2025 Read Quebec Book Fair

Alexandra Sweny — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 16:00:00 +0000

The Read Quebec Book Fair turns 10! Celebrate this milestone year on December 6–7 at Casa d’Italia, with 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. In honour of the tenth anniversary, this year’s Fair will, for the first time, welcome publishers from across Canada.

Taking place in the historic Casa d’Italia, the Fair will present a full weekend of programming, including a discussion between Heather and Arizona O’Neill about their new collaborative book Valentine in Montreal. Comic fans and those looking to discover the city’s beloved bédéistes will enjoy Art and Life in Graphic Novels with Juli Delporte, Pascal Girard and D. Boyd. Meanwhile, find your next dinner table discussion topic at our non-fiction lightning round, where authors such as Francine Pelletier will demystify their research and share the passion inspiring their work. For writers looking to pitch a book idea, we’re hosting the fair’s first ever speed-dating event for writers and editors, where up-and-coming and seasoned wordsmiths will have the opportunity to deliver their pitches directly to publishers.

The Fair will offer plenty of fun for young booklovers in a cozy, book-filled Kids’ Nook both days, and a special reading and guided yoga practice for children with author Marlee Kostiner on Saturday afternoon. Other programming highlights include a panel discussion hosted by Italian community archivist Nancy Marrelli, and a showcase of publisher Guernica Editions’ latest Quebec authors and releases.

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, with a special 10th Anniversary High Fidelity DJ set with local journalist and author Brendan Kelly.

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).

Visit readquebec.ca for all the details.

Author Signing Schedule

Event Schedule

Saturday December 6, 2025

New Knowledge: Nonfiction Lightning Round

December 6, 2025 at 12 pm – 1 p.m.
Main Stage, Salle des célébrations

Nathalie Cooke
Martha Langford
Valérie Lefebvre-Faucher
Stephen Monteiro
Francine Pelletier
Catherine Richardson
Alex R. Tipei
Thomas Waugh
Andrei Zanescu

Moderated by Ryan Van Huijstee

Often, fiction gets the limelight, poetry gets the prestige. But nonfiction books are published every day that help illuminate, preserve and create the world around us. Join local authors as they share the passions that led them to investigate a single subject in depth and then write an entire book about it.

Nathalie Cooke is an English professor at McGill University and a specialist in literary food studies and material culture. Her research uncovers the hidden stories told by menus, textiles, and other everyday artefacts, revealing how their forms, codes, and designs shape what we remember, and how we read.

Catherine Richardson Kineweskwêw is a Métis therapist, family therapist, researcher and academic working at Concordia University. Her maternal relatives come from Fort Chipewyan and have ties to Red River. She holds a research Chair in Indigenous Healing Knowledges and teaches in First Peoples Studies and Creative Arts Therapies. She is a co-founder of the Centre for Response-Based Practice where she and her colleagues advance dignity-centered approaches to violence. Cathy is also interested in the broader and multi-dimensional aspects of healing, such as the person as whole being, a spirit in a body with emotions, intelligence, physicality and in relation to all beings in the natural world.

She has taught in various counselling and social work programs and is the former director of the First Peoples Studies program at Concordia University. She explores various approaches to well- being on her substack podcast, where she speaks with healers, activists and response-based therapists. She is a student of shamanic practice and the mother of three amazing adult children.

Martha Langford, FRSC, is the author of A History of Photography in Canada. The first of three volumes, Anticipation to Participation, 1839 1918 has just appeared. Beautifully produced, the book is both lively and comprehensive, with over 400 illustrations. Langford is a distinguished professor emeriti of Concordia University in Montreal. She is the former research chair and director of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art. In prior lives, she was the founding director of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, an affiliate of the National Gallery of Canada, and before that, Executive Producer of the Still Photography Division of the National Film Board of Canada. She has organized photographic exhibitions for museums and festivals in Canada, the UK, and Europe.

Valérie Lefebvre-Faucher is editor-in-chief of Liberté. She has worked as an editor at both Remue-ménage and Écosociété, with a focus on environmental, anti-capitalist, and feminist work. In addition to having collaborated with numerous collectives, blogs, and magazines, she published Procès Verbal and Promenade sur Marx, published in English under the title Jenny, Eleanor, and Laura, et al., translated by Mélissa Bull.

Stephen Monteiro teaches and researches media and culture at Concordia University. He has written or edited several books, including Needy Media, The Fabric of Interface, and The Screen Media Reader. He has contributed as an expert on contemporary technology to CBC Radio and the Toronto Star, among other media outlets.

