Writing in the Eastern Townships: About the Participants
BRENDA HARTWELL is a writer, proofreader, and editor who lives in Baldwin’s Mills, Quebec, in a home she and her husband built with their own hands and power tools. An active community volunteer, she served for many years as Townshippers’ Association’s Chair of Community and Culture and has sat on the boards of The Townships Sun, The Lennoxville & District Women’s Centre, and Townshippers Foundation. She was editor-in-chief of
Taproot: Poetry, Prose, and Images from the Eastern Township, five literary anthologies featuring the work of regional creatives. Her writing has appeared in local, regional, and national magazines, newsletters and newspapers, online, and in Quebec-based anthologies. Her debut novel,
No Wrong Season, was published by Inanna Publications in Toronto in 2025.
JOSH QUIRION is a French-Canadian writer from the Eastern Townships of Quebec. He holds an M.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from Concordia University. He is the co-founder and first editor-in-chief of
Yolk Literary Magazine. He is the author of two short story collections,
Towners & Other Stories (Shoreline Press, 2020) and
Homebound (Shoreline Press, 2025), which is long-listed for the 2026 Leacock Medal for Humour. Quirion’s writing has also appeared in
The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, The Antigonish Review, Funicular Magazine, Guernica Editions’ anthology
Chronicling the Days, and others. He currently lives in Montreal, Quebec, but is strategically plotting a return to his beloved Townships.
LOUISE ABBOTT is a non-fiction writer, photographer, and documentary filmmaker in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. She has published seven books of text and photos:
The Coast Way, The French Shore, The Heart of the Farm, Eeyou Istchee: Land of the Cree, Memphremagog: An Illustrated History (2 volumes), and
Islands of History. She has directed numerous documentaries, including the award-winning
Nunaaluk: A Forgotten Story and her latest,
Dreamers and Steamers: The Steamboat Era on Lake Memphremagog.Three of her Townships films—The Sugarmakers, Ayer's Cliff Fair,
and
Niels Jensen, Cabinetmaker—were broadcast on WNED PBS in recent years. www.louiseabbott.ca
Part of QWF’s Writers Out Loud series of panel discussions, author interviews, and readings.