Feminist Writing Retreat at Salon58
SPECIAL EDITION: 5TH ANNIVERSARY
On Saturday, May 10, 2025, starting at 7 p.m., the 5th edition of our highly acclaimed Feminist Cabaret will be held at the Marsoui Recreation Center!
Year after year, Salon58’s writing retreat brings together writers and the public to share the texts and ideas generated by the week’s writing. On the menu: readings, performances and discussions!
The Feminist Writing Retreat
For this anniversary edition, at the invitation of the Retreat team, 17 of the 38 people who took part in previous editions will gather at Salon58 to contribute to a special formula inspired by the concept of the exquisite corpse. In a nod to the 100th anniversary of Surrealism (1924-2024), we pose the following question: what can feminist thought and practice do to shake up or question this artistic movement? Over the course of a week, the authors will work on individual texts with their own trajectories, tonalities and themes, but which will be linked: the last sentence of one text will always be the first of the next, in the manner of an exquisite cadaver.
The result of this conceptual and collective work will be presented as a performative reading on Saturday, May 10, 2025, then printed as an artisanal zine by Noeuds Éditions and widely distributed by Mandoline Hybride and its partners.
17 authors from Caplan, Douglastown, Eastman, Gaspé, La Martre, Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Maria, Matane, Mont-Louis, Mont-Saint-Pierre, Montréal, Rimouski and Sainte-Anne-des-Monts will benefit from the support of 4 facilitators working professionally in the fields of literature, dance, visual arts and communications: Karla Etienne (Montréal), Élise Ross-Nadié (Montréal), Emma Desgens (Mont-Saint-Pierre) and Priscilla Guy (Marsoui).
THE CABARET
Saturday, May 10, 2025 7 to 10 p.m.
At the Marsoui Recreation Center
Tickets:
- Regular rate: $20 (taxes and fees included)
- Solidarity rate: $35 (taxes and fees included)
A bar will be available on site.
Payment by credit card or cash will be accepted.
Participants 2025
Alexandra Dion-Fortin, Sainte-Anne-des-Monts, Îles-de-la-Madeleine
Inspired by the observation of natural, architectural, poetic and living life, Alexandra Dion-Fortin explores by hand the colors and grays of the world around her. As a visual artist, illustrator, cartoonist, architectural designer, author and sometimes poet or filmmaker, she wears many hats to anchor herself in just as many projects. She studied architecture between 2012 and 2020 in Montreal (Tio’tia:ke). She now devotes herself to her artistic projects, dividing her time between the wave-swept island (Menagoesenog) and the Haute-Gaspésie (7th district of Gespe’gewa’gi). Watercolor, lead and colored pencil are her favorite tools. Her left hand and face are often covered in color when she draws the living. She hopes one day to witness a social and environmental revolution, and intends to fill her eyes with as many rivers as possible. (Photo: © Gabrielle D. Fortin)
Camille Montagne, Mont-Louis
Camille Tremblay Fournier, Gaspé
Camille Tremblay-Fournier always does a bit too much (teacher, social worker, doula, queer feminist activist, community organizer), one buttock between the Gaspé, Montreal, the Magdalen Islands and Northern Quebec. While she’s most passionate about poems that hurt or make you laugh, it’s political essays on social reproduction and feminized labor that have fueled her creative existence in recent years. Her ambition, in the distant future, is to let go of her prefrontal cortex in favor of sensations, in order to pick up the ideas that have been nagging at her (Photo: © Courtesy of the author).
Charlotte Vaidye-Bourgault, Douglastown
Charlotte Vaidye-Bourgault composes poetry and music between Gaspé and Montreal. Her musical project Char is an invitation into a dreamlike, unusual universe. Char plays on various Quebec cultural stages, including Gesù, Théâtre de la Vieille Forge, La Pointe Sec and Verre Bouteille. Her music, both introspective and contemplative, aims to redefine song in its own way and create an encounter with everyone⸱e sensibility. She’s releasing a pop-flavored, quirky and buoyant album in 2022, as well as an experimental microalbum in 2023. Her poetic texts have appeared at the Festival d’arts littéraires de Gaspé (2022 and 2024) and the Retraite d’écriture féministe à Salon58 (2023). Charlotte believes in ghosts, in the infinite power of community gathering and in poetry as our greatest opportunity. (Photo: © Guillaume Boulay)
Claire Moeder, Maria
Claire Moeder is an author. Based in Gaspésie since 2017, she initiates literary projects in the form of experimental walks, writing workshops and microeditions where human narratives and singular territories are linked. As a creator and walker in motion, she is also open to new feminist approaches to writing about the place of the living, motherhood and the sovereignty of the body.