Well-known journalist, documentary filmmaker, teacher and broadcaster, Francine Pelletier, formerly of CBC’s the fifth estate, is the author of three books: Second début: Cendres et renaissance du féminisme, Atelier 10, (2015), a short personal history of feminism in Quebec; : L’Art de se mouiller : Chroniques pour nourrir le débat, Écosociété (2022), a selection of her columns in Le Devoir from 2013-22; and Dream Interrupted : the Rise and Fall of Quebec Nationalism, Sutherland House (2025).

A transnational historian, primarily focused on Southeast Europe and France, Alex R. Tipei is professor of history and international studies at the Université de Montréal. MQUP published her book, Unintended Nations: France’s Empire of Civilization, Southeast Europe, and the Post-Napoleonic World. Alex’s research has received funding from SSHRC, the Fulbright Program, and the American Council of Learned Societies. She has taught and researched at McGill and Princeton Universities as well as the Universities of Bucharest and Illinois. Alex is also a team leader on the European Research Council funded project Transnational Histories of Corruption in South-East-Central Europe based at New Europe College/Institute for Advanced Study in Bucharest.

Ryan Van Huijstee is the director of Concordia University Press. He previously held a range of roles at University of Toronto Press and McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Thomas Waugh is a writer, programmer, and activist who taught film studies and sexuality at Concordia University from 1976 to 2017. He is the author of The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinema; and fourteen other books.

Valentine in December! With Heather and Arizona O’Neill

December 6, 2025, 2–3 pm
Main Stage, Salle des célébrations

The duo will take to the stage to discuss their collaboration Valentine in Montreal. The novel, written by Heather with illustrations by Arizona, is a sweet Montreal adventure in which our famous metro plays a starring role. The O’Neills will sign copies after their onstage appearance.

Heather O’Neill is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist. Her most recent novel is Valentine in Montreal. Her previous works include Capital of Dreams and When We Lost Our Heads, a #1 national bestseller and finalist for the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. The Lonely Hearts Hotel, won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and CBC’s Canada Reads. Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, and Daydreams of Angels were shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize two years in a row. O’Neill has also won CBC’s Canada Reads and the Danuta Gleed Award. Born and raised in Montreal, she lives there today.

Arizona O’Neill is a Montreal-based author and illustrator. Her illustrations appear in Valentine in Montreal. She is the author of Est-ce qu’un artiste peut être heureux ?, a collection of graphic interviews, and illustrated Nelly Arcan’s L’enfant dans le miroir. Her comics have appeared in Hazlitt, Exclaim!, the Montreal Gazette and mRb. She has created animated videos for many outlets, including CBC. She is a regular contributor to Radio-Canada’s Il restera toujours la culture, and is one half of the bookstagram page @ONeillReads. She is currently working on a graphic memoir.

Guernica Editions Showcase

December 6, 2025, 3:30 – 5 pm
Rotunda

An event celebrating Guernica Editions’ longstanding presence in Quebec, featuring readings by authors with new releases this year, including fiction, memoir, and poetry. With the purchase of a book, guests will be entered into a raffle to win a selection of Guernica titles.

Michael Carin, Edisson & Jeremiah
Ann Cavlovic, Count on Me
Jonathan Kaplansky and Francis Catalano, The Origin of the Future
Andreas Kessaris, The Grand Tour of Park Ex
Bunmi Oyinsan, A Ladder of Bones
Meryem Yildiz, Backbone
Contributors from The Nuances of Love

Michael Carin trained as a political theorist at McGill University, where he also studied under the godfather of Canadian literature, Hugh MacLennan. He is the author of several novels, including Five Hundred Keys, The Kremlin Papers, and the work of alternate history Churchill at Munich. His non-fiction response to the Holocaust, The Future Jew, won him wide recognition as a provocative secular humanist. Mr. Carin lives in Montreal.

Poet, novelist, short story writer and essayist born in Montreal, Francis Catalano won the Quebecor Prize of the Trois-Rivières International Poetry Festival for Qu’une lueur des lieux (2010) and the La Métropole Prize of Excellence for Climax (2022). As a translator of Italian poetry, he won the John Glassco Prize in 2006 for Instructions pour la lecture d’un journal de Valerio Magrelli.

Ann Cavlovic’s fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in Canadian literary magazines and news media, such as Event, The Fiddlehead, Grain, PRISM International, The Globe & Mail, and CBC. She lives in Western Quebec.

Connie Guzzo McParland, president and co-director of Guernica Editions, holds a BA in Italian Literature and a master’s degree in Creative Writing from Concordia University. She is the author of The Girls of Piazza D’amore (2013), The Women of Saturn (2017), Le Donne di Saturno (2019), An opera in 3 Acts/Un opéra en trois actes (2021), and The Twelfth Room, a translation of La Dodicesima Stanza.

