The Word On The Street’s 35th Annual Festival returns to its iconic fall weekend, September 28th and 29th, at Queen’s Park.
28sep11:00 am11:45 amSolo Feature: Nowhere, ExactlyM.G. Vassanji11:00 am - 11:45 am(GMT-04:00)
From one of Canada’s most celebrated writers, two-time Giller Prize winner M.G. Vassanji, comes a thoughtful meditation on what it means to belong in the
From one of Canada’s most celebrated writers, two-time Giller Prize winner M.G. Vassanji, comes a thoughtful meditation on what it means to belong in the world.
Home is never a single place, entirely and unequivocally. It is contingent. The abstract “nowhere,” then, is the true home.
M.G. Vassanji has been exploring the immigrant experience for over three decades, drawing deeply on his own transnational upbringing and intimate understanding of the unique challenges and perspectives born from leaving one’s home to resettle in a new land. The question of identity, of how to configure and see oneself within this new land, is one such challenge faced. But Vassanji suggests that a more fundamental and slippery endeavour than establishing one’s identity is how, if ever, we can establish a sense of belonging. Can we ever truly belong in this new home? Did we ever truly belong in the home we left? Where exactly do we belong? For many, the answer is nowhere exactly.
Combining brilliant prose, thoughtful, candid observation, and a lifetime of exploring how we as individuals are shaped by the places and communities in which we live and the history that haunts them, Nowhere, Exactly examines with exquisite sensitivity the space between identity and belonging, the immigrant experience of both loss and gain, and the weight of memory and nostalgia, guilt and hope felt by so many of those who leave their homes in search of new ones.
Moderator
Linda Morra is an award-winning author and podcaster. Using her expertise as a seasoned literature professor, she develops provocative, timely insights for her podcast, Getting Lit With Linda, about books from Canada and elsewhere to show why stories are relevant for all of us. Getting Lit With Linda won the 2022 Outstanding Education Series Award by the Canadian Podcast Awards and was a Finalist for the 2023 People’s Choice Podcasting Awards. Her podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, and other high-quality platforms.
Moderator
M G Vassanji is the author of ten novels, three collections of short stories, a travel memoir about India, a memoir of East Africa, and a biography of Mordecai Richler. He is twice winner of the Giller Prize (1994, 2003); the Governor General’s Prize (2009) for nonfiction; the Harbourfront Festival Prize; the Commonwealth First Book Prize (Africa, 1990); and the Molson Prize. “Nostalgia”, his dystopian novel, was a finalist for CBC’s Canada Reads. M G Vassanji was born in Nairobi, Kenya and raised in Tanzania. He lives in Toronto, and visits East Africa and India often.
On Identity and Belonging
AuthorM.G. Vassanji
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Sometimes the difference between a good book and a great one isn’t the plot or characters, but the author’s turn of phrase. From neologisms (newly-coined
Sometimes the difference between a good book and a great one isn’t the plot or characters, but the author’s turn of phrase. From neologisms (newly-coined words) to rhythm to the rich interplay between two languages on one page, there are many ways to shape language to create surprising and powerful effects. Join Margaret Nowaczyk, Irene Marques, Cassidy McFadzean, and moderator Stuart Ross as they discuss the imperfect and beautiful tool that is the written word.
Cassidy McFadzean is the author of three books of poetry: Crying Dress (House of Anansi, 2024), Drolleries (McClelland & Stewart 2019), shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award, and Hacker Packer (M&S 2015), which won two Saskatchewan Book Awards and was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Joyland, The Walrus, Hazlitt, and in Dead Writers, a collaborative anthology out this fall with Invisible Publishing. Cassidy was born in Regina and currently lives in Toronto, where she is the 2024-2025 Writer-in-Residence at Sheridan College.
Irene Marques is a bilingual writer (English and Portuguese) and Lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University in the department of English. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature, Masters in French Literature and Comparative Literature (University of Toronto) and a Bachelor of Social Work (Ryerson University, now TMU). Her published creative works include, among others, three collections of poetry and the novels Daria (Inanna Publications, 2021) and Uma Casa no Mundo (Imprensa Nacional/Portugal, 2021), which won Prémio Imprensa Nacional/Ferreira de Castro. Her fourth collection of poetry, The Bare Bones of Our Alphabet will be out in September, 2024 (Mawenzi House). Irene Marques was born and raised in Portugal and moved to Canada at the age of 20.
Margaret Nowaczyk is a pediatrician and a clinical geneticist. Her writing has appeared in Prairie Fire, Geist, Examined Life Journal, Intima, Broken Pencil, The New Quarterly, The Antigonish Review, Grain, Litro US, The Dalhousie Review, and others. Her non-fiction won thte 2020 CNFC/Humber Literary Review contest and was a finalist for the 2022 National Magazine Awards. Her memoir “Chasing Zebras” won the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Memoir. “Marrow Memory”, a collection of essays, was published by Wolsak&Wynn in June 2024. She lives in Hamilton, ON with her husband, two sons, two cats, and a rescue greyhound.
Moderator
Stuart Ross has published over 20 books of fiction, poetry, and personal essays, most recently the memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers, winner of the 2023 Trillium Book Award, the poetry collection The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky, and the short story collection I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub. His poetry has been translated into Nynorsk, French, Spanish, Russian, Slovene, and Estonian. Active in the Canadian micropress world since the mid-1970s, Stuart lives in Cobourg, Ontario, and blogs infrequently at bloggamooga.blogspot.ca.
Moderator
AuthorCassidy McFadzean
Essays in Discovery
AuthorMargaret Nowaczyk
AuthorIrene Marques
AuthorStuart Ross
28sep2:00 pm2:45 pmSolo Feature: Behind YouCatherine Hernandez2:00 pm - 2:45 pm(GMT-04:00)
As terror grips a city, a young girl faces danger closer to home and chilling memories that last a lifetime. Catherine Hernandez’s
As terror grips a city, a young girl faces danger closer to home and chilling memories that last a lifetime.
Catherine Hernandez’s most gripping and affecting novel yet, Behind You is inspired by a horrifying chapter in Canadian history and follows fictional characters terrorized by a fictional perpetrator.
Alma is a Filipina woman who works as a film editor for a cheesy True Crime series featuring the most notorious killers of the 20th century called Infamous. On the surface she seems to live a good life with her wife Nira and teenage son, Mateo. But there is so much left unsaid.
It’s not until Infamous’ last episode features the Scarborough Stalker that she remembers coming of age while the serial rapist and killer was attacking women and girls in Scarborough in the late 80s and early 90s.
What unfolds are two storylines: In the past, young Alma watches an entire city become consumed with a manhunt for an elusive, terrifying suspect, while she herself is in jeopardy from closer corners. In the present, adult Alma must come to terms with her own ideas of consent to stop her son’s dangerous behaviour towards his girlfriend.Weaving back and forth in time, Behind You is a moving story of one girl’s resilience into adulthood and a chilling portrayal of the insidiousness if rape culture. It daringly turns the Whodunit genre on its head by asking the question “Who hasn’t done it?” As in, who has not been complicit in sexual harm?
Catherine Hernandez is a proud queer woman of colour and an award-winning author. She is of Filipino, Spanish, Chinese and Indian heritage and is married into the Navajo Nation. Her debut novel, Scarborough, which was adapted into an award-winning motion picture, won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award as an unpublished manuscript. It was a finalist for the Toronto Book Award, the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award, the Edmund White Award, the Trillium Book Award and Canada Reads. Her second novel, Crosshairs, made the CBC’s Best Canadian Fiction list and was named one of NOW magazine’s 10 Best Books, one of NBC’s 20 Best LGBTQ Books and an Audible Best Audiobook. Her third novel, The Story of Us, was shortlisted for the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award and longlisted for a Toronto Book Award. Catherine Hernandez is also the author of the children’s books M Is for Mustache A Pride ABC Book, I Promise and Where Do Your Feelings Live? Her most recent novel, Behind You, was published this year. Before it hit the shelves, it was optioned by Conquering Lion Pictures to become a feature film, with Catherine writing the screenplay. Catherine Hernandez lives outside Toronto.
Moderator
Linda Morra is an award-winning author and podcaster. Using her expertise as a seasoned literature professor, she develops provocative, timely insights for her podcast, Getting Lit With Linda, about books from Canada and elsewhere to show why stories are relevant for all of us. Getting Lit With Linda won the 2022 Outstanding Education Series Award by the Canadian Podcast Awards and was a Finalist for the 2023 People’s Choice Podcasting Awards. Her podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, and other high-quality platforms.
Moderator
AuthorCatherine Hernandez
Be a part of romance history as bestselling Harlequin authors battle it out to crown the definitive romance trope for the ages! In honour of
Be a part of romance history as bestselling Harlequin authors battle it out to crown the definitive romance trope for the ages! In honour of Harlequin’s 75th Anniversary, hear why their favourite romance tropes should be on every reader’s TBR list, see sparks fly in the rapid-fire round, and cheer for the most beloved trope that should live happily ever after. Test your romance trivia knowledge for swoon-worthy prize packs.
Don’t miss this rare gathering of romance authors in Toronto: BJ Daniels, Heather Graham, Brenda Jackson, RaeAnne Thayne, Nina Crespo, Caitlin Crews, Renee Daniel Flagler, Addison Fox, Mindy Obenhaus and Catherine Tinley.
Addison Fox is a lifelong romance reader, addicted to happy-ever-afters. She loves writing about romance as much as reading it. Addison lives in New York with an apartment full of books, a laptop that’s rarely out of sight and a wily beagle who keeps her running. You can find her at www.addisonfox.com, facebook.com/addisonfoxauthor or on Twitter (@addisonfox).
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, B.J. Daniels lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, and two springer spaniels. When not writing, she quilts, boats and always has a book or two to read. Contact her at www.bjdaniels.com, on Facebook at B.J. Daniels or through her reader group the B.J. Daniels’ Big Sky Darlings, and on twitter at bjdanielsauthor.
