The Argo presents its June reading series event of local prose, poetry, and music, curated by Ilona Martonfi, in-person at the Argo, at 7 PM.

The event is free and everyone is welcome. RSVPs are not required, but we do ask people to wear masks in the store! We look forward to seeing you at the event.

Cora Siré has written five books including Fear the Mirror, a collection of stories recently published by Véhicule Press.

James Hawes is a Montreal poet and the proud publisher of the new and experimental micro-press Turret House.

Zoe Shaw is a writer and editor based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal. She is the Managing Editor at carte blanche.

Chard Chénier is a painter/musician who performs blues poem-songs. Visit www.chardart.com to see his art + listen to his music or view his YouTubes.

Emily Tristan Jones has poems in The Puritan, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. Her first book is forthcoming in Chicago. She is editor of Columba.

Jack Ruttan is a writer, translator, critic, and illustrator. He writes about the arts and for TV, and paints watercolours. http://mruttan.ca

Mirabel is an award-winning poet. Her collection, The Vanishing Act (& The Miracle After), comes out June 2023 by Guernica Editions.

 

Join us for a book club with Mark Abley, author of Strange Bewildering Time! The event is free and open to all (even if you didn't read the book yet, but there will be spoilers!), and takes place in-store at 7 PM on Thursday, June 15th.

A poet and journalist looks back on a remarkable journey from Turkey to Nepal in 1978, when the region was on the brink of massive transformation.

In the spring of 1978, at age twenty-two, Mark Abley put aside his studies at Oxford and set off with a friend on a three-month trek across the celebrated Hippie Trail - a sprawling route between Europe and South Asia, peppered with Western bohemians and vagabonds. It was a time when the Shah of Iran still reigned supreme, Afghanistan lay at peace, and city streets from Turkey to India teemed with unrest. Within a year, many of the places he visited would become inaccessible to foreign travellers.

Drawing from the tattered notebooks he filled as a youthful wanderer, Abley brings his kaleidoscope of experiences back to life with vivid detail: dancing in a Turkish disco, clambering across a glacier in Kashmir, travelling by train among Baluchi tribesmen who smuggled kitchen appliances over international borders. He also reflects on the impact of the Hippie Trail and the illusions of those who journeyed along it. The lively immediacy of Abley's journals combined with the measured wisdom of his mature, contemporary voice provides rich insight, bringing vibrant witness and historical perspective to this beautifully written portrait of a region during a time of irrevocable change.


MARK ABLEY is a nonfiction writer, poet, and journalist. His many books include The Organist: Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind, a memoir of his father; Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages and The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English, among other books on language; Conversations with a Dead Man: The Legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott, an unconventional look at Canada's past; and several poetry collections and children's books. His work has won international praise and has been translated into five languages. He lives in Montreal.

 
 

Looking for a book to bring some comedy to your summer? The Argo Bookshop, in conjunction with the JET Alumni Association of Quebec and Atlantic Canada, will be hosting its July Japan Book Club on July 20.

 

For this meeting, we'll be discussing There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job, a modern workplace satire by Tsumura Kikuko. A young woman goes to an employment agency, and asks for a convenient job: close to home, with no reading or writing and ideally little thinking. But she gets a series of jobs that don't quite work out, in amusing and witty ways. A droll critique of working life and late capitalism, this wry read will get you laughing while also sticking in your head.

 

Join us online via Zoom for a lively discussion! Email us at events @ argobookshop.ca for the link. You can read the book in any language. You're also welcome to come if you haven't read the book, but there will be spoilers.