Jonathan Kaplansky is a literary translator of French in Montreal. He won a French Voices Award to translate Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux’s Things Seen and was shortlisted for the David Booth Award for Jonathan Bécotte’s Like a Hurricane. He has also translated works by Hélène Dorion, Lise Gauvin, Louis- Philippe Hébert, Hélène Rioux and Lise Tremblay.

Andreas Kessaris grew up in Montreal’s Park Extension district, the son of Greek immigrants. He graduated from Dawson College and Concordia University, earning a BA in Communications & English. His column, Read On! with Andreas Kessaris, was a popular feature in the West-End community paper The Local Herald. His writing has also appeared on Suite101.com, in the literary journal The Write Place, on the Montreal entertainment website Curtainsup.tv, The Miramichi Reader, and The Montreal Review of Books. His first book, The Butcher of Park Ex & Other Semi-Truthful Tales, was released in 2020 to great acclaim.

Bunmi Oyinsan is a Nigerian/Canadian writer. From novels to scripts for radio, television, and the theatre, she has contributed to both the nonfiction and fiction canons of African literature. Oyinsan gained her MA focusing on orature and literature from Saint Mary’s University and a Ph.D. from York University. She is the writer, producer, and presenter for the Sankofa Pan African Series, which has over 100K subscribers and over 5 million views. She is a winner of the Matatu Prize for her YA novel Fabulous Four and has been nominated for THEMA’s Best Film Script. Her novel Three Women was nominated for the Flora Nwapa Prize for Women’s Literature in 2006. Born in Lagos, she lives in Bowmanville, Ontario.

Meryem Yildiz is a Turkish-Canadian poet from Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). Her poems have appeared in journals across the country, including Arc Poetry Magazine, The Ex-Puritan, PRISM International, The Fiddlehead, and yolk, among others. In 2022, she won The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Poetry as well as the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s carte blanche Prize. She’s also a poetry editor at LBRNTH, a queer literature and arts magazine, which she co-edits with Misha Solomon. In her debut collection, Backbone, Meryem explores the complexities of identity across geographies, and reveals how friendship and memory shape the search for home.

NaMOOste Yoga for Kids

December 6, 2025, 3:30 – 4:30 pm
Main Stage, Salle des célébrations

Author Marlee Kostiner never fails to get kids giggling as she reads all the ways animals say “Namaste” with their animal sounds (the cow says naMOOste, the chick says namaSQUEEK). After an engaging reading, Marlee guides the kids through yoga poses they learned in the book, ending with a relaxing moment of silence (yes, the kids are quiet!). NaMOOste features 13 beautiful watercolour animals practising authentic yoga poses, and shows young readers ways to care for their bodies and minds. For kids ages 3–9.

Marlee Kostiner is an award-winning journalist, writer, editor, and the author of NaMOOste, a playful yoga book that helps kids build social-emotional skills. A passionate advocate for neurodiversity and mental health, Marlee brings these values into all her creative work. In 2021, she founded Garden Wolf Publishing House to help fellow purpose-driven experts, organizations and non-profits turn their ideas into meaningful children’s books. She lives in Montreal with her two sons, her husband, and their grumpy cat.

Opening Cocktail

December 6, 2025, 5 – 7 pm
Salle des mémoires

Join us for a special 10th anniversary edition of the Read Quebec Book Fair’s 5 à 7 featuring a DJ set by journalist and author of Habs Nation Brendan Kelly, known for his popular High Fidelity in the Park events. New wave, old-school disco and you. Open to all!

Born in Glasgow, raised in Montreal and a fan of the Canadiens for longer than he can remember, Brendan Kelly was one of the founders of the late great alternative weekly the Montreal Mirror. He worked at the Montreal Daily News in the late ‘80s and had a weekly music column on CBC Radio for over 30 years. His Montreal Gazette column What the Puck is a controversial contrarian hot take on the Canadiens that elicits much hate and even more love. He has written for the Gazette since 1996. He also frequently contributes to various Radio-Canada cultural shows. He has published two books on the Montreal Canadiens – Le CH et son people (2024), and Habs Nation: A People’s History of the Montreal Canadiens (2025).

Sunday December 7, 2025

Archives Out Loud: Italian-Canadian Literature

December 7, 2025, 11:30 am – 12:30 pm
Main Stage, Salle des célébrations

Licia Canton
Mary di Michele
Carmine Starnino

Moderated by Nancy Marrelli

There is a significant body of excellent Italian-Canadian literature available from a variety of sources in English, French, and Italian. The panel will discuss some established works as well as new voices emerging from the next generation. This session is part of the Archives Out Loud series organized by the Italian-Canadian Archives of Quebec. The panel will be followed by a reception in the office of the Italian-Canadian Community Archives of Quebec, in the basement level of Casa d’Italia.

