As evening descends upon Montreal’s gay village, queer Canadian writers and performers will gather for the latest in a series of public readings and performances of original work at Stock Bar – a strip club on Ste. Catherine Street East.
On the roster: readings by Will Aitken, Shelagh Plunkett, Karen Molson, Melanie Mitzner, Bill Zaget and Carolyn Boll, with a special performance by Woodpigeon, a.k.a. Mark Andrew Hamilton. The event is hosted by Christopher DiRaddo.
Free (18+)
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As evening descends upon Montreal’s gay village, queer Canadian writers and performers will gather for the latest in a series of public readings and performances of original work at Stock Bar – a strip club on Ste. Catherine Street East.
On the roster: readings by Will Aitken, Shelagh Plunkett, Karen Molson, Melanie Mitzner, Bill Zaget and Carolyn Boll, with a special performance by Woodpigeon, a.k.a. Mark Andrew Hamilton. The event is hosted by Christopher DiRaddo.
Free (18+)
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READERS & PERFORMERS
WILL AITKEN's novels include My Life Burning in the Moonlight (2013), Glass Rain: An Amsterdam Rhapsody (2011), Realia (2000), A Visit Home (1993) and Terre Haute (1989). He has also published the non-fiction book, Luchino Visconti’s Death In Venice: A Queer Film Classic. As arts journalist and arts critic, Aitken has written for The Globe and Mail, MacLean’s, the National Post, Paris Review, Brick Literary Magazine, Threepenny Review and a variety of other publications.
SHELAGH PLUNKETT is an award-winning writer and journalist. Her work has been published in various Canadian and American journals including The Walrus, enRoute magazine, Geist, The Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail. In 2007 she won the CBC Literary Award for creative non-fiction, and her memoir of growing up in Guyana and on Timor, Indonesia, The Water Here is Never Blue, was short listed for the QWF Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction and the Concordia University First Book Prize.
LINK: https://twitter.com/shelaghplunkett
Canadian musician WOODPIGEON, a.k.a. MARK ANDREW HAMILTON, has recorded six critically-acclaimed studio albums and more than a dozen Eps. His most recent release is ‘T R O U B L E’ (April 2016), am album about rhythm and sex and sadness. Merging the best of John Grant with Avalon era Roxy Music, Fleetwood Mac’s Tango in the Night, with a nod towards Kanye West’s Yeezus, the sounds of ‘T R O U B L E’ are transposed to a largely acoustic setting feeding off influences from his travels across the globe.
LINK: http://www.woodpigeon-songbook.com/
KAREN MOLSON is a writer with a keen interest in history and the natural world. Following many years of writing biography and non-fiction, she finally felt ready to work on a novel, and four years later, The Company of Crows was fledged. The Company of Crows tells the story of Veronica Reid, a bookish young thirteen-year-old girl who comes of age one fraught summer in Ontario in the 1970’s.
LINK: http://www.karenmolson.ca/
Screenwriter and novelist MELANIE MITZNER studied drama and screenwriting at N.Y.U., the New School and privately under American screenwriter Meade Roberts. She received an Edward Albee Fellowship for her play Personal Effects and was a finalist in the Writers Guild East Foundation Fellowships for her screenplay “Dodge and Burn.” “In the Name of Love” and “Out to Lunch” were finalists in the Houston Film Festival Screenwriting Competition. Her novel Slow Reveal was a finalist in the Heekin Group Foundation James Fellowship. Her most recent novel, Paradise at H/er Feet, takes place in New York and Montréal.
LINK: www.melaniemitzner.com
BILL ZAGET is a writer, playwright and actor (as Zag Dorison). Born in Detroit and raised in Montreal, he was living and working in Toronto until 2014. He recently returned to Montreal after 35 years. Publications in anthologies include “Renfield or, Dining at the Bughouse” (the prose version of his one-man show) in Dracula in London (2001); “Zombies on the Down-Low,” in Beach Boys (2009); “Symeon,” in the award-winning anthology Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper (2012); and “The Samsa,” in Gods, Memes, and Monsters (2015).
CAROLYN BOLL's poems have been published in The Gay & Lesbian Review and The Lavender Review where she was also the Guest Art Editor for the Dance Issue and also had her collage work published. Currently, she is the Communications Consultant for Linda Leith Publishing and is working on a book rooted in her childhood experience as a tomboy in the ballet world.
LINK: https://twitter.com/carolynboll
CHRISTOPHER DIRADDO is the author of The Geography of Pluto (2014). He has also published four short stories in anthologies by Arsenal Pulp Press, including the Lambda Literary Award-winning First Person Queer.
LINK: https://www.christopherdiraddo.com
