction and narrative structure. Other Maps is her first novel.

Oren Safdie was born in Montreal where he attended St George’s School and Marianopolis College. Following graduate studies in Architecture and Creative Writing at Columbia University, Oren has worked as a playwright, screenwriter, and professor of Dramatic Writing & Literature. Five of his plays were New York Times Critic’s Picks. Beyond Ken Dryden, which is his first book, was produced as a play in Montreal in 2024 and Toronto in 2025. He divides his time between LA and Montreal.

Natalie Southworth’s award-winning stories have appeared in literary journals in Canada, the UK and the US, including The North American Review, The Moth Magazine, The New Quarterly, Canadian Notes & Queries, The Brooklyn Review and more. She lives in Montreal.

Janet Torge lives in Montreal and is always looking for new adventures. She’s been a television documentary producer, a prenatal teacher and Birth Doula, an overnight talk-show host at CFCF Radio, traffic reporter and Radio Noon host at CBC Montreal, a columnist at the Montreal Gazette, and co-founder of the first rape relief centre in Canada. She recently trained as a Death Doula and is also the author of Dear Sam, a book about the death of her son.

December 5, 2026
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm
Rotunda

Everyday Reconciliation with Derek Aronhie:nens Montour and Elin Sandberg Miller

With:
Derek Aronhie:nens Montour 
Elin Sandberg Miller

Moderated by Lisa Byer-de Wever

Many of us are committed to the idea of Reconciliation – but what can we do about it? Derek Montour, is an Indigenous man who grew up on the Kahnawà:ke Kanien’kehá:ka Territory. Elin Sandberg Miller is an immigrant from Sweden who, with her outsider view of Canadian society, brings a fresh perspective to the issues. Together they share their conversation between friends, bringing warmth and insight on how Reconciliation can be part of our everyday lives.

Derek Aronhie:nens Montour joined the armed services after high school—first the Canadian Royal Montreal Regiment and later the United States Marine Corps. After leaving the services, he moved back to Kahnawà:ke to work with the Kahnawà:ke Shakotiia’takehnhas Community Services, and today he is the organization’s executive director. He also serves on the board of directors for the First Nations of Quebec and Labrador Health and Social Services Commission and has assisted at the national level on the Child and Family Services Reform National Advisory Committee. He also served on the Minister of National Defence’s Advisory Panel on Systemic Racism and Discrimination, which submitted their final report in December 2021. Derek grew up in Kahnawà:ke and has two children and a grandchild.

Born and raised in Tiotià:ke, otherwise known as Montreal, Lisa Byer-de Wever is a Diaconal Ministry in the United Church of Canada. As someone who has navigated the many worlds of colour, culture, gender, religion, spirituality and language her whole life, she is passionate about creating space for dialogue, learning and deep listening where everyone can share their authentic self.  

She identifies as having mixed West Indian and Indigenous heritage. She has served as the minister for Kahnawake United Church, as the Executive Director to Saint Columba House, and more recently Merging Waters United Church on the West Island of Montreal. 

She co-chairs the United Church’s Regional Right Relations Circle and has facilitated the Kairos Blanket Exercise for about 15 years. She has long been a social justice activist, involved in issues around Indigenous and LGBTQ2sIA+ justice, food insecurity and Gaza.   

In a world where siloed narratives and resistance to the “other” is the norm, she believes we have the opportunity and responsibility to not only foster coexistence but co-resistance. Not only because our faith invites us to do so but our humanity compels us to. 

Elin Sandberg Miller hosted the podcast Everyday Reconciliation in 2021–22, which she created and co-produced with the think tank Canada 2020. Her work has been published in various newspapers and magazines, including the Montreal Gazette. She spent most of her working life in the Swedish Foreign Service and more recently at Global Affairs Canada, working on issues of international law, human rights, gender equality, conflict resolution and peacebuilding. She immigrated to Canada in 2008, currently lives in Ottawa, has three children and a grandchild, and is a dual Swedish-Canadian citizen.