Licia Canton has published short stories, nonfiction and poetry in English, French, Italian and a Venetian dialect. She has been translator-in-residence at the University of Hull, UK, and Writer-in-Residence at Università della Calabria, Italy. She is co-founder of Accenti Magazine and co-director of the Queer Italian-Canadian Artists Research Project (U of Toronto). She is the director of the documentary film Creative Spaces: Queer and Italian Canadian (2021). She mentors emerging writers through the Quebec Writers’ Federation Hire-a-Writer directory. For her work in culture, she was awarded the Italy in the World Prize (2018). She holds a Ph.D. from Université de Montréal and an M.A. from McGill University.

Born in Italy and immigrated to Canada in 1955, Mary di Michele is an award-winning, internationally published writer. She is the author of more than twelve books, including the collection of poems Stranger in You and the novel Tenor of Love. Her last collection of poetry, Bicycle Thieves (ECW 2017), was short-listed for the Pat Lowther Award. She is active in the collaborative writing group Yoko’s Dogs. Now retired from teaching at Concordia University, she continues to live in Montreal.

Nancy Marrelli is Director of the Italian-Canadian Archives of Quebec at the Casa d’Italia, and Archivist Emerita, Concordia University. She is also co-publisher of Véhicule Press. Her family left Italy and settled in Montreal in 1909.

Carmine Starnino is the Editor in Chief of The Walrus. He is the author of eight books, including Dirty Words: Selected Poems 1997–2016.

Acquiring Editors at Work

December 7, 2025, 1 – 2 pm
Main Stage, Salle des célébrations

Leila Marshy, Baraka Books
Curtis John McRae, Véhicule Press
Yashaswi Kesanakurthy, Simon & Schuster Canada

Moderated by Tawhida Tanya Evanson

Who gets to choose which books will be published – and how do they do it? Editors from three publishers will discuss how they decide what to publish, and how writers can improve their chances. Simon & Schuster children’s book editor Yashaswi Kesanakurthy, Baraka Books’ fiction and nonfiction editor Leila Marshy, and Curtis McRae, fiction editor at Véhicule Press, will give us the inside scoop on what acquisitions editors really do.

Yashaswi Kesanakurthy [yush-us-we kay-sah-nah-koor-thi] is the Children’s Editor at Simon & Schuster Canada. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia’s MA program in Children’s Literature and Toronto Metropolitan University’s publishing program. Her publishing career began as Publishing Assistant at Tundra Books, PRHC. She then joined HarperCollins Canada as Associate Editor where she developed a vibrant list including The Garden of Lost Socks by Esi Edugyan and Amélie Dubois, The Hockey Skates by Karl Subban and Maggie Zeng, and Mortified by Kristy Jackson and Rhael McGregor. At Simon & Schuster Canada, she remains focused on publishing marginalized, Canadian voices that tell entertaining and transformative stories. Yash lives in Toronto with a magical, if unruly, library that just keeps growing.

Leila Marshy is the author of The Philistine (LLP, 2018) and My Thievery of the People (Baraka Books, 2025), and is editor of the anthology Razing Palestine: Punishing Solidarity and Dissent in Canada (Baraka Books, 2025). Daughter of a Palestinian refugee, Marshy lived in Cairo during the First Intifada and worked for the Palestinian Red Crescent and the Palestinian Mental Health Association. She has been a community and political organizer, including founding a dialogue group with the Hasidic community in her local neighbourhood, helping elect the first Hasidic woman to public office in the world. Marshy is Editor at Baraka Books and lives in Montreal.

Curtis John McRae is the fiction editor at Véhicule Press and the Co-Founder/Editor-in-Chief of yolk literary journal. He is the author of Quietly, Loving Everyone (Vehicule Press, 2025). His fiction has appeared in The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, and others. He won the 2021/22 David McKeen Award, was longlisted for the 2025 DISQUIET Literary Fiction Contest, received an honourable mention in the 2024 Peter Hinchcliffe award, and was a finalist in the 2019 Quebec Writers’ Federation contest for emerging young writers. Curtis teaches English literature at John Abbott College and formerly served as a board member for the Quebec Writers’ Federation.

