DREAMS & PEACE FORUM
Drawing, provisionally, on the lessons of the global crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival is working, with the help of literature, to shine a light on restorative subjects: peace, calmness, serenity, slowness, and a lucid look at the state of the world.
With a view toward impacting how it might all turn out, and with a taste of the 2021 Festival’s “Slow: The Power of Words” offering, we present the Dreams and Peace Forum. Echoing the UN’s decision to declare 2021 the International Year of Peace and Trust, the Forum spotlights the voices of a few great and beloved lucid dreamers from various backgrounds. Writers, philosophers, students and, most importantly, young citizens of the world—these thinkers provide answers to a set of 4 pressing questions about the state of the present and the potential for the future. Complete with reading recommendations for these difficult times.
THE QUESTIONS
THE AUTHORS
SERGE JONCOUR
Serge Joncour a reçu le prix Femina du roman en 2020 pour Nature humaine (Flammarion). Il est l’auteur de douze livres parmi lesquels UV (Le Dilettante, prix France Télévision 2003) et, aux éditions Flammarion, L’Idole (2005), Combien de fois je t’aime (2008), L’Amour sans le faire (2012), L’Écrivain national (prix des Deux Magots 2014), Repose-toi sur moi (prix Interallié 2016) et Chien-Loup (prix Landerneau 2018). Né à Paris en 1961, il veut devenir nageur de combat. Il interrompt donc rapidement ses études de philosophie, faute de temps. Il exerce différents métiers : maître-nageur, livreur de journaux, cuisinier, rédacteur publicitaire… Il voyage dans de nombreuses îles avant de se consacrer définitivement à l’écriture.
JEAN-PIERRE GORKYNIAN
Auteur montréalais d’origine syrienne, Jean-Pierre Gorkynian s’intéresse aux questions identitaires liées à l’immigration, plus particulièrement aux impacts de ce phénomène sur les adolescents issus de parents expatriés d’origine arabe. Il a publié deux romans: Tireur embusqué (Mémoire d’encrier, 2020) et Rescapé (VLB éditeur, 2015).
MARTINA CHUMOVA
Née à Prague en 1984, Martina Chumova arrive au Québec à la fin des années 1980. S’intéressant à beaucoup de choses disparates, elle étudie en anthropologie, en études allemandes et en histoire avant de travailler comme éditrice. Son premier roman, Boîtes d’allumettes (Cheval d’août, 2020), traite d’immigration et de mémoire en se concentrant sur le détail, l’oblique, la texture fine des expériences quotidiennes.
FELWINE SARR
Né en 1972 à Niodior, au Sénégal, Felwine Sarr est un universitaire, écrivain, économiste, musicien et intellectuel. Il est l’auteur de Dahij (Gallimard 2009), Afrotopia (Philippe Rey 2016). Il dirige en 2017, avec Achille Mbembe, l’ouvrage Écrire l’Afrique-Monde (Jimsaan-Philippe Rey), réunissant les Actes des Ateliers de la pensée de Dakar et de Saint-Louis. Chez Mémoire d’encrier, il a publié 105 Rue Carnot (2011), Méditations africaines (2012, 2020 NE), Ishindenshin, de mon âme à ton âme (2017) et Habiter le monde, essai de politique relationnelle (2017). Avec les écrivains Boubacar Boris Diop et Nafissatou Dia Diouf, il est le cofondateur de la maison d’édition Jimsaan au Sénégal. Il enseigne à Duke University, en Caroline du Nord.
GABRIELLE FILTEAU-CHIBA
Gabrielle Filteau-Chiba écrit, traduit, illustre et défend la beauté des régions sauvages du Québec. Encabanée (Éditions XYZ, Montréal, 2018; Le Mot et le reste, Marseille, 2020) son premier roman inspiré par sa propre vie dans les bois du Kamouraska, a conquis un vaste public ici et à l’étranger. Avec Sauvagines, son livre suivant (finaliste au prix France-Québec 2020), et Bivouac (à paraître en mars 2021), elle continue son exploration de la place de l’être humain dans la nature.
TÉA MUTONJI
Born in Congo-Kinshasa, Téa Mutonji is a poet and fiction writer. Her debut collection, Shut Up You’re Pretty, is the first title from Vivek Shraya’s imprint, VS. Books. It was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and won the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award and the Trillium Book Award. Mutonji lives and writes in Toronto.
FRANCESCA EKWUYASI
Francesca Ekwuyasi is a writer and multidisciplinary artist born in Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness, and belonging. Her short documentary Black + Belonging screened at the Halifax Black Film Festival, Festival International du Film Black de Montréal, and Toronto Black Film Festival. You may find some of her writing in Winter Tangerine Review, Brittle Paper, Transition Magazine, the Malahat Review, Visual Art News, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and GUTS magazine. Her story ?run is Heaven was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize and her debut novel Butter Honey Pig Bread (Arsenal Pulp Press 2020) was longlisted for the Giller Prize.