December 5, 2026
1:45 pm – 3 pm
Rotunda

How I(t) Work(s): Literary Translation

• With:
  Chloe Savoie-Bernard
• Rachel Martinez
• Pablo Strauss

Moderated by Katie Grubisic

Quebec is a hotbed of literary translation. Many of our best translators are also writers, and many of our writers want to see their books translated, hopingwanting to reach their fellow Quebecers who read in the other official language. But how does it work? If you have a translation project in mind, how do you get it onto the page? And how do you get your new book, published in English, translated and published in French? Winner of the Governor-General’s Literary Award for French-to-English Translation, local poet and editor Katia Grubisic will lead a discussion with three established translators working from French to English (Pablo Strauss) and English to French (Rachel Martinez and Chloé Savoie-Bernard). Learn how the business of translation works, and the art of translation as well. Bring your curiosity to the Q&A.

Katia Grubisic is a writer, editor, and translator. Her work has won the Gerald Lampert award, the Cole Foundation Prize for Translation, and the Governor General’s Award for translation, and been shortlisted for the A.M. Klein Prize.

Rachel Martinez worked for many years in the fields of arts and communications before devoting herself exclusively to translation. A polyglot, she has translated (from English, Spanish, and Italian) more than 130 works in a variety of genres for renowned French-language publishers, including novels, short stories, non-fiction, arts catalogues, biographies, essays, and children’s literature. She has organized events and served on numerous literary prize juries, roundtables, conferences, and translation residencies both in Canada and abroad. Rachel Martinez represented the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada on the advisory committee of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre from 2018 until its dissolution in 2020. Among other awards and honors, she was a two-time finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award in French Translation, which she won for Glenn Gould, une vie (Boréal) in 2005.

Chloé Savoie-Bernard occupe un poste de professeure de littérature à l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Chercheuse, autrice et traductrice, elle a entre autres, publié Des femmes savantes (Triptyque, 2016) et Sainte Chloé de l’amour (Hexagone, 2021). Parmi ses traductions, notons Voix/Éclairs/Tonnerres, de Myriam Chancy (Remue-ménage, 2023), de même que Sister Love, une correspondance entre Audre Lorde et Pat Parker, (Points, 2024). Sa dernière traduction est la pièce de Ntozake Shange, Aux filles de couleur qui ont déjà pensé au suicide (Payot, 2026). 

Pablo Strauss’s many translations from Quebec include novels, personal essays, nonfiction, and comics. He is a three-time finalist for the Governor General’s Award for translation, and has published book reviews, shorter translations, and personal essays in Harpers, Geist, Granta, and the Montreal Review of Books. Pablo grew up in Victoria, B.C., and has now lived in Quebec City for two decades.

December 5, 2026
4 pm – 5 pm
Rotunda

Guernica Editions’ Montreal Book Launch 2026

• WIth:
  Marie-Josée Poisson, Blood Bound: Unlacing Secret Ties
• Robin Blackburn McBride, River of Dreams
• Jay Quint, Village of Dreams
• H. Nigel Thomas, And Then Again Begin
• Hélène Rioux / Jonathan Kaplansky, The Love of Man

Moderated by Connie Guzzo-McParland

Join us for a vibrant literary celebration at the Read Quebec Book Fair for Guernica Editions’ annual Montreal Book Launch. Enjoy lively readings from our authors, browse and buy fresh new titles, and enter our book‑bag raffle. After the event, join us for a friendly AELAQ‑ and QWF-sponsored cocktail, where writers, publishers, and book lovers gather to mingle, toast, and celebrate Montreal’s literary scene.

Connie Guzzo McParland, President and Co-director of Guernica Editions, holds a BA in Italian Literature and an MA in Creative Writing from Concordia University. She is the author of the novels The Girls of Piazza d’Amore (2013) and The Women of Saturn (2017), the latter translated into Italian as Le donne di Saturno (2019). Her nonfiction work includes the biography An Opera in 3 Acts, translated into French as Un opéra en 3 actes (2021). She also translated The Twelfth Room, the English edition of La Dodicesima Stanza. Her latest work, Stitch by Stitch, Punto per punto, De fil à aiguille, launching in March 2027, is a collection of stories and testimonials about Italian immigrant women who laboured in the garment industry in Quebec. 