URL https://www.harlequin.com/shop/authors/22888_b-j-daniels.html
Brenda Jackson is a New York Times bestselling author of more than one hundred romance titles. Brenda lives in Jacksonville, Florida, and divides her time between family, writing and traveling. Email Brenda at authorbrendajackson@gmail.com or visit her on her website at brendajackson.net.
USA Today bestselling, RITA-nominated, and critically-acclaimed author Caitlin Crews has written more than 130 books and counting. She has a Masters and Ph.D. in English Literature, thinks everyone should read more category romance, and is always available to discuss her beloved alpha heroes. Just ask. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her comic book artist husband, is always planning her next trip, and will never, ever, read all the books in her to-be-read pile. Thank goodness.
Catherine Tinley is a multi award-winning writer of witty, heartwarming Regency Romance. Her first novel, Waltzing with the Earl, won the Rita(R) Award for Best Historical Romance 2018, and she has since won the 2021 RoNA award, the 2021 HOLT medallion, and the 2022 RoNA award for Best Historical Romance. She lives in Ireland with her family and can be reached at www.CatherineTinley.com and on social media at https://linktr.ee/CTinley
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Heather Graham has written more than a hundred novels. She’s a winner of the RWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Thriller Writers’ Silver Bullet. She is an active member of International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America. For more information, check out her websites: TheOriginalHeatherGraham.com, eHeatherGraham.com, and HeatherGraham.tv. You can also find Heather on Facebook.
Best-selling author Mindy Obenhaus lives on a ranch in Texas with her husband, two sassy pups and countless cattle. She’s passionate about touching readers with Biblical truths in an entertaining, and sometimes adventurous, manner. When she’s not writing, you’ll likely find her in the kitchen, spending time with her grandchildren or roaming the ranch in search of inspiration. She’d love to connect with you via her website, mindyobenhaus.com, or on Facebook.
Nina Crespo lives in Florida where she indulges in her favorite passions — the beach, a good glass of wine, date night with her own real-life hero and dancing. Her lifelong addiction to romance began in her teens while on a “borrowing spree” in her older sister’s bedroom where she discovered her first romance novel. Let Nina’s sensual, award-winning stories satisfy your craving for love, romance, and happily ever after.
New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains where she lives with her family. Her books have won numerous honors, including six RITA Award nominations from Romance Writers of America and Career Achievement and Romance Pioneer awards from RT Book Reviews. She loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website.
Award-winning author Renee Daniel Flagler has written novels and poetry, and she has taught creative writing throughout the New York City Department of Education and served as a Writer in Residence at the Langston Hughes Library. Renee received an MFA in Creative Writing from The College of New Rochelle, where she obtained the graduate program’s inaugural Creative Writing Division Award for Excellence in Writing and Commitment to the Profession. Renee also created a scholarship for students pursuing studies in writing disciplines in higher education. Renee hails from the suburbs of New York City, where she lives with her husband and children. Connect with her at ReneeDanielFlagler.com.
AuthorHeather Graham
PublisherHarlequin
AuthorMindy Obenhaus
PublisherHarlequin
AuthorCatherine Tinley
PublisherHarlequin
AuthorCaitlin Crews
PublisherHarlequin
AuthorBJ Daniels
PublisherHarlequin
AuthorBrenda Jackson
PublisherHarlequin
AuthorNina Crespo
PublisherHarlequin
AuthorAddison Fox
PublisherHarlequin
AuthorRenee Daniel Flagler
PublisherHarlequin
AuthorRaeAnne Thayne
PublisherHarlequin
In her debut collection of short fiction, Amanda Peters describes the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide spectrum in time and place—from contact with the
In her debut collection of short fiction, Amanda Peters describes the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide spectrum in time and place—from contact with the first European settlers, to the forced removal of Indigenous children, to the present-day fight for the right to clean water.
In this intimate collection, Peters melds traditional storytelling with beautiful, spare prose to describe the dignity of the traditional way of life, the humiliations of systemic racism and the resilient power to endure. A young man returns from residential school only to realize he can no longer communicate with his own parents. A young woman finds purpose and healing on the front lines as a water protector. An old man remembers his life as he patiently waits for death. And a young girl nervously dances in her first Mawi’omi. The collection also includes the story “The Berry Pickers,” which inspired Peters’ critically acclaimed novel of the same name, as well as the Indigenous Voices Award–nominated story “Pejipug (Winter Arrives).”At times sad, sometimes disturbing but always redemptive, the stories in Waiting for the Long Night Moon will remind you that where there is grief there is also joy, where there is trauma there is resilience and, most importantly, there is power.
Amanda Peters is a writer of Mi’kmaq and settler ancestry. Her debut novel, The Berry Pickers, was a critically acclaimed bestseller in Canada. Her work has appeared in the Antigonish Review, Grain, the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Dalhousie Review and Filling Station. She is the winner of the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for unpublished prose and a participant in the 2021 Writers’ Trust Rising Stars Program. Peters has a certificate in creative writing from the University of Toronto, and she is a graduate of the master of fine arts program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Amanda Peters lives and writes in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, with her fur babies, Holly and Pook.
Moderator
Linda Morra is an award-winning author and podcaster. Using her expertise as a seasoned literature professor, she develops provocative, timely insights for her podcast, Getting Lit With Linda, about books from Canada and elsewhere to show why stories are relevant for all of us. Getting Lit With Linda won the 2022 Outstanding Education Series Award by the Canadian Podcast Awards and was a Finalist for the 2023 People’s Choice Podcasting Awards. Her podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, and other high-quality platforms.
Moderator
AuthorAmanda Peters
Faith in something is an ever-present human trait—whether that’s faith in a higher power, in your community, or your own tenacity and spirit. But faith can be co-opted
Faith in something is an ever-present human trait—whether that’s faith in a higher power, in your community, or your own tenacity and spirit. But faith can be co-opted as a tool of control, used to set rigid lines around acceptable behaviours and even to prohibit independent thinking. How can placing faith in literature, of all things, help to break open the spaces where doctrine and high-control groups reign? The authors on this panel have personal histories with Pentecostalism, Mennonite culture, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Join them alongside moderator Blair Hurley as they engage in a nuanced, compassionate discussion about how literature can disrupt fundamentalist ways of thinking and invite a broader, more balanced worldview.
Moderator
Blair Hurley is the author of THE DEVOTED, which was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Her second novel, MINOR PROPHETS, was published in 2023. Her work is published in New England Review, Electric Literature, The Georgia Review, Guernica, Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. Her story “The Telepathist” was listed as a “Distinguished Story” in Best American Short Stories 2022. She is a Pushcart Prize winner and an ASME Fiction award finalist.
Moderator
Daniel Allen Cox is the author of four novels and I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah’s Witness, shortlisted for the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal and named one of the Best Books of 2023 by Publishers Weekly. Daniel’s essays have appeared in The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Electric Literature, and The Malahat Review and have been recognized by the National Magazine Awards, Best Canadian Essays, and The Best American Essays.
K.R. Byggdin is the author of Wonder World, a ReLit Award finalist and winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Their writing has appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada, the UK, and New Zealand. Born and raised on the Prairies, they currently divide their time between Halifax and Toronto as an MFA candidate at the University of Guelph.
Michelle Syba was born in Toronto and grew up Pentecostal. Her story collection, End Times (Freehand Books, 2023) was a finalist for the Quebec Writers’ Federation Concordia University First Book Prize. End Times explores the lives of people variously entangled with evangelical culture, from a hipster megachurch pastor to a management consultant on the verge of a nervous breakdown at Davos. At a time when the end feels nigh for many, End Times assembles an expansive cast that includes immigrants, the elderly, the burned-out, and the lonely, examining our hidden anxieties and longings.
AuthorMichelle Syba
Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehova’s Witness
AuthorDaniel Allen Cox
AuthorBlair Hurley
AuthorK.R. Byggdin
In Wild Failure, characters encounter feelings of shame, desire, attachment, and disconnection as they find themselves navigating their way through bad decisions, unusual situations, and
In Wild Failure, characters encounter feelings of shame, desire, attachment, and disconnection as they find themselves navigating their way through bad decisions, unusual situations, and fraught relationships.
In “Oh, El,” a dominant woman can’t stop herself from toying with the tender heart of her co-worker. The title story, “Wild Failure,” is a doomed love story between an agoraphobic and a wilderness hiker. In “Half-Pipe,” a teen girl’s heterosexual ambivalence results in chaos at a skate park. A group of idealistic roommates find themselves the subject of a true crime podcast in “Murder at the Elm Street Collective House.” In “The Sex Castle Lunch Buffet,” a woman reflects on her brief stint at a nineties strip club after she learns of the death of a former client.Wild Failure is replete with Whittall’s perceptive humor and acute insights into human nature. It’s also a dynamic and vibrant collection of poetic fiction that contend with the meaning of desire in a world that devalues femininity and queerness.
Moderator
Katie Underwood is an award-winning journalist and the current managing editor at Maclean’s magazine. Previously, she held editorial positions at Chatelaine and The Grid, and her byline has appeared in such fine publications as The Walrus, Toronto Life, the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. She just got into audiobooks.
Moderator
Zoe Whittall’s latest book is the short story collection Wild Failure (Harpercollins, 24). Her fifth bestselling novel The Fake was longlisted for the 2023 Toronto Book Award. The New York Times called her fourth novel The Spectacular “a highly readable testament to the strength of the maternal bond” and The Toronto Star called it “a singularly impressive piece of fiction.” Her third novel The Best Kind of People was published in 2017 by Penguin Random House U.S., was shortlisted for The Scotiabank Giller Prize, named Indigo’s #1 Book of 2016. She won a Lamda literary award for her second novel Holding Still for as Long as Possible, and the Writers Trust Dayne Ogilvie prize for her debut, Bottle Rocket Hearts. She is also a Canadian Screen Award winning TV writer. Her fourth book of poetry, No Credit River, will be out in October 2024. She lives in Prince Edward County, Ontario.
