Join us on September 26 & 27 for three simultaneous live streams for readers of all ages and appetites – check them out below!
Are you missing meandering through our marketplace? Well, we’ve set up our tents in cyberspace!
Registration is FREE, as always (but we also appreciate donations if you can easily afford it. You can choose to donate with your ticket, or support the festival with a donation of any amount at Canada Helps).
Learn how to get involved and engage in WOTS2020. This is a beginner’s guide to all of the elements of our virtual festival this year!
This stream is home to our classic Word On The Street programming such as author readings and interviews with many of the best 2020 releases! Debuts, bestsellers, and everyone in between.
Live captioning is available for this programming stream
Event has already taken place!
Andrew Pyper is the multiple award-winning author of nine internationally bestselling novels. The Residence, forthcoming in September with Skybound Books/Gallery, is being developed as a hybrid fiction/documentary series with Skybound Entertainment and Radical Media, with Pyper acting as Executive Producer. Among his previous novels, The Demonologist was the winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Novel and is being developed for feature film at Netflix with Matt Reeves producing. His first novel, Lost Girls, won the Arthur Ellis Award, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and appeared on both the New York Times and Times (UK) bestseller lists. He lives in Toronto.
Saleema Nawaz is the author of two novels, most recently, Songs for the End of the World. Her first novel, Bone and Bread, won the Quebec Writers’ Federation Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the 2016 Canada Reads competition. She is also the author of the short story collection Mother Superior, and a winner of the Writers’ Trust of Canada / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. Born and raised in Ottawa, she currently lives in Montreal.
Terese Mason Pierre is a writer, editor and organizer whose work has been published in Strange Horizons, The Temz Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere online and in print. She is the poetry editor of Augur Magazine, and volunteers with Shab-e She’r reading series. Terese lives and works in Toronto.
From Toronto-based poet Terese Mason Pierre comes Manifest, a gorgeous speculative/fantasy-filled journey to the outer limits of human desire. Mason Pierre’s romantic, dreamy, and ethereal language stops time: and in that held moment, we are transported to lands, beaches, and worlds that may only exist in our collective unconscious, but that move us toward a profoundly intimate understanding of what it means to be human.
This chapbook is printed on white paper with cardstock cover lovingly designed and typeset by Dani Spinosa. Gorgeous cover art by Mia Carnevale. Poetry edited by Tiffany Morris.
AuthorTerese Mason Pierre
Move over Nancy Drew – mavens of mystery C.S. O’Cinneide, Gail Bowen, and Ann Lambert are writing award-winning mysteries with strong lady leads. Follow the trail along with these sleuths, from
Move over Nancy Drew – mavens of mystery C.S. O’Cinneide, Gail Bowen, and Ann Lambert are writing award-winning mysteries with strong lady leads. Follow the trail along with these sleuths, from finding a body to solving the murder! Moderated by Deb Dundas, Toronto Star.
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Ann Lambert has been writing and directing for the stage for thirty-five years. She is the author of the Russell and Leduc Mystery Series. Ann has been a teacher of English literature at Dawson College for almost thirty years in Montreal, Quebec, where she makes her home.
C.S. O’Cinneide runs the blog She Kills Lit and is the author of Petra’s Ghost, a literary thriller set on the Camino de Santiago. She lives in Guelph, Ontario.
Gail Bowen is an author, playwright, and teacher. Among her numerous writing awards are a lifetime achievement award from the Crime Writers of Canada and the Distinguished Canadian Award from the University of Regina. Reader’s Digest has called her Canada’s best mystery novelist. She lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, with her husband, Ted.
Ann Cleeves praises the second book in the Russell and Leduc mysteries as a story about power and powerlessness in the dead of winter as well as “a rollicking good read.” After a howling snowstorm envelops Montreal, the body of a young woman is discovered. The only clue to her identity: a photograph in her pocket with the phone number of Detective Inspector Romeo Leduc. Meanwhile, Marie and Romeo navigate their deepening relationship, and a student at Marie’s college is the victim of a terrible assault. Romeo thinks the young woman’s death is linked to violence against homeless people, but justice for the most vulnerable is hard to find.
AuthorAnn Lambert
Candace Starr likes to think of herself as retired since she got out of prison — that is, until society maven Kristina Corrigan tries to hire Candace to permanently remove her daughter’s barnacle of a boyfriend. The only catch? Tyler Brent is seventeen years old. Even Candace draws the line at taking out a target who doesn’t even shave yet.
But when Tyler turns up dead, people start asking questions. Detective Chien-Shiung Malone, the ambitious homicide investigator assigned to the case, has more than a few of her own. Candace isn’t about to provide any answers, though — until Malone makes her a proposition she just can’t refuse.
AuthorC.S. O’Cinneide
In the nineteenth instalment of the Joanne Kilbourn series, Jo is co-writing a screenplay for a made-in-Saskatchewan movie. But before the script is completed, her brilliant co-writer and friend, Roy Brodnitz, disappears while scouting locations. Hours later, he’s found but dies in a state of mortal terror. Heartsick and perplexed, Joanne resolves to learn what happened. What she discovers threatens Brodnitz’s legacy, and the decision about whether or not to reveal the truth is hers to make. The Unlocking Season is another deeply satisfying and thought-provoking novel from one of Canada’s finest crime writers.
AuthorGail Bowen
In partnership with
Cordelia Strube and Dolly Dennis’ new novels gather a cast of colourful characters, throw them in between a rock and a hard place, and roll the emotional dice to see
Cordelia Strube and Dolly Dennis’ new novels gather a cast of colourful characters, throw them in between a rock and a hard place, and roll the emotional dice to see if their protagonists can pull through their troubles. What do you do when your community is facing a crisis? Moderated by Deb Dundas, Toronto Star.
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Cordelia Strube is the author of ten critically acclaimed novels. She has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Book Award, and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Dolly Dennis is an award-winning playwright, the author of the novel Loddy-Dah, and a celebrated visual artist. She lives in Edmonton.
Stevie, a recovering alcoholic and kitchen manager of Chappy’s, a small chain restaurant, is frantically trying to prevent the people around her from going supernova: her PTSD-suffering veteran son, her uproariously demented parents, the polyglot eccentrics who work in her kitchen, the blind geriatric dog she inherits, and a damaged five-year-old who landed on her doorstep and might just be her granddaughter. Award-winning author Cordelia Strube returns to her unforgettable terrain of the forgotten inner burbs of east Toronto with this scabrous, infinitely humane story that will make you cheer.
AuthorCordelia Strube
Adeen is the resident manager of the Complex Arms, an apartment building in the Mill Woods neighbourhood of Edmonton. With no help from her deadbeat husband, Frosty, who sees himself as the next big thing in Nashville, she struggles to maintain the building while coping with the needs of a daughter with disabilities.
As a distraction from her problems, Adeen grows more and more involved in the lives of her tenants, forming relationships and building a community. But when a natural disaster hits, the lives of the Complex Arms’s residents will never be the same.
AuthorDolly Dennis
26sep1:00 pm1:30 pmVirtual EventLove YourselfKelli Korducki, Michelle Parise1:00 pm – 1:30 pm EST
Join Michelle Parise and Kelli Korducki in conversation about romantic partnerships, breaking social contracts, and learning to love yourself after romantic tragedy strikes.
Join Michelle Parise and Kelli Korducki in conversation about romantic partnerships, breaking social contracts, and learning to love yourself after romantic tragedy strikes.
Event has already taken place!
Kelli María Korducki is a journalist and cultural critic. Her byline has appeared frequently in the Globe and Mail and National Post, as well as in the New Inquiry, NPR, the Walrus, Vice, and the Hairpin. A former editor-in-chief of the popular daily news blog Torontoist, Korducki is based in Brooklyn and Toronto.
Michelle Parise is an award-winning journalist, writer, and performer. She has worked for the CBC for more than two decades, in everything from children’s television to music programming and documentary making, as well as at the helm of many national radio programs. The daughter of Italian immigrants, she lives in Toronto.
A memoir of falling in love, the fallout of infidelity, and everything messy in between — and the inspiration behind the hit CBC podcast.
“A lyrical tribute to the intoxicating, dramatic, destructive and ultimately empowering nature of love.” — Anna Maria Tremonti
Love, marriage, baby. Michelle Parise bought into the dream. But one day, her husband drops The Bomb and she’s suddenly alone. Michelle documents from falling in love to the fallout of infidelity and everything messy in between, finally finding life and hope in the aftermath.
AuthorMichelle Parise
In Hard To Do, Kelli María Korducki turns a Marxist lens on the relatively short history of romantic partnership, tracing how the socio-economic dynamics between men and women have transformed the ways women conceive of domestic partnership. With perceptive, reported insights on the ways marriage and divorce are legislated, the rituals of twentieth-century courtship, and contemporary practices for calling it off, Korducki reveals that, for all women, choosing to end a relationship is a radical action with very limited cultural precedent.
AuthorKelli Korducki
26sep1:30 pm1:35 pmVirtual EventNervesLena Suksi1:30 pm – 1:35 pm EST
A special 5 minute poetry reading with Lena Suksi.
A special 5 minute poetry reading with Lena Suksi.
Event has already taken place!
Lena Suksi has lived in Toronto for a decade. Their writing has mostly appeared as texts accompanying exhibitions or read at galleries, including at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Cooper Cole, Georgia Scherman Projects, Susan Hobbs, Towards, The Table, and Calaboose. They’ve presented at Doored, Images Festival and Blackwood Gallery.
