Kurt Vonnegut once said that you can't be a serious writer of fiction unless you're depressed. But the writers of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry who came together to celebrate at Lion d'Or on Tuesday were anything but. Members of the Montreal literati packed into the 1930s-style club for the 2009 Quebec Writers' Federation Literary Awards Gala to honour the achievements of the Quebec writing community. Many thank you's to mothers were given, cheap beers provided by MacAuslan were had, and jokes about cheap beer (and mothers) were enjoyed by all.

Montreal-based cartoonist and musician Rick Trembles has been hailed as a hardworking twisted genius by "journalists", fellow-musicians and legendary figures such as Robert Crumb.

Motion Picture Purgatory Volume 2 is Rick's second collection of "comic-strip concoctions configured to critique film" and it recently came out on Fab Press.

Listen up, heathens. Author, radio producer, and bitingly funny oddball Jonathan Goldstein is holding a book launch event tonight for his latest book: Ladies and Gentleman, The Bible Goldstein is best known for his radio work on This American Life and CBC's smartest show Wiretap, but tonight he gets out of the studio in an attempt to revive that most sacred of texts, the Bible (so sacred it needs a capital B).

The event is taking place over at Drawn and Quarterly (in itself a reason to go), and it will feature a Q and A with Jonathan and a special guest appearance from Montreal Cartoonist and Wiretap star Howard Chackowicz. Apparently there's also a slide show story about dating Lois Lane after she breaks up with Superman.

I'm telling you about this for 2 reasons:

We Love Books! is an exhibition bringing together books from the four corners of the earth. Foreign designers, whether graphic artists or typographers, are throwing a new and fascinating light upon generally accessible publications.This festival took place last November in Échirolles (France). Mars et Avril is a modern photo-novel hybrid with a unbridled cohesion between text and images.Two books from Mars et Avril published by local ad agency Sid Lee and La Pastèque were selected among the best. See some pages of the book after the jump.

Posters from Expozine 2006. Photo: "5th anniversary party" by Flickr user sfflaw.

At the mention of the word “zine,” most people think of quaint little booklets plastered in riot grrrl scrawls and anarchy symbols. Wildly popular in the early 1990’s, they faded from public awareness and were chalked up as a fad. Right?

Wrong. Zine culture is alive and kicking. There’s no better place to be than Montreal, a fertile playing ground for a dizzying array of genres. There are smut zines, bike zines, feminist zines, queer zines, fashion zines, all manner of zines.

The Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival is here, for the 10th consecutive year. It starts today and runs until Sunday, May 4th and focuses on the theme “On the Road.” Like most things literary, this festival is perhaps a bit more low-key than other Montreal festivals, but the degree of talent remains the same. I highly recommend checking out a few of the events; many of them are free, and even the ones that aren't are cheap enough to merit a trip out.

A few highlights:

This afternoon (4pm), hear bilingual writers discuss the challenges that come with writing in a language that is not your mother tongue, with authors K. Madavane, Wei-Wei and Nathalie Stephens ($5). And while we’re thinking about languages, Thursday, May 1st sees the Translation Slam ($10), where one francophone poet and one Anglophone poet will have their work translated by two different translators. Who says poetry doesn’t get rowdy?

It’s been a while since City Lit: Roundup hit Midnight Poutine, but this week is kind of exciting, so I can’t not give you a heads up.

First of all, get ready for the 10th Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, beginning April 30th and running until May 4th. The program looks promising! Be sure to take note of Montreal's small-publishing house, Longbridge Books’, first book launch. It’s a great idea to support local publishing houses, and the books they’re releasing sound great – not to mention, two of them are by Montreal authors ( Licia Canton’s Almond Wine and Fertility and D.C. Iannuzzi’s City of Sinners).

My apologies for missing the roundup last week, but things are back on track now! Oh, and March 21st is World Poetry Day, so celebrate it in style!

Here's some events to bookmark this week (March 17th – March 23rd):

Tonight (March 17th) is the WithWords Press book launch for Jason Camlot’s The Fruit Man and Other Poems and Gillian Sze’s A Tender Invention. These two are great Montreal talents, so poetry lovers, check this out. At Kafein (1429a Bishop), readings start at 7pm sharp.

On Wednesday, March 19th, playwright and best-selling novelist Trevor Ferguson will be speaking and signing books between 5 & 7 PM at Théâtre La Chapelle. Contact for reservations to see the play after!

My apologies to those expecting a "This Week in Montreal Blogs"- my laptop has been temporarily expropriated by Future Shop and as such I haven't had much opportunity to check out what's been going on in the blogosphere. Instead, I've been forced to interact with loved ones and actually initiate human contact, such as the book launch I attended tonight with a friend, for the Canadian art history tome "Beyond Wilderness".

Head down to the library and pick up King Leary by Paul Quarrington - it's the winning book in CBC's Canada Reads 2008 contest

Just in time for International Women's Week - all women travelers! ms. guided, a literary journal devoted to the traveling woman’s experience, has extended their deadline for submissions to March 15th. The theme is “Change Of Course” and includes stories, poems or personal accounts, and photos or drawings. Email submissions only!

Here are the events to bookmark for this week (March 3rd to March 9th):

Canada Reads 2008 begins this week, bringing five celebrity panelists together to discuss what book Canada should read for 2008. Listen to the arguments on CBC Radio One at 11:30am or 7:30pm, or podcast it. The five novels being debated include Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring, Mavis Gallant's From the Fifteenth District, and Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage.

The CBC Literary Awards winners have been announced, with some Montrealers bringing home some of the prizes. Shelagh Plunkett won 1st place in Creative Nonfiction, André Roy winning 1st place for Poetry (in French) and Tania Langlais getting 2nd place for Poetry (in French).

Here are the events to bookmark for this week (February 25th - March 2nd) (sorry, it seems to be a slow week!):

Calling all writers! Montreal’s Matrix Magazine, one of my favourite literary journals, has put out the call for submissions for unpublished prose or poetry fitting the lovely theme The Gallows Humour Dossier – so anything dark, absurd, weird, sarcastic, witty….a.k.a. what poets do best. Deadline is April 11th, email submissions preferred.

If your New Year’s resolution was to finally get around to writing that Pulitzer prize novel you’ve been putting off for three years, here’s a good way to kickstart your writing: the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s writing workshops. They’re open for registration, with many classes to choose from: writing fiction, documentary, comedy writing, poetry and creative non-fiction, to name a few.

And some events to bookmark this week (February 18th – February 24th):