Tawhida Tanya Evanson is a poet, novelist, artist and Ashiq. Her work blends poetry, orality, music, movement and film around themes of African diasporic identity, Sufi spirituality and resistance to Western values. Born and based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, she has roots in Antigua, West Indies. Evanson’s novels include the French Livre des ailes (Marchand de feuilles 2023), and the award-winning Book of Wings (Véhicule 2021); her two poetry collections are Nouveau Griot (Frontenac 2018) and Bothism (Ekstasis 2017). She has an extensive history of spoken word performance, audio recordings and films including the multi-award-winning Afrofuturist concert film CYANO SUN SUITE (2024). Evanson’s work has travelled to festivals across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. She is past director of the Banff Centre Spoken Word Program; past president of the Quebec Writers’ Federation; and 2025 Poet Ambassador in Residence at the League of Canadian Poets. She moonlights as a whirling dervish.

Speed Dating for Writers and Publishers!

December 7, 2025, 2 – 3 pm
Archives room, basement level

Writers, bring your pitch and get ready to present it to a range of local publishers. 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. Note that authors will be asked to sign up at the welcome table on Sunday in order to participate.

Dave Dufour, Flame Arrow Publishing
Yashaswi Kesanakurthy, Simon & Schuster Canada
Firoze Manji, Daraja Press
Leila Marshy, Baraka Books
Curtis McRae, Véhicule Press
Shannae Nitti, Crackboom! Books
Moderated by Lori Schubert, Quebec Writers’ Federation

Dave Dufour is the Founder & Publisher of Flame Arrow Publishing, a bilingual speculative-fiction press based in British Columbia and Québec. He leads a growing catalogue of hopepunk, fantasy, and science fiction in both English and French, and is dedicated to championing bold, imaginative voices across Canada. With a professional background as an educator and linguist, Dave brings a deep understanding of language, culture, and storytelling to his editorial vision. He also oversees Brins d’éternité, one of Québec’s longest-running speculative-fiction magazines.

Firoze Manji, PhD, is a Kenyan / Canadian, resident in Québec. He has spent more than 50 years in international development, health, human rights and political activism. He is the publisher of Daraja Press and is an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa. He is the recipient of the 2021 Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Lifetime Achievement Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association.

Lori Schubert is the executive director of the Quebec Writers’ Federation, where she has worked since 2003. From 1998 to 2017 she was also a member and general manager of VivaVoce, a professional chamber choir. Prior to her work in arts management, Lori was a singer and corporate communications trainer in the New York metropolitan area. She has taught written and oral communication at Columbia, McGill and Concordia Universities. She was instrumental in the founding of Quebec’s English-language Arts Network (ELAN) and has served two terms on its board of directors. Through QWF, Lori co-founded the National Juries and Awards Working Group in 2021. She has also served in an advisory capacity for YES Montreal, the Blue Metropolis Foundation and the Atwater Writers’ Exhibition, and currently chairs the Education and Skills Development Table for the Working Group on Arts and Culture.

Art and Life in Graphic Novels

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

D. Boyd
Juli Delporte
Pascal Girard
Moderated by François Vigneault

Three of Quebec’s most distinctive voices in contemporary comics come together to explore the intimate connections between art and autobiography. Juli Delporte (Portrait of a Body), D. Boyd (Denniveniquity), and Pascal Girard (Pastimes) draw from personal experience to craft stories that are tender, funny, and deeply human. Join them for a conversation about turning life into art, the creative risks of vulnerability, and the evolving landscape of autobiographical graphic novels. Moderated by François Vigneault.

Montreal-based cartoonist D. Boyd hails from Saint John, New Brunswick – the setting for Denniveniquity and her first graphic memoir, Chicken Rising. Her work has appeared in the New Brunswick Chapbook Series (Frog Hollow Press), the Montreal Review of Books, and in unique collaborations with some exciting Canadian writers.

Juli Delporte is an author and multidisciplinary artist born in France in 1983. She now lives in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal. She is the author of several graphic novels published by Drawn & Quarterly, including This Woman’s Work and Portrait of a Body. She has also published children’s albums, including the recent Grands oreilles (Éditions de la Pastèque), and a book of poems illustrated with etchings, Décroissance sexuelle (L’Oie de Cravan). She occasionally writes literary essays, produces illustrations for various magazines and publishing houses, and collaborates on collective publications. Alongside all this, Juli explores different printing techniques (serigraphy, risography, and etching), creates zines, gives creative workshops, and makes ceramic pieces.

Pascal Girard was born in Jonquière, QC, in 1981. He is a part-time cartoonist and part-time social worker. He is the award-winning author of several graphic novels, including Rebecca and Lucie in the Case of the Missing Neighbor, Nicolas, Petty Theft, and most recently the collection Pastimes. He lives in Montreal with his family.

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.

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