Author: Chris

The 2021 documentary I took part in is now available to watch online in its entirety. Creative Spaces: Queer and Italian Canadian, directed by Licia Canton, looks into the intersections of queerness and Italian-Canadian identity, featuring (in addition to myself) writers Luca Cusmano and Steve Galluccio, and University of Sherbooke professor Domenico A. Beneventi.

You can watch the (28-minute) documentary below.

I leave for Guadalajara tomorrow. I’m going to attend the Feria Internacional del Libro (FIL), the second largest book fair in the world (Sharjah is the guest of honour). This is a wonderful opportunity. Blue Met invited me to attend as part of their delegation, and I’m honoured. On Monday (Nov. 28), I’ll be taking part in an event called Queer Literature and Auto-Narrative: How to Tell with Adel B. Khelifa and Marie-Andrée Lamontagne. The event will be in French with live interpretation into Spanish.

The publishing world descends upon Guadalajara for the FIL, so there is also the opportunity to meet other writers, publishers, and festival directors (I’ve already been invited to half a dozen receptions). This is something I’ve always dreamed about – getting to represent my country, and talk about my work, to foreign audiences. To make lasting international connections.

In advance of my appearance, I was interviewed about the trip by writer and radio host of La Décima Radio, Rob Hernandez. There’s also a write up in Mural, a leading independent publication.

I’ll write and share the experience when I get back. Wish me luck.

It’s August, so I am feeling nostalgic about Provincetown. It’s been a while since I’ve been, but for a number of years, my boyfriend, friends and I would rent a house for a week and fill it with love, food, laughter and sex (not necessarily in that order).

Provincetown has always been such a magical place for me that I wanted to write about its transformative powers. “The Sun in Our Bodies” explores the pull of the seaside village on one couple’s relationship.

Those of you who have read The Family Way might notice similar characters or plot points. I wrote this short story while also writing the novel, so I guess each is inspired by the other.

Read “The Sun in Our Bodies.”

Last month, Violet Hour presented Queer & Italian in Montreal at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Montreal as part of the Fierté Montréal Pride celebrations.

I got the idea for this event after learning that Montreal’s Pointe a Calliere Museum had recently wrapped their Italian Montreal exhibit with no real mention of the contributions of LGBTQ Montrealers of Italian origin. I felt this would be a good opportunity to correct that omission, celebrating our accomplishments while also creating a conversation around what more can be done to create change and foster acceptance among the old guard.

The event took the form of a screening of the short documentary Creative Spaces: Queer and Italian Canadian and a panel discussion about the past, present and future of queer Italian-Canadian culture in the city featuring Gaspare Borsellino (Gruppo Italiano Gay e Lesbico di Montreal), V Di Gregorio (CIAO – Canadian Italians Against Oppression), and Steve Galluccio (Mambo Italiano). I hosted the talk, which you can now watch below.

There was a lot of electricity in the room that night and many of us left wanting more events like this (I’m working on it, so stay tuned).

Big thanks to my partners on this one: Istituto Italiano di Cultura Montreal (Sandro, Laura), Fierté Montréal Pride (Guillaume, Oswaldo) and Accenti Magazine (Licia, Domenic).

Given that June is Pride Month, Accenti Magazine asked if they could publish my essay, “Pictures and Parades,” about a series of photographs taken by me or my friends at Montreal’s Pride parade over the years (the first image I write about is below).

Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, I worked for Divers/Cité, the organization responsible for producing Montreal’s LGBTQ Pride Celebrations at the time (here’s a super clip of some of the interviews I did). Landing that job was life changing for me in the same way that Pride parades were also transformative. I used to buy upwards of a dozen rolls of film to capture the week(back when we didn’t have smart phones or digital cameras). Sifting through the physical copies over the years, they all tend to blend one into the other, but in some of the images there are the invisible moments of my then young queer life.

The essay appears in last year’s Here and Now: An Anthology of Queer
Italian-Canadian Writing (along with “The Sun in Our Bodies,” a short story I wrote that inspired part of The Family Way). But you can read “Pictures and Parades” by clicking here.

On Thursday, July 21, I’ll be hosting a special event at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Montreal called “Queer and Italian in Montreal.” An official part of this year’s Fierté Montreal Pride, this event will be a festive celebration of queer Italian-Canadian life and culture in the city

The idea for this event came after I learned that the 2021 “Italian Montreal” exhibit at the Pointe-à-Callière Museum (which set out to shine “a spotlight on the daily lives of Montréal’s earliest Italian immigrants and on the ways in which the community has evolved over the past century) neglected to include any information about the contributions made by LGBTQ Italians. Most notable was the omission of the work of writer Steve Galluccio, whose year 2000 play Mambo Italiano made an enormous impact in the city and put a spotlight on the love lives of Montreal’s gay Italian-Canadians.

Well, we hope to correct that oversight with this event.

Joining me and Steve on stage will be Gaspare Borsellino (president of the Gruppo Italiano Gay e Lesbico di Montreal, a social club for LGBTQ folks of Italian origin that played a significant role in queer cultural life in Montreal in the 1990s) and Vee DG (writer, photographer and co-founder of CIAO – Canadian Italians Against Oppression). Together, we will talk about the past, present and future of queer Italian-Canadian culture in the city.

As part of the event, we will also be screening Creative Spaces: Queer and Italian Canadian (Licia Canton, 2021), a short documentary that explores the intersections of queerness, creativity and culture with three Italian-Canadian writers living in Montreal. Featured in the documentary are Domenico A. Beneventi, Liana Cusmano, Steve Galluccio, and yours truly.

“Queer and Italian in Montreal” is free and takes place on Thursday, July 21, 2022, from 7 PM to 9 PM at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Montreal (1200 ave du Docteur-Penfield). Click here to reserve your place.

Big thanks go out to Sandro Cappelli and his team at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Montreal, as well as Fierté Montreal Pride, and Accenti magazine. I couldn’t have done it without everyone’s support.

Hope to see you there.