Her writing has been recognized with numerous distinctions, including the Concordia University David McKeen Award in Creative Writing (2008) for her thesis Girotondo; a shortlist nomination for the Quebec Writers’ Federation First Book Award for The Girls of Piazza d’Amore (2013).

December 5, 2026
 5 pm – 7 pm
Rotunda

Opening Cocktail

In partnership with the Quebec Writers’ Federation

Join us for a special edition of our annual Book Fair Opening Cocktail, introducing and celebrating our close partner the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s brand new Executive Director and Director of Operations. Remy Attig and Zac Remple are new to the QWF but they’ve already jumped in with both feet. The Book Fair Opening Cocktail is a chance for the publishers, writers, and booklovers to rub elbows and make connections – where better to introduce two very important new members of our literary community? Come for a drink, an hors d’oeuvre, and friendly conversation.

Sunday December 6, 2026

December 6, 2026
11 am – 12:30 pm
Gallery

Speed Dating for Writers and Publishers!

Writers, bring your pitch and get ready to present it to a range of local publishers. This edition will focus on poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Introduce yourselves, and then you’ll have three minutes to tell your publisher “date” what your book is all about. Don’t forget to leave time for questions or a little discussion. When the bell dings, move to the next available seat and do it again. Whether you find a home for your manuscript or not, you’ll make contacts and gather information that may serve you now and in the future. 

• With:
  Fiona Jeffries
• Lis McLoughlin
• Connie McParland or Michael Mirolla
• Manahil Bandukwala 

Moderated by Remy Attig

Remy Attig, PhD, is the executive director of the Quebec Writers’ Federation. Prior to joining QWF, Remy worked as an associate professor of sociolinguistics and translation, where their research focused on minority/minoritized language communities. In a pre-academic life, they worked as the senior director of operations at the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), the operations manager of the David Suzuki Foundation, and the executive director of Projet 10 / Project 10, Montreal’s longest-running organization supporting 2SLGBTQIA+ youth. Through their research, teaching, writing, and activism, Remy demonstrates that the way people tell their stories, and the language(s) they choose to use, are often as important as the message they share with the world.

Manahil Bandukwala is the author of Heliotropia (Brick Books 2024; shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award, the Raymond Souster Award, and the Ottawa Book Award, and winner of the Archibald Lampman Award) and MONUMENT (Brick Books 2022). She was selected as a Writer’s Trust of Canada Rising Star in 2023. She is currently Managing Editor for Brick Books. See her work at manahilbandukwala.com.

Connie Guzzo McParland, President and Co‑director of Guernica Editions, holds a BA in Italian Literature and an MA in Creative Writing from Concordia University. She is the author of the novels The Girls of Piazza d’Amore (2013) and The Women of Saturn (2017), the latter translated into Italian as Le donne di Saturno (2019). Her nonfiction work includes the biography An Opera in 3 Acts, translated into French as Un opéra en 3 actes (2021). She also translated The Twelfth Room, the English edition of La Dodicesima Stanza. Her latest work, Stitch by Stitch, Punto per punto, De fil à aiguille, launching in March 2027, is a collection of stories and testimonials about Italian immigrant women who laboured in the garment industry in Quebec.

Her writing has been recognized with numerous distinctions, including the Concordia University David McKeen Award in Creative Writing (2008) for her thesis Girotondo; a shortlist nomination for the Quebec Writers’ Federation First Book Award for The Girls of Piazza d’Amore (2013).

Fiona Jeffries (she/her) is an Acquisitions and Development editor at Fernwood Publishing, a worker-run independent book publisher that focuses on critical perspectives across a range of subjects and voices. In keeping with Fernwood’s mission, her editorial work is wide ranging and informed by her academic training and activist commitments.

Lis McLoughlin, PhD is the founder and director of NatureCulture® www.nature-culture.net, a publishing company through which she directs the Writing the Land® Project www.writingtheland.org, which pairs poets with conserved lands, and creates anthologies sold for land conservation. Lis has degrees in Civil Engineering, Education, and Science and Technology Studies. She lives off-grid in Northfield, Massachusetts and part-time in Montréal, Québec.