The Nerves subverts the literary approach to sexuality by treating the erotic not as a site of anxiety but of reverie. Set in an imaginary world where our sense memories tell us who we are, Lena Suksi’s literary debut is psychedelic, attentive, cinematic and hot. Writing toward sensitivity and ecstasy, exploring touch as healing abandon, The Nerves is charged with desire, devotion, and creative fantasy. Through a series of joyful encounters, Lena Suksi reminds us that pleasure can be abundant, nuanced and that it can heal. Engaging in a queer erotics of language, Suksi’s debut is a bundle of wet atmospheres, speaking to faith in touch.
AuthorLena Suksi
Marlowe Granados and Terese Mason Pierre are pleasure seekers, explorers and indulgers. Join them as they navigate their way to a deeper understanding of what it means to be a
Marlowe Granados and Terese Mason Pierre are pleasure seekers, explorers and indulgers. Join them as they navigate their way to a deeper understanding of what it means to be a person following their desires.
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Marlowe Granados is a writer and filmmaker. She co-hosts The Mean Reds, a podcast dedicated to women-led films, and her advice column, “Designs for Living,” appears in The Baffler. After spending time in New York and London, Granados currently resides in Toronto. Happy Hour is her début novel.
Terese Mason Pierre is a writer, editor and organizer whose work has been published in Strange Horizons, The Temz Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere online and in print. She is the poetry editor of Augur Magazine, and volunteers with Shab-e She’r reading series. Terese lives and works in Toronto.
Refreshing and wry in equal measure, Happy Hour is an intoxicating novel of youth well spent. Isa Epley is all of twenty-one years old and already wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. She arrives in New York City for a summer of adventure with her best friend, one newly blond Gala Novak. They have little money, but that’s hardly going to stop them from having a good time. A cri de cœur for party girls and anyone who has ever felt entitled to an adventure of their own, Happy Hour is an effervescent tonic for the ails of contemporary life.
AuthorMarlowe Granados
From Toronto-based poet Terese Mason Pierre comes Manifest, a gorgeous speculative/fantasy-filled journey to the outer limits of human desire. Mason Pierre’s romantic, dreamy, and ethereal language stops time: and in that held moment, we are transported to lands, beaches, and worlds that may only exist in our collective unconscious, but that move us toward a profoundly intimate understanding of what it means to be human.
This chapbook is printed on white paper with cardstock cover lovingly designed and typeset by Dani Spinosa. Gorgeous cover art by Mia Carnevale. Poetry edited by Tiffany Morris.
AuthorTerese Mason Pierre
26sep2:00 pm2:30 pmVirtual EventSevenFarzana Doctor, Moderator: Lue Boileau2:00 pm – 2:30 pm EST
A reading and discussion with author Farzana Doctor.
A reading and discussion with author Farzana Doctor.
Event has already taken place!
Farzana Doctor is the author of Stealing Nasreen, All Inclusive, and Six Metres of Pavement, which won a Lambda Literary Award and was short-listed for the Toronto Book Award. She lives in Toronto.
Lue Boileau is a collective member at Room Magazine and Assistant Editor for Room’s current issue. They are also on the editorial team at PREE Caribbean Literature. Lue is a writer of Black speculative and environmentalist fiction, and their prize winning short stories have been anthologized in Canada and the Caribbean. Lue is currently completing their first full-length work, with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
While researching her great-great grandfather on a trip to India, Sharifa stumbles upon family secrets and must face the indelible mark they’ve left on her life.
AuthorFarzana Doctor
26sep2:40 pm2:45 pmVirtual EventOO: Typewriter PoemsDani Spinosa2:40 pm – 2:45 pm EST
A special 5 minute reading with Dani Spinosa.
A special 5 minute reading with Dani Spinosa.
Event has already taken place!
Dani Spinosa is a poet of digital and print media, an on-again-off-again precarious professor, the managing editor of the Electronic Literature Directory, and a co-founding editor of Gap Riot Press, a feminist experimental micro-press. In addition to OO: Typewriter Poems, she has published four poetry chapbooks and a scholarly manuscript.
Feminist visual poetry that rewrites avant garde poetic history.
At once paying homage to the long history of visual poetics and critiquing the progressivist and masculinist ideals that continue to inform the genre, the poems in OO incorporate lines from visual and concrete poems by some of the major figures of visual poetics, as well as several underread and understudied female visual poets.
AuthorDani Spinosa
Authors Madhur Anand and Lamees Al Ethari present personal memoirs that expand the definition of the genre through the use of generational storytelling and representation of memory. Moderated by Roland
Authors Madhur Anand and Lamees Al Ethari present personal memoirs that expand the definition of the genre through the use of generational storytelling and representation of memory. Moderated by Roland Gulliver, Toronto International Festival of Authors.
Event has already taken place!
Lamees Al Ethari immigrated to Canada with her husband and two boys in 2008. She holds a PhD in English Language and Literature from the University of Waterloo, where she has been teaching creative and academic writing since 2015. Her writing and research focus on Iraqi North American women’s life narratives of trauma and migration.
Madhur Anand is the author of A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes (McClelland & Stewart, 2015) and several other literary works published in national and international magazines. She is a full professor of ecology and sustainability at The University of Guelph.
An experimental memoir about Partition, immigration, and generational storytelling, This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart weaves together the poetry of memory with the science of embodied trauma using the imagined voices of the past and the vital authority of the present.
Told through the lenses of biology, physics, history, and poetry, this is a memoir that defies form and convention to immerse the reader in the feeling of what remains when we’ve heard as much of the truth as our families will allow, and we’re left to search for ourselves among the pieces they’ve carried with them.
AuthorMadhur Anand
In this memoir, Lamees Al Ethari traces her transition from an idyllic childhood in a large extended Iraqi family to the relative stability of an exilic family life in Canada. Through memory fragments, flights of poetry, diary entries, and her own art, the author reveals the trauma suffered by Iraqis, caused by three senseless wars, dehumanizing sanctions, a brutal dictatorship, and a foreign occupation. Finely observed, highly personal, and intensely moving, this account also gives testimony to the Iraqi people’s resilience and the humanity they manage to preserve in the face of adversity. It is the other voice, behind the news flashes.
AuthorLamees Al Ethari
A special 5 minute poetry reading with stephanie roberts.
A special 5 minute poetry reading with stephanie roberts.
Event has already taken place!
A citizen of Canada, Panama, and the United States, stephanie roberts is the prize-winning author of The Melting Potential of Fire. roberts is based in Quebec.
rushes from the river disappointment traverses city, country, and fantasy using nature as artery through the emotional landscape. As they wrestle to come to terms with the effects of uncertainty and grief on hope and belief, these diverse field notes are interspersed with the fabulous: a polar bear and owl engage in flirtation, a time traveller appears on a lake, an erotic scene takes place on a train, and we confront “people capable of eating popcorn at the movie of your agony.”
“Through these stunning poems, roberts ‘effortlessly holds up the universe.’ A gorgeous collection.” – Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Hourglass Museum
Authorstephanie roberts
26sep3:30 pm4:00 pmVirtual EventDirty BirdsTerry Fallis, Morgan Murray3:30 pm – 4:00 pm EST
A reading and discussion with author Morgan Murray.
A reading and discussion with author Morgan Murray.
Event has already taken place!
Morgan Murray was born and raised on a farm near the same west-central Alberta village as figure-skating legend Kurt Browning (Caroline). He now lives, works, plays, writes, and builds all sorts of crooked furniture in Cape Breton.
In late 2007, as the world’s economy crumbles, the remarkably unremarkable Milton Ontario—not to be confused with Milton, Ontario—leaves his parent’s basement in Saskatchewan and sets forth to find fame, fortune, and love in the electric sexuality of Montreal, to bask in endless Millennial adolescence, to escape the infinite flatness of Saskatchewan, and to find his messiah: Leonard Cohen.
Hilariously ironic and irreverent, Dirty Birds is a quest novel for the twenty-first century—a coming-of-age, rom-com, crime-farce thriller—where a hero’s greatest foe is his own crippling mediocrity, and getting out of bed before noon.
AuthorMorgan Murray
Poets jaye simpson, Lily Wang, and Dominik Parisien join multi-media artist Rasiqra Revulva in examining the craft, development, and intertextuality of their highly-anticipated debut collections. Hosted by Rasiqra Revulva.
Poets jaye simpson, Lily Wang, and Dominik Parisien join multi-media artist Rasiqra Revulva in examining the craft, development, and intertextuality of their highly-anticipated debut collections. Hosted by Rasiqra Revulva.
Event has already taken place!
Dominik Parisien is a writer, editor, and poet and the author of the chapbook We, Old Young Ones. He lives in Toronto.
jaye simpson is an Oji-Cree Anishinaabe Two Spirit Trans Woman whose roots hail from the Sapotaweyak & Skownan Cree Nations. their debut collection, it was never going to be okay, is out now with Nightwood Editions.
Lily Wang is the founder and editor of Half a Grapefruit Magazine. She is doing her MA in English and Creative Writing at the University of Toronto. Her first chapbook Everyone In Your Dream is You was published by Anstruther Press in 2018. Her work has appeared in Peach Mag, The Puritan, The Hart House Review, Bad Nudes, Hobart Pulp, and more.
Rasiqra Revulva is a queer femme writer, multimedia artist, editor, musician, performer and SciComm advocate. She is an editor of the climate crisis anthology Watch Your Head: A Call to Action, and one half of the experimental electronic duo The Databats (Slice Records, Melbourne; Toronto).