AuthorZoe Whittall
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Seeking uncanny, fun, experimental, creepy, sarcastic, playful, vulgar, inventive, sexual, weird, sweet, and evocative works, editors Samia Marshy and Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch set out
Seeking uncanny, fun, experimental, creepy, sarcastic, playful, vulgar, inventive, sexual, weird, sweet, and evocative works, editors Samia Marshy and Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch set out to collect Arab and Arabophone queer writing. The result is an anthology brimming with gems by emerging and established writers and an homage to the lineages and complexities of queer Arab life. Multi-genre, multi-generational, and global, El Ghourabaa is an enigma, a delight, and a contribution to an ongoing conversation and creative outpouring. Editors Samia and Eli Tareq will be joined by contributors Trish Salah and Hoda Adra to discuss the process of creating the anthology, and what it means to celebrate queer Arab life in this collective moment in time.
Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch is an mixed-Arab a writer living in Tio’tia:ke. Their book, knot body, was published by Metatron Press in 2020, and their second book, The Good Arabs, published by Metonymy Press in 2021, was granted the honorary mention for poetry by the Arab American Book Awards and won the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. Their translation of Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay’s La fille d’elle-même was published April 2023. With co-editor Samia Marshy, they edited El Ghourabaa, an anthology of queer and trans writing by Arab and Arabophone writers, published June 2024.
Samia Marshy is a full-time reader and part-time writer located in Tio’tià:ke (Montreal, QC). She has been a practising massage therapist since 2015 and cares deeply about bodies, access to care, and consent in bodywork. She co-wrote “The Hands That Planted Them” with Lee Lai, published in Metal Hurlant, and was an editor for The Philistine by Leila Marshy.
Born in Halifax / Kjipuktuk in Mi’kma’ki, Trish Salah is a writer of mixed Arab-Irish heritage. She is the author of the Lambda Award-winning poetry collection, Wanting in Arabic and of Lyric Sexology Vol. 1, and co-editor of a special issues of TSQ, on trans cultural production, and Arc Poetry Magazine, spotlighting trans, non-binary and Two Spirit writers. An associate professor of Gender Studies at Queen’s University, she edits the Journal of Critical Race Inquiry. She lives in T’karonto.
A Queer and Trans Collection of Oddities
AuthorEli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch (ed.), Samia Marshy (ed.), Trish Salah
Recently there’s been an exciting surge of neurodiverse representation in mainstream publishing, both in terms of characters and the authors who write them. Autism in
Recently there’s been an exciting surge of neurodiverse representation in mainstream publishing, both in terms of characters and the authors who write them. Autism in particular seems to be unfolding past its old and tired stereotypes in the media and into a deeper, truer depiction of autistic life. Join Paige Layle, Colleen Coco Collins, and Maggie North, with moderator Kerry C. Byrne, as they explore how their neurodivergence influences the way they tell stories, and what fresh perspectives autistic minds bring to writers’ craft.
Colleen Coco Collins [she/they] is an interdisciplinary artist of Irish, French, and Odawa descent, working in songwriting, performance, poetry and visual arts. She’s worked as a gallery director, in forestry, fossil preparation, and renovation; as an autism support worker, teacher, and women’s shelter counsellor. Her writing, music, and art practice centers on temporality, presumptions of sentience, subversion, rhythm, gesture, geographies, biophonies, frequencies, the ouroboric, the peripatetic, love and the polyglottic. Hailing from Antler River/Deshkan Ziibiing/London, Ontario, Coco has studied at universities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, New Zealand/Aotearoa, and Ireland/Éire. She lives litorally and autistically in rural Port Greville, Mi’kma’ki/Nova Scotia amidst crows, coyotes, grackles, bees, humpback, lichen and fox.
Maggie North writes deeply emotional, strangely hilarious novels at the intersection of romance and women’s fiction. Her favorite subjects include introverts at the end of their [expletive] ropes, STEM, Canada, and other overlooked, underrated things you’d love to discover. She enjoys being autistic a lot more since her diagnosis as an adult. She lives in Ottawa with her spouse, The Kid, and a rotating cast of hypoallergenic aquarium friends.
Paige Layle is an Autistic advocate and influencer who speaks from personal experience about their struggles being an undiagnosed Autistic child in her new book, But Everyone Feels This Way: How An Autism Diagnosis Saved My Life. Now in their twenties, Layle advocates for Autistic children all over the world, with millions of social media followers joining on their journey to better Autism education. She also sings, acts and dances whenever possible. She probably is right now.
AuthorPaige Layle
AuthorMaggie North
AuthorColleen Coco Collins
Founded in 2014 by Nadia L. Hohn, Sankofa’s Pen (formerly known as African-Canadian Writers for Children and Young Adults, ACWCYA) is a group that supports writers
Founded in 2014 by Nadia L. Hohn, Sankofa’s Pen (formerly known as African-Canadian Writers for Children and Young Adults, ACWCYA) is a group that supports writers and illustrators of African or Caribbean descent and paves a way of opportunity for Black writers and illustrators for children and young adults currently living or formerly residing in Canada. Celebrating its 10th Anniversary this year, please join Nadia, Kern Carter, Wanda Taylor, and Kevin heronJones as they celebrate the incredible strides Black Canadian authors have made in the last decade, especially in the realm of Young Adult fiction!
Author
KERN CARTER is the author of Boys and Girls Screaming, along with two self-published novels, Thoughts of a Fractured Soul (novella) and Beauty Scars. In addition to his writing, Kern is a filmmaker and also teaches professional writing at a local college, committed to supporting emerging writers and helping them find their voice. He lives in Toronto.
Author
Author
Kevin heronJones is storyteller. Through prose or through poetry; novel or short story. He writes and he narrates in the tradition of the ancient African griots who used stories and poetry to educate as well as entertain. A student of journalism and creative writing, he uses his arena to inspire and encourage creativity and a love of literature amongst our young people. Kevin grew up in Jane/Finch and Brampton. He has published three novels and three books of poetry. He has also been featured on six spoken word poetry albums and narrates novels and short stories through his Listen Fiction platform.
Author
Moderator
Nadia L. Hohn, B.A. (Hon.), B.Ed., M.Ed., M.F.A. is an educator, artivist, and award-winning author of several books for children including A Likkle Miss Lou and the Malaika series. Malaika’s Costume (2016) was the 2021 TD Grade One Book Giveaway. Her books Malaika, Carnival Queen (Groundwood Books) and The Antiracist Kitchen: 21 Stories (and Recipes) (Orca) were released in 2023. Nadia’s upcoming books are Getting Us to Grandma’s (Groundwood Books, 2024) and Patty Dreams (Owlkids, 2025). She teaches elementary school and writing for children courses at post-secondary institutions.
Moderator
Author
Wanda Taylor is an award-winning author, screenwriter, filmmaker, and college professor. She writes both fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. Wanda’s book The Grover School Pledge is a favourite among kids across Canada, with its focus on friendship, diversity, kindness, and community. The Grover School Pledge was named a top book for kids by Kobo Books and short listed for the Hackmatack Award. It was also the 2023 recipient of the Northern Lights Book Award in the US, an award honoring books around the globe that excel in literary quality, with an emphasis on permanency.
Author
AuthorKern Carter
AuthorKevin heronJones
AuthorKevin heronJones
AuthorKevin heronJones
AuthorNadia L. Hohn (ed.)
AuthorWanda Taylor
The world of a teen is full of transformations, both physical and emotional. Even more so when you throw ghosts or monsters or spaceships into
The world of a teen is full of transformations, both physical and emotional. Even more so when you throw ghosts or monsters or spaceships into the mix. Why is speculative fiction such a perfect playground for exploring the questions teens are asking themselves? Join some of the biggest names in YA science fiction and fantasy, M.T. Khan, Matteo L. Cerilli, and Mikaela Lucido, plus Canadian legend Kenneth Oppel as moderator, as they discuss writing young protagonists for young readers—and how those readers can be heroes too.
Moderator
Kenneth Oppel is the bestselling author of numerous books for young readers. His award-winning Silverwing trilogy has sold over a million copies worldwide and was adapted into an animated TV series and stage play. Airborn won a Michael L. Printz Honor Book Award and the Governor General’s Literary Award; its sequel, Skybreaker, was a New York Times bestseller and was named Children’s Novel of the Year by the Times (UK). Kenneth Oppel is also the author of Half Brother, This Dark Endeavor, The Boundless, The Nest, Every Hidden Thing, Inkling and the Bloom trilogy. His latest novel is Ghostlight. Ken Oppel lives with his family in Toronto.
Moderator
M.T. Khan is a speculative fiction author with a penchant for all things myth, science, and philosophy. She focuses on stories that combine all three, dreaming of evocative worlds and dark possibilities. When she’s not writing, M.T. Khan can be found travelling the world or cracking physics equations as she graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, she currently resides in Toronto, Canada, with a hyperactive cat and an ever-increasing selection of tea.
Matteo L. Cerilli (he/him) is a transmasc author and activist specializing in speculative fiction for all ages. His work features the YA horror novel LOCKJAW (Tundra, 2024), a featured short story in BURY YOUR GAYS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF TRAGIC QUEER HORROR (Ghoulish Books, 2024), and poetry in Augur magazine. His activism has included setting up gender care for trans students at York University, helping to found the Students for Queer Liberation—Tkaronto, and organizing with the No Pride in Policing Coalition.
Mikaela Lucido is a Filipina-Canadian storyteller, fangirl, and amateur birdwatcher. She was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in Mississauga, on the Treaty and Traditional Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and The Huron-Wendat and Wyandot Nations. She studied Creative Writing & Publishing at Sheridan College and was the 2021 recipient of the Ampersand Award. Her words have been featured in Ricepaper Magazine, Cambio & Co., Living Hyphen, and Augur Magazine. She writes for the awkward and anxious.