December 6, 2026
11:15 am – 12:15 pm
Rotunda

Pow Pow Showcase

Moderated by François Vigneault

Featuring author Alexandre Fontaine Rousseau and illustrator Francis Desharnais, this treat for fans of comics and history alike will spotlight Conquest of the Cosmos, a withering satire of politics, ideology, and human ambition that couldn’t be more relevant to our current moment.

December 6, 2026
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm
Rotunda

Poetry Lightning Round

• With:
  Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt, The Hospitality of Trees
• Alexei Perry Cox, Space 
• Sabyah Seyam, On Occasion contributor
• Leigh Kotsilidis, Some of Us May Live
• Sina Queyras, On Occasion (ed.)
• Chanel Sutherland, On Occasion contributor
• Misha Solomon, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet
• Erín Moure, On Occasion contributor
• Nicole Rayiza Fong, SUBTEXT 

Moderated by Jason Camlot

A wide range of local poets will share tasty snippets from their new books in a fun, fast-paced and festive Lightning Round of the most current Quebec poetry in English. Five authors of new books and five contributors to the anthology On Occasion will give you just enough to whet your appetite for more. Stay and get your new books signed after the event. 

Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt is the author of the critically acclaimed Carrying War (Dundurn, 2026), featured in the Globe and Mail as one of the 36 Best Books of Summer. Her debut memoir, Peacekeeper’s Daughter (Thistledown, 2021), was a finalist for the Mavis Gallant Nonfiction Award. Tanya has two poetry collections: Chaos Theories of Goodness (Shoreline, 2022) and The Hospitality of Trees (Shoreline, 2025). She lives in North Hatley, QC.

Jason Camlot is the author of five collections of poetry including The Animal Library (DC Books, 2000), What The World Said (Mansfield, 2013), and Vlarf (McGill Queen’s, 2021), and most recently, a constellation of chapbooks (released by Vallum, Apartment 9, above/ground, No Press, and Turret House Press) presenting sections from the Shooky sessions, collaboratively composed by listening and writing, with Stuart Ross. Jason’s critical works include Phonopoetics: The Making of Early Literary Recordings (Stanford, 2019) and the co-edited collections, Collection Thinking (Routledge, 2024), Unpacking the Personal Library (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2023), and CanLit Across Media (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2019). He is Professor of English at Concordia University.

Leigh Kotsilidis has written two full-length collections of poetry, Hypotheticals (2011) and Some of Us May Live (2026), both with Coach House Books. Her poems have also appeared in journals and magazines, including The Malahat Review, Prism international, EVENT, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, and Hazlitt, as well as being anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry in English and IV Lounge Nights, among others. She is also an intermedia artist. Kotsilidis lives and works in Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal).

Erín Moure is a poet and translator. She has published 19 books of poetry, and translations of more than 25 books of poetry by others from Galician, Spanish, French, and Portuguese (including Nicole Brossard, Andrés Ajens, Chantal Neveu, Rosalia de Castro, Chus Pato, Fernando Pessoa). Her most recent book is Theophylline: a poetic migration via the modernisms of Rukeyser, Bishop, Grimké (Anansi, 2023), and her most recent translation is of Galician poet Chus Pato’s Sonora (Veliz Books, 2026). 

Sina Queyras is a Montreal/Tiohtià:ke-based writer, professor, editor, and literary organizer. Recent work includes Rooms (2022), a blend of memoir, poetry, and criticism offering a peek into the defining spaces of the author as a young queer writer, and My Ariel (2017), a collection riffing on Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, reimagining, queering, and inhabiting its iconic poems. They are the author of multiple poetry collections, including Lemon Hound, which won the Pat Lowther and Lambda awards and Expressway, nominated for a Governor General’s Award. Queyras was also a co-editor of Avant Desire: A Nicole Brossard Reader (2020), which traces the essential feminist poet’s innovation, experimentation, and activism across her body of work. They recently edited On Occasion: Poems for the People (Coach House Books 2026). 

Nicole Raziya Fong (they / she) is a poet, editor, and painter living in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal, Québec, Canada. They are the author of SUBTEXT (2026, Talonbooks), ORACULE (2021, Talonbooks), PERFACT (2019, Talonbooks), and other works. Writing appears in journals including The Capilano Review, carte blanche, and Social Text. Their work has received support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts. Their work seeks to delimit and reconstruct immaterial ampoules of psychic experience, coaxing the incorporeal into inhabiting a more muscular physique.