Claire has collaborated on several magazines (Ciel variable, Vie des arts, Le Sabord), creations and residencies (DARE DARE, AdMare, Jardins de Métis, Centre SAGAMIE) linking writing to the visual arts. In 2024, she published the poetry collection le ventre des roches (Éditions du Noroît) and the micro-publication les marcheuses. In 2025, she will publish les eaux, a book created six-handed with artists Alphiya Joncas and Anne-Marie Proulx in the Magdalen Islands (Les éditions de la Morue verte & AdMare). (Photo: © La Nomade photographie)
Gabrielle Huot-Foch, Montréal
A lifelong literary artist who has worked in a variety of contexts and jobs, Gabrielle has made the reinvention of the self an ongoing object of interest. In addition to being inhabited by (almost) constant self-doubt, she has completed a Master’s degree in research-creation focusing on the relationship between care, space and self-narratives. She has also published two zines in collaboration with Atelier universel and texts in the magazines Les Écrits, Mœbius and Liberté. At present, she is trying to rediscover writing in her new daily life as a teacher (Photo: © Élise Deschênes).
Jess Roy, Montréal
Jess Roy is no stranger to wandering, jumping from rooster to donkey and cracking jokes. She’s one of the people behind Coup d’Griffe, l’Attaque, Hochelaga Mon Amour, Zine de zines and a host of other projects. Founder of Nœuds Éditions, she’s busy bringing to the world stories and voices she’s been searching for too long – so you don’t have to. She mixes genres in her own way, always using art and literature as unifying and transformative tools. (Photo: © Courtesy of the author)
Joé·e Dufresne, Montréal
A bimbo camouflaged in a teenage body and parent to a toddler raised in a proto-commune, Joé-e Dufresne is also co-founder of the feminist bookshop L’Euguélionne, and has worked there since it opened in 2016. From 2012 to 2023, she worked with the micro-publishing and printmaking collective Possibles éditions. Her writing veins meander along the lines of autotheory, subversive maternity and the archaeology of hidden queer histories of female icons in popular culture. Joé-e lives in Montréal/Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang, with her queer family of five adults, one child and a German shepherd. (Photo: © Camille Gravel)
Joëlle Gauvin-Racine, Saint-Jean-Port-Joli
Joëlle Gauvin-Racine lives in the L’Islet region, on Wolastokuk, the ancestral territory of the Wolastoqey nation. She is a poet and anthropologist. Her poems have appeared in the magazines Exit and Caminando, on the Fabrique culturelle and on the poetry bulletin board at Quebec City’s Maison de la littérature. Through her poetic writing, she seeks ways to stand firm in the midst of the multiple griefs that are part of our existence, without giving up and without abandoning joy. In 2023, Joëlle was a finalist for the Prix Relève professionnelle in Chaudière-Appalaches. She likes to write by a window, read by her lover and live by the trees (Photo: © Courtesy of the author).
Katy Collet, Douglastown
Katy Collet, also known as Trace d’encre, is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist who lives and loves the Gaspé Peninsula. A community and cultural worker, her artistic approach is inseparable from her collective and social commitment. With the intention of creating art that connects, she is interested in the links of belonging and interdependence between communities, territory, nature and living together. She is co-founder of La Griffe (2022), an independent publication with a social flavor in the Gaspé Peninsula, as well as Ateliers À Travers in Percé (2023), a space dedicated to printed art by and for artists and the general public. At the same time, she has embarked on a co-writing project on living in an intentional community in a remote region, where she reflects on the inconsistencies that run through us and the difficulties to be overcome, because of the choice of such a lifestyle. Her studio door is always open for a peek or a chat (Photo: © Isabelle Huard).