AuthorM.T. Khan
AuthorMikaela Lucido
AuthorMatteo L. Cerilli
AuthorKenneth Oppel
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For as long as humans have made houses, they’ve told stories about those houses being haunted. But what really makes a haunting? How do characters
For as long as humans have made houses, they’ve told stories about those houses being haunted. But what really makes a haunting? How do characters rise to the challenge of these unexpected roommates (friendly or otherwise)? What can haunted house stories tell us about our own relationship to home? Join A.G.A Wilmot, Madeline Ashby, Clarissa Trinidad Gonzalez, and moderator Nick Cutter as they pry up the floorboards to see what’s hiding underneath.
Author
AGA Wilmot (BFA, MPub) is a writer and editor based out of Toronto, Ontario. They have won awards for fiction, short fiction, and screenwriting, including the Friends of Merril Short Story Contest and ECW Press’s Best New Speculative Novel Contest. For seven years they served as co-publisher and co-EIC of the Ignyte- and British Fantasy Award-nominated Anathema: Spec from the Margins. Books of AGA’s include The Death Scene Artist (Buckrider Books, 2018) and Withered (ECW Press, 2024). They are represented by Kelvin Kong of K2 Literary (k2literary.com). Find them online at agawilmot.ca.
Author
Author
Clarissa Trinidad Gonzalez was born in Manila, where she grew up with her family’s stranger-than-fiction stories. She developed a love for philosophy and classics in university. She then worked as a copywriter in advertising and later became associate creative director. She spent her twenties trekking around the Philippines, sampling regional food, and experiencing the hospitality of her fellow Filipinos.She moved to Canada in the mid-nineties, worked as a designer, then studied creative writing at the University of Toronto. She now works in communications. She lives in Toronto, with her spouse and daughter.
Author
Author
Madeline Ashby is a consulting futurist and novelist based in Toronto. She is the author of the Machine Dynasty series, Company Town, and contributor to How to Future: Leading and Sense-making in an Age of Hyperchange. She has developed science fiction prototypes for Changeist, the Institute for the Future, the Smithsonian Institution, SciFutures, Nesta, The World Health Organization, the World Bank, the Atlantic Council, and others. She is a member of the AI Policy Futures Group at the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination, and the XPRIZE Sci-Fi Advisory Council. Her work has appeared in BoingBoing, Slate, MIT Technology Review, WIRED, The Atlantic, and elsewhere.
Author
Moderator
Nick Cutter is the author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller The Troop (which is currently being developed for film with producer James Wan), The Deep, Little Heaven, and The Handyman Method, cowritten with Andrew F. Sullivan. Nick Cutter is the pseudonym for Craig Davidson, whose much-lauded literary fiction includes Rust and Bone, The Saturday Night Ghost Club, and, most recently, the short story collection Cascade. His story “Medium Tough” was selected by author Jennifer Egan for The Best American Short Stories 2014. He lives in Toronto, Canada. He returns with THE QUEEN (October 2024), a heart-pounding novel of terror about a young woman searching for her missing friend and uncovering a shocking truth.
Moderator
AuthorClarissa Trinidad Gonzalez
AuthorMadeline Ashby
AuthorNick Cutter & Andrew F. Sullivan
AuthorA.G.A. Wilmot
Penny Dreadful meets The Gilded Wolves in this breathtaking finale to the young adult historical fantasy Bones of Ruin trilogy! For years, the elite secret society called the Enlightenment
Penny Dreadful meets The Gilded Wolves in this breathtaking finale to the young adult historical fantasy Bones of Ruin trilogy!
For years, the elite secret society called the Enlightenment Committee has waited for the apocalyptic force known as Hiva to destroy the world as it has so many times before. What the Committee didn’t know, however, was that Hiva wasn’t an event—it was a person.
Iris Marlow. An African tightrope dancer with no memories of her past. A girl who cannot die.
At least, she couldn’t die. Until her own friends discovered her one weakness and murdered her once and for all. The world-ending threat she posed should be gone too, but there’s one more Hiva out there, and unlike Iris, this one has no love for humanity. In her absence, this Hiva has taken it upon himself to judge if humanity deserves to live.
But when it comes to Hivas, the judgment is always the same. The ending is always total destruction. And while Iris is dead, she’s not gone—and after the betrayal that ended her life as Iris, she is now out for revenge.
The world’s days are numbered. The Cataclysm has begun.
Moderator
Anime is a smart-wit packed host with a dynamic and welcoming demeanor. From her humble beginnings to becoming a Chartered Accountant Canada CPA, Anime’s wealth of knowledge and understanding spans into many different facets of life. Anime has moderated countless panel discussions and has hosted premier festivals, conventions and galas across North America. If you happen to have attended alongside the other 1.6M jet setters in Toronto, then you would have definitely watched Anime command some of Canada’s biggest festivals where she is the official Host of Taste of the Danforth on the celebrity main stage. She is an incredible act and a genuinely beautiful person.
Moderator
Sarah Raughley grew up writing stories about freakish little girls with powers because she secretly wanted to be one. She is a huge fangirl of anything from manga to sci-fi fantasy TV and other geeky things, all of which have inspired her writing. Sarah has been nominated for the Aurora Award for Best YA Novel and works in the community doing writing workshops for youths and adults. She has a PhD in English, which makes her a doctor, so it turns out she didn’t have to go to medical school after all. She continues to use her voice for good.
AuthorSarah Raughley
From Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent to Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens, angels, demons, and the mortal people of the Bible have been
From Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent to Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens, angels, demons, and the mortal people of the Bible have been cast in one story after another, from the silly to the serious to the satirical. Why do writers keep coming back to these characters, centuries or millennia later? How does the relationship to them change when we work with them as characters? Is this all technically Old Testament fanfiction? Join Anthony Oliveira, Jerrod Edson, and moderator Sonia Urlando as they discuss working with biblical figures in both retellings and new fiction.
Anthony Oliveira (@meakoopa) is a multiple National Magazine and GLAAD award-winning author, film programmer, pop culture critic, and PhD living in Toronto. He is the writer of Dayspring, the international bestselling story of the beloved disciple of Christ. His work is in a myriad of genres, often incorporating queer themes, and spans comics, prose, journalism, and academic research.
Jerrod Edson is the author of six books. His most recent novel, The Boulevard —hailed by author Ian Colford as an “irreverent triumph”— features Ernest Hemingway, Vincent van Gogh, and Satan on a train ride through Hell. Edson was the recipient of the 2013 David Adams Richards Prize for his novella, The Moon is Real, while his novel, The Goon, was shortlisted for the 2011 Relit Award. He lives in Mississauga, ON, with his wife Leigh and daughters Hadley and Harper.
Moderator
Sonia Urlando (she/her) is an editor, writer, and podcaster based in Toronto. She has a love of incisive questions, an affection for trickster figures, and a wealth of facts about greyhounds. You can find her at Augur Magazine, where she serves as a Senior Editor (Copy & Proofs) and hosts the newly-launched podcast Murmustations all about worldbuilding through speculative genres.
Moderator
AuthorSonia Urlando (ed.)
AuthorAnthony Oliveira
AuthorJerrod Edson
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When science fiction and fantasy authors talk about “worldbuilding”, people usually assume it means the craft of building imaginary worlds to set stories in. But
When science fiction and fantasy authors talk about “worldbuilding”, people usually assume it means the craft of building imaginary worlds to set stories in. But worldbuilding can and does apply in real life too. We are collectively creating our modern world every day—and speculative fiction plays a surprisingly strong part in that! Join authors Peter Counter, K.J. Aiello, and moderator Amanda Leduc as they explore how sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and other SpecFic helps to shape our social and cultural imagination, and the ways that can empower us to build a better tomorrow.
Moderator
Amanda Leduc is the author of the novel THE CENTAUR’S WIFE and the non-fiction book DISFIGURED: ON FAIRY TALES, DISABILITY, AND MAKING SPACE, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Governor General’s Award in Nonfiction. She is also the author of an earlier novel, THE MIRACLES OF ORDINARY MEN. Her new novel, WILD LIFE, is forthcoming in spring 2025. She has cerebral palsy and lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
Moderator
K.J. Aiello is a mentally ill, award-winning writer based in Toronto, ON. Their work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, Chatelaine, The Walrus, and This Magazine. They are still waiting for their very own dragon. Sadly, this has not happened, so their cats will have to suffice.
Peter Counter writes about television, video games, film, music, mental illness, horror, technology, and the occult. He is the author of two essay collections that blend criticism and memoir: How to Restore a Timeline: On Violence and Memory (2023, House of Anansi) and Be Scared of Everything: Horror Essays (2020, Invisible Publishing). His nonfiction has also appeared in The Walrus, All Lit Up, Motherboard, Art of the Title, Electric Literature, Open Book, and the anthology Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church (2019, Epiphany Publishing). He lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, with his spouse and two cats.
AuthorPeter Counter
On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space
AuthorAmanda Leduc
AuthorAmanda Leduc
Mental Illness, Magic, and the Stories We Tell
AuthorK.J. Aiello
Here is groundbreaking, dazzling debut fiction from one of Canada’s most exciting and admired writers. Canisia Lubrin’s debut fiction is that rare
Here is groundbreaking, dazzling debut fiction from one of Canada’s most exciting and admired writers.
Canisia Lubrin’s debut fiction is that rare work of art—a brilliant, startlingly original book that combines immense literary and political force. Its structure is deceptively simple: it departs from the infamous real-life “Code Noir,” a set of historical decrees originally passed in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire. The original Code had fifty-nine articles; Code Noir has fifty-nine linked fictions—vivid, unforgettable, multi-layered fragments filled with globe-wise characters who desire to live beyond the ruins of the past.
Ranging in style from contemporary realism to dystopia, from futuristic fantasy to historical fiction, this inventive, shape-shifting braid of stories exists far beyond the enclosures of official decrees. This is a timely, daring, virtuosic book by a young literary star. The stories are accompanied by black-and-white drawings—one at the start of each fiction—by acclaimed visual artist Torkwase Dyson.
