Join us for a very special book launch to celebrate 4 books that have come out during the last 3 years.

𝓕𝓔𝓐𝓣𝓤𝓡𝓘𝓝𝓖:

Lee Suksi (TORONTO) launching The Nerves (2020)

Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch launching knot body (2020)

Trynne Delaney launching the half-drowned (2022)

Jayson Keery (PHILADELPHIA) launching The Choice Is Real (2023)

Tickets: $8

Doors: 7:30pm

Readings: 8:00pm

𝓣𝓗𝓔 𝓑𝓞𝓞𝓚𝓢 𝓦𝓔 𝓐𝓡𝓔 𝓛𝓐𝓤𝓝𝓒𝓗𝓘𝓝𝓖

𝒯𝐻𝐸 𝒞𝐻𝒪𝐼𝒞𝐸 𝐼𝒮 𝑅𝐸𝒜𝐿 𝐵𝒴 𝒥𝒜𝒴𝒮𝒪𝒩 𝒦𝐸𝐸𝑅𝒴

Challenging the conventions of how queer and trans people are encouraged to tell their stories, The Choice is Real engages the concept of choice in queerness and trivializes the linear “born-this-way” narratives that queer people are sold. In response to a second puberty brought on by medical transition and an unravelling of family structures following the death of their stepmother, Keery regresses through a warped and foreboding childhood landscape saturated with pop culture iconography. Writing with and against Disney classics, Keery moves between formative memories and contemporary moments, weaving in accounts of current relations in their playful uprooting of assumptions of queer relationality. Opening with a cheeky epigraph from trans author and activist Lou Sullivan: “I love being a girl. So delicate,” The Choice is Real explodes with celebration and criticism of girlhood from a transmasculine perspective.

𝒯𝐻𝐸 𝐻𝒜𝐿𝐹-𝒟𝑅𝒪𝒲𝒩𝐸𝒟 𝐵𝒴 𝒯𝑅𝒴𝒩𝒩𝐸 𝒟𝐸𝐿𝒜𝒩𝐸𝒴

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.

the half-drowned was the winner of the Concordia University First Book Prize at The Quebec Writers’ Federation Literary Awards in 2022.

𝒦𝒩𝒪𝒯 𝐵𝒪𝒟𝒴 𝐵𝒴 𝐸𝐿𝐼 𝒯𝒜𝑅𝐸𝒬 𝐸𝐿 𝐵𝐸𝒞𝐻𝐸𝐿𝒜𝒩𝒴-𝐿𝒴𝒩𝒞𝐻

Bringing together poetry, essay, and letters to “lovers, friends and in-betweens,” Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch confronts the ways capitalism, fatphobia, ableism, transness, and racializations affect people with chronic pain, illness, and disability. knot body explores what it means to discover the limits of your body, and contends with what those limitations bring up in the world we live in.

knot body was shortlisted for the QWF First Book Prize. Their second collection of poetry, The Good Arabs (Metonymy Press), won the 2022 Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal.

𝒯𝐻𝐸 𝒩𝐸𝑅𝒱𝐸𝒮 𝐵𝒴 𝐿𝐸𝐸 𝒮𝒰𝒦𝒮𝐼

The Nerves subverts the literary approach to sexuality by treating the erotic not as a site of anxiety but of reverie. Set in an imaginary world where our sense memories tell us who we are, Lee Suksi’s literary debut is psychedelic, attentive, cinematic and hot. Writing toward sensitivity and ecstasy, exploring touch as healing abandon, The Nerves is charged with desire, devotion, and creative fantasy. Through a series of joyful encounters, Suksi reminds us that pleasure can be abundant, nuanced and that it can heal. Engaging in a queer erotics of language, Suksi’s debut is a bundle of wet atmospheres, speaking to faith in touch.

The Nerves won the award the award for LGBTQ Erotica at the Lambda Literary Awards in 2021.

𝓜𝓞𝓡𝓔

Opening Meditation from Bára Hladík (Vancouver, BC)
Guest poet LA Warman (Brooklyn, NY)

𝓐𝓒𝓒𝓔𝓢𝓢𝓘𝓑𝓘𝓛𝓘𝓣𝓨

There is a small set of stairs leading into the venue. Unfortunately this venue is not wheelchair accessible.