Laurence Lallier-Roussin, La Martre
Laurence Lallier-Roussin (elle/il) is a multidisciplinary artist. Her site-specific show La pointe mouillée will be presented at FURIES – festival de danse contemporaine in July 2025. Laurence is the author of Conte bright comme une pierre précieuse (2025), a little book that crosses the political potential of wonderful oral tales with queer speculative fiction imaginaries. She is also producer and curator of POST-FURIES and the Post-Pistoles cabaret, initiatives that disseminate performance art and unclassifiable living arts in community and queer contexts. Laurence lives in Haute-Gaspésie (Photo: © Audrée Lewka)
Leïla Sofiane, Caplan
Trained in social theatre and computer science, Leïla Sofiane has become a spoken word artist. Their practice weaves between libraries, their journals, and their journey through the surrounding landscapes. While their thinking is queer and intersectional, their work is a quest for accessibility, beauty, and ecstasy. They share poetic fragments on Quebec stages, through micro-publishing, in printed collections and magazines, as well as online.
In their spare time, they tend to vegetables, their chosen family, and a rebellious spirit, in Gespe’gewa’gi, the unceded Mi’gmaq territory commonly known as the Gaspé Peninsula. (Photo: © Lolographer)
Marie-Pier Bédard, Mont-Saint-Pierre
Originally from Richelieu in Montérégie, Marie-Pier Bédard moved to Mont-Saint-Pierre in Gaspésie in 2016. In 2022, she completed a graduate microprogram in art therapy to bridge the gap between her professional life and her own creative process. This experience decomplexed her relationship with creation and enabled her to take on an autotelic practice; first through painting, then through writing. With a degree in social work, she truncated her career in 2023 for teaching arts and culture in secondary schools. She took part in her first feminist writing retreat in Salon58 in 2023. Since then, she has published texts in the magazines Magazine Gaspésie and La Griffe, and in the collection Je garde mes lunettes fumées près de moi. Her paintings were exhibited in the village square of Mont-Saint-Pierre in the summer of 2024 and will be in March 2026 at the Chic-Chocs school service center. There’s no doubt she’s off to a flying start (Photo: © GLang)
Michelle Gauthier, Eastman
Her professional career has been marked by many years devoted to teaching. This immersion at the heart of learning not only nourished her mind, but also cultivated a fascination for language and its power.
Her attachment to reading and writing has stayed with her over the years. Exploring a diversity of subjects, constantly learning and seeking to understand the complex world around us through the prism of words are passions that drive her every day.
Today, she pursues this literary exploration with the hope that her creative journey may inspire those around her, revealing to them the beauty of personal expression and the importance of leaving a unique mark. (Photo: © Courtemanche)
Nadia Gagné, Rimouski
A multidisciplinary artist based in Rimouski, Nadia Gagné works mainly in performance/installation, in the visual and living arts. Narrative, speech and writing run through all her creations. Deploying self-reflexive works or the voices of other subject-persons, her work questions determinisms, injunctions, commonplaces and other inducers of social discomfort. More recently, she has taken an interest in the experience of racialization and exoticization of people who are said to be mixed-race, but whose cultural identity is not. Her projects are most often developed in the context of residencies, notably at Clark, Caravansérail, Espaces F, Ubchihica, CLAC Mitis and Théâtre du Bic (Photo: © Laurie Edwidge Cardinal).
Nathalie Bernier, Matane
Trained as an actress, Nathalie Bernier has been active in her region’s cultural milieu for nearly 20 years. A versatile, neurodivergent artist, she writes, directs and acts both on stage and for the camera. Various grants have enabled her to distribute her short films in Canada and Europe. She has been seen on many stages as a light-hearted yet intense actress, as well as in every edition of La Soirée des doublures as a performer-improviser. Nathalie lives in Matane and also coordinates a feminist organization in the Lower Laurentians that works to defend collective rights. (Photo: © Courtesy of the author)
Rayla Corbeil, Montréal
At 9:28 p.m. sharp, April 7, 2025, Raÿla remembers that she has to send in her biography by midnight tonight, along with a 12-page assignment. As usual, she surprises herself by forgetting one assignment, but will certainly forget the next. Raÿla’s nature is sparse, jovial and sensitive. She loves life with her roommates, bike trips and the La Noce festival party bus more than anything. She hates moving appliances, the anti-choice sandwich man who hangs out in front of her university and, while we’re at it, the current political climate. Raÿla is currently studying sexology and dreams of a world where she could write more poetry and less essays. She has published in a number of literary magazines and hopes one day to bring out a collection. A project was born at last year’s retreat (2024). Who knows, maybe this edition will give her the space she needs to pursue her mission! (Photo: © Rémi Ouellette)
Facilitators 2025
Élise Ross-Nadié, Montréal
Élise Ross-Nadié is passionate about the links, nodes and intersections between digital cultures, power and dreams. She also has a keen interest in free software, the decolonization of knowledge and Afrofuturism. She has had the privilege of taking her stories and hybrid projects to over fifteen countries. Her adventures have produced all kinds of artifacts: Wikipedia articles, a guide to identifying wild roses, great friendships, an extraordinary literary tour, a collective work between Canada and Cuba, a collection of feminist texts and numerous dance sessions. In 2023, she received the Alliance grant from the Montréal Art Interculturels organization. She works for Liberté magazine, the Festival de la poésie de Montréal and participates in the Retraite d’écriture féministe for the 3rd time.