Sabyah Seyam is a Palestinian writer born and currently based in Tiohtià:ke (so-called Montreal). She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Concordia University, where she is currently completing her MA in the same program. She was a poetry editor of Soliloquies Anthology. Her publications include Yolk, Frontier Poetry, The Malahat Review, and Coach House’s 2026 anthology, On Occasion: Poems for the People. Sabyah’s current writerly interests include colonized identities, the working class, the power of language, and the power of privacy in a hyper-connected world.

Misha Solomon is a homosexual poet in and of Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. His work has appeared in journals across Canada and has been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry 2024, 2026, and 2027 (Biblioasis) and in On Occasion: Poems for the People (Coach House). He is a student in Concordia University’s Interdisciplinary Humanities PhD program. He is the author of three chapbooks and his full-length debut, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet, was released by Brick Books in March 2026. 

Chanel Sutherland is a Vincentian Canadian writer of fiction and creative nonfiction. She won the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize and the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize and was named one of CBC Books 30 Writers to Watch in 2022. Chanel is also the overall winner of the 2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She has a BA in English literature from Concordia University and lives in Montreal, Quebec. Her first collection of short stories, titled Layaway Child, is out now from House of Anansi.

December 6, 2026
1:45-2:45 pm
Rotunda

Véhicule Showcase: Who Gets Remembered?

What do a coming-of-age novel that takes place in Bombay, a collection of essays on forgotten women jazz musicians, and a novel that celebrates Montreal and a ghost have in common? All three books are amazing and entertaining acts of remembering or recovery. Come and meet Zeenat Nagree (My Summer Vacation), David Homel (translator of Black Satin by Stanley Péan), and Éric Dupont (The Colour of Time, or the Incredible Story of Mary Gallagher) in conversation with Dimitri Nasrallah.

With:
Zeenat Nagree
David Homel
Éric Dupont

Zeenat Nagree is an independent writer and curator who grew up in Bombay and now divides her time between India and Canada. Having studied art history in Chicago, she writes on contemporary art and curates exhibitions. My Summer Vacation is her first book.

David Homel is the author of ten novels and a memoir, as well as a series of books for younger readers co-written with Marie-Louise Gay. A prize-winning writer and translator, he has worked in documentary film, print and radio journalism. He lives in Montreal.

Born in Amqui, Quebec, Éric Dupont studied at Carleton University, the Free University of Berlin, the Université de Montréal and the University of Toronto. Dupont’s La fiancée américaine, released in 2012, won the Prix des libraires du Québec and the Prix littéraire des collégiens. Its English translation, Songs for the Cold of Heart, translated by Peter McCambridge, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2018 and subsequently published by HarperCollins outside of Canada as The American Fiancée. Éric Dupont lives in Montreal.

Moderator: 

Dimitri Nasrallah is the author of four novels, including Hotline, a Canadian bestseller that was long-listed for the 2022 Giller Prize and was a 2023 finalist for Canada Reads. Nasrallah was born in Lebanon in 1977, during the country’s civil war, and moved to Canada in 1988. His previous books include The Bleeds (2018); Niko (2011), which won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction; and Blackbodying (2005), which won Quebec’s McAuslan First Book Prize. His books have also been nominated for the Dublin Literary Award and the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. Nasrallah was the fiction editor of Esplanade Books from 2013 to 2025, and currently teaches creative writing at Concordia University. He lives in Montreal.

December 6, 2026
3 pm – 4 pm
Rotunda

InfiniPRESS Showcase

With:
Zach Fraser, Whalefall (collaborator)
Ashe Lang, Whalefall
Riley Wilson, Whalefall (collaborator)
Mohsen El Gharbi, Omi Mouna
Leanne Brodie, Omi Mouna (translator)
Catherine Chabot, Clean Slate
Jennie Herbin, Clean Slate (translator)

Moderated by Zach Fraser.

Come hear from InfiniPRESS, Montreal’s young and dynamic publisher of playwrights’ new work originating in English and in translation. 

