The Carton Half-Full
yolk Celebrates its Sixth Anniversary
Photo by Sean Smallwood
Six years ago, local literary magazine yolk broke out of its shell and splattered all over Montreal’s literary scene by way of an event called Egg the Poet. The Instagram post promoting this event is captioned as follows: “Come join us January 17th to celebrate the launch of Yolk, a new Montreal-based literary journal dedicated to the word. This is a chance to share what is ours and soon to become yours.” This week, yolk is celebrating what they’ve dubbed “a half-dozen eggs” and hosting a sixth anniversary party. Join readers, writers, and all those similarly dedicated to the word at Parquette this Thursday, April ninth from seven pm to midnight; more information is available at yolk’s website: https://www.yolkliterary.ca/
In 2020, yolk’s founding members—Alexandre Marceau, Curtis John McRae, Josh Quirion, Sean Lee, Clare Chodos-Irvine, and Spencer Nafekh—defined their project as such: “Yolk began as an electric conversation around a picnic table in Saint Henri Square. We are undergraduate, graduate, and graduated students of writing. Some of us learn our craft formally from accomplished authors in seminar courses, and some of us learn by looking out the window of the world and onto the streets that sing below. Some of us learn from screaming squirrels, old curtains, grandfathers, and bowel movements. We learn from old lovers, long winters, and from the deep internet where a musical genius remains entombed…”
In the lead-up to yolk’s sixth anniversary party, I spoke to Jeremy Audet, the magazine’s Director of Marketing and Non-Fiction Editor, who has been “in yolk’s periphery since it began” and attended the first Egg the Poet. He describes the experience on his Substack page: “Five years ago, a small apartment or art gallery overflowing with patrons gathered to enjoy a poetry reading was an event somehow both rare and annoying. It was moralizing to see a community of young, inspired artists take shape before our eyes, writers come together to celebrate and practice writingfor the sake of writing. It legitimized our passions, our desire for art to be communal and considered a ‘serious’ venture. It was annoying because the city was so evidently in need of more opportunities for writers. The writers were there, in search of common ground and likeminded peers.”
Having officially joined yolk’s team in 2022, Jeremy proudly declares, “even from a personal standpoint, I can say that I love yolk. I think it’s one of the coolest projects to come out of CanLit in the last six years in terms of scope and ambition”. Looking back on the magazine’s genesis, Jeremy asserts that “yolk was well-placed and well-timed, both coming into and out of the pandemic” and amidst “a wave of interest in publishing and in literature and the arts”. He claims that “yolk was fortunate in its timing, being at the forefront of this new wave”, and that over the past six years, “yolk showed people that it was possible to contribute to a community of writers that has always been around—to do this and to do it well”.
yolk has offered writers from Montreal and beyond tangible opportunities to showcase their writing, make connections, and better understand the industry into which they hope to enter. Jeremy emphasizes that the magazine is focused on “showing people what the strength of community can do, and showing people that it’s possible to put your foot in the door in an industry that is otherwise dominated by Toronto, the Big Five publishing houses, and university programs.” Acknowledging that “the professional opportunities for publishing, creative writing, and literary studies in Canada are few and far between”, Jeremy proudly highlighted the ways in which yolk has attempted to fill those gaps.
For the past two years, yolk has been home to the Montreal Fiction Prize, which editor-in-chief Curtis John McRae describes as “a new Canadian fiction prize to further bolster, and provide new and valuable opportunities for, Canadian writers. I believe that through the continued creation of multiple well-remunerated, prestigious Canadian opportunities, our literary organizations foster a healthy ecosystem for emerging and established writers. This is our humble step in that direction. In coexistence with other prizes, contests, and regular publication opportunities, we hope this will encourage writers in the coming years.”
Encourage them it did: the winner of the inaugural prize, Sabrina Fielding, has recently “signed a two-book deal [...], with the Montreal Fiction Prize being a significant stepping stone in that direction. She was contacted by an agent, who saw her win through CBC Books. That’s exactly what we wanted to do with the Montreal Fiction Prize.” Through Sabrina’s success story, Jeremy asserts that “yolk is a community-building project for everyone that’s involved, and our mandate is to give everyone professional opportunities that would have otherwise been hard to come by, and to show people that those professional opportunities exist and can be self-made.
“We also want to be accessible to writers who maybe don’t know how to put their foot in the door. Hannah Berger won our second Montreal Fiction Prize; it was her first publication. [...] I think the fact that Sabrina and Hannah, the two first winners, were emerging speaks more to the way we conduct outreach at yolk: very grassroots, in the community, talking to people, letting people know that these things are available at every stage in their career.”
Finally, when asked to attribute a single phrase to each of yolk’s six years, Jeremy had the following to offer:
Year One: “Rumbustious resilience.”
Year Two: “Real, actionable commitment. (If I’m not mistaken, that second year was when a box of our issues was stolen from the front door of where we got them shipped.)”
Year Three: “Planning ahead.”
Year Four: “Legitimacy.”
Year Five: “The year of national growth.”
Year Six: “It might be too early to say, but I would say this year is a back-to-the-roots year. We had a lot of fun at the start, we legitimized ourselves, we turned this into a well-oiled machine where we run pretty much like clockwork now, we’re funded for the time being (it’s always precarious)—we have the opportunity to return to our roots of rumbustious resilience.”
Jeremy has spearheaded the organization of the sixth anniversary party “because I wanted that return to the roots to shine through our mandate. We don’t necessarily want to be an authority of any kind in the literary scene in Montreal or Canada; we don’t want to be a governing body by any means. We are a community project with community output; that’s what it’s been since the start, and that’s something we need to come back to.”
The venue for the event, Parquette, reflects this focus: “we chose it carefully; it’s in a community-focused space.” Parquette holds free classes, art exhibits, ethical raves, and has a built-in café. Unlike many recent yolk events, the sixth anniversary party is free and unticketed; “we’re not interested in turning a profit,” Jeremy asserts. The event will feature DJ Nosh (Noah Geffroyd) and jazz trio Lucas Melo, Arnaud Castonguay, and Isabelle Gaudreau, as well as a visual art exhibit curated to exclusively feature Montreal artists.
With an interest in bilingual projects by way of a translation series, further visual arts exhibits, feature interviews, and an upcoming poetry prize, yolk’s future is bright. “Broad strokes, what we want to do for the next six years—for the next half-dozen eggs—is maintain that rate of growth and maintain that expansion across Canada. We have big ideas, some of which I won’t share, but we do want to strengthen our position as a community-builder and a community-uplifter—through events and art exhibits, through internships and opportunities, and through involvement in the Montreal literary scene. We’re not expecting this high level of interest in literature and in creative arts to continue for the next six years; it’s something that fluctuates—it always has. We want to be around to show people what can be done with, frankly, hard work, dedication, and a carton of eggs.”