Moderator
Alyanna Denise Chua is a Toronto-based writer and journalist whose work has appeared in the Toronto Star, Toronto Life and Zoomer, among others. She currently serves as the assistant editor at Maclean’s, where she oversees the magazine’s back-of-book section, curating stories on arts, immigration and housing from across Canada.
Moderator
Canisia Lubrin is a writer, editor and teacher, author of five books, including The Dyzgraphxst and The World After Rain (M&S, 2025). Her work has received a 2021 Windham-Campbell Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and Griffin Poetry Prize, among others. Lubrin has held fellowships at the Banff Centre, Civitella Ranieri, Literature Colloquium, and several universities. She is Asst. Professor and coordinator of the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA in the School of English & Theatre Studies, and poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart. Code Noir (Knopf, 2024) her fiction debut, contains 59 drawings by acclaimed visual artist, Torkwase Dyson.
AuthorCanisia Lubrin
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The rise of Indigenous horror as a genre is doing more than adding amazing titles to our TBR piles; it’s also giving voice to the
The rise of Indigenous horror as a genre is doing more than adding amazing titles to our TBR piles; it’s also giving voice to the real horrors Indigenous people face every day. As Alicia Elliott commented in CBC Arts column Shelfies, “What more is there to fear when you’ve already faced governments who have tried for centuries to wipe you out, who have used biological warfare and forced starvation to create apocalypse for your people?” Join Cheryl Isaacs, Adriana Chartrand, and Drew Hayden Taylor as they discuss what it means to write fear, dread, and horror within an Indigenous context, and the power and resilience that can rise up from those depths.
Adriana Chartrand is a mixed-race Native woman from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her dad is Red River Metis (Michif) from St. Laurent and her mom is white. She speaks English and French and works in the film industry. She is based in Toronto.
Cheryl Isaacs is a Mohawk/white writer and the author of The Unfinished, a story born while running the trails of southern Ontario’s Carolinian forests. Cheryl educates by day, writes by night and is always on the lookout for delightfully creepy things.
Moderator
Drew Hayden Taylor is an award winning playwright, novelist, journalist and filmmaker. Born and living on the Curve Lake First Nation, Drew has done practically everything from performing stand up comedy at the Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C. to being Artistic Director of Canada’s Premiere Indigenous theatre company, Native Earth Performing Arts. Currently his 35th book, a novel titled COLD, published by McClellend & Stewart was recently released, and the third season of his documentary series on APTN, Going Native, will start at the end of August.
Moderator
AuthorAdriana Chartrand
AuthorDrew Hayden Taylor
AuthorCheryl Isaacs
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A.D.Sui is a Ukrainian-born, queer, disabled science fiction writer, and the author of THE DRAGONFLY GAMBIT. She is a failed academic, retired fencer, and coffee enthusiast. Her short fiction has appeared in Augur, Fusion Fragment, HavenSpec, and other venues. When not wrangling her two dogs you can find her on every social media platform as @thesuiway or on her website at www.thesuiway.ca
Christopher DiRaddo is the author of the novels The Family Way, shortlisted for the F.G Bressani Literary Prize, and The Geography of Pluto. He lives in Montreal where he is the founder and host of the Violet Hour Reading Series & Book Club, which has to date provided a platform for more than 275 LGBTQ+ writers in Canada.
AuthorA.D. Sui
AuthorChristopher DiRaddo
Here’s a challenge: build a believable world from scratch in 3,000 words. Or 1,000. Or less! It’s a tough ask even before you throw goblin
Here’s a challenge: build a believable world from scratch in 3,000 words. Or 1,000. Or less! It’s a tough ask even before you throw goblin court politics or ancient monsters or far-future warp technology into the mix. These authors are experts in creating worlds that suit the needs (and tight word counts) of short stories, all while immersing readers in complex fantastical settings. Join Suzan Palumbo, Paola Ferrante, and Gary Barwin, with moderator Anuja Varghese, as they get into what makes a speculative short story feel—well—real!
Moderator
Anuja Varghese (she/her) is an award-winning writer and editor based in Hamilton, ON. Her work appears in Hobart, Corvid Queen, Southern Humanities Review, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and Plenitude Magazine, as well as the Queer Little Nightmares anthology, among others. Her debut short story collection, titled Chrysalis (House of Anansi Press, 2023) explores South Asian diaspora experience through a feminist, speculative lens. In 2023, Chrysalis won the Writers Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. Find Anuja on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok (@anuja_v across platforms) or through her website www.anujavarghese.com.
Moderator
Gary Barwin is the author of 31 books including Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction 2024-1984 and the national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates which won the Leacock Medal and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award and the Giller Prize and was long listed for Canada Reads. He lives in Hamilton.
Paola Ferrante is a writer living with depression. Her debut fiction collection, Her Body Among Animals (Book*hug Press, 2023), was nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award, a runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Award, a Silver Medal Winner in Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, and is forthcoming in August 2024 in the UK from Influx Press. Her debut poetry collection, What To Wear When Surviving a Lion Attack (Mansfield Press, 2019), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She was born, and still resides in, Toronto with her partner Mat and their son.
Suzan Palumbo (she/her, they/them) is a Trinidadian – Canadian, dark speculative fiction writer and editor whose short stories have been nominated for the Nebula, Aurora, World Fantasy and Locus awards. Countess, her queer, Caribbean, space opera novella, will be published by ECW Press in September 2024. Skin Thief: Stories, her debut collection, is available now from Neon Hemlock Press. She is represented by Michael Curry of the Donald Maass Literary agency and can be contacted via her website at suzanpalumbo.carrd.co
AuthorAnuja Varghese
AuthorPaola Ferrante
AuthorGary Barwin
AuthorSuzan Palumbo
Writers, illustrators, artists, translators, editors, designers: the magazine ecosystem brings together the talents and ideas of a vast field of creatives doing cutting-edge work in
Writers, illustrators, artists, translators, editors, designers: the magazine ecosystem brings together the talents and ideas of a vast field of creatives doing cutting-edge work in a realm that is experiencing an exciting resurgence. This panel brings together some of the industry’s best literary magazine makers—big and small. Get ready to talk about the ingredients required for a thriving literary scene. We’ll cover how they’re filling crucial gaps in our media diet, the ways they’re supporting emerging writers, and what they hope for the future of print.
Anthony Salvalaggio is one of the founders and editors of Toronto Journal, established in 2022.
Ariella Garmaise is a writer and critic from Toronto. She is currently an assistant editor at The Walrus where she contributes to books coverage and the editing of short fiction. Her writing and literary criticism have been published in the Washington Post, Financial Times, and Los Angeles Review of Books.
Moderator
Nicola Hamilton RGD (she/her) is an award-winning editorial designer based in Toronto, Canada. For over a decade now she’s been art directing and designing magazines. She’s worked on publications like The Grid, Chatelaine, The University of Toronto Magazine, Best Health, Precedent, and Serviette to name a few. Nicola is the President of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD), where she advocates for the value of design. In July 2022, Nicola took her love of magazines to a whole new level by opening Issues Magazine Shop, a bricks-and-mortar magazine retailer with a mandate to celebrate the people and projects keeping print alive.
Moderator
Tali Voron-Leiderman is the managing editor of The Ampersand Review of Writing & Publishing and teaches in the Honours Bachelor of Creative Writing & Publishing at Sheridan College. Tali was the founder and publisher at The Soap Box Press and is the founder and managing editor at Plume Press. She holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto and completed her Master of Arts in Literatures of Modernity at Toronto Metropolitan University. Tali is driven by her love for good writing, community building, and the desire to make the publishing industry a more accessible space.
When five-year-old Monolith is taken from the Philippines to live with his mother in Canada, he immediately lashes out. Unable or unwilling to speak, he attacks her and
When five-year-old Monolith is taken from the Philippines to live with his mother in Canada, he immediately lashes out. Unable or unwilling to speak, he attacks her and destroys his new home.
Everyone wants to know why—and everyone has a theory. But unlike the solid certainty his name suggests, the answer isn’t so simple.
From a cliffside town in the Tagaytay highlands of the Philippines, to the Filipino communities in the desert of Osoyoos, the Arctic world of Iqaluit, the suburbs of southern Ontario, Sarnia’s Chemical Valley, Montréal’s Côte-des-Neiges, and Toronto’s Little Manila, Austria-Bonifacio takes readers into the kaleidoscope of the Filipino diaspora, uncovering the displacement, estrangement, resilience and healing that happen behind closed doors.
As each chapter unfolds, truths are revealed in humorous, joyful, devastating and surprising ways: through an incisive caregiver’s instruction manual, a custody battle over texts and e-mails, a disarmingly direct self-help guide, a series of desperate résumés, a kundiman songbook, and more.
Monolith appears again and again, as a misbehaving boy in a store, the subject of town gossip, a face in a fundraising campaign, a client in questionable care, a dying man’s beacon of hope—and an unlikely new friend.
Compellingly readable, incisive and resonant, Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio’s stunning debut opens a window into the homes and hearts of the Filipino-Canadian community.
Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio is a Filipina-Canadian author, speaker and school board consultant who builds bridges between educators and Filipino families through her initiative, Filipino Talks. After completing her master’s degree in Immigration and Settlement Studies, she graduated from the Humber School for Writers and completed a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She was a finalist for the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award and has been published in various anthologies. She lives in Toronto, ON, where she is writing her second novel.
“A hospital … is like a roosting box: a communal space that provides ideal but temporary shelter for [the] vulnerable.” In the aftermath of the
“A hospital … is like a roosting box: a communal space that provides ideal but temporary shelter for [the] vulnerable.”
In the aftermath of the First World War, a cash register factory in the west end of Toronto was renovated to treat wounded soldiers returning from war. From 1919 to the 1940s, thousands of soldiers passed through its doors. Some spent the remainder of their lives there.
