Valentine’s Day isn’t just about star-crossed lovers, gorging broken hearts on chocolate, or aiming Cupid’s arrow at that certain someone. It’s a month-long celebration of art, sex, expression and adoration.

Toronto event “A Queer Kind of Valentine’s Returns” wants you to think outside heart-shaped chocolate boxes, come out and romanticize your fine selves with an evening of music and spoken word.

Writers and musicians performing will include Debra Anderson, Brock Hessel, Javier Pena, Rex Baunsit, Danny and the Holy Mountain, Dorianne Emmerton and Sara Meinke will perform.

“It’s a fun night of quick and dirty live music sets, readings from local authors and a chance to rub shoulders with all the cuties, cruise and catch up over cocktails with friends,” says Anderson. “I always think it’s a great idea to take up space to celebrate love and sex – on our own terms, in our own way. I’m a big mush ball that way.”

Anderson is a mainstay in the Toronto queer literature scene. Her novel Code White won the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Grant in 2009. The book is both tragically hilarious and unabashedly sexy.

Anderson work has appeared in other anthologies, including Girl Fever and Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity.

“I’m in the middle of working on two exciting new projects: a book of poetry, Please Do Not Hesitate (to Contact Me), about an office worker who is trapped in the senseless Monday to Friday routine and escapes to the public bathrooms of a nearby department store for a daily reprieve from her mindless days,” says Anderson. “And I’m also working on an untitled novel about the struggles of female adolescence in the suburbs and the claustrophobia and enduring strength of family ties.”

The Deets:

A Queer Kind of Valentine’s Returns

Fri, Feb 10 at 8pm

Habits Gastropub

928 College St