Join Sydney Hegele for the launch of Bird Suit (Invisible Publishing) at La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly at 176 rue Bernard O at 7 pm on Thursday, June 6th. The evening will feature a reading, a conversation with Arizona O'Neill, a Q&A, and a signing.The event is free and open to all. Books will be available for purchase at the event and the authors will sign copies of their books.
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A tourist town folk tale of stifled ambition, love, loss, and the bird women who live beneath the lake.
Every summer the peaches ripen in Port Peter, and the tourists arrive to gorge themselves on fruit and sun. They don’t see the bird women, who cavort on the cliffs and live in a meadow beneath the lake. But when summer ends and the visitors go back home, every pregnant Port Peter girl knows what she needs to do: deliver her child to the Birds in a laundry basket on those same lakeside cliffs. But the Birds don’t want Georgia Jackson.
Twenty years on, the peaches are ripening again, the tourists have returned, and Georgia is looking for trouble with any ill-tempered man she can find. When that man turns out to be Arlo Bloom—her mother’s ex and the new priest in town—she finds herself drawn into a complicated matrix of friendship, grief, faith, sex, and love with Arlo, his wife, Felicity, and their son, Isaiah. Vivid, uncanny, and as likely cursed as touched by grace, Bird Suit is a brutal, generous story as sticky and lush as a Port Peter peach.
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Sydney Hegele (they/them) is the author of The Pump (Invisible Publishing 2021), winner of the 2022 ReLit Literary Award for Short Fiction and a finalist for the 2022 Trillium Book Award. Their essays on life with Dissociative Identity Disorder have appeared in Catapult and Electric Literature, and have been featured by Lithub, The Poetry Foundation, and Psychology Today . Their novel Bird Suit is forthcoming with Invisible Publishing in Spring 2024, and their essay collection Bad Kids is forthcoming with Invisible in Fall 2025. They live with their husband and French Bulldog on Treaty 13 Land (Toronto, Canada).
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Arizona O’Neill is a Montreal based illustrator and author. She has created original videos for CBC’s Creator Network, and artists such as Laurence Philomène and Patrick Watson. Her monthly painted illustrations fill the window of the Drawn & Quarterly bookstore in Mile End. Her book of illustrated graphic interviews with celebrated and controversial Quebec artists called Est-ce qu’un artiste peut être heureux? was released in November 2022. Arizona is currently working on a graphic memoir in 2024.
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Librairie Drawn & Quarterly would like to acknowledge that our events and bookstores are located on the unceded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka. Many of us refer to Montreal as our home, but it is named Tiohtiá:ke. It has always been a gathering place for many First Nations and continues to be home to a diverse population of Indigenous peoples. We are grateful that creating and sharing stories has been a part of this land for thousands of years.
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La Petite Drawn and Quarterly Accessibility information:
- We encourage the wearing of masks at our events.
- Our event space 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.
- It is not a sober space, our events sometimes offer alcohol.
Please email [email protected] if you have any questions!
Event Venue
176 Rue Bernard O, Montréal, QC H2T 2K2, Canada, 176 Rue Bernard O, Montréal, QC H2T 2K2, Canada,Montreal, Quebec