The Roosting Box is an exquisitely written history of the early years of the Christie Street Hospital and how war reshaped Canadian society. What sets it apart from other volumes is the detail about the ordinary people at the heart of the book: veterans learning to live with their injuries and a world irrevocably changed; nurses caring for patients while coming to terms with their own wartime trauma; and doctors pioneering research in prosthetics and plastic surgery or, in the case of Frederick Banting, in a treatment for diabetes.
Naming chapters after parts of the body, den Hartog chronicles injuries and treatments, and through the voices of men and women, the struggles and accomplishments of the patients and staff. The cast of characters is diverse — Black, female, Indigenous, and people with all sorts of physical and mental challenges — and their experiences, gleaned from diaries, letters, service records, genealogical research, and interviews with descendants, are surprising and illuminating.
An unusual mix of history and story, The Roosting Box offers deeply personal perspectives on healing in the aftermath of war.
Kristen den Hartog is a decorated novelist and non-fiction writer. Her books have won an Alberta Book Publishing Award and been nominated for both a Trillium Award and the City of Toronto Book Award.
The inside story of the grassroots fight to have a suicide barrier erected on Toronto’s “bridge of death.” Most Torontonians have no idea their city
The inside story of the grassroots fight to have a suicide barrier erected on Toronto’s “bridge of death.”
Most Torontonians have no idea their city once hosted the second most popular suicide magnet in North America, behind the Golden Gate Bridge. Since its completion in 1918, more than four hundred people jumped to their death from the Bloor Viaduct, which spans the cavernous Don Valley.
That number might still be rising if not for the tireless efforts of a group of volunteers, led by two citizens, who fought City Hall for years to get a suicide barrier erected. Not only did they win, they saved numerous lives and brought to light valuable research on how barriers actually lower suicide numbers overall. The resulting barrier — The Luminous Veil — has been praised for its ingenious and inspiring design.
The Suicide Magnet tells how the battle was won, and explores the ongoing efforts to help those suffering from mental health challenges.
Paul McLaughlin is a highly experienced and award-winning freelance writer, broadcaster and teacher. The author of 2022’s Asking the Best Questions, he has written numerous books, articles and playscripts. He lives in Toronto, where he teaches professional writing at York University.
A delightfully cunning, sharply insightful novel about ambition and subterfuge from the author of the Giller-longlisted novel A Beauty. This novel’s unnamed narrator is so
A delightfully cunning, sharply insightful novel about ambition and subterfuge from the author of the Giller-longlisted novel A Beauty.
This novel’s unnamed narrator is so obsessed with the desire to write the biography of her literary hero, the late poet Marianne Rasmussen, that she assumes a false name and talks her way into the house of Rasmussen’s former lover, Aubrey Ash. She gets more than a foot in the door–she moves in as a lodger, gaining precious daily contact with frail, crusty, almost-centenarian Aubrey and his handsome, younger (but hardly young) brother Harry.
The would-be biographer tries to ingratiate herself with both the Ash Brothers. She flatters Aubrey and she flirts with Harry, but the harder she tries to get her hands on the coveted prize–access to the Rasmussen papers–the more she gets tangled in a trap that might just be of her own making. Can she resist the temptation to possess, by any means, the letters, photographs and first drafts that could unlock the secret to Marianne Rasmussen’s genius?
The Rasmussen Papers is a brilliant reply to Henry James’ The Aspern Papers. Connie Gault flips James’ story on its head and slides it into contemporary Toronto’s Cabbagetown, among the marginalized and dispossessed, people the narrator studies as intently as she studies everyone she meets–until a confrontation on a streetcar makes her reconsider the limits of what you can know of another’s story, and how hidden we all are, especially from ourselves.
Connie Gault has written for stage and radio and film. Her first novel, Euphoria, won a Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction and was short-listed for the High Plains Fiction Award and the Commonwealth Prize for Best Novel of Canada and the Caribbean. A Beauty won the 2016 Saskatchewan Book of the Year as well as the award for fiction, and was long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. A former prose editor of Grain magazine, Connie has also edited books of fiction and has taught many creative writing classes and mentored emerging writers. After spending most of her life in Saskatchewan, she now lives in London, Ontario.
For fans of Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together is an epic graphic memoir about a queer illustrator surviving his intensely
For fans of Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together is an epic graphic memoir about a queer illustrator surviving his intensely Christian childhood in 1970s Toronto.
Meet little Maurice Vellekoop, the youngest of four children raised by Dutch immigrants in the 1970s in a blue-collar suburb of Toronto. Despite their working-class milieu, the Vellekoops are devoted to art, music, and film, and they instill a deep reverence for the arts in young Maurice—except for literature. He’d much rather watch Cher and Carol Burnett on TV than read a book. He also loves playing with his girlfriends’ Barbie dolls and helping his Mum in her hair salon, which she runs out of the basement of their house. In short, he is really, really gay. Which is a huge problem, because the family is part of the Christian Reformed Church, a strict Calvinist sect. They go to church twice on Sunday, and they send their kids to a private Christian school, catechism classes, and the Calvinist Cadet Corps. Needless to say, the church is intolerant of homosexuality. Though she loves her son deeply, Maurice’s mother, Ann, cannot accept him, setting the course for a long estrangement.
Vellekoop struggles through all of this until he graduates from high school and is accepted into the Ontario College of Art in the early 1980s. Here he finds a welcoming community of bohemians, including a brilliant, flamboyantly gay professor who encourages him to come out. But just as he’s dipping his toes into the waters of gay sex and love, a series of romantic disasters, followed by a violent attack, sets him back severely. And then the shadow of the AIDS era descends. Maurice reacts by retreating to the safety of childhood obsessions, and seeks to satisfy his emotional needs with film- and theatre-going, music, boozy self-medication, and prolific art-making. When these tactics inevitably fail, Vellekoop at last embarks on a journey towards his heart’s true desire. In psychotherapy, the spiderweb of family, faith, guilt, sexuality, mental health, the intergenerational fallout of World War II, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, French Formula Hairspray, and much more at last begins to untangle. But it’s going to be a long, messy, and occasionally hilarious process.
I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together is an enthralling portrait of what it means to be true to yourself, to learn to forgive, and to be an artist.
Maurice Vellekoop was born in 1964 in a suburb of Toronto. A prolific artist and illustrator, he has worked non-stop for the last three decades. In addition to publications, his corporate clients include Swissair, Abercrombie & Fitch, Air Canada, Smart Car, and LVMH. He lives on Toronto Island with his partner Gordon Bowness.
Join Toronto Poet Laureate Lillian Allen for a breathtaking bite of poetry to end the day! Including a flash performance with Gary Barwin and Gregory
Join Toronto Poet Laureate Lillian Allen for a breathtaking bite of poetry to end the day! Including a flash performance with Gary Barwin and Gregory Betts to preview Muttertongue, a one-of-a-kind collaborative dialogue/performance/book combining the intensity of Dub Poetry with the intricacies of experimental poetics.
Join us for a special conversation with shortlisted fiction writers for the 2023 Trillium Award. In partnership with Ontario Creates.
Join us for a special conversation with shortlisted fiction writers for the 2023 Trillium Award. In partnership with Ontario Creates.
D.A. Lockhart is the author of multiple collections of poetry and short fiction. His work has been shortlisted for numerous awards. It has appeared widely throughout Turtle Island including, The Malahat Review, Grain, CV2, TriQuarterly, The Fiddlehead, ARC Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, Best New Poetry from the Midwest, and Belt. He is a graduate of the Indiana University – Bloomington MFA in Creative Writing program where he held a Neal-Marshall Graduate Fellowship in Creative Writing. He is pùkuwànkoamimëns of the Moravian of the Thames First Nation. Lockhart currently resides at Waawiiyaatanong and Pelee Island where he is the publisher at Urban Farmhouse Press.
Nina Dunic’s debut novel The Clarion won the 2024 Trillium Book Award, was longlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and received “Best of 2023” nods from The Globe and Mail, Apple Books and the CBC. She is a two-time winner of the Toronto Star Short Story Contest, has been longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize four times, won third place in the Humber Literary Review Emerging Writers Fiction Contest, and was nominated for The Journey Prize. She has a collection of stories coming out in 2025. Nina lives in Scarborough.
Moderator
Stuart Ross has published over 20 books of fiction, poetry, and personal essays, most recently the memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers, winner of the 2023 Trillium Book Award, the poetry collection The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky, and the short story collection I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub. His poetry has been translated into Nynorsk, French, Spanish, Russian, Slovene, and Estonian. Active in the Canadian micropress world since the mid-1970s, Stuart lives in Cobourg, Ontario, and blogs infrequently at bloggamooga.blogspot.ca.
Moderator
Zalika Reid-Benta is a Canadian author. Her debut novel River Mumma was shortlisted for the 2024 Trillium Book Award and has received starred reviews from publications such as Publishers Weekly and Booklist Magazine. River Mumma is an Amazon Books Editors’ Pick for Best Science Fiction and Fantasy and was the October 2023 pick for the CityLine book club.Reid-Benta’s debut short story collection Frying Plantain won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction in 2020. Frying Plantain was shortlisted for numerous awards including the Toronto Book Award, the Trillium Book Award, the White Pine Award and the Evergreen Award. Her picture book, Twelve Days of Jamaican Christmas, will be published in 2025.
AuthorD.A. Lockhart
AuthorZalika Reid-Benta
AuthorNina Dunic
AuthorStuart Ross
Join us for a special conversation with shortlisted poetry writers for the 2024 Trillium Award. In partnership with Ontario Creates.
Join us for a special conversation with shortlisted poetry writers for the 2024 Trillium Award. In partnership with Ontario Creates.
Born and raised in Kingston, Ontario, Britta Badour, better known as Britta B. is an award-winning artist, public speaker, voice talent, and poet living in Toronto. She is the author of the poetry collection and audiobook, Wires that Sputter, published by McClelland & Stewart. Britta is a Trillium Book Award Finalist for Poetry and her work has been shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, as well as longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. Britta holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph and teaches spoken word performance at Seneca College.
