BOLD & CREATIVE

What does it take to sustain a literary life?

The brand new Bold&Creative podcasts from Blue Metropolis offers up six refreshing perspectives from the English-language literary world in Quebec in 2024. We wanted to explore writing practices and career paths, changing experiences and new contexts. What does our literary world look like right now? How does one get started? How does one keep going?
To answer these questions, we invited Liz Howard (the Poet), Daniel Allen Cox (the Prose-Writer), Tawhida Tanya Evanson (the Performer), Dimitri Nasrallah (the Publisher*), Linda Morra (the Podcaster) and Curtis McRae (the Promoter) to go deep, in a series of twenty-minute conversations with host Rachel McCrum.
What emerged were rich, wide-ranging – and occasionally deliciously weird – discussions about literary life and practice.
That it takes a community to bring a book into the world. That after the writing is done, there is editing, publication, conversation, promotion, collaboration, education. That they all work tirelessly and creatively to find new ways to support and promote writers.
That they are passionate about building new relationships, supporting authenticity, talent, and access.
That there are constant challenges in the form of burn out, mental health, endless volunteering, and limited financial support.
That every one of them wears multiple hats, to allow them to not only continue their own work, but to open doors for others. That they are not just in this for their own creative advancement, but to ensure that literary culture survives and thrives. 
That it was a pleasure and a joy to speak with each of these bold and creative voices. We hope that you enjoy.

*technically, Editor rather than Publisher, but that doesn’t begin with a P.

Photo credit: Liz Howard

The Poet: Liz Howard

Liz Howard is a poet, editor, and educator. Her first collection, Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent, won the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the 2015 Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Her second collection, Letters in a Bruised Cosmos, was shortlisted for the 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Trillium Poetry Prize. She is an Assistant Professor of creative writing at Concordia University. Born and raised on Treaty 9 territory in Northern Ontario, she currently lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.

Photo credit: Matthew Khalili

The Promoter: Curtis McRae

Curtis McRae’s (he/him) debut short story collection, Quietly, Loving Everyone, is forthcoming (Véhicule Press). His fiction has appeared in The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Chronicling the Days anthology (Guernica Editions, 2021), and others. He won the 2021/22 David McKeen Award and was a finalist in the 2019 Quebec Writers’ Federation contest for emerging young writers. Curtis is the Editor-in-Chief of yolk literary journal, sits on the board of directors for the Quebec Writers Federation, and teaches English literature at John Abbott College. A Concordia University fellowship recipient, he holds an MA in Creative Writing.

Photo credit: Alison Slattery

The Prose-writer: Daniel Allen Cox

Daniel Allen Cox is the author of I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah’s Witness, finalist for the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal and named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2023. His four novels have been nominated for the Lambda Literary, Ferro-Grumley, and ReLit awards. His essays have appeared in The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Electric Literature, The Malahat Review, Maisonneuve, and elsewhere, and have been recognized by Best Canadian Essays, The Best American Essays, and the National Magazine Awards. Daniel is past president of the Quebec Writers’ Federation.

Photo credit: Justine Latour

The Performer:Tawhida Tanya Evanson

Tawhida Tanya Evanson is a poet, author, performer, producer and Ashik. Her poetry collections include Bothism (2017) and Nouveau Griot (2018), and her debut novel Book of Wings (2021) won the 2022 CAM/Blue Metropolis New Contribution Prize. Her French autotranslation Livre des ailes (2023) is fresh from Marchand de feuilles. With a twenty-five-year practice in oral poetry and music, she performs internationally and has released several studio albums and videopoems including the upcoming 2023 Afrofuturist concert film CYANO SUN SUITE. She is president of the Quebec Writers’ Federation, director of the Banff Centre Spoken Word Program, and produces interarts events as Mother Tongue Media. Born and based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal of Antiguan and québécoise origin, she moonlights as a whirling dervish.

Photo credit: Nadia Zhang

The Podcaster: Linda Morra

Linda Morra is a settler scholar, professor, writer, and podcaster, who works on the unceded territory of the Abenaki. She writes, hosts and co-produces (with Marco Timpano) Getting Lit With Linda, entering its fifth season (2024). The podcast was a Finalist of the People’s Choice Podcasting Awards in 2023 and of the Canadian Podcasting Awards in the Arts Category in 2022. It won in the Outstanding Education Category for the Canadian Podcasting Awards in 2022. Linda published the Routledge Introduction to Gender and Sexuality in Literature in Canada in 2023 and, with Sarah Henzi, co-edited On the Other Side(s) of 150: Untold Stories and Critical Approaches to History, Literature, and Identity in Canada, which won the Canadian Studies Network Prize in 2022.

Photo credit: Bruno Destombes

The Publisher: Dimitri Nasrallah

Dimitri Nasrallah is the author of four novels. His most recent, 2022’s Hotline, is a national bestseller that was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Prix des Libraires du Québec, and shortlisted for CBC’s Canada Reads. He was born in Lebanon in 1977, and moved to Canada in 1988. His previous books – 2018’s The Bleeds, 2011’s Niko, and 2004’s Blackbodying – have been nominated for CBC Canada Reads, the Dublin Literary Award, and the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal, and won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and Quebec’s McAuslan First Book Prize. He lives in Montreal, where he serves as fiction editor for Véhicule Press’s Esplanade Fiction imprint, translates Québécois fiction from French to English, and teaches creative writing at Concordia University.