The Montreal Review of Books launches its Summer 2023 issue Wednesday, July 5th, at Wills Bar (6729 Esplanade Ave). Join us for readings by Valérie Bah with translator Kama La Mackerel (The Rage Letters, Metonomy), Maxime Aurélien and Ted Rutland (Out To Defend Ourselves, Fernwood), and John Reibetanz (New Songs for Orpheus, McGill-Queen’s University Press).

Doors open at 6:00 p.m., with readings beginning at 7:00 pm. The authors will be available to sign books after the readings. Admission is free; please RSVP on the Facebook event.

For those unable to attend in person, readings will be live-streamed on our YouTube page.

We thank you for your continued support of the mRb, and look forward to seeing you there!

Valérie Bah is a Tiohtià:ke-based filmmaker and writer whose work explores intergenerational trauma & healing, as well as mundane/radical acts of survival. Couched in magical realism, Val’s narratives are driven by Black feminist thought and lived experience.

Kama La Mackerel is an educator, visual artist, performer, writer and translator who works between and across English, French and Mauritian Kreol. They are the author of the award-winning poetry collection ZOM-FAM (Metonymy Press) and have translated works by Canadian writers Vivek Shraya and Kai Cheng Thom. They have lectured, performed and exhibited their work internationally.

Maxime Aurélien is the former leader of les Bélangers, Montreal’s first Haitian street gang. He is the owner of Cash Content, a pawn shop and barbershop in Montreal’s east end.

Ted Rutland is a professor at Concordia University. His research and activism focuses on the racial politics of urban planning and policing in Canadian cities. He is the author of Displacing Blackness: Planning, Power, and Race in Twentieth-Century Halifax.

John Reibetanz is an award-winning poet, fellow of Victoria College, and senior fellow at Massey College, Toronto. He has published fourteen full collections and two chapbooks, been shortlisted for the national ReLit Poetry Award, and won First Prize in the international Petra Kenney Poetry Competition.

Les versions originales en français de The Rage Letters (Les enragé.es, Éditions du remue-ménage, 2021) et Out to Defend Ourselves (Il fallait se défendre, Mémoire d’encrier, 2023) seront également à vendre sur place!