Catriona Wright is a writer, editor, and teacher. Her most recent poetry collection, Continuity Errors, was published by Coach House Books in 2023. She is also the author of the poetry collection Table Manners and the short story collection Difficult People. Her writing has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Walrus, Grain, The New Quarterly, and elsewhere.
Moderator
Sanna Wani is a poet, editor and translator based in Toronto. She is the author of My Grief, the Sun (House of Anansi Press, 2022), the winner of the 2023 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. She is the host of the podcast Poet Talk and a member of the Daybreak Poets Collective.
Moderator
AuthorCatriona Wright
AuthorSanna Wani
AuthorBritta Badour
Accessibility Sponsor
On September 7, 1964, John, Paul, George and Ringo performed two back to back concerts at Maple Leaf Gardens. Culture in Toronto, as we knew
On September 7, 1964, John, Paul, George and Ringo performed two back to back concerts at Maple Leaf Gardens. Culture in Toronto, as we knew it, changed forever. In this special panel conversation, Michael Barclay will moderate authors Dierdre Kelly, Aaron Badgley and concert promoter Johnny Brower as they discuss that fateful night 60 years ago and how Beatlemania transformed music, fashion and pop culture.
As a youngster, Aaron Badgley developed a profound love of The Beatles and music in general, also developing a fascination with record labels. At the age of 19, he started working in radio and by 20, he was a production manager for a number of stations in Canada. In 2005, Aaron debuted his syndicated radio show The Beatles Universe, which ran for six years. Currently, he is the host of Here Today and Backwards Traveller radio shows and cohosts From Memphis To Merseyside and The Way-Back Music Machine (with Tony Stuart). He writes for Spill Magazine and Immersive Audio Album, and has also contributed to the All Music Guide. Aaron resides in Toronto, Canada.
Deirdre Kelly is a Canadian journalist, author and internationally recognized arts critic and style writer. She holds a Master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto and is the best-selling author of the nonfiction books, Paris Times Eight and Ballerina: Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection, the latter taking the number one spot on a Top 10 list of the world’s best ballet books published by the Guardian newspaper in 2021. Her next book, Fashioning the Beatles: The Looks that Shook the World, will be published in the fall of 2023 by Sutherland House Books.
John Brower became a seminal figure in the Toronto music scene in 1963 when his high school rock band The Diplomats were amongst a small number of bands that reigned supreme on the Toronto circuit. His early concerts paved the way for rock promotion to become one of the country’s biggest exports as Live Nation and its progenitors benefited from Brower’s early milestone events. He was first to bring major rock artists to Canada on a weekly basis in Toronto. His club The Rockpile, a late 60’s venue following in the tradition of Bill Graham’s Fillmore held sway to everyone from The Who to Led Zeppelin and brought international stars to Toronto every week during the formative rock years. His first pop festival in June 1969 preceded Woodstock by several months. For his rock and roll revival in September of 69 he invited John Lennon who appeared unannounced with the Plastic Ono Band featuring Eric Clapton. Lennon’s appearance there is considered to be the impetus for his leaving The Beatles and striking out on his own. Wikipedia’s listing of the top 30 legendary music festivals lists five produced by Brower including; The Toronto Rock and Roll Revival 1969, where John Lennon made his break from The Beatles, The Strawberry Fields Festival, considered Canada’s Woodstock, and The Heatwave Festival, the landmark turning point in New Wave music that ushered in the 80’s. His life’s work has included poetry, creative writing, social activism and generosity of the human spirit. He is currently producing film and television properties based on his personal experiences in the music business. He lives in Venice California with an extended family that includes two dogs and three cats.
AuthorAaron Badgley
The Looks that Shook the World
AuthorDierdre Kelly
Presenting Partner
“Unofficial Mayor of Toronto” Shawn Micallef joins us to talk about the newly updated edition of his Toronto favorite book, Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto.
“Unofficial Mayor of Toronto” Shawn Micallef joins us to talk about the newly updated edition of his Toronto favorite book, Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto.
What is the ‘Toronto look’? Glass skyscrapers rise beside Victorian homes, and Brutalist apartment buildings often mark the edge of leafy ravines, creating a city of contrasts whose architectural look can only be defined by telling the story of how it came together and how it works, today, as an imperfect machine.
Join Shawn Micallef in conversation with local author Kerry Clare about meandering our city’s unique neighbourhoods and celebrating a city in motion.
Kerry Clare is the author three novels Asking for a Friend (out now from Doubleday Canada), Waiting for a Star to Fall and Mitzi Bytes, and editor of The M Word: Conversations About Motherhood. A National Magazine Award-nominated essayist, and editor of Canadian books website 49thShelf.com, she writes about books and reading at her longtime blog, Pickle Me This. She lives in Toronto with her family.
Shawn Micallef is the author of Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto and Full Frontal TO (nominated for the 2013 Toronto Book Award), a weekly columnist at the Toronto Star, and a senior editor and co-owner of the independent, Jane Jacobs Prize–winning magazine Spacing. Shawn teaches at the University of Toronto and OCAD University and was a 2011-2012 Canadian Journalism Fellow at University of Toronto’s Massey College. In 2002, while a resident at the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab, he co-founded [murmur], the location-based mobile phone documentary project that has spread to over 20 cities globally. Shawn is the Toronto Public Library’s urban-focused Writer in Residence until December 2013.Explore the city with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef.
Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto
AuthorShawn Micallef
Presenting Partner
Toronto has been deeply shaped by its secrets. Dramatic scenes have played out in the dark corners of our city; our past is filled with
Toronto has been deeply shaped by its secrets. Dramatic scenes have played out in the dark corners of our city; our past is filled with tales of espionage, betrayal and conspiracy. History has been made by our secret agents, undercover operatives, bootleggers, con artists and thieves.
Award-winning storyteller, teacher and historian Adam Bunch shares a special presentation that shines a light into the city’s shadows and takes us down into the mysterious nooks and crannies where that history is written in whispers.
Adam Bunch is an award-winning storyteller who brings the history of Toronto and Canada to life. He’s the author of The Toronto Book of the Dead and The Toronto Book of Love, the host of the Canadiana documentary series, and the creator of the Toronto History Weekly newsletter, the Festival of Bizarre Toronto History, and the Toronto Dreams Project. His work popularizing Canadian history was recognized with the Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media — the Pierre Berton Award. He also teaches history at George Brown College and has created writing workshops for the Toronto Public Library. He’s spoken at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum, and his writing has appeared in The Toronto Star, Spacing Magazine and The Huffington Post. In a previous life, he was a music journalist: editor-in-chief of SoundProof Magazine and The Little Red Umbrella, a contributor to PopMatters and Sun Media’s 24 Hours commuter newspaper, and a member of the jury for the Polaris Music Prize. He also served as Creative Director for Ripple Creatives Strategies, developing marketing and communications for not-for-profit clients like the Gardiner Museum, Habitat For Humanity, Kids Help Phone, and the United Nations refugee agency. He’s lived in Toronto since he was a few weeks old, growing up along the Humber River, raised on stories of snowstorms, jazz clubs and wartime romances.
Presenting Partner
Join the Loop de Loop world and upcycle your old clothes— saving them from landfill!—with personalized patches. Children will have a chance to design and create their own
Join the Loop de Loop world and upcycle your old clothes— saving them from landfill!—with personalized patches. Children will have a chance to design and create their own small patch using fabric markers and fabric.
Andrea Curtis is an award-winning Toronto writer whose books have been published around the world. Her latest nonfiction for young readers includes the just-published Loop de Loop (Groundwood), illustrated by Netherlands-based Roozeboos, and the ThinkCities series City of Neighbors, City Streets are for People, City of Water and A Forest in the City (Groundwood). Andrea lives with her family in the west end where she loves to hike, bike, doodle and dig in her veggie patch.
Circular Solutions for a Waset-Free World
AuthorAndrea Curtis
28sep12:45 pm1:15 pmPlague ThievesCaroline Fernandez12:45 pm - 1:15 pm(GMT-04:00)
Caroline Fernandez loves to write children’s books for curious kids. She’s won awards for her fantastic stories, like the exciting chapter book series “Asha and Baz” which highlights real-life historical women in STEM. She has written numerous picture books including; “Hide And Seek: Wild Animal Groups in North America” and “The Adventures of Grandamasaurus” (series) and “Stop Reading This Book“. For those looking for a big adventure, watch for her upcoming middle-grade historical novel “Plague Thieves.” Caroline writes, drinks tea, and bakes in Toronto, ON. Twitter and Instagram: @ParentClub
AuthorCaroline Fernandez
28sep1:30 pm2:00 pmSo Loud!Sahar Golshan, Shiva Delsooz1:30 pm - 2:00 pm(GMT-04:00)
Sahar Golshan is the author of So Loud! a picture book published in 2024 with Annick Press. So Loud! is illustrated by Shiva Delsooz. Sahar is a writer, a language learner, and the director of the short documentary KAR (2019). She is a winner of the Marina Nemat Award for Creative Writing in Non-Fiction and the Air Canada Short Film Award. Her writing has appeared in Room, Taclanese, Shameless, The Ex-Puritan, and Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language. She enjoys teaching and facilitating workshops in academic and community spaces.
Shiva Delsooz is an Iranian-Canadian illustrator born and raised in Ontario, Canada. She graduated from College with a diploma in animation and has always had a passion for drawing, as her mother can confirm by all the little doodles underneath her dining room table.
AuthorSahar Golshan, Shiva Delsooz (Illustrator)
28sep2:15 pm2:45 pmOma's Bag2:15 pm - 2:45 pm(GMT-04:00)
Michelle Wang lives in Toronto, Ontario, with her husband and their four children. She is an elementary school teacher, but as her youngest daughter always says, when asked: “My mom’s an author and an aloe farmer.” When not playing random songs every time she walks by a piano, Michelle can be found reading a book to avoid cleaning her very messy house.
