Five Dials Takes Quebec!
With the help of the Quebec Ministry of Culture and the Quebecois writer’s union, we launched a bumper November issue of Five Dials at the Maison des Ecrivains in Montreal on Saturday night, mixing up Francophone and Anglophone writers with some of our favourite regulars. It was a whirlwind two days of meetings, planning, editing and, finally, launching, but a good time was had by all and we met some great new writers (at least, new to us) and made a lot of new friends.
As always, we like to send out the issue from an interesting place and to make sure the ‘send’ button is pressed by an interesting person. In Montreal we were introduced to Richard Fortier, who works at la Maison des ecrivains but is also a country and western singer. Richard grew up in the northern reaches of Quebec and he agreed to sing one of his favorite Quebecois songs before pressing the button. ‘I am going to sing Mille Après Mille,’ he told us earlier. ‘It’s by a country singer who is no longer with us, Willie Lamothe. It’s a sad song, a reminder of when I was young. For us, country and western is like the fado for the Portuguese. It makes me cry.’
Thanks again to Richard for launching the issue and to Stanley and Andre for making the night such a success.