Cephalopography 2.0 is as much a passionate celebration of cephalopods in all their plurality and finery as it is a collection of poems exploring human identity and experience through the lens of these marine animals. These experiments with traditional poetic forms such as ghazals, tankas and cinquains, as well as more contemporary forms, make poems that are uniquely and beautifully composed. Cephalopography 2.0 plunges into the depths of human experience to daringly remark on the wild and transformative links between cephalopods and humanity beyond the land and the sea.
AuthorRasiqra Revulva
it was never going to be okay is a collection of poetry and prose exploring the intimacies of understanding intergenerational trauma, Indigeneity and queerness, while addressing urban Indigenous diaspora and breaking down the limitations of sexual understanding as a trans woman.
Authorjaye simpson
In Saturn Peach, Lily Wang establishes a distinctive voice that is part heartbreak and part wise witness chronicling the strangeness of a technologized world. When asked to describe her book, Wang answered in her quintessential way, “There are things I never want to know but always know. Every day I live with them. Every day I live. I am like a young fruit. Like a peach, common, not the popular kind but oblate, saturn. I live and inside me this pale fruit, yellow and white. I take bites out of myself and share them with you. Maybe you taste like me. Maybe you hold this fruit and become a tree.” If ever there were a book that disarmingly – and seemingly effortlessly – encouraged its reader to become a metaphor, then Saturn Peach is it.
AuthorLily Wang
Dominik Parisien’s debut collection is a poignant celebration of the complicated lived experience of disability, a challenge to the societal gaze, and a bold reconfiguration of the language of pain.
Balancing hope and uncertainty, anger and gratitude, these poems shift from medical practice to myth, from trauma to intergenerational friendship, in an unflinching exploration of the beauty and complexity of othered bodies.
AuthorDominik Parisien
Join panelists Val Napoleon, Harold Johnson, and Margery Fee, moderated by Pamela Palmater for a discussion about decolonization and reconciliation, exploring Indigenous sovereignty and resistance, and how to take part
Join panelists Val Napoleon, Harold Johnson, and Margery Fee, moderated by Pamela Palmater for a discussion about decolonization and reconciliation, exploring Indigenous sovereignty and resistance, and how to take part in shaping a healthy, harmonious Canada in tandem with Indigenous nations. Closed captioning sponsored by Another Story Bookshop.
Event has already taken place!
Harold R. Johnson has a law degree from Harvard University and is the author of six books, including the bestseller Firewater, which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for non-fiction. He lives in La Ronge, SK.
Margery Fee, PhD, FRSC, is Professor Emerita, UBC. Recent publications are Literary Land Claims (2015); Tekahionwake: E. Pauline Johnson’s Writings on Native North America (2016), with Dory Nason; Polar Bear (2019) and On the Cusp of Contact: Gender, Space and Race in the Colonization of British Columbia: Essays by Jean Barman (2020).
Dr. Pamela Palmater is a Mi’kmaw lawyer, author and social justice activist from Eel River Bar First Nation. She has four university degrees, including a doctorate in law. Pam has worked with First Nations for 25+ years advancing native education, sovereignty and nationbuilding. She currently holds the position of Professor and Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University.
Val Napoleon is Law Foundation Chair of Indigenous Justice and Governance at the University of Victoria. She has taught and published extensively on aboriginal legal issues, Indigenous law and legal theories, Indigenous feminisms, governance, critical restorative justice, oral traditions, and Indigenous legal research methodologies.
While colonial imposition of the Canadian legal order has undermined Indigenous law, creating gaps and sometimes distortions, Indigenous peoples have taken up the challenge of rebuilding their laws, governance, and economies. Indigenous conceptions of land and property are central to this project.
AuthorVal Napoleon
Growing up on a northern trap line, Harold Johnson was taught to keep his distance from wolves. For decades, wolves did the same for humans. But now this seems to be changing. In 2005, twenty-two-year-old Kenton Carnegie was killed in a wolf attack near his work camp. Part story, part forensic analysis, Cry Wolf examines this and other attacks, showing how we fail to take this apex predator seriously at our own peril.
AuthorHarold R. Johnson
Indigenous people have long been represented as roaming “savages” without land title and without literature. Literary Land Claims analyzes works by writers who resist these dominant notions and posits that literary studies needs a new critical narrative, one that engages with the ideas of Indigenous writers and intellectuals.
AuthorMargery Fee
Warrior Life: Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence is the second collection of writings by Palmater. In keeping with her previous works, numerous op-eds, media commentaries, YouTube channel videos and podcasts, Palmater’s work is fiercely anti-colonial, anti-racist, and more crucial than ever before.
Palmater addresses a range of Indigenous issues — empty political promises, ongoing racism, sexualized genocide, government lawlessness, and the lie that is reconciliation — and makes the complex political and legal implications accessible to the public.
AuthorPamela Palmater
A reading and discussion with author Canisia Lubrin. Moderated by Khashayar Mohammadi.
A reading and discussion with author Canisia Lubrin. Moderated by Khashayar Mohammadi.
Event has already taken place!
Canisia Lubrin is a writer, editor, critic and teacher whose international publications include translations into Spanish, Italian, French and German. Lubrin’s writing has been recognized by the Toronto Book Award, Journey Prize, Gerald Lampert, Pat Lowther, Writers Trust Rising Star prize and others.
Khashayar Mohammadi is a queer, Iranian born, Toronto-based Poet, Writer, Translator and Photographer. He is the author of poetry Chapbooks “Dear Kestrel” by knife | fork | book 2019 and “Solitude is an Acrobatic Act” by above/ground press 2020. His debut poetry collection “Me, You, Then Snow” is forthcoming with Gordon Hill Press
Me, You, Then Snow is a collection of poetry woven from dreams, memories and deep-seeded longing, a collection of poetry that ranges from ambiguously addressed love-letters, to ekphrastic poems for arthouse cinema, to pieces written near midnight when the day’s experiences rush back into view. Though working in diverse forms and styles, the poetry manifests as a profoundly unified desire to experience and communicate the world.
AuthorKhashayar Mohammadi
The Dyzgraphxst presents seven inquiries into selfhood through the perennial figure Jejune. Polyvocal in register, the book moves to mine meanings of kinship through the wide and intimate reach of language across geographies and generations. Against the contemporary backdrop of intensified capitalist fascism, toxic nationalism, and climate disaster, the figure Jejune asks, how have I come to make home out of unrecognizability. Marked by and through diasporic life, Jejune declares, I was not myself. I am not myself. My self resembles something having nothing to do with me.
AuthorCanisia Lubrin
26sep6:45 pm6:50 pmVirtual Eventmaybe, basicallyTracy Wai de Boer6:45 pm – 6:50 pm EST
A special 5 minute reading with Tracy Wai de Boer.
A special 5 minute reading with Tracy Wai de Boer.
Event has already taken place!
Tracy Wai de Boer is a writer from Calgary currently living in Toronto. She is mixed-race and explores identity in much of her creative work. Tracy writes poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and experimental literature. Her work has been published in a variety of outlets across North America and she facilitates writing programs with people of all ages.
“maybe, basically” is a collection of poems that explore mixed-race identity, nature, and relationships. It is the author’s first chapbook.
AuthorTracy Wai de Boer
26sep7:00 pm7:45 pmVirtual EventCrosshairsSamia Madwar, Catherine Hernandez7:00 pm – 7:45 pm EST
A reading and discussion with author Catherine Hernandez. Moderated by Samia Madwar. Closed captioning sponsored by Another Story Bookshop.
A reading and discussion with author Catherine Hernandez. Moderated by Samia Madwar. Closed captioning sponsored by Another Story Bookshop.
Event has already taken place!
Catherine Hernandez is a proud queer brown femme author and artistic director of b current performing arts. She is of Filipino, Spanish, Chinese, and Indian heritage, and she is married into the Navajo Nation. Hernandez is the author of the acclaimed and award-winning novel Scarborough. Crosshairs is her second novel.
Samia Madwar is the managing editor at The Walrus. She is also a member of the Magazines Canada board of directors and the Inuit Art Quarterly editorial advisory council.
In a terrifyingly familiar near-future, with massive floods that lead to rampant homelessness and devastation, a government-sanctioned regime seizes the opportunity to force communities of colour, the disabled and the LGBTQ2S into labour camps in the city of Toronto. Meanwhile, in the shadows, a new hero emerges when a queer Black performer and his allies join forces to rise up against this oppressive regime.
With her signature prose, Catherine Hernandez creates a cautionary tale filled with fierce and vibrant characters that explores the universal desire to thrive, to love and to be loved.
AuthorCatherine Hernandez
A reading and discussion with author Justin Ling on his new book Missing in the Village: The Story of Serial Killer Bruce McArthur, the Search for Justice, and the System
A reading and discussion with author Justin Ling on his new book Missing in the Village: The Story of Serial Killer Bruce McArthur, the Search for Justice, and the System That Failed Toronto’s Queer Community. Moderated by Steven Beattie, Quill & Quire Review Editor.
Event has already taken place!
Justin Ling is an investigative journalist whose reporting has focused on stories and issues undercovered and misunderstood. His writing has appeared in Vice News, BuzzFeed, Foreign Policy, Motherboard, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and the Guardian.
This extraordinary book tells the complete story of the McArthur murders. Based on more than five years of in-depth reporting, this is also a story of police failure, of how the queer community responded, and the story of the eight men who went missing and the lives they left behind. In telling that story, Justin Ling uncovers the latent homophobia and racism that kept this case unsolved and unseen. This gripping book reveals how police agencies across the country fail to treat missing persons cases seriously, and how policies and laws, written at every level of government, pushed McArthur’s victims out of the light and into the shadows.