AuthorMichelle Wang
28sep3:00 pm3:45 pmFireside MunschM. John Kennedy3:00 pm - 3:45 pm(GMT-04:00)
M. John Kennedy’s hit solo show Fireside Munsch is a high-energy performance featuring four of Robert Munsch’s classic stories performed as one wacky storytelling play. Featuring Andrew’s Loose
M. John Kennedy’s hit solo show Fireside Munsch is a high-energy performance featuring four of Robert Munsch’s classic stories performed as one wacky storytelling play. Featuring Andrew’s Loose Tooth, The Paperbag Princess, PIGS and the brand-new Robert Munsch book, BOUNCE!
M. John Kennedy is Head of the Acting Program at the Randolph College for the Performing Arts in Toronto. In the past year M. John has been fortunate to have worked on a number plays including Tunnel at the End of the Light (Soldiers in the Arts), The Tilco Strike (4th Line Theatre), Give ‘Em Hell (Prairie Fire, Please / Theatre Direct) and It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play & Yellow Face (New Stages) all while touring his one-person Robert Munsch show(s) Fireside Munsch*. (*Eight Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations).
28sep4:00 pm4:30 pmKaiah's GardenMelanie Florence4:00 pm - 4:30 pm(GMT-04:00)
Melanie has been writing full-time since 2010 and has written a bunch of books, but she’s probably best known for her picture books, Missing Nimama and Stolen Words, which won the 2016 TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and the 2018 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award respectively. In her spare time, Melanie plays guitar, reads manga, collects vinyl, listens to really loud rock music and slightly quieter K-pop, gets tattoos and drinks too much coffee. She lives in Toronto with her family.
AuthorMelanie Florence
28sep4:45 pm5:15 pmNight of the Living ZedKevin & Basil Sylvester4:45 pm - 5:15 pm(GMT-04:00)
Basil Sylvester is a writer and bookseller. Their first book, The Fabulous Zed Watson!, co-written with Kevin Sylvester, was a finalist for the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award, the 2021 Lambda Award and the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award. Night of the Living Zed is their second novel. They live in Toronto, Canada.
Kevin Sylvester has written and illustrated more than thirty books for kids.His latest novel is Night of the Living Zed, written with his kid, Basil. It’s the sequel to The Fabulous Zed Watson! which was a finalist for numerous awards, including the TD and the Governor General’s. Kevin’s also the author and illustrator of Apartment 713. It was the 2024 winner of the Silver Birch, Red Cedar and SunDogs awards… all voted on by kids!He has a new graphic novel, Puffin and Penguin, with his pal Helaine Becker.His series, The Hockey Super-Six is highly illustrated and goofy fun.His other novels range from science fiction (The MINRs trilogy) to mystery novels (The Neil Flambé Capers), and other super-heroes (Mucus Mayhem).His picture books include Gargantua (Jr.): Defender of Earth, Super-Duper Monster, GREAT and Splinters.He also writes and illustrates non-fiction books. There are sports books (Gold Medal for Weird, Basketballogy, Baseballogy) and books on financial literacy (Follow Your Stuff and Follow Your Money.)
AuthorBasil Sylvester & Kevin Sylvester
29sep11:00 am11:45 amFireside MunschM. John Kennedy11:00 am - 11:45 am(GMT-04:00)
M. John Kennedy’s hit solo show Fireside Munsch is a high-energy performance featuring four of Robert Munsch’s classic stories performed as one wacky storytelling play. Featuring Andrew’s Loose
M. John Kennedy’s hit solo show Fireside Munsch is a high-energy performance featuring four of Robert Munsch’s classic stories performed as one wacky storytelling play. Featuring Andrew’s Loose Tooth, The Paperbag Princess, PIGS and the brand-new Robert Munsch book, BOUNCE!
M. John Kennedy is Head of the Acting Program at the Randolph College for the Performing Arts in Toronto. In the past year M. John has been fortunate to have worked on a number plays including Tunnel at the End of the Light (Soldiers in the Arts), The Tilco Strike (4th Line Theatre), Give ‘Em Hell (Prairie Fire, Please / Theatre Direct) and It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play & Yellow Face (New Stages) all while touring his one-person Robert Munsch show(s) Fireside Munsch*. (*Eight Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations).
29sep12:00 pm12:30 pmBarnaby Unboxed!The Fan Brothers12:00 pm - 12:30 pm(GMT-04:00)
Kids can develop favourite foods and attributes of the various creatures featured Barnaby Unboxed! and create their own new Perfect Pet!
Kids can develop favourite foods and attributes of the various creatures featured Barnaby Unboxed! and create their own new Perfect Pet!
TERRY, ERIC and DEVIN FAN are brothers, writers and artists who have been dreaming up stories and characters together since they were young. Barnaby Unboxed! is the follow-up to The Barnabus Project, winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award and the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, among many other honors, and published in almost twenty languages around the world. Terry and Eric are the author-illustrators of the internationally renowned The Night Gardener, Ocean Meets Sky, It Fell from the Sky and Lizzy and the Cloud as well as the illustrators of several other bestselling picture books, including Chris Hadfield’s The Darkest Dark. Eric is also the author of the critically acclaimed picture book Night Lunch, illustrated by Dena Seiferling. Devin is a youth worker who has a passion for nature, poetry and kung fu. All three brothers live in Ontario, and daydream during long walks in the park.
AuthorThe Fan Brothers
Accessibility Sponsor
29sep12:45 pm1:15 pmGetting Glam at Gram'sErin Hawryluk & Sara Weed12:45 pm - 1:15 pm(GMT-04:00)
Erin Hawryluk loved drawing so much that she became an illustrator. With a background in animation and a love for storytelling, creating children’s books has always been a dream. Seeing a special story come to life is what it’s all about. Erin is the illustrator of the children’s book Getting Glam at Gram’s. She lives in Southwestern Ontario with her family.
Sara Weed loved school so much that she became a teacher. Now as a dynamic secondary-level science teacher with the Lambton Kent District School Board, she brings her zest for life and love of learning into her classroom. When she is not teaching, she enjoys creating art, getting outdoors, and all things active. She lives with her wife and their two kids in rural Ontario and together they share a passion for reading. Her kids inspired her to create Getting Glam at Gram’s – a children’s book radiating queer joy.
AuthorSara Weed, Erin Hawryluk (Illustrator)
Join authors and real-life scientists, Farah Qaiser and Hajer Nakua, for an interactive reading of their new children’s picture book, Khadija and the Elephant Toothpaste Experiment (Second Story
Join authors and real-life scientists, Farah Qaiser and Hajer Nakua, for an interactive reading of their new children’s picture book, Khadija and the Elephant Toothpaste Experiment (Second Story Press), which demonstrates how everyone can see themselves in science. The authors will then perform the exciting elephant toothpaste experiment, and kids will learn to do this experiment at home with adult supervision.
Growing up, Farah Qaiser always had her head buried in a book. She is a scientist by training, a DNA detective if you will, and has worn many hats, from working in policy to writing for newspapers. Farah holds a Master of Science from the University of Toronto. She hopes that Khadija And the Elephant Toothpaste Experiment will help draw children into the world of science, a world they belong in.
Hajer Nakua is a PhD graduate from the University of Toronto. Her research investigated the relationship between brain development and mental health symptoms in children. Hajer passionate about making science accessible. She uses social media to share mental health and neuroscience research with her North American and Middle Eastern followers on Instagram (in English and Arabic). Hajer also enjoys giving talks about neuroscience to children and youth. Hajer is the co-author of a recently published book, Khadija and the Elephant Toothpaste Experiment, which aims to encourage young girls to pursue their curiosities and see themselves in the world of science.
AuthorFarah Qaiser & Hajer Nakua
29sep2:15 pm2:45 pmSuper SwitchJeff Szpirglass2:15 pm - 2:45 pm(GMT-04:00)
Jeff Szpirglas is the author of several works for young people, including the Countdown to Danger series for Scholastic Canada and the Book of Screams series from Orca. He is also the co-author, with Danielle Saint-Onge, of a number of Orca Echoes titles, including Shark Bait!, X Marks the Spot! and Super Switch. Jeff has worked at CTV and was an editor at Chirp, Chickadee and Owl magazines. In his spare time, he teaches grade school. Jeff lives with his family in Kitchener, Ontario.
AuthorJeff Szpirglas
29sep3:00 pm3:30 pmMomma's Going to MarchJennifer Maruno3:00 pm - 3:30 pm(GMT-04:00)
Make your voice heard! Children can choose a cause they feel strongly about, e.g. Environment, Peace, etc. Grab one of the mini protest signs to decorate, and then
Make your voice heard! Children can choose a cause they feel strongly about, e.g. Environment, Peace, etc. Grab one of the mini protest signs to decorate, and then chime in during an interactive reading. Your sign is yours to keep!
Jennifer Maruno, former elementary school principal, is the author of eight novels for middle grade and young adult readers as well as four picture books. Her novels of historical fiction, which focus on Canadian history, have received many award nominations and commendations. Her latest picture book, While You Sleep, was selected by The Bank Street College of Education’s The Best Children Books of the Year (for books published in 2022). She received her Master of Education from Brock University. Jennifer enjoys full time writing, travelling and mentoring other writers. She lives in Burlington, Ontario.
AuthorJennifer Maruno
29sep3:45 pm4:15 pmHaunted Canada: The Graphic NovelJoel A. Sutherland3:45 pm - 4:15 pm(GMT-04:00)
Joel A. Sutherland is the award-winning author of House of Ash and Bone (Tundra Books), Screamers (Scholastic Canada), numerous volumes of Haunted Canada (a series that now has more than 500,000 copies in print, has recently been adapted into a graphic novel, and is being developed for television), and Summer’s End (a Red Maple Award Honour Book). His series, Haunted, including The House Next Door, was praised by Goosebumps author R.L. Stine. He has a Masters of Information and Library Studies from Aberystwyth University in Wales and lives in southeastern Ontario with his family. Visit him at joelasutherland.com.
Graphic Novel, Volume 1
AuthorJoel A. Sutherland
PublisherScholastic
