booksvscigarettes with Outburst Queer Arts Festival - The Argonauts

We’re excited to announce that over the next 3 months, CCA will join with Outburst Queer Arts Festival to bring the booksvscigarettes reading group to Belfast.

These reading group events will provide an informal, friendly and social atmosphere in which to explore challenging and compelling texts and ideas, with the focus of Outburst booksvscigarettes on queer thinking and ideas. We will read and discuss one short text (e.g. one chapter of a book, an essay, etc.) together for each session.

First up is Chapter 1 of Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts – “a genre-bending memoir….offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its centre is a romance: the story of the author’s relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson’s account of falling in love with Dodge, who is fluidly gendered, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, offers a firsthand account of the complexities and joys of (queer) family-making.”

The event will take place on Thursday, 28 September at 7pm in The MAC, in the Crush area on the first floor.

This event is free and open to the public but please register via email: hello@outburstarts.com. There’s no need to prepare before – just turn up and we’ll read together.

booksvscigarettes takes its name from George Orwell’s essay which assessed the price and value of reading against other pursuits.