JESSICA JOHNS
Johns is a nehiyaw-English-Irish aunty and member of Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta. She is the Managing Editor for Room Magazine and a co-organizer of the Indigenous Brilliance reading series. Her debut poetry chapbook, How Not to Spill, co-won the 2019 BP Nichol Chapbook Award, and her short story “Bad Cree” won the 2020 Writers’ Trust Journey Prize and placed silver at the 2020 National Magazine Awards.
LAUREN TURNER
Lauren Turner is a disabled poet and writer, who lives in Tiohtiá:ke/ Montréal on the unceded land of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation. She is the author of The Only Card in a Deck of Knives (Wolsak & Wynn, 2020) and We’re Not Going to Do Better Next Time (knife | fork | book, 2018).
CATHERINE BUSH
Catherine Bush’s five novels include the just-released Blaze Island (2020) and The Rules of Engagement (2000), a New York Times Notable Book and a Globe & Mail Best Book of the Year. She was recently a Fiction Meets Science Fellow at the HWK in Germany and has spoken internationally about addressing the climate crisis in fiction. She is the Coordinator of the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA and can be found online at www.catherinebush.com.
In concert with our Peace and Dreams Forum contributors, candidates for the 2021 Blue Metropolis Excellence Awards in Indigenous Studies answered the same 4 questions to share their vision for a better and more inclusive world. A joint project of Blue Metropolis and the McConnell Foundation, the Awards (l’un francophone, l’autre, anglophone) seek to highlight Indigenous studies programs offered at several Canadian universities, encourage academic excellence, and reward dynamic young people whose work and charisma spark change in their communities. Explore the Awards, our candidates en 2021, and their answers here.
DISCOVER THE WORK OF OUR CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS
These punchy, sharply observed stories blur the lines between longing and choosing, exploring the narrator's experience as an involuntary one.
"Dulled by the residue of trauma and sharpened by the expectations of the streets, Tea's characters are painfully and beautifully rendered in these gritty, must-read stories." — Catherine Hernandez, author of Scarborough
"'Bad Cree' is the kind of story that wakes you up in the middle of the night, purposefully and uncomfortably. Not with a question, but with an answer." — 2020 Journey Prize Jury
Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of friendship, faith, and above all, family.
"Where expectations of genre leave their own delicious signatures across fabulism, the folkloric, the strange, and a mercurial realism, the queerness and sensuality of this debut novel excites." - Canisia Lubrin, author of The Dyzgraphxst
For those who loved Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior comes a new climate-themed, Shakespeare-inspired novel from bestselling author Catherine Bush.
"A prediction of what is to come should we fail to heed the mounting evidence of the current climate crisis." — Quill & Quire
The Only Card in a Deck of Knives unpacks society’s impulse to pull away from sick women and examines why we discredit their professed pain, symptoms and emotions.
"These poems fight for life with brutal honesty and, at a time when so many are being careless with the lives of themselves or others, these are perhaps exactly the words we need." — Contempory Verse 2
Dans ce grand roman de « la nature humaine », Serge Joncour orchestre presque trente ans d’histoire nationale où se répondent jusqu’au vertige les progrès, les luttes, la vie politique et les catastrophes successives qui ont jalonné la fin du XXe siècle, percutant de plein fouet une famille française.
« C'est fluide, rythmé, plein de suspens; un grand roman populaire, au sens noble du mot. » — L'OPINION
"Pour Anouk, passer de la vie en solo à la vie à deux était déjà un grand pas; la vie en groupe, pas évident que ce soit pour elle..."
"Tireur embusqué décrit bien la peur et la douleur d’une vie passée sous les bombes, tout en nous confrontant à notre confort nord-américain."
Mario Cloutier, La Presse
"Auprès du fleuve de Saint-Louis du Sénégal, un être pense lentement au fil de l’eau. C’est à cet exercice de méditation que nous convie Felwine Sarr."
Extrait de la description de la maison d'édition, Mémoire d’encrier.
"Martina Chumova offre un premier roman prometteur, rythmé de la douce poésie du quotidien, qui saura sans aucun doute bercer cet été extraordinaire."
Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec, Le Devoir
THE DREAMS & PEACE LIBRARY
“The Great Silence” in Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang, Knopf, 2019
Epistemologies of African Conflicts: Violence, Evolutionism, and the War in Sierra Leone by Zubairu Wai, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012
La lutte pour le territoire québécois, Entre extractivisme et écocitoyenneté, Bruno Massé, Éd. XYZ, 2020
Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, House of Anansi Press, 2020
All Day I Dream About Sirens, Domenica Martinello, Coach House, 2019
Docteur Jivago, Boris Leonidovitch Pasternak, Éd. Gallimard, coll. Folio, 1972
We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib, Penguin Random House Canada, 2019
Confession d’un masque, Yukio Mishima, Éd. GALLIMARD, coll. Folio, 1983
Le meilleur des mondes, Aldous Huxley, Éd. Pocket, 2017
Les Mots, la mort, les sorts: La Sorcellerie dans le bocage, Jeanne Favret-Saada, Éd. GALLIMARD, coll. Folio essais, 1985