Emma Desgen, Mont-Saint-Pierre
Emma Desgens is an artist who works in social intervention in schools and with the elderly. Her creations, both literary and visual, echo the everyday and the ordinary, combining the fractures that forge human beings with the gentleness it takes to repair them. Inspired by the intimate, she seeks to transcribe the dialogue between what inhabits us and what surrounds us. She is currently working on a collection of poems dealing with grief, filiation and writing through her own cultural and family heritage. She is also the instigator of the Feminist Writing Retreat at Salon58 and co-editor of the 2023 retreat collection Je garde mes lunettes fumées près de moi.
Karla Etienne, Montréal
Of Haitian origin, living in Tiohtià:ke, Montreal, Karla Etienne is a dance artist and cultural manager. She has worked with Zab Maboungou and collaborated as a dancer on projects by George Stamos, Katya Montaignac, Sophie Corriveau, Kimberley de Jong and Priscilla Guy. She is interested in the persistence of the body in space as an act of resistance and self-sublimation. She wrote a text on Bill Robinson’s emancipatory dance in Lo: Tech: Pop: Cult: Screendance Remixed, to be published by Routledge in 2024, edited by Priscilla Guy and Alanna Thain. She continues to contribute as a mentor and advisor to artists and arts organizations. Karla Etienne is Executive Director of the Canadian Dance Assembly and guest artist-curator at Mandoline Hybride. In 2021, Karla receives the Prix Stellaire de Nyata Nyata for service to the greater dance community.
Priscilla Guy, Marsoui
Priscilla Guy is an artist, curator and arts researcher based in Marsoui, Gespe’gewa’gi (Gaspésie). Her stage and film works are presented locally and internationally. She publishes texts in art magazines (Moebius, Moveo, Dance Current, 24images, International Journal of Screendance) and participates in various academic publications as an author or editor (Oxford, Routledge, UDLAP). Holder of a doctorate in feminist and cinematic studies from the Université de Lille (France), she has directed the cultural organization Mandoline Hybride since 2007, and has initiated several artistic development and dissemination projects (Regards Hybrides, Salon58, FURIES, L’Hybride — café & librairie). She currently sits on the boards of Studio 303, Orange Noyée and the Corporation de développement de la Haute-Gaspésie et des Chic-chocs. Finalist for the Prix Artiste dans la communauté by Les Arts et la ville (2023), she received the Prix Culture from LOJIQ (2012) and the Prix Étincelle from the Prix de la danse de Montréal (2022).
Previous editions
4th edition – May 2024
with Emma Desgens, Priscilla Guy, Karla Etienne & Élise-Ross Nadié
See photos of the Cabaret >
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3rd edition – April 2023
with Catherine Beau-Ferron, Emma Desgens, Priscilla Guy, Karla Etienne & Élise-Ross Nadié
See photos of the Cabaret >
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2nd edition – April 2022
with Catherine Beau-Ferron, Emma Desgens, Priscilla Guy, Karla Etienne & Élise-Ross Nadié
See photos of the Cabaret >
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1st edition – April 2021
with Catherine Beau-Ferron, Emma Desgens and Priscilla Guy
Photos: René Faulkner
Partners
This project received financial support from the Programme de partenariat territorial de La Haute-Gaspésie. La Retraite is also supported by the Canada Council for the Arts | Conseil des arts du Canada. Special thanks to the Municipality of Marsoui, Noeuds Éditions and Poème en août.