Join us at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly (176 Rue Bernard Ouest) for our Graphic Novel Book Club! On Tuesday November 24th at 7 pm we will be discussing Opioids & Organs by Arizona O'Neill, published by Drawn & Quarterly. This meeting will be hosted by D+Q Publisher Peggy Burns. The Graphic Novel Book Club is free to attend and no reservation is required.Buy the book: https://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/opioidsorgans
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Arizona grieves at the hospital bed of her father, a man she hardly knew, brain dead after a fentanyl overdose. Doctors encourage her to act quickly to recast him as a hero by way of organ donations. Distraught, Arizona makes a decision that will haunt her for the rest of her life. As she struggles to come to terms with her father’s death and her role as next of kin in making his life’s last decision, she uncovers inconvenient truths about the organ industry’s own codependence on the opioid crisis.
Her parents were bohemian wild kids of 90s Montreal. He was a talented skateboarder, charming guitarist, and visual artist. She was an aspiring writer and outcast. They lived with other teenagers in the Plateau in a messy apartment filled with drugs, alcohol, and black-market animals. The city’s macabre history—McGill Medical School, the Mount Royal Cemetery, ancient cadavers at the Maude Abbott Medical Museum—takes center stage as Arizona sorts out fact from fiction.
Opioids and Organs is a damning critique of an industry that takes advantage of society’s outcasts. It is also the graphic novel debut of O’Neill herself, who weaves together a dramatic personal history with that of how humanity made its scientific advances. A muted yet striking pastel palette and a dolllike fantastical elegance belie both the gruesomeness of the book’s topic and the rage of its author.
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Arizona O’Neill is a Montreal-based author and illustrator. She is the illustrator of Nelly Arcan’s L’enfant dans le miroir, and Heather O’Neill’s Valentine in Montreal. Her comics have appeared in Hazlitt, Exclaim! and Canadian Geographic. She has created animated videos for many outlets including CBC. Opioids and Organs is her debut graphic novel.
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Librairie Drawn & Quarterly Accessibility information:
- Our store uses StopGap.ca ramps in an effort to encourage accessibility. Both the step at the entrance, followed by a half step and a door have StopGap ramps. The door opens inward and is not automated. Once inside, there are no additional steps.
- There is one non-gendered bathroom.
- It is not a sober space, our events sometimes offer alcohol.
- Please email [email protected] if you have any accessibility needs we can accommodate.
Event venue
176 Rue Bernard Ouest, Montreal, QC, Canada, Quebec H2T 2K2, 170 Rue Bernard O, Montréal, QC H2T 2K2, Canada, Mount Royal
Tickets
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