AuthorJustin Ling
Event has already taken place!
Canisia Lubrin is a writer, editor, critic and teacher whose international publications include translations into Spanish, Italian, French and German. Lubrin’s writing has been recognized by the Toronto Book Award, Journey Prize, Gerald Lampert, Pat Lowther, Writers Trust Rising Star prize and others.
Fiona Raye Clarke is an award-winning Trinidadian-Canadian writer and community-engaged artist. Her co-created screenplay, “Intersecting” won the 2017 CineFAM Short Film Challenge. Her writing has appeared in various publications online and in print, including the Puritan Town Crier, the Room Magazine blog, and the League of Canadian Poets Chapbook edited by Chelene Knight, These Lands. Her plays have been produced by the rock.paper.sistahz festival and InspiraTo Festival and she is an alumnus of the Diaspora Dialogues Long-Form Mentorship Program and the Banff Centre. She holds a Creative Writing Certificate from Humber College and a Master of Laws from Osgoode Hall Law School.
Francesca Ekwuyasi is a writer, artist, and filmmaker born in Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness, and belonging. Her writing has been published in Winter Tangerine Review, Brittle Paper, Transition Magazine, the Malahat Review, Visual Art News, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and GUTS magazine. Her story “Ọrun is Heaven” was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize. Butter Honey Bread Pig is her first novel.
Join poets Sachiko Murakami (Render), A.F. Moritz (As Far As You Know), and Randy Lundy (Field Notes for the Self), as they traverse a series of befores and afters, experiencing
Join poets Sachiko Murakami (Render), A.F. Moritz (As Far As You Know), and Randy Lundy (Field Notes for the Self), as they traverse a series of befores and afters, experiencing the darknesses of life and exploring what comes after. Moderated by Kirby, knife | fork | book. Closed captioning sponsored by House of Anansi Press and Groundwood Books.
Event has already taken place!
AF Moritz currently serves as the sixth poet laureate of the City of Toronto. His many honours include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize, and an Ingram Merrill Fellowship.
KIRBY is the author of WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE CALLED? (Anstruther Press, 2020) THIS IS WHERE I GET OFF (Permanent Sleep Press, 2019) SHE’S HAVING A DORIS DAY (knife | fork | book, 2017), and forthcoming POETRY IS QUEER (Palimpsest, Fall 2021) jeffkirby.ca
Randy Lundy is a member of the Barren Lands (Cree) First Nation. Born in northern Manitoba, he has lived most of his life in Saskatchewan. He has published three previous books, Under the Night Sun, Gift of the Hawk, and Blackbird Song. An award-winning poet, his work has been widely anthologized.
Sachiko Murakami is the author of three previous poetry collections, including The Invisibility Exhibit (shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award). As a literary worker, she has edited poetry, worked for trade organizations, hosted reading series, organized conferences, sat on juries, and judged prizes.
Written and organized chronologically around before and after the poet’s serious illness and heart surgery in 2014, these gorgeously unguarded poems plumb and deepen the reader’s understanding of Moritz’s primary and ongoing obsessions: beauty, impermanence, history, social conscience and responsibility, and, always and most urgently, love. For all its necessary engagement with worry, sorrow, and fragility, As Far As You Know sings a final insistent chorus to what it loves: “You will live.”
AuthorA.F. Moritz
Field Notes for the Self is a series of dark meditations: spiritual exercises in which the poem becomes a forensics of the soul. The poems converse with Patrick Lane, John Thompson, and Charles Wright, but their closest cousins may be Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabulations—overlapping structures in which notes or images are rung slowly and repeatedly like bells. The goal is freedom from illusion, freedom from memory, from “the same old stories” of Lundy’s violent past; and freedom, too, from the unreachable memories of the violence done to his Indigenous ancestors, which, Lundy tells us, seem to haunt his cellular biology.
AuthorRandy Lundy
Journey through dreamscapes in Sachiko Murakami’s intimate and unflinching poetic memoir as she travels the non-linear path of addiction to recovery, how it shifts over time, and what happens when it is translated through poetry. Looking beyond the straightforward, happily-ever-after narrative, Murakami wades through the aftermath of her addiction and questions what happens to trauma when it is put down on the page – and all the ways in which it can be rendered. Recovery is a jagged line, but hope lives and crystallizes in every moment we can mark ourselves “#stillhere.”
AuthorSachiko Murakami
27sep11:45 am11:50 amVirtual Eventbrethbill bissett11:45 am – 11:50 am EST
A special 5 minute poetry reading with bill bissett.
A special 5 minute poetry reading with bill bissett.
Event has already taken place!
bill bissett originalee from lunaria a far distant planet wch had a mor egalitarian bodee politik still trying 2 get usd 2 challenging erthling wayze but feel its worth it 2 try poet n paintr shows paintings at th secret handshake galleree in toronto
b r e t h / th treez uv lunaria
b r e t h is th bodee being th prsonal n th politikul ar th same
b r e t h advocates equitee in all material n spiritual mattrs
th stork th lettr th image in th lettr th lettr in th sound n image
politikul poetree lyrik love romantic sound vizual narrativ n
non narrativ environmental n fuseyun poetree
Authorbill bissett
Amanda Leduc and Sarah Kurchak join Syrus Marcus Ware in conversation on their new books celebrating and analyzing human difference. What does it look like when we meet our differences
Amanda Leduc and Sarah Kurchak join Syrus Marcus Ware in conversation on their new books celebrating and analyzing human difference. What does it look like when we meet our differences with celebration?
Event has already taken place!
Amanda Leduc’s essays and stories have appeared in publications across Canada, the US, and the UK. She is the author of the novels The Miracles of Ordinary Men and the forthcoming The Centaur’s Wife. She has cerebral palsy and lives in Hamilton, Ontario, where she works as the Communications Coordinator for the Festival of Literary Diversity.
Sarah Kurchak is a writer and retired professional pillow fighter living in Toronto. Her work as an autistic self-advocate and essayist has appeared in Hazlitt, Catapult, the Guardian, Time, CBC, Vox and Electric Literature. She is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers, and this is her first book.
Syrus Marcus Ware is a core team member of Black Lives Matter Toronto, a Vanier Scholar, a facilitator and designer for the CulturalLeaders Lab, and an award-winning artist and educator.
Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when you identify more with the Beast than Beauty?
If every disabled character is mocked and mistreated, how does the Beast ever imagine a happily-ever-after? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference.
AuthorAmanda Leduc
An autistic writer’s memoir of the detrimental effects of pretending to be normal, and her impassioned call to redefine what is considered a successful life. Kurchak examines the Byzantine steps she took to become “an autistic success story,” how the process almost ruined her life and how she is now trying to recover. Tackling everything from autism parenting culture to love, sex, alcohol, obsessions and professional pillow fighting, Kurchak’s enlightening memoir challenges stereotypes and preconceptions about autism and and considers what might really make the lives of autistic people healthier, happier and more fulfilling.
AuthorSarah Kurchak
The killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012 by a white assailant inspired the Black Lives Matter movement, which quickly spread outside the borders of the United States. The movement’s message found fertile ground in Canada, where Black activists speak of generations of injustice and continue the work of the Black liberators who have come before them. Until We Are Free contains some of the very best writing on the hottest issues facing the Black community in Canada. It describes the latest developments in Canadian Black activism, organizing efforts through the use of social media, Black-Indigenous alliances, and more.
27sep12:45 pm12:50 pmVirtual EventBurning Sugar Cicely Belle Blain12:45 pm – 12:50 pm EST
A special 5 minute reading with Cicely Belle Blain.
A special 5 minute reading with Cicely Belle Blain.
Event has already taken place!
Cicely Belle Blain is a Black, queer activist, writer and consultant. They are noted for founding Black Lives Matter Vancouver and were listed as oneVancouver magazine’s 50 most powerful people, BC Business’s 30 under 30 and one of CBC’s 150 Black women and non-binary people making change across Canada. Cicely Belle Blain is an instructor in Executive Leadership at Simon Fraser University and the author of Burning Sugar(Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020).
The latest from Vivek Shraya’s VS. Books: a poetic exploration of Black identity, history, and lived experience influenced by the constant search for liberation.
In this incendiary debut collection, activist and poet Cicely Belle Blain intimately revisits familiar spaces in geography, in the arts, and in personal history to expose the legacy of colonization and its impact on Black bodies. They use poetry to illuminate their activist work: exposing racism, especially anti-Blackness, and helping people see the connections between history and systemic oppression that show up in every human interaction, space, and community. Their poems demonstrate how the world is both beautiful and cruel, a truth that inspires overwhelming anger and awe – all of which spills out onto the page to tell the story of a challenging, complex, nuanced, and joyful life. In Burning Sugar, verse and epistolary, racism and resilience, pain and precarity are flawlessly sewn together by the mighty hands of a Black, queer femme.
AuthorCicely Belle Blain
Open your heart to beautiful possibility and listen to the words of Bahar Orang and Amal El-Mohtar as they discuss the intricate intimacy of the human experience.
Open your heart to beautiful possibility and listen to the words of Bahar Orang and Amal El-Mohtar as they discuss the intricate intimacy of the human experience.
Event has already taken place!
Amal El-Mohtar is an award-winning author, editor, and critic. Her short story “Seasons of Glass and Iron” won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards and was a finalist for the World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Aurora, and Eugie Foster awards.