Leanna Brodie is a leading translator of Québécois and Franco-Canadian playwrights. Recent productions: David Paquet’s The Weight of Ants and The Shoe (The Cherry Arts, Ithaca NY) and Wildfire (Factory Theatre, Toronto ON, Talisman Theatre, Montréal QC, and Upstream Theater, St. Louis MO); Catherine Léger’s Home Deliveries (Ruby Slippers Theatre/Jericho Arts Centre, Vancouver); Fanny Britt’s Benevolence (GCTC, Ottawa); Sébastien Harrisson’s From Alaska (Belfry Theatre, Victoria), and Rébecca Déraspe’s I Am William (Stratford Festival). Brodie is currently translating Rébecca Déraspe’s Those Who Have Vanished (The Search Party) and River Ice, Breaking (Talisman Theatre) and Nathalie Doummar’s Sissi (Ruby Slippers). Her translations have won two PGC Tom Hendry Awards and a Dora Mavor Moore Award. She is also an award-winning playwright and performer: Salesman in China (co-written with Jovanni Sy) was staged at the Stratford Festival and National Arts Centre in 2024, winning the QWF Prize for Best New Play. Learn more about her work at www.leannabrodie.com.

Mohsen El Gharbi defines himself as a theatre craftsman — an approach shaped by his Lecoq training at Lassaad in Brussels, where the actor is the author of his own work. Deeply committed to the solo form, he has created six one-man shows exploring themes of violence, identity, and memory. As a writer and performer, his work has toured across Canada and Europe. For his work on Omi Mouna – A Fantastic Encounter with My Great-Grandmother, Mohsen was nominated in the category of Outstanding Lead Performance at the Montreal English Theatre Awards (METAs). His documentary Omi Mouna’s Secret travelled to festivals on three continents. He continues to write, perform, and create.

Ashe Lang is a Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist specializing in handcrafted props and accessories for film and live performance. Raised near the ocean in the Dominican Republic, Ashe developed a deep reverence for the sea from an early age. Certified as a SCUBA diver at 11, her firsthand encounters with both the breathtaking wonder of marine life and the stark impacts of human activity have continually drawn her back to ocean conservation. Over the past decade, Ashe has honed her craft in design, painting, and detailed prop fabrication for major productions, including Cirque du Soleil (Alegría, Kà, The Beatles LOVE), blockbuster films, and local theatre. She is also a passionate writer whose short stories have earned multiple accolades. Whalefall is her first play to be produced and published.

December 7, 2025,
3 – 4 pm
Main Stage, Salle des célébrations

Seeing Things: Lee Lai and Arizona O’Neill in Conversation

From spectral magpies to Frankenstein’s Monster (actually he much prefers “Frankie”), unsettling visions haunt the protagonists of Cannon and Opioids & Organs, two of the most talked-about graphic narratives of the last year. Join Montreal authors Lee Lai and Arizona O’Neill for a freewheeling conversation about blurring the boundaries between the real and the imaginary, tackling “intergenerational trauma shit” both obliquely and head-on, and why the comic book medium is the ideal form for true stories, invented tales, and everything in between. Featuring short readings from both authors. Moderated by François Vigneault.

Arizona O’Neill is a Montreal author and illustrator. She is the illustrator of Nelly Arcan’s L’enfant dans le miroir and Heather O’Neill’s Valentine in Montreal. Her comics have appeared in Hazlitt, Exclaim!, Canadian Geographic, and the Montreal Gazette. She has created animated videos for many outlets, including CBC. Opioids and Organs is her debut graphic novel out with Drawn & Quarterly.

Lee Lai is an Australian cartoonist living in Tio’tia:ke (colonially Montreal). Her latest graphic novel Cannon is with Drawn & Quarterly, Giramondo, Sarbacane and other publishers. She lives with her two roommates and a cat called Pumpkin.

François Vigneault is an American-born cartoonist living in Québec. He is the creator of the sci-fi graphic novel TITAN (Oni Press, 2020 / Éditions Pow Pow, 2017), the illustrator of books including Le gâteau empoisonée (Éditions de la Pastèque, 2025), Extraordinary Eyeglasses (Helvetiq, 2024), and Orcs in Space (Oni Press 2021-22), and also works as a translator and designer.