Lee Lai launches Cannon in conversation with Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch
Schedule
Tue, 09 Sep, 2025 at 07:00 pm
UTC-04:00Location
176 Rue Bernard Ouest, Montreal, QC, Canada, Quebec H2T 2K2 | Mount Royal, QC
Advertisement
Join us at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly for the launch of Cannon, the new graphic novel by Lee Lai, on Tuesday September 9th. The author will appear in conversation with Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch, author of Knot Body and The Good Arabs. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and following the conversation the author will be signing! This event is free to attend and open to all. No reservation is required. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
CANNON: A LAMBDA Award winner and breakout fiction sensation returns with a darkly funny slice of friendship strife.
We arrive to wreckage—a restaurant smashed to rubble, with tables and chairs upended riotously. Under the swampy nighttime cover of a Montreal heat-wave, this is where we meet our protagonist, Cannon, dripping in little beads of regret sweat. She was supposed to be closing the restaurant for the night, but instead, well, she destroyed it. The mess feels a bit like a horror-scape—not unlike the horror films Cannon and her best friend, Trish, watch together. Cooking dinner and digging into deep cuts of Australian horror films on their scheduled weekly hangs has become the glue in their rote relationship. In high school, they were each other's lifeline—two queer second-generation Chinese nerds trapped in the suburbs. Now, on the uncool side of their twenties, the essentialness of one another feels harder to pin down.
Yet, when our stoic and unbendingly well-behaved Cannon finds herself—very uncharacteristically—surrounded by smashed plates, it is Trish who shows up to pull her the hell outta there.
In Cannon, Lee Lai’s much anticipated follow-up to the critically acclaimed and award-winning Stone Fruit, the full palette of a nervous breakdown is just a slice of what Lai has on offer. As Cannon’s shoulders bend under the weight of an aging Gung-gung and an avoidant mother, Lai’s sharp sense of humor and sensitive eye produce a story that will hit readers with a smash.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
LEE LAI is an Australian cartoonist living in Tio’tia:ke (colonially known as Montreal, Canada). In 2021, she was selected as one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 for her debut graphic novel, Stone Fruit, which went on to win several awards, including the Lambda Literary Award for Graphic Novel, the Cartoonist Studio Prize, the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, and two Ignatz Awards. Her comics have appeared on the New Yorker, McSweeney’s, the New York Times, Granta Magazine, and the Museum of Modern Art Magazine.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
ELI TAREQ EL BECHELANY-LYNCH is a writer living in Tio'tià:ke. Their work has appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 anthology, GUTS, carte blanche, the Shade Journal, The New Quarterly, Arc Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. They were longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2019. Their book knot body (2020), published by Metatron Press, was shortlisted for the QWF Concordia University First Book Prize. The Good Arabs (2021), published by Metonymy Press, was the winner of the 2022 Grand Prix du livre de Montréal and received an Honorable Mention from the 2022 Arab American Book Awards for the George Ellenbogen Poetry Award.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Librairie Drawn & Quarterly Accessibility information:
- Our store uses StopGap.ca ramps in an effort to encourage accessibility. Both the step at the entrance, followed by a half step and a door have StopGap ramps. The door opens inward and is not automated. Once inside, there are no additional steps.
- There is one non-gendered bathroom.
- It is not a sober space, our events sometimes offer alcohol.
- Please email [email protected] if you have any accessibility needs we can accommodate.
Advertisement
Where is it happening?
176 Rue Bernard Ouest, Montreal, QC, Canada, Quebec H2T 2K2, 170 Rue Bernard O, Montréal, QC H2T 2K2, Canada, Mount RoyalEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