Bahar Orang is a writer and physician-in-training living in Toronto; she completed her MD at McMaster University, and is now completing specialty training in psychiatry. Her poetry and essays have been published in such places as GUTS, Hamilton Arts & Letters, CMAJ, and Ars Medica. Where Things Touch: A Meditation on Beauty is her first book.
From award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone comes an enthralling, romantic novella spanning time and space about two time-traveling rivals who fall in love and must change the past to ensure their future. This is How You Lose the Time War has won Best Novella in the Locus, Nebula, and Hugo Awards, and Best Short Fiction in the Prix Aurora Awards and BFSA Awards, and is a finalist for like, everything.
AuthorAmal El-Mohtar
Part lyric essay, part prose poetry, Where Things Touch: A Meditation on Beauty grapples with the manifold meanings and possibilities of beauty. Drawing on her experiences as a physician-in-training, Orang considers clinical encounters and how they relate to the concept of beauty. Such considerations lead her to questions about intimacy, queerness, home, memory, love, and other aspects of human experience. Throughout, beauty is ultimately imagined as something inextricably tied to care: the care of lovers, of patients, of art and literature, and the various non-human worlds that surround us.
AuthorBahar Orang
27sep1:25 pm1:30 pmVirtual EventDouble Self-PortraitJames Lindsay1:25 pm – 1:30 pm EST
A special 5 minute reading with James Lindsay.
A special 5 minute reading with James Lindsay.
Event has already taken place!
James Lindsay is the author of Our Inland Sea and the chapbook Ekphrasis! Ekphrasis! He is the co-founder of Pleasence Records and works in book publishing. He lives in Toronto.
Double Self-Portrait explores doubling and reproduction in art, memory, culture, nostalgia and fatherhood. Divided by four longer, more autobiographical poems, this is a deeply layered collection, one that at times speaks directly to the reader and at other times is meta-textual. Bees, cicadas, music and photography swirl through these poems, bounded as they are by the resistance to and embracing of responsibility. This is a collection where the poems work individually and together, subtly building toward a single theme that slowly coalesces during the reading to create a collection that resonates in your mind long after the book is closed.
AuthorJames Lindsay
27sep1:30 pm2:00 pmVirtual EventOn NostalgiaVish Khanna, David Berry1:30 pm – 2:00 pm EST
David Berry, author of On Nostalgia is interviewed by journalist and Kreative Kontrol podcast host Vish Khanna.
David Berry, author of On Nostalgia is interviewed by journalist and Kreative Kontrol podcast host Vish Khanna.
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David Berry is a writer and cultural critic. His work has appeared in the Globe & Mail, Hazlitt, Toronto Life, and elsewhere, and he was an arts and culture columnist for the National Post for five years. On Nostalgia is his first book. David currently lives in Edmonton.
Wish Khanna played in several bands and he hosts a renowned topical interview podcast called Kreative Kontrol, is an Assistant Editor at Exclaim! Magazine, where he oversees the Comedy section, and he’s a co-organizer of the Long Winter arts series in Toronto, where he hosts a monthly talk show called Long Night with Vish Khanna. He was a Host and Producer at CBC Radio 3 and is an on-air columnist for the CBC Radio One program, The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers. He wrote a monthly arts column for the Guelph Mercury Tribune and his written work has also been featured in Pitchfork, NOW, the AV Club, the Globe and Mail, Spinner, Huffington Post, Signal to Noise, Aux, Eye Weekly, Chart Attack, Off the Shelf, and more. He began organizing and promoting concerts in Guelph in 1997 and did so sporadically until 2019 (including December’s annual Stay Out of the Mall mini-festival), under the moniker KYEO, which is a reference to a Fugazi song of the same name. He once co-hosted CFRU 93.3 FM‘s The Mich Vish Interracial Morning Show! with his wife Michelle.
From movies to politics, social media posts to the targeted ads between them, nostalgia is one of the most potent forces of our era. Drawing on everything from the modern science of memory to the romantic ideals of advertising, and traversing cultural movements from futurism to fascism to Facebook, cultural critic David Berry examines how the relentless search for self and overwhelming presence of mass media stokes the fires of nostalgia, making it as inescapable as it is hard to pin down.
AuthorDavid Berry
Two darlings of Francophone mystery make their English-translation debuts. What makes a mystery tick? Closed captioning sponsored by Anansi/Groundwood.
Two darlings of Francophone mystery make their English-translation debuts. What makes a mystery tick? Closed captioning sponsored by Anansi/Groundwood.
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Andrée A. Michaud is one of the most beloved and celebrated writers in the French language. She is, among numerous accolades, a two-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award and has won the Arthur Ellis Award for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing, the Prix Ringuet, and France’s Prix SNCF du Polar. She lives in the province of Quebec.
Martin Michaud is a bestselling author, screenwriter, musician, and former lawyer. His critically acclaimed Victor Lessard series has won numerous awards, including the Arthur Ellis Award and the Prix Saint-Pacôme for Crime Fiction, and is the basis for the award-winning French-language TV series Victor Lessard. He lives in Montreal.
Brimming with the snowy menace and mystery of the boreal woods, where nothing is ever entirely known, the celebrated and prize-winning noir novelist Andrée A. Michaud once again defies categorization in an ethereal story that is also a meditation on the very process of literary creation.
AuthorAndrée A. Michaud
When a homeless man jumps to his death in Old Montreal, the police discover two wallets in his possession: one belonging to a retired psychiatrist who was murdered in a bizarre ritual, the other to a powerful corporate lawyer who has vanished. As Montreal police detective Victor Lessard and his partner, Jacinthe Taillon, work to solve the separate mysteries, a dark conspiracy begins to emerge.
While the pressure builds and the bodies accumulate, disturbing secrets come to light about a pivotal moment in political history. But will Lessard and Taillon crack the case in time to stop the killer from striking again?
AuthorMartin Michaud
For the entirety of human history, we have dealt with infectious disease, epidemic events, and global crises, but perhaps not at the scale we are now experiencing. How does a
For the entirety of human history, we have dealt with infectious disease, epidemic events, and global crises, but perhaps not at the scale we are now experiencing. How does a polio epidemic exacerbate racism? What do viral pandemics have to do with an opioid crisis? Here to connect the dots are authors and medical professionals Ross Pennie, Brodie Ramin, and David Waltner-Toews moderated by journalist Nora Loreto.
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Brodie Ramin is a primary care and addiction physician. He is an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa and a Diplomate of the American Board of Addiction Medicine. Dr. Ramin lives in Ottawa.
Dr. David Waltner-Toews is a renowned Canadian epidemiologist, veterinarian, and highly-respected specialist in the epidemiology of food and waterborne diseases, zoonoses, ecosystem health, and One Health, whose work has been instrumental in the development of teaching and training programs across North America, Europe, and Asia.
Nora Loreto is a writer and activist based in Quebec City. She is the editor of the Canadian Association of Labour Media. Her next book, Take Back The Fight (Fernwood) will be published in October, 2020. Nora has been tracking COVID-19 deaths in residential care, nightly, for over four months.
Ross Pennie earned a medical degree from Queen’s University in 1976. He was a specialist in infectious disease, a Department of Paediatrics and Pathology professor at McMaster University, and practised at Brantford General Hospital. He is now retired and lives with his family in Southern Ontario.
Trauma surgeon Dr. Hosam Khousa flees Syria with his family to Hamilton, Ontario, where he is forced to trade in his scalpel for barber’s clippers. Cutting hair seems a safe way to make a living, until a fellow Syrian is slashed to death in the barbershop. At the same time, epidemic investigators Dr. Zol Szabo and Natasha Sharma are battling an outbreak of vaccine-resistant polio. When Hosam spots something that might help Dr. Szabo, but ruin his surgical career, he realizes that Canada is not the sanctuary he expected, but a bitter paradise he must learn to navigate.
AuthorRoss Pennie
Authored by a leading epidemiologist “On Pandemics” answers our questions about animal diseases that jump to humans—called zoonoses—including what attracts them to humans, why they have become more common in recent history, and how we can keep them at bay. Almost all pandemics and epidemics have been caused by diseases that come to us from animals, including SARS, Ebola, and Covid-19. Epidemiologist, veterinarian, & ecosystem health specialist, Dr. Waltner-Toews, gathers the latest research to profile dozens of illnesses, revealing the greater impact of animal-borne diseases on our world, encouraging us to re-examine our role in pandemics.
AuthorDavid Waltner-Toews
In The Age of Fentanyl, Dr. Brodie Ramin tells the story of the opioid crisis, showing us the disease and cure from his perspective as an addiction doctor working on the front lines. We meet his patients, hear from other addiction experts, and learn about the science and medicine of opioid addiction and its treatments. He shows us how addiction can be prevented, how knowledge can reduce stigma, and how epidemics can be beaten.
AuthorBrodie Ramin
A special reading and interview with Sami Jo Small, superstar goaltender and author of The Role I Played with lauded sportswriter Sean Fitz-Gerald.
A special reading and interview with Sami Jo Small, superstar goaltender and author of The Role I Played with lauded sportswriter Sean Fitz-Gerald.
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Sami Jo Small spent 10 years on Canada’s National Women’s Hockey Team. As a veteran goaltender, she gives the reader behind-the-scenes insight into one of the most successful teams in women’s sports history.
Sean Fitz-Gerald is a senior national writer for The Athletic. As a reporter, he has covered the Olympics, Pan American Games, Super Bowl, Grey Cup, NHL playoffs and the NBA playoffs. In 2015, he was named sportswriter of the year by Sports Media Canada.
