We are thrilled to welcome award-winning author and science journalist Annalee Newitz in discussion with Ziya Tong about the book Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age. The event is free, captioned, and open to all - register on Eventbrite by clicking here!

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.

Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often anonymous workers—slaves, women, immigrants, and manual laborers—who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia.

Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past, but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities, it may also reveal something of our own fate.

Annalee Newitz writes science fiction and nonfiction. They are the author of the book Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age, and the novels The Future of Another Timeline, and Autonomous, which won the Lambda Literary Award. As a science journalist, they are a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and have a monthly column in New Scientist. They have published in The Washington Post, Slate, Popular Science, Ars Technica, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, among others. They are also the co-host of the Hugo Award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. Previously, they were the founder of io9, and served as the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.

Award-winning broadcaster Ziya Tong anchored Daily Planet, Discovery Channel's flagship science program, until its final season in 2018. Tong also hosted the CBC's Emmy-nominated series ZeD, PBS's national prime-time series Wired Science, and worked as a correspondent for NOVA scienceNOW alongside Neil deGrasse Tyson on PBS. She served as the Vice Chair of WWF Canada until 2019, and was elected to the WWF International Board in 2020. She is the author of The Reality Bubble, a groundbreaking and wonder-filled look at the hidden things that shape our lives in unexpected and sometimes dangerous ways. 

The Argo presents its May reading series event of local prose, poetry, and music, curated by Ilona Martonfi. Please email us at events @ argobookshop . ca for the Zoom link!

Our lineup for this month's event:
Harold Hoefle is a poet; his collection, The Night Chorus, was published in 2018 by McGill-Queen's University Press.
International Award Winner, Gloria Macher has published 6 books and also in The Nashwaak Review, In/Words Magazine and Kola Magazine.
Zoe Shaw is a writer and editor from Montreal. She is the Managing Editor of carte blanche.
Ilona Martonfi is an editor, poet, curator & activist, her most recent poetry book is Salt Bride (Inanna, 2019). Forthcoming, The Tempest (Inanna, 2022).
John Kerkhoven is a blues and roots harmonica player and singer. Among his current projects is an exploration of fiddle tunes.
Sandra Sjollema is a widely published poet and the author of two poetry chapbooks, including Life times two (Cactus Press, forthcoming).
H. Nigel Thomas is an award-winning author of dozens of essays and books. His latest book is the novel Easily Fooled.
 

We are delighted to welcome Montreal author and poet Cora Siré for the launch of her newest poetry collection, Not in Vain You've Sent Me Light, including a conversation with poet Deanna Radford. The event will take place at 7 PM on Thursday, May 13th; it is free, open to all, and will be captioned. RSVP required - click here!

Not in Vain You’ve Sent Me Light begins with a provocative, sometimes humorous exposé of two lovers and their collisions and triumphs, and evolves into a high-voltage portrait gallery, depicting heroes and artists, scientists and politicians, mothers and their conflicted daughters. Cora Siré draws on a multi-dimensional palette to deepen her exploration of identity, displacement and the cosmic powers of love and art. 

Cora Siré is the author of two novels and two poetry collections, including Not in Vain You've Sent Me Light published this spring by Guernica Editions. Her work has appeared in anthologies and magazines in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Author website:  www.quena.ca.

Genre lines can be helpful for readers, writers, and publicists (they help people find more of what they love) even if the risks of not hewing to genre conventions can be dire - particularly those that are perceived as central to the genre, like a "happily ever after" in romance or a successfully solved murder in a mystery. But genre conventions can shift, and they are often culture-specific. And there is a particular joy in a well-broken genre convention! Join us for readings and an awesome panel of queer SFF authors talking on this topic, organized by dave ring and Neon Hemlock Press.

The event is free, open to all, and captioned. Register by clicking on this link!

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Victories Greater Than Death, the first book in the young-adult Unstoppable trilogy, along with the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. Her fiction and journalism have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, McSweeney's, Mother Jones, the Boston Review, Tor.com, Tin House, Conjunctions, Wired Magazine, and other places. Her TED Talk, "Go Ahead, Dream About the Future" got 700,000 views in its first week. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.

