On Thursday, November 20, 2025 – Another Story Bookshop hosts the launch of The Translating Subject by Melissa Tanti, in conversation with Canadian literature historian in English and Cultural Studies Lorraine York. Tanti’s book explores the queer, feminist and decolonizing potential in multilingual experimental writing. Presented in partnerhips with McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Navigating a life lived in language
The Translating Subject (McGill-Queens University Press, 2025) focuses on a shift in women’s writing since 1960 toward multilingual writing. This recent shift in women’s writing toward multilingual (more than one language) poetics opens the potential for such experimental texts to set up innovative terms of engagement that are queer, feminist, transnational and decolonizing. Bringing together theories of the avant-garde with theories of translation, Melissa Tanti analyzes works by three of North America’s most important contemporary experimental writers: Canadian poet and translator Erín Moure, American novelist and poet Kathy Acker and French-Canadian poet and novelist Nicole Brossard. Tanti confirms the radical potential of multilingual writing through close readings of Moure’s multilingual texts, Acker’s overlooked propensity to write in Farsi, and Brossard’s insistence on the importance of writing in languages that are not one’s own.
Through close readings of experimental, multilingual texts, Tanti shows that reading multilingual writing creates hospitality for voices that are minoritized or erased by Anglohegemony – the global dominance of English. The Translating Subject argues that multilingual writing challenges monolingual norms and what they uphold: limiting conceptions of subjectivity, community and identity. Drawing on detailed archival research, the book highlights language rights, minoritized languages and language use, demonstrating that language is full of life-giving possibilities. The Translating Subject proposes that multilingual writing encompasses both an ethos and practical strategies for navigating a life lived in language.
“Tanti reads and discusses the specific poems attentively and sensitively. Her observations about the significance of ‘sight’ versus touch or other senses, and how language and words in the three writers emerge out of all senses, are astute and thought-provoking.”
– Kathy Mezei, Simon Fraser University
About Melissa Tanti
Melissa Tanti is a research fellow at the Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities at Coventry University, UK. Her research focuses on experimental uses of language in literature, poetry, performance and as a research methodology. She specializes in contemporary women’s writing and translation. The Translating Subject (McGill-Queens UP, 2025) is her first book.
About Another Story Bookshop
Founded by the late social justice activist Sheila Koffman, Another Story Bookshop is an independent bookstore located in Toronto’s Roncesvalles neighbourhood. The shop specializes in books about social justice by and about culturally diverse and marginalized figures – including 2SLGBTQ+ and Indigenous people – in particular for young readers.
(Photo credits: Another Story Bookshop & McGill-Queen’s University Press. Melissa Tanti.)
Event details
Hosted by: Another Story Bookshop & McGill-Queen’s University Press
Type of event: book launch
Featured author: Melissa Tanti
Facilitator: Lorraine York
Date: Thursday, November 20, 2025
Start time: 7:00 PM ET
Duration: 90 minutes
Cost: Free – registration required (see booking link below)
Location: Another Story Bookshop, 315 Roncesvalles Ave., Toronto, ON, M6R 2M6
Excerpt: Read an excerpt of the book here.
Booking link: Book your spot here.
Contact details: Another Story Bookshop, 315 Roncesvalles Ave., Toronto, ON, M6R 2M6, Canada; (416) 462-1104, books@anotherstory.ca, anotherstory.ca
Accessibility: It’s a storefront shop, located on the ground floor. Please contact the shop for details: (416) 462-1104, books@anotherstory.ca.