The Argo presents its August 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:
Louise Dupré has published twenty books, including La main hantée (GG Award 2017) translated by Donald Winkler and published at Guernica.
Ilona Martonfi is a poet, editor, curator, & activist. Her latest poetry collection is entitled Salt Bride (Inanna, 2019). Forthcoming, The Tempest (Inanna, 2022).
Mike Di Sclafani, Multidisciplinary Artist, Singer-Songwriter - Acoustic Folk/Blues, author of the chapbook Vultures (Coracle Press, 2017).
Jocelyne Dubois’s Memorial Suite won the Lennoxville Reads… Poetry award. Her novel, World of Glass, was a finalist for the Hugh MacLennon Prize.
Brian Campbell is a poet/singer-songwriter, author of several poetry collections. His latest music EP is On This Shore. www.campbellmuse.com
Clayton Bailey is a Montreal writer and the author of Expedition (Great Plains Fiction, 2003) and Optique (Vehicule Press, 2007).
Maria Caltabiano is an editor and poet, Drawing Daybreak is her first poetry collection with Guernica Editions, fall 2021.
Kate Lavut, Graphic novelist. CHiCO, (2015); finalist QWF prize for children’s & young adult lit. Working on a children's book 'I love you with no hair'.

This year, the Quebec Writers’ Federation hosted its first poetry and prose workshop specifically inviting writers who identify with the disability experience to gather. Now the workshop facilitator, some participants, and other writers from the Montreal region will share a program of poems, prose, and dramatic writing. 

The event will take place over Zoom on Thursday, August 12th, at 7 PM. Everyone is welcome; the event is free and captioning will be available! Registration via Eventbrite is required - sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/disability-series-3-qwf-poetry-and-prose-showcase-tickets-164204830067

We're thrilled to co-host this in conjunction with the QWF, who will be recording the Zoom event and posting it later on their YouTube channel so as to make the event more accessible to those who might not attend the day of. For privacy reasons, we will ask for mics to be muted until the Q&A section, and invite you to only have cameras on if you're comfortable with being part of the recording.

Enjoy this opportunity to hear new work by disabled writers in English from Quebec. We have works in print by some of these writers in the store already, and for anything else in print, we'll be happy to special-order it for you! Featured authors will include (more to be confirmed):

Bára Hladík is a writer, artist and facilitator born to Czech migrants in Sinixt Territory. Her work can be found in Hamilton Arts & Letters Canadian Disability Poetics Issue, and more. Book of Mirrors (2019), her micro-chapbook of reflections on degenerative disease was selected for the Ghost City Press microchap series. She is the founding editor of Theta Wave. barahladik.com

Madelaine Caritas Longman is a writer and PhD candidate living in Tiotià:ke (Montreal). Her poetry has appeared in Room, Prism, Grain, and elsewhere. Her collection The Danger Model explores the relationships between art, identity, and chronic illness, and received the QWF's Concordia University First Book Prize. https://madelainelongman.com/

Ambica Sharma ⚓ is Montreal-based and involved in theater, dance, poetry, and broadcasting.  She has presented performance poetry at multiple platforms in North America since 2015. She writes in her mother tongue Hindi, and also is writing in English and contributing to local publications. She manages and curates the Kabir Poetry Club. https://www.centrekabir.com/en/poetry-club

Seeley Quest is a trans disabled writer, organizer, and environmentalist, in Montreal since 2017, who led the QWF workshop. From the US, sie presented with the Sins Invalid project 2007-15. Hir script “Crooked” is in At the Intersection of Disability and Drama: A Critical Anthology of New Plays. Not on social media, find hir via email at https://questletters.substack.com.

Pamela Vaccariello is a Montreal-based writer, currently pursuing a BA in Creative Writing at Concordia University. Her poetry has been published in Dawson College’s S.P.A.C.E. magazine and Creations literary journal. Her work often explores disability and the body.

image by: funkyjunkinteriors.net 
 

We are delighted to welcome Giller-shortlisted author Kathleen Winter for the launch of her stunning new novel Undersong, a lyrical reimagining of the lost years of misunderstood Romantic Era genius Dorothy Wordsworth.

The event will be on Thursday, August 26th, at 7 PM Eastern, and will be held over Zoom, consisting of a reading followed by a conversation and Q&A. Everyone is welcome, and the event will be captioned; please click here to RSVP on Eventbrite! 

Attendance is free, but any local attendees who email us a proof of purchase of Undersong will get a beautiful hand-painted bookmark made by the author, representing one of her own watercolor studies of flowers and scenes familiar to Dorothy Wordsworth!

About Kathleen Winter:

Kathleen Winter's novel Annabel was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Orange Prize, and numerous other awards. It was also a Globe and Mail "Best Book," a New York Times "Notable" book, a Quill & Quire "Book of the Year" and #1 bestseller in Canada. It has been published and translated worldwide. Her Arctic memoir Boundless (2014) was shortlisted for Canada's Weston and Taylor non-fiction prizes, and her last novel Lost in September (2017) was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award. Born in the UK, Winter now lives in Montreal after many years in Newfoundland.

About Undersong:

When young James Dixon, a local jack-of-all-trades recently returned from the Battle of Waterloo, meets writer Dorothy Wordsworth, he quickly realizes he’s never met another woman anything like her. In her early thirties at the time of the meeting, Dorothy has already lived a wildly unconventional life. As her famous brother William Wordsworth’s confidante and creative collaborator—considered by some in their circle to be the secret to his success as a poet—she has carved a seemingly idyllic existence for herself, alongside William and his wife, in England’s Lake District. 
 
One day, Dixon is approached by William to do some handiwork around the Wordsworth estate. At William’s urging, he takes on more and more chores—and quickly understands that his real, unspoken responsibility is to keep an eye on Dorothy, who is growing frail and melancholic. The unlikely pair of misfits form a sympathetic bond despite the sometimes troubling chasm in social class between them, and soon Dixon is the quiet witness to everyday life in Dorothy’s family and glittering social circle, which includes literary legends Samuel Coleridge, Thomas de Quincy, William Blake, and Charles and Mary Lamb.
 
Through the fictional James Dixon—a gentle but troubled soul, more attuned to the wonders of the garden he faithfully tends than to vexing worldly matters—we step inside the Wordsworth family, witnessing their dramatic emotional and artistic struggles, hidden traumas, private betrayals and triumphs. At the same time, Winter slowly weaves a darker, complex “undersong” through the novel, one as earthy and elemental as flower and tree, gradually revealing the pattern of Dorothy's rich, hidden life—that of a woman determined, against all odds, to exist on her own terms despite societal norms. But the unsettling effects of Dorothy’s tragically repressed brilliance take their toll, and when at last her true voice finally sings out, it is so searing and bright that Dixon, compelled equally by love and grief and fear, must make an impossible choice.

Looking for a book you can really dig into to kick off the fall? The Argo Bookshop, in conjunction with the JET Alumni Association of Quebec and Atlantic Canada, will be hosting its autumn Japan Book Club on September 30.

For this meeting, we'll be discussing The Woman in the Dunes by Abe Kobo. After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit. But when he attempts to leave the next morning, he quickly discovers that the locals have other plans. Held captive with seemingly no chance of escape, he is tasked with shoveling back the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten to destroy the village. His only companion is an odd young woman. Together their fates become intertwined as they work side by side at this Sisyphean task.

Join us online via Zoom for a lively discussion of a classic if trippy 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.