An examination of Canada’s evolving relationship with the sport of hockey, which has become increasingly expensive — and less accessible — for families. Before the Lights Go Out is a moving, funny, yet unsettling picture of a sport at a crossroads. Fitz-Gerald’s warm but rigorous journalistic approach reads, in the end, like a letter to a troubled friend: it’s not too late to save hockey in this country, but who has the will to do it?
AuthorSean Fitz-Gerald
Men’s hockey in Canada may hog the limelight, but interest in women’s hockey has never been higher. The Role I Played is a memoir of Sami Jo Small’s ten years with Canada’s National Women’s Hockey Team. Beginning with her experience as a rookie at the first-ever women’s Olympic hockey tournament in Nagano in 1998 and culminating with Canada’s third straight Olympic gold medal in Vancouver in 2010, the veteran goaltender gives the reader behind-the-scenes insight into one of the most successful teams in sports history.
AuthorSami Jo Small
Join Shaena Lambert for a reading from her new novel, Petra. Love, jealousy and murder are prevalent in this novel inspired by Petra Kelly, the original Green Party leader and
Join Shaena Lambert for a reading from her new novel, Petra. Love, jealousy and murder are prevalent in this novel inspired by Petra Kelly, the original Green Party leader and environmental political activist. Moderated by Sue Carter, Quill & Quire Editor In Chief.
Event has already taken place!
Shaena Lambert is the author of the novel, Radiance and two books of stories, Oh, My Darling and The Falling Woman, all of which were Globe and Mail best books of the year. Her fiction has been published to critical acclaim in Canada, the UK and Germany and has been nominated for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, the Evergreen Award, the Danuta Gleed Award and the Frank O’Connor Award for the Short Story. Her stories have been chosen four times for Best Canadian Stories, and have appeared in many publications, including The Walrus, Zoetrope: All Story, Ploughshares, The Journey Prize Anthology and Toronto Life.
January, 1980. At the height of the Cold War, Petra Kelly inspires hundreds of thousands to take to the streets to protest the placement of nuclear missiles on West German soil—including a NATO general named Emil Gerhardt, who shocks the establishment by converting to the cause. Petra and her general not only vault to fame as the stars of the Green Party, but they also fall in love. Then Manfred Schwartz, an ex-lover, urges Petra to draw back the curtain on Emil’s war record, and they enter a world both complicated and threatening.
Told by Manfred Schwartz, from his place in a present world even more beset by existential threats, Petra is an exploration of love, jealousy, and the power of social change. A woman capable of founding a new and world-changing politics and taking on two superpowers, Petra still must grapple with her own complex nature and a singular and fatal love.
AuthorShaena Lambert
Steer yourself into a more intentional way of living, and slow down to think about how minimalism is tied to mental health and our popular culture with Tara Henley and
Steer yourself into a more intentional way of living, and slow down to think about how minimalism is tied to mental health and our popular culture with Tara Henley and Cait Flanders. Moderated by Sue Carter, Quill & Quire Editor In Chief.
Event has already taken place!
Cait Flanders’ previous book The Year of Less is “a fascinating look into a living experiment that we can all learn from” (Vogue). It has been shared in the NY Times, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Oprah.com, and more. Cait always has an adventure in the calendar. She is from Victoria.
Tara Henley is a Canadian writer and broadcaster. Over the past two decades, her work has appeared on CBC television, and in The Guardian, The L.A. Times, The Globe and Mail and The Walrus, as well as dozens of other publications across the world. She currently works as a producer at CBC Radio and has a books column in The Toronto Star.
Flanders offers a trail map to following her example and building a slow, mindful, minimalist life that emphasizes the beauty of the natural world, the importance of real human connection, the joys of travel, and the happiness that comes from living an intentional life in harmony with your own values.
Choosing to opt out is a brave decision, and ultimately a rewarding one. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. There will be hardships along the way, but with Flanders’s guidance and advice, you’ll have all the encouragement and insight you’ll need to build a life of purpose, fulfillment, and adventure.
AuthorCait Flanders
North America is facing an epidemic of lifestyle-related health problems. And yet, the culture continues to celebrate the elite few who thrive in the always-on work world. The health crisis-not cardiac but anxiety- forced Tara Henley to step off the media treadmill and examine her life and the stressful twenty-first century world around her. Part memoir, part travelogue, and part investigation, Lean Out tracks Henley’s journey from the heart of the connected city to the fringe communities that surround it. She connects the dots between anxiety and overwork and confronts the biggest issues of our time.
AuthorTara Henley
27sep5:35 pm5:40 pmVirtual EventDept. of Continuous ImprovementBen Robinson5:35 pm – 5:40 pm EST
A special 5 minute reading with Ben Robinson.
A special 5 minute reading with Ben Robinson.
Event has already taken place!
Ben Robinson is a poet, musician and librarian. His most recent chapbooks are Keeps on Running from The Alfred Gustav Press and Dept. of Continuous Improvement from above/ground press. He has only ever lived in Hamilton, Ontario on the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas.
“He has only ever lived in Hamilton, ON.”
For a while now, this has been the last line of my writing bio. I initially added this line without much thought, but I am becoming increasingly aware of how much living in Hamilton has affected me.
A city like Hamilton forces you to be prepared for things to take a sharp turn toward absurdity at any given moment. Many of the more surreal elements in these poems came directly from the city itself. This place is more generative than I could ever hope to be; I’m just trying to pay attention and write as fast as I can.
AuthorBen Robinson
A reading from Mohamed Abdulkarim Ali, author of Angry Queen Somali Boy his memoir of coming to age as a queer man caught between traditions.
A reading from Mohamed Abdulkarim Ali, author of Angry Queen Somali Boy his memoir of coming to age as a queer man caught between traditions.
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Mohamed Abdulkarim Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, and lived in the United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands before immigrating to Canada as a teenager. He currently lives in Toronto. This is his first book.
Yasmin Emery (she/her) is a writer, designer, and chronic multitasker. She works in publishing and lives in Toronto.
Kidnapped by his father on the eve of Somalia’s societal implosion, Mohamed Ali was taken first to the Netherlands by his stepmother, and then later on to Canada. Unmoored from his birth family and caught between twin alienating forces of Somali tradition and Western culture, Mohamed must forge his own queer coming of age.
What follows in this fierce and unrelenting account is a story of one young man’s nascent sexuality fused with the violence wrought by displacement.
AuthorMohamed Abdulkarim Ali
Every life leaves a legacy, and life is a strange and winding thing. What hides in the more shadowy corners of the conversations we like to avoid about our own
Every life leaves a legacy, and life is a strange and winding thing. What hides in the more shadowy corners of the conversations we like to avoid about our own mortality? Four brave authors shine a light on what it means to live, and what people do when the end is near. Closed captioning sponsored by Another Story Bookshop.
Event has already taken place!
Dakshana Bascaramurty is a reporter for the Globe and Mail, who has won a National Newspaper Award and a Digital Publishing Award for her writing. Her work has appeared in the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen, and on CBC. This is her first book.
John Gould is the author of three collections of very short stories — including The End of Me and Kilter, a finalist for the Giller Prize and a Globe and Mail Best Book — and the novel Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good. He taught for years at the University of Victoria. He lives on unceded Lekwungen territory in Victoria, BC.
Liz Levine is an award-winning producer whose credits include Kyra Sedgwick’s directorial debut, Story of a Girl, and Douglas Coupland’s television series jPod. She has written for the National Post, The Walrus, Playback magazine, and The Vancouver Sun. She divides her time between Toronto, Vancouver, and Los Angeles.
Rachel Matlow (she/her/they/them) was a long-time producer on the arts and culture program Q on CBC Radio, where she also worked on Spark and The Sunday Edition. Her audio documentary “Dead Mom Talking” won a 2016 Third Coast award and a 2017 Gabriel award. She has written for The Globe and Mail, National Post, and The Believer.
A traumedy about life and death (and every cosmic joke in between)
When her mother is diagnosed with cancer, Rachel Matlow is concerned but hopeful. It’s Stage 1, so her mom will get surgery and everything will go back to normal. When Elaine decides to forgo conventional treatment and heal herself naturally, Rachel is forced to ponder whether the very things that made her mom so special—her independent spirit, her belief in being the author of her own story—are what will ultimately kill her.
AuthorRachel Matlow
A genuinely moving, funny, and inventive account of loss and grief, mental illness and suicide, from film and TV producer Liz Levine (Story of a Girl), written in the aftermath of the deaths of her sister and best friend.
AuthorLiz Levine
The End of Me is an astonishing set of sudden stories about the experience of mortality. With an ear attuned to the uncanny and the ironic, John Gould catches his characters at moments of illumination as they encounter the mystery of their finite being. A marooned astronaut bonds with a bereft cat; kids pelt a funeral procession with plums; a young girl ponders the brief brutality of her last life, and braces herself for the next one. Rife with invention, with fresh ideas and arresting voices, this collection of flash fiction shimmers with compassion and vitality.
AuthorJohn Gould
For readers of Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Will Schwalbe, the moving, inspiring story of a young husband and father who, when diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of thirty-three, sets out to build a legacy for his infant son.
AuthorDakshana Bascaramurty
27sep7:15 pm7:45 pmVirtual EventTHE AFTERLIFE: WOTS Staff Tell All7:15 pm – 7:45 pm EST
Closing ceremonies for WOTS2020, our first ever virtual festival. Meet the team behind the scenes as we reflect on the virtual pivot, challenges overcome, and the friends we made along
Closing ceremonies for WOTS2020, our first ever virtual festival. Meet the team behind the scenes as we reflect on the virtual pivot, challenges overcome, and the friends we made along the way (pizza optional, but suggested).
