Exploring the virtual edition of the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival 2021
Building communities
Our sense of belonging is fostered by the communities where we grew up, but it can also be grounded in the communities that we build or feel kinship to in the course of our lives. Literary communities are such spaces where we meet kindred spirits. This theme came through during the discussion “Finding Queer Readers,” hosted by Christopher DiRaddo and which united writer and publisher Lawrence Schimel, publisher Ashley Fortier and author Nia King. The North American LGBTQ literary landscape has changed a lot in the last few decades with the disappearance of vibrant, independent queer and feminist bookstores and book fairs. Fortier started Metonymy Press with co-publisher Oliver Fugler in 2015 in Montreal partly in response to this loss and as a way to address the need for venues around which to continue building relationships and community.
“Many authors have come to know each other from being part of Metonymy’s catalogue,” she explained.
All panelists agreed that creating safe spaces for queer writers and artists is essential in making sure that their voices are heard and that they can write without self-sensorship and the pressure to conform to the cis-heteronormative expectations of mainstream publishing in order to make their stories reach the broader public.
Small-press publishing: “Un endroit où les gens viennent déposer ce qu’ils ont dans le ventre”
Giving voice to underrepresented communities has always been the ethos of small-press publishing, and the festival discussions that I listened to confirmed this still to be the case. In his talk, Danny Ramadan described how his first novel came to be published. When he started approaching Canadian presses, he realized that they were interested in the story he was telling, but not in the way he wanted to tell it. They wanted him to turn his book into a memoir and to follow the familiar media narrative about refugees. “Canadian society in 2014 wasn’t ready to hear the story of a Syrian refugee,” he said. He waited until he found a press—Nightwood Editions in Gibson, BC—that published his book the way he envisioned it. Since then the book has had great success, receiving awards and being translated in French, German and Hebrew.
This story is indicative of many similar experiences in the publishing world and illustrates how important small presses still are in their willingness to take risks, publish the work of authors early in their career and to tell stories that do not conform to comfortable narratives and to “what sells.” For Fortier, the work of independent publishers is vital for carving out and maintaining space where authors can write on their own terms. Indie publishers also fight against market trends and the gatekeeping of mainstream presses. This topic also emerged during the panel discussion with Indigenous authors who remarked that while mainstream publishers seem keen to accept stories that confirm their ideas about what a “good Indian” is, Indigenous writers who are “pushing the boundaries, reclaiming Indigenous narratives and using Indigenous languages—things that may not be at the top of the best-seller’s list—they have a harder time getting in there,” Duncan explained.
Other publishers that we met during the festival spoke in similar terms about the significance of small presses in advancing a different approach to literature, writing and social dialogue. Chantal Spitz, writer, activist and founding member of the literary magazine Littérama’ohi, which publishes authors from French Polynesia, was one of the participants in the panel “Comment faire connaître et promouvoir les auteurs autochtones d’Océanie?”, hosted by Natacha Gagné and also featuring publisher Christian Robert and literature professor Vāhi Sylvia Tuheiava-Richaud. For Spitz, the mission of a literary magazine such as Littérama’ohi is not so much to promote or defend specific languages, but rather to showcase French Polynesian writing in all its linguistic diversity, including Indigenous languages.
What is important is to cultivate literature that is defined by the authors themselves, not imposed by outside forces: “On refuse de laisser encore l’extérieur de définir ce qu’on appelle littérature,”
she said in a sentence that takes a stance towards overturning the longstanding colonial practice of a major metropolitan “centre” (Paris, London) imposing its definition of literature to writers from the so-called “periphery.” Rather, Littérama’ohi encourages literature that is “polyforme, polylangue.” The magazine’s mission is thus to refuse the norms imposed from the outside (“des normes qui viennent d’ailleurs”), and to accept forms of writing that are not rigidly defined: it could be a text of 10 pages or 3 lines, what matters is that the press creates “un endroit où les gens viennent déposer ce qu’ils ont dans le ventre. […] Ce qu’on veut c’est que les gens puissent s’exprimer,” Spitz said.