WILD PRIDE x Telling Queer Stories

Join us at Joie de Livres for a conversation on queer storytelling and belonging, where we explore the many ways queer stories shape culture and plant seeds for livable futures. Authors weave together works of food, romance, resistance, collective care, joy, technology, desire, and connection in celebration of the queer stories we tell.

There will be readings from authors and book signing.

Panelists: Dr. Alex Ketchum, Ayla Vejdani, francesca ekwuyasi, and Ayavi Lake

Moderator: Dr. Casey Burkholder

Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her) is an Associate Professor at McGill University’s Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF). She is an elected member of the Royal Society of Canada: College of New Scholars. Ketchum is the Director of the Just Feminist Tech and Scholarship Lab. She is the author of several books including  Engage in Public Scholarship!: A Guidebook on Feminist and Accessible Communication, Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses, How to Organize Inclusive Events and Conferences, and the forthcoming “Digital Queers, and High Tech Gays: A History of LGBTQ+ Cyber Activism.” She is also co-editor of the anthology: Queers at the Table: An Illustrated Guide to Queer Food with Recipes.

alexketchum.ca | @dr.alexketchum

Ayla Vejdani (she/her) is a storyteller, holder of space, and curator of experience. Her debut novel YOU X ME weaves a series of queer, BIPOC love stories. These modern entanglements are the kind of romances that make us lose sleep, love letters to the friendships we can’t live without, and a celebration of our endless journeys of self-discovery. Raised and educated all over the world, she has a master’s in human rights, is a certified brain-based inclusive leadership consultant and the co-host of The SHIFT podcast. She speaks four languages and laughs in all. Ayla is a queer Iranian-Canadian from Tkaronto/Toronto living in Tiohtia:ke/Montréal. She is an insatiably creative, hopeful romantic who believes in magic.

iamayla.com | @ayla.author

francesca ekwuyasi (she/her) is the author of Butter Honey Pig Bread and co-author of Curious Sounds: A Dialogue in Three Movements. She won the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LGBTQIA2S+ writers, and has been short and Longlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, the Governor General Award, the Amazon First Novel Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Dublin International Literary Award and others. She lives between Montreal and Halifax.

ekwuyasi.com | @f.ekwuyasi/

Dr. Casey Burkholder (she/her) is a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Social Justice in Youth and Child Studies, an Associate Professor at Concordia University, and the director of the JOYLab. From 2017-2024, Casey worked as an Associate Professor at the University of New Brunswick. In choosing a research path at the intersection of resistance&activism, gender, sexuality, DIY media-making, art production, queer joy, and participatory archiving, Casey engages in research for social change through participatory visual approaches to local issues with 2SLGBTQ+ youth, adults, elders and teachers. She is the co-founder of the Fredericton Feminist Film Collective, and is the PI of Pride/Swell+ and SexualityNB.

caseyburkholder.com | @joy_lab.mtl 

Ayavi Lake (she/her) was born in Dakar, Senegal. After her studies in Paris, she moved to Quebec – those three territories leave their mark in her writings. Her short fiction collection Le Marabout (VLB éditeur, 2019), in which she plays with the lore of the Parc-Extension neighborhood, won the Prix des Horizons imaginaires 2020, and is currently being adapted by filmmaker Miryam Charles. In 2022, she published La Sarzène (VLB éditeur), a novel that explores questions of transmission, including through books. Her texts can be found in many anthologies, such as Futurs (Triptyque, 2020), Canons – Onze déclarations d’amour littéraire (VLB éditeur, 2023), Selfies – Autoportraits d’enfants du siècle (Le Cheval d’août, 2023) and many others, as well as literary magazines, including Solaris, Moebius, Le Sabord and Words Without Borders. Ayavi Lake teaches literature in Montreal. She is currently working on a queer, feminist, afrofuturist tale and on a thematic sequel of Le Marabout.