Laura Kooji launches their new book No Rainbow, with special guest Clementine Morrigan reading from their zine Fucking Magic.

For those times when it seems hope is lost, “No Rainbow” quietly offers a fiery response with love letters penned to queer and indigenous loves, the land and the brokenhearted. Kooji presents alternatives through imagination and a poetic flow that transcends survival and moves towards places where queer Indigenous people can thrive in community and love. “No Rainbow” is collection of poetry written over the last 4 years through major life changes as the author came out as Two Spirit/Queer to community and family. Feelings around identity, relationships, sexuality and the inseparable reality of indigenous being and indigenous bodies in a political context are written as a method of healing. No Rainbow provides places to dream, find possibility and feel the kind of love we all long for. Pieces are translated into Anishnaabemowin, the Ojibway language to include indigenous language learners.

Laura Kooji is Anishinaabe, Ojibway from Nipissing First Nation. She was raised, and currently lives in Dish with Once Spoon territory. In addition to writing, Laura is a beadwork artist, community educator/activist and musician. They have media published articles about cultural appropriation and identity in print and online. Laura is also the co-founder and editor of Bent Q Media, an online resource run by and for members of Hamilton Ontario’s LGBTQIA+ and Two Spirit communities. Laura is passionate about Indigenous language revitalization and studies Anishnaabemowin (Ojibway) and Kanyen’kehà:ka (Mohawk) languages.

Fucking Magic is a zine series about trauma, desire, and magic. It’s about polyamory, bdsm, queerness, pleasure, recovery, joy, chosen family, and creating home. It’s a zine about the power of transformation and the magic of possibility. It’s a zine about love in the apocalypse, navigating polyamory from a trauma informed perspective, healing sexual trauma, and cultivating queer pleasure. It’s about water, the way that water heals us, and our responsibility to heal the water. It’s about anger as a source of healing and power, as a good and healthy way to learn about boundaries and protect them. It’s about straight girl trauma and healing from the cumulative trauma of fucking lots of straight dudes, about going deep and unlearning compulsory heterosexuality and misogyny in an embodied way. It’s about the power of being an incest survivor and having survived. Fucking Magic is about slow, deep pleasures, deep, safe love, and growing older as an act of defiance. It’s nervous system magic and growing up.

Clementine Morrigan is a writer, poet, rebel scholar, teacher, and working witch. She writes the zine Fucking Magic. They are the author of three books: You Can’t Own the Fucking Stars (2018), The Size of a Bird (2017), and Rupture (2012). She writes, creates, teaches, and works magic engaging with trauma, sexuality, desire, love, healing, and relationships. All of their work aims to obliterate shame, cultivate compassion, promote healing, and encourage enchantment. She is a white settler of Irish, Scottish, and English ancestry living in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. They are a sober alcoholic and a practitioner of trauma magic.

ACCESS AND GENERAL INFO:

This is a free event. Books and zines will be on sale.

L’Euguélionne is on the ground floor. The accessible entrance is around the back. Ring the doorbell at the front and someone will come to show you the way in through the back. The bathroom is not accessible.