Join us for this reading of narrative poems re-writing the Stepmother archetype from award-winning Québécoise and UK artists Amélie Prévost and Rachel McCrum. There will be a post-reading Q&A with Helen Mort.

In the aftermath of a crisis within her blended family, a stepmother weighs up her choices, past, present, and future. Fragment by fragment, she pieces together her story, with the honesty of a woman with everything to lose and everything to gain. Using words as a mirror, she tries to see herself as she is, not in the eyes of the society around her, but in the eyes of those who love her and who she loves.

La belle-mère / The Stepmother offers a complete re-reading of the stepmother archetype, a subject of the collective Western imagination for centuries. The challenges, duties, responsibilities, stakes, and freedoms of the role are weighed and analyzed without complacency, in this dynamic suite of narrative poems. The show can be performed in French or English by the co-authors themselves, Amélie Prévost and Rachel McCrum. This event will be predominantly in English.

Delivered in partnership with Quebec City of Literature with thanks to Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for financial support in the form of two Research & Creation grants.