Violet Hour: 10 Years of Metonymy Press

Created in 2014 by Ashley Fortier and Oliver Fugler, Metonymy Press aims to reduce barriers to publishing for authors whose perspectives are underrepresented in order to produce quality materials relevant to queer, feminist, and social justice communities.

Violet Hour’s Christopher DiRaddo will be speaking with publishers Ashley and Oliver about Metonymy’s beginnings and the past decade. We’ll also be hearing from press authors H Felix Chau Bradley and Kama La Mackerel, and there will be readings from Ralph Haddad and Leila Marshy, both of whom appear in Metonymy’s recent release, El Ghourabaa: A Queer and Trans Collection of Oddities.

A partnership between Metonymy Press, Librairie Pulp Books & Cafe, The Équipe de recherche en études Queer au Québec and Violet Hour.

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ABOUT THE PRESS

Metonymy Press is based in Tio’tià:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory. For ten years, Metonymy has been publishing literary works by emerging queer and trans writers — what one author described as “books that reframe power and affirm life.” They really want to keep gay book lovers satisfied.

Metonymy is the project of Ashley Fortier and Oliver Fugler. They met on their first day of high school and have been writing together and editing for each other ever since. Their work is supported by a fantastic roster of collaborators, including acquisitions editors H Felix Chau Bradley, Kama La Mackerel, and Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch.

ABOUT THE WRITERS

H Felix Chau Bradley is a writer and editor living in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). They are the author of Personal Attention Roleplay, a story collection. You can find their recent work in carte blanche, ESPACE art actuel, the Ex-Puritan, GLYPHÖRIA, the Humber Literary Review, PRISM International, Words Without Borders and Xtra.

Ralph Haddad specialized in Islamic Studies with a Concentration on emerging Gender and Sexuality studies coming out of and around Southwest Asia. He currently serves as the Head of Advocacy for Basmeh and Zeitooneh, a Syrian refugee-led organization based in Lebanon, where he aims to advance the cause of refugee protection at such a critical juncture in Lebanese history. Ralph is Lebanese-born and currently resides in Montreal, but is perpetually in search of home.

Kama La Mackerel is an educator, visual artist, performer, writer and translator who works between and across English, French and Mauritian Kreol. They are the author of the award-winning poetry collection ZOM-FAM (Metonymy Press) and have translated works by Canadian writers Vivek Shraya and Kai Cheng Thom. They have lectured, performed and exhibited their work internationally. Find them on social media @kamalamackerel

Leila Marshy is a Palestinian-Montrealer. During the First Intifada, she worked for the Palestinian Red Crescent, the Palestinian Mental Health Association, and Medical Aid for Palestine. In 2011, she founded Friends of Hutchison, a groundbreaking community group bringing Hasidic and non-Hasidic neighbours together in dialogue. Her first novel, The Philistine, was published in 2018 and in French in 2021. Her collection of stories, My Thievery of the People, will be out in March 2025. She is Fiction Editor at Baraka Books.