Produced by the Association of English-language Publishers of Quebec (AELAQ) in partnership with the Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF), the Holiday Book Fair celebrates the vibrancy of the English-language literary scene in Quebec, with local publishers displaying their titles, and Librairie Paragraphe selling books from Quebec writers and translators published elsewhere.

We have a great lineup of exhibitors this year, including: AOS Publishing, Baraka Books, Black Rose Books, Concordia University Press, Corner Studio, Guernica Editions, Studio Georgeville, Linda Leith Publishing, Maisonneuve Magazine, Metatron, Metonymy Press, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Librairie Paragraphe Bookstore, Pow Pow Press, QC Fiction, The Secret Mountain, SpokenWeb, Universitas Press, Vallum, and Véhicule Press.

The fair is open Friday and Saturday November 4-5, 2022, from 11 am – 5 pm, in the Atrium of the McConnell Building at Concordia University, 1400 De Maisonneuve Boulevard W. The building is accessible directly from Guy metro and fully accessible to wheelchairs and strollers. In accordance with public health guidelines, mask wearing for in-person events is optional, though encouraged, with hand sanitizing stations available at all locations.

90 local authors will be on site at Concordia on Friday and Saturday to sign books and chat, including Terry Mosher (Aislin), Peter McAuslan, David Bradford, Toula Drimonis, Ann Lambert, Christopher DiRaddo, and many more! Here is the full schedule of author signings.

Check out the Holiday Book Fair Events Calendar for full event details, including:

Montreal Review of Books – Fall Issue Launch
Wednesday, November 2, 2022, 7 pm.
Ursa Montreal (5589 Park Avenue) Free, no registration required
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.

Atwater Poetry Project – Holiday Book Fair Special Edition
Thursday, November 3, 2022, 7 pm
Atwater Library and Computer Centre, Adair Auditorium
(4023 Tupper Street, Westmount)     Free, no registration required  
This special edition of the Atwater Poetry Project series, will feature an evening of new writings with poets Prathna Lor (Emanations), River Halen (Dream Rooms), and Trynne Delaney (the half-drowned). Moderated by APP curator Faith Paré.

Eight Voices: Finalists for the First QWF Spoken Word Prize
Friday, November 4, 2022, 1 pm
4TH SPACE, inside the McConnell Building, Concordia University 
(1400 Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal)    Free, no registration required
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 behosted by poet and SpokenWeb director Jason Camlot.

Jazz Stories: En Direct
Friday, November 4, 2022, 3 pm
4TH SPACE, inside the McConnell Building, Concordia University
(1400 Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal)    Free, no registration required
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.

Wine and Cheese Reception
Friday, November 4, 2022, 4:30 pm
McConnell Building, Concordia University Atrium
(1400 Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal)  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. This event is in-person only and will not be livestreamed.

On Saturday morning, coffee will be offered to browsers with the compliments of the Holiday Book Fair.

The books of the participating authors will be available for sale at the in-person events, and a curated selection of books by Quebec writers will also be available through the Read Quebec online catalogue. This is a wonderful opportunity to find the perfect holiday gift for your loved ones! 

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

The post Holiday Book Fair 2022 appeared first on Read Quebec.

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.

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

The post Holiday Book Fair Opening Cocktail  appeared first on Read Quebec.

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. (Note that finalist Liana Cusmano will not be performing at this event.)

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 the 4TH SPACE 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!

The post Eight Voices: Finalists for the First QWF Spoken Word Prize appeared first on Read Quebec.

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 Tiohtià: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.

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

The post Atwater Poetry Project – Holiday Book Fair Special Edition appeared first on Read Quebec.

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.

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

The post Montreal Review of Books – Fall 2022 Issue Launch appeared first on Read Quebec.