Welcome to issue 4. The work gathered here is preoccupied with what we inherit—from the bodies that made us, the histories we are born into, and the people we love, lose, and carry forward. Moss pushes its rhizoids through layers of decomposing ancestors, while elsewhere, a woman arrives into consciousness carrying two million eggs and no memories. A young man stands on a rooftop and listens to a song his mother sang to him as a child. A girl carries forward her mother’s insistence that she need not be perfect, nor accept the diminished versions of herself imposed by others.
These pieces also ask what it means to belong—to a body, a family, a culture, a land—and what it means when we no longer feel at home in our own lives—or never did. A banker steps off a train into an unmapped life; a haiku loses its way (and arrives anyway). Across this issue, language itself becomes a site of both loss and discovery: we move between English and French, Spanish, Creole, and Tamil—a reminder that Quebec’s literary tradition has always been multilingual, and that these voices exist in constant, enriching conversation.
Grief, too, runs through this issue—in an earthquake and its aftermath, in the loss and near-loss of parents, in missed chances to say goodbye (or to choose differently), in the end of childhood, and in the end of the world.
But mostly, these pieces centre on love. A weary woman in the middle of a gloriously unhinged apocalypse raises the Antichrist as tenderly as any mother. A girl writes her way back to her younger self to offer comfort. Another discovers love within the quiet suffocation of a family home she knows she must soon leave. Even an inanimate object longs for love—for it to rekindle between a couple trapped in a loop of inertia and inanity.
These are pieces about love that does not disappear when the thing or person it was attached to vanishes. Love that can mend a cracked plate and create a common language in a strange land. If these young writers represent the future of literary art in Quebec, it is a future that is blessedly free from cynicism, meanness, and despair.
The visual art in this issue is in dialogue with these pieces. An exposed rib cage, layered with colour, asks what we carry inside us, and what it costs to expose it. A barn owl regards us with uncanny stillness, while a fawn shares surreal company with a mouse and a rabbit. A lacrosse player is framed by a circle suggestive of tradition and wholeness.
This issue also features a conversation between Issue 3 contributor Maya Mohammad and Chanel Sutherland, conducted on the eve of the publication of Chanel’s debut story collection, Layaway Child (House of Anansi Press, spring 2026). In it, they discuss memory, displacement, and the power of mundane human moments. We hope you enjoy it.
As always, we’re grateful for the support of the Quebec Writers’ Federation, the Phyllis Lambert Foundation, and Canadian Heritage, as well as our individual donors, whose generosity allows us to pay contributors, publish more writers and artists, host launches and public readings, and arrange mini-mentorships for submitters whose work we believe deserves further development and support.
Thank you, as well, to my editorial team—Erin Samant, Ev Ricky, Jessica Bebenek, and John Wickham—and to Dr. Gage Karahkwi:io Diabo, who joins Quist as Editor of Indigenous Voices. Gage is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of English and First Peoples Studies at Concordia University. They bring deep experience and a passion for Indigenous storytelling to the role. We’re delighted to welcome them to the team and grateful to Julie Ann David and her uncle, Dan David, whose generosity and vision made this position possible.
This is Ev’s last issue as Arts Editor for Quist. While we’re sad to see them go, we’re excited that they’re leaving to devote more time to their own artistic practice (and we encourage you to seek out their work: it is spectacular—intimate, gritty, playful, and, above all, honest). Throughout their two years on our masthead, Ev has embodied Quist’s mission to nurture, promote, and advocate for young artists in this province. We are deeply grateful for their contributions and for the lasting mark they have left on the magazine. Thank you, Ev!
Thanks are also due to the educators, youth workers, community leaders, and caregivers across Quebec who continue to encourage the young writers and artists in their lives to share their work with us. As we’ve said before, Quist would not exist without your support.
Finally, thank you to you—for spending time with these stories and images and honouring the work of our contributors with your attention.
Merci.
Mèsi anpil.
நன்றி.
Gracias.
Miigwech.
Niá:wen
Jen DeLeskie
Editor-in-Chief
Quist