HA Clarke is here and queer, etc. They have been published in Lunch Ticket, PRISM international, Dream Pop Press, Portland Review, Gothic Nature Journal, Eidolon, and Chaleur Magazine. They were a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Young Adult Fiction and a Pushcart nominee.  They currently research queerness, labor, and monstrosity in grad school. The Scapegracers is their first novel.
 

Danny Lore is a queer black writer/editor raised in Harlem and currently based in the Bronx. They write across the SFF spectrum,  with short stories in Fireside, Fiyah, Nightlight and more, as well as comics from Marvel, DC, Vault and more. Their goal in their stories is to tie the element of SFF that they grew up with and love with the environments and people that reflect the world around them. When not writing, it's all video games, gunpla, doll collecting and makeup for them!

 

Nicasio Andres Reed is a writer, poet, and essayist whose work has appeared in venues such as Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Uncanny Magazine, and Shimmer. He lives in Tagaytay, in the Philippines, with four dogs, some family, and the occasional uninvited monitor lizard. Find him at nicasioreed.com, or on Twitter @nicasiosilang.
 

Izzy Wasserstein is a queer and trans woman who teaches writing and literature. She has published in in Clarkesworld, Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and elsewhere. She shares a home with Nora E. Derrington and their animal companions. She’s an enthusiastic member of the 2017 class of Clarion West.

 

Looking for a musical and philosophical read as the spring crests in Montreal? The Argo Bookshop, in conjunction with the JET Alumni Association of Quebec and Atlantic Canada, will be hosting its spring Japan Book Club on May 27.

For this meeting, we'll be discussing The Forest of Wool and Steel by Miyashita Natsu. This story focuses on a young man who is drawn into a career of piano tuning. Through dealing with different mentors in the field, and interacting with the needs and desires of his customers and their different instruments, he grows musically, technically, and philosophically. A great hit in Japan, this is a book that expands both minds and hearts.

Join us online via Zoom for a lively discussion of a heartwarming and thoughtful piece of Japanese literature! Email us at events @ argobookshop.ca for the link. You can read the book in any language. You're also welcome to come if you haven't read the book, but there will be spoilers.

Horror, slipstream, dark fantasy, weird fiction - there is amazing work being done at the overlap of the speculative and the unsettling. Join authors Jason Baltazar and Nino Cipri as they explore the topic through readings and conversation on Friday, May 28th at 7 PM Eastern. The event is free, open to all, and captioned! RSVP required, click here to sign up.
 
Jason Baltazar is a proud Salvadoran American, originally from the Appalachian corner of Maryland. He is currently completing a PhD at the University of Kansas focused on speculative fiction and postcolonial studies. He writes stories that leak across borders, conduct strange rituals, and speak with a weird heart on the tip of their tongue. His work has appeared in Boston Review, Bourbon Penn, F(r)iction magazine, and other venues. He is currently writing his first novel, a punk-infused dark fantasy about living in the hyphen. For more info please check out his website: jasonbaltazar.com

Nino Cipri is a queer and trans/nonbinary writer, editor, and educator. They are a graduate of the Clarion Writers' Workshop, and the University of Kansas's MFA program. A multidisciplinary artist, Nino has also written plays, screenplays, and radio features; performed as a dancer, actor, and puppeteer; and worked as a stagehand, bookseller, bike mechanic, and labor organizer.
 

One time, an angry person on the internet called Nino a verbal terrorist, which was pretty funny.
 

Nino's 2019 story collection Homesick won the Dzanc Short Fiction Collection Prize, was nominated for the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy Award, and was chosen as one of the top ten books on the ALA's Over the Rainbow Reading List. Their novella Finna — about queer heartbreak, working retail, and wormholes — was published by Tor.com in 2020, and was nominated for the Lambda, Nebula, and Hugo awards. Its sequel Defekt came out in April 2021. Nino's YA horror debut, Burned and Buried, will be published by Holt Young Readers in 2022.