Event has already taken place!
David Alexander is the Festival Director for The Word On The Street Toronto. A published poet with over a decade of nonprofit leadership experience, David helped build Toronto’s Veg Food Fest, North America’s largest annual vegetarian food festival. His first book, After the Hatching Oven, was released by Nightwood Editions in 2018.
David manages artistic programming and overall festival production.
Maya Baumann joined the WOTS team in 2017, excited to braid together her passion for the literary arts and her background in arts management, diaspora and Indigenous studies. Since, she has been helping connect diverse thinkers and creating platforms for them to share their ideas.
Maya manages artistic programming and relations with programming partners.
Rebecca Diem writes smart and hopeful speculative fiction and poetry. She is the author of the indie steampunk series Tales of the Captain Duke and a Tor.com contributor. An avid bookworm, Rebecca was once honoured to receive the ‘Nose in a Book’ award from her elementary school librarian. Somewhere between reading Virginia Woolf and Neil Gaiman she began to write her own stories, and has no plans to stop.
Rebecca manages communications, marketing strategy, and social media.
Sienna Tristen is an author of speculative fiction and poetry who explores queer platonic partnership, radical compassion, and mythmaking in their work. A purveyor of many skills and talents, Sienna can lead a yoga class, speak to you in three and a half languages, and climb forty feet in the air on a pair of silks. She joined WOTS as an assistant in 2019 and wouldn’t stop bothering them until they gave her a full-time job in 2020.
Sienna manages event logistics and the festival’s exhibitor marketplace.
This stream is designed to set your imagination into overdrive – each morning there will be panels of sci-fi and fantasy authors, and each afternoon presenters will dive deep into a range of issues and ideas!
Live captioning is available for this programming stream
Pervasive technology, shifting obsessions, automatic apocalypse – hear from Nina Laurin, Karoline Georges, S.D. Chrostowska, and GMB Chomichuk on their imaginings of future-tech and how this affects human life on
Pervasive technology, shifting obsessions, automatic apocalypse – hear from Nina Laurin, Karoline Georges, S.D. Chrostowska, and GMB Chomichuk on their imaginings of future-tech and how this affects human life on earth.
Event has already taken place!
GMB Chomichuk is an award-winning writer and illustrator whose work has appeared in film, television, books, comics and graphic novels. His work ranges from the heartwarming to the blood-curdling with graphic novels like Will I See? and the forthcoming Arena City and Good Boys. He is the host of the Super Pulp Science podcast.
Karoline Georges is the author of seven books, including Under the Stone (finalist for the 2012 Quebec Booksellers’ Prize). Her latest novel, The Imago Stage, has won several honors in French, including the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2018. Karoline currently lives in Montreal.
Nina Laurin studied Creative Writing at Concordia University in Montreal, where she currently lives. She speaks and reads in Russian, French, and English but writes her novels in English. She wrote her first novel while getting her writing degree, and Girl Last Seen was a bestseller a year later in 2017.
S. D. Chrostowska is Professor of Humanities and Social & Political Thought at York University, Toronto. She is the author of Permission: A Novel; and Matches: A Light Book and co-editor of Political Uses of Utopia: New Marxist, Anarchist, and Radical Democratic Perspectives. She currently lives in Toronto.
A thrilling and intense psychological suspense from the bestselling author of Girl Last Seen.
It’s a sunny day in Venture, Illinois, the sort of place where dreams come true and families can get a fresh start. Cecelia Holmes deserves it after the home invasion that shattered her previous life. Now everything seems perfect – her high-security SmartHome, her doting husband, her sweet daughter.
Until she begins to feel spied on. Her husband doesn’t believe her. Her neighbors ignore her. So when she discovers a shocking secret about the prior occupant of their house, she feels that she has no one to turn to. Now Cecelia must face her fears…
AuthorNina Laurin
The Automatic Age is the story of a father and son navigating an automated apocalypse.
The future was supposed to be a mechanical utopia of automats, self-driving cars, food pills, and nostalgia machines, designed to create maximum comfort and efficiency for its human inhabitants. But this automated paradise has turned into a world where robot search teams find and remove the troublesome humans that clutter it with grim efficiency.
Now Kerion and his young son, Barry, are two of the few people left behind. They must find a way not only to survive, but to reclaim their humanity.
AuthorGMB Chomichuk
An unemployed, dream-prone narrator finds himself following Chevauchet, diplomat of Onirica, a foreign republic of dreams, to resist a prohibition on sleep in near-future Greater America. On a mission to combat the state-sponsored drugging of citizens with uppers for greater productivity, they traverse an eerie landscape in an everlasting autumn, able to see other people’s nightmares and dreams. As Comprehensive Illusion – a social media-like entity that hijacks creativity – overtakes the masses, Chevauchet, the old radical, weakens and disappears, leaving our narrator to take up Chevauchet’s dictum that “daydreaming is directly subversive.
AuthorSD Chrostowska
Georges offers up an alienated childhood with shifting pop culture obsessions, a woman’s awakening to the role of the image in culture, and her eventual isolation in her apartment and the world online. It is a catalogue of the anxieties of an age, from nuclear war to terrorism, climate change to biological warfare. Set in the past and not-too-distant future of Montreal, The Imago Stage is an ominous tale of oppression, suppression, and disembodiment.
AuthorKaroline Georges
26sep10:45 am10:50 amVirtual EventShared UniversePaul Vermeersch10:45 am – 10:50 am EST
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Paul Vermeersch is a Toronto based poet, multimedia artist, creative writing professor, & literary editor. He is the author of several poetry collections, including the Trillium Award-nominated The Reinvention of the Human Hand. He teaches at Sheridan College & is the founding editor of Buckrider Books, an imprint of Wolsak & Wynn Publishers Ltd.
Paul Vermeersch has reinvented the “new and selected.” Bringing together the very best of his poetry from the last quarter century with new and never-before-published works, Shared Universe is a sprawling chronicle of the dawn of civilizations, the riddles of 21st-century existence, and any number of glorious, or menacing, futures. In this universe, time is thematic instead of chronological, and space is aesthetic rather than voluminous. Here, alongside popular favourites, are recently unearthed gems and visionary new poems that reveal the books hidden within the books of one of Canada’s most distinctive and imaginative poets.
AuthorPaul Vermeersch
Kevin Chong and Waubgeshig Rice sit down to discuss their prescient novels – stories of navigating quarantines, dwindling supply chains, and social inequity.
Kevin Chong and Waubgeshig Rice sit down to discuss their prescient novels – stories of navigating quarantines, dwindling supply chains, and social inequity.
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Kevin Chong is the author of six books, including most recently the 2018 novel The Plague. He lives in Vancouver but has recently begun teaching creative writing at UBCO in Kelowna.
Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist originally from Wasauksing First Nation. His first short story collection, Midnight Sweatlodge, won an Independent Publishers Book Award in 2012. His debut novel, Legacy, followed in 2014. He now splits his time between Sudbury and Wasauksing.
With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, unexpected visitors arrive, escaping the crumbling society to the south. The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. As tensions rise, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again.
AuthorWaubgeshig Rice
A modern retelling of the Camus classic that posits its story of infectious disease and quarantine in our contemporary age of social justice and rising inequity.
AuthorKevin Chong
26sep12:00 pm12:05 pmVirtual EventPluviophileYusuf Saadi12:00 pm – 12:05 pm EST
A special 5 minute reading with Yusuf Saadi.
A special 5 minute reading with Yusuf Saadi.
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Yusuf Saadi’s first collection, Pluviophile (Nightwood Editions April 2020), was selected by the CBC for its 2020 reading list. He previously won The Malahat Review‘s Far Horizons Award for Poetry and the Vallum Chapbook Award and has published poems in numerous Canadian literary journals. He currently resides in Montreal.
Pluviophile veers through various poetic visions and traditions in search of the sacred within and beyond language. The collection houses sonnets and other shorter poems between larger, more meditative runes. One of these longer poems, “The Place Words Go to Die,” winner of The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Poetry, imagines an underworld where words are killed and reborn, shedding signifiers like skin to reenter symbiotic relationships with the human, where “saxum [is] sacrificed and born again as saxifrage.” From here the poems shift to diverse locations, from Montreal to Kolkata, from the moon to the gates of heaven.
AuthorYusuf Saadi
Journalist and author Mark Bulgutch (That’s Why I’m a Doctor, Douglas & McIntyre) leads a discussion with a diverse group of writers who are also healthcare workers. Presented by the
Journalist and author Mark Bulgutch (That’s Why I’m a Doctor, Douglas & McIntyre) leads a discussion with a diverse group of writers who are also healthcare workers. Presented by the City of Toronto.
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Bahar Orang is a writer and physician-in-training living in Toronto; she completed her MD at McMaster University, and is now completing specialty training in psychiatry. Her poetry and essays have been published in such places as GUTS, Hamilton Arts & Letters, CMAJ, and Ars Medica. Where Things Touch: A Meditation on Beauty is her first book.
Cathy Crowe is a long-time street nurse who works in the area of social justice nursing. Cathy is a ground-breaking author (Dying for a Home: Homeless Activists Speak Out and A Knapsack Full of Dreams. Memoirs of a Street Nurse). She is a member of the Order of Canada.
Dr. James Maskalyk is a physician and bestselling author (Six Months in Sudan, Life on the Ground Floor). He practices emergency medicine and trauma at St. Michael’s Hospital and teaches at the University of Toronto. He is strategic director of a program that works with Ethiopian partners at Addis Ababa University to train East Africa’s first emergency physicians and is a member of Medecins Sans Frontieres, an organization for which he has worked as journalist and physician. He wrote a diary for the Globe and Mail during the early days of COVID-19, and is writing his third book for Penguin Random House, titled Doctor: Heal Thyself about moving beyond traditional views of the body to explore different types of healing.
Dr. Kwame McKenzie is the CEO of Wellesley Institute and is an international expert on the social causes of mental illness, suicide and the development of effective, equitable health systems. Kwame is a policy advisor, clinician and academic who has authored more than 200 papers and five books.
Dr. Vincent Lam worked in the emergency room at Toronto East General Hospital and helped fight the 2003 SARS outbreak. His depiction of four medical students who become doctors in Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, won the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize – Canada’s most prestigious literary award. He is the youngest writer, and the only first-time author, to win it. The book was adapted for television and broadcast on HBO Canada. Dr. Lam co-authored The Flu Pandemic And You, a non-fiction guide to influenza pandemics, which was recognized in 2007 with a Special Recognition Award by the American Medical Writers’ Association. Dr. Lam’s biography of Tommy Douglas was published by Penguin Canada as part of the Extraordinary Canadians series. The Headmaster’s Wager, Dr. Lam’s first novel, about a Chinese compulsive gambler and headmaster of an English school in Saigon during the Vietnam War, was a finalist for the 2012 Governor General’s Prize.
Hear three brilliant poets with new books in a fascinatingly wide spectrum of traditions and subjects, all of crucial concern today, but rarely grasped with such passion and breadth. Presented
Hear three brilliant poets with new books in a fascinatingly wide spectrum of traditions and subjects, all of crucial concern today, but rarely grasped with such passion and breadth. Presented by the City of Toronto.
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AF Moritz currently serves as the sixth poet laureate of the City of Toronto. His many honours include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize, and an Ingram Merrill Fellowship.
A native of Chile, Beatriz Hausner came at a young age to Canada with her parents, the artist Susana Wald and the poet and collage artist Ludwig Zeller. She has published acclaimed poetry collections including Enter the Raccoon (2012), Sew Him Up (2010) , The Archival Stone (2005), The Stitched Heart (2004), The Wardrobe Mistress (2003), and Towards the Ideal Man Poems (2003). Her extensive work as a translator has focused on the writers of that literature, including Rosamel del Valle, Enrique Molina, Olga Orozco, César Moro, the poets of the Chilean Mandrágora movement, among others. A respected historian and translator of Latin American Surrealism, she is a co-founder of Quattro Books, and has served as Chair of the Public Lending Right Commission. For many years she worked at the Toronto Public Library, where she founded and curated many readings and series and was increasing the TPL’s literary programming, collections in poetry and in foreign literatures, and relationship to the Canadian literary community. She is currently President of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada. Hausner’s poetry is rooted in international surrealism, especially its Spanish American expression.
The author of eight books, Joe Fiorito won the National Newspaper Award for Columns in 1995; the Brassani Prize for short fiction in 2000; and the 2003 City of Toronto Book Award for his novel, The Song Beneath the Ice. He has worked as a city columnist for the Montreal Gazette, The National Post, The Globe&Mail, and the Toronto Star.
An Indo-Guyanese writer by way of Scarborough (Ganatsekwyagon), Natasha Ramoutar is a poet and producer who covers arts and culture. Her micro-fiction was selected for the My City, My Six exhibition at Toronto City Hall, and she was named Scarborough’s Emerging Writer of 2018 by the Ontario Book Publishers Organization. Her work has been included in projects by Diaspora Dialogues, Scarborough Arts, and Nuit Blanche Toronto and has been published in The Unpublished City II, PRISM Magazine, Room Magazine, THIS Magazine and more. She is the volunteer Social Media Coordinator for the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD). She curated So Fresh: A Scarborough Reading as the 2019 writer-in-residence at Firefly Creative Writing and is the fiction editor of FEEL WAYS, an anthology of Scarborough writing.
All I Have Learned Is Where I Have Been, Joe Fiorito’s second collection, creates uncompromising mini-narratives about addiction, failed rehabs, incarceration, and homelessness. Along with his 2018 book, City Poems, this work establishes him as the preeminent chronicler of people in extremis. Poems of searing precision convey a visceral knowledge of urban realities: “her little finger curls a bit/she cut a tendon when she slit/ her wrist; she’d clenched/ her fist.” All I Have Learned Is Where I Have Been is a moving exploration of brokenness by one of Canada’s most indispensable writers.
AuthorJoe Fiorito
Written and organized chronologically around before and after the poet’s serious illness and heart surgery in 2014, these gorgeously unguarded poems plumb and deepen the reader’s understanding of Moritz’s primary and ongoing obsessions: beauty, impermanence, history, social conscience and responsibility, and, always and most urgently, love. For all its necessary engagement with worry, sorrow, and fragility, As Far As You Know sings a final insistent chorus to what it loves: “You will live.”
AuthorA.F. Moritz
Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart engages the many faces, and bodies, of Eros. From wistful romance to explicit sex, the poems are inspired by the troubadour poets of Provence and Italy, and invoke such historical figures as the Byzantine Empress Theodora and her husband, Emperor Justinian, not to mention the important, little known poet Beatriz, the Countess of Dia. Juxtaposing surrealism with Ovid, Callimachus, Dante, the Troubadours, and popular music—punk and new wave—these poems are pure Hausner in chorus with her “alter voices,” expressing permutations of presence, absence, conquest, and loss. Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart reaches through the millennia to create an unexpected, fully contemporary exploration of one of humanity’s deepest sources of pain and transcendence.
AuthorBeatriz Hausner
Bittersweet is a collage representing both a reconstructed homeland and Scarborough, Ontario. It considers memory using photographs, maps, language, and folklore. Bringing together definitions, recipes, cartography, photo albums, and oral stories, it meditates on themes of obscured and suppressed history, theft, time, and liminality. The poems journey from Toronto to Guyana to South Asia, and Scarborough remains omnipresent, with a mix of identities and a strong, active, and boisterous youthful presence. Bittersweet is Ramoutar’s first book of poems.
AuthorNatasha Ramoutar
Join Faye Guenther and Souvankham Thammavongsa for a dazzling conversation as they delve into their new short story collections covering culture, identity and coming of age. Guenther’s Swimmers in Winter
Join Faye Guenther and Souvankham Thammavongsa for a dazzling conversation as they delve into their new short story collections covering culture, identity and coming of age. Guenther’s Swimmers in Winter (Invisible Publishing, Aug 2020) is a haunting and beautiful debut collection of short stories, and Souvankham Thammavongsa How to Pronounce Knife (Penguin Random House, April 2020) has since been nominated for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller. Moderated by CBC’s Ryan B. Patrick.
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Faye Guenther lives in Toronto. Her writing has appeared in literary magazines including Joyland and she has published a chapbook, Flood Lands, with Junction Books. Swimmers in Winter is her first collection of short fiction.
Ryan B. Patrick is a Toronto writer, critic and arts & culture journalist. He is a producer at CBC Books, the digital destination for all CBC books and CanLit programming, including Canada Reads. His work has appeared in publications and websites such as Exclaim! Magazine, CBC Music, Huffington Post Canada and NOW Magazine.
Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of four poetry books and the short story collection How to Pronounce Knife (McClelland & Stewart, 2020), longlisted for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her stories have won an O. Henry Award and appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, and Granta. She lives in Toronto.
Named one of the best books of April by The New York Times, Salon, The Millions, and Vogue, and featuring stories that have appeared in Harper’s, Granta, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review, this revelatory book of fiction from O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa establishes her as an essential new voice in Canadian and world literature. Told with compassion and wry humour, these stories honour characters struggling to find their bearings far from home, even as they do the necessary “grunt work of the world.”
AuthorSouvankham Thammavongsa
PublisherPenguin Random House
Sharp and stylistic, the trifecta of diptychs that is Swimmers in Winter swirls between real and imagined pasts and futures to delve into our present cultural moment: conflicts between queer people and the police; the impact of homophobia, bullying, and PTSD; the dynamics of women’s friendships; life for queer women in Toronto during WWII and after; the intersections between class identities and queer identities; experiences of economic precarity and precarious living conditions; the work of being an artist; dystopian worlds; and the impact of gentrification on public space. These are soul-searching, plot-driven character studies equally influenced by James Baldwin, Christopher Isherwood, and Elena Ferrante.
AuthorFaye Guenther
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Fathima Cader’s writing has appeared in Guernica, The New Inquiry, Hazlitt, and elsewhere. Her forthcoming creative non-fiction book manuscript examines the migration of war and terror through the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Sri Lanka. She also works as a public interest litigator, representing workers, unions, and students.
Sheung-King is a writer and educator. His work has appeared in PRISM International, The Shanghai Literary Review, and The Humber Literary Review, among others. He is currently a lecturer at the University of Guelph and Sheridan College. You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. is Sheung-King’s debut book. Originally from Hong Kong, he lives in Toronto.
Sheung-King’s debut novel, You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. (Book*hug Oct 2020) is an intimate novel of memory and longing that challenges Western tropes and Orientalism. Embracing the playful surrealism of Haruki Murakami and the atmospheric narratives of filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, Sheung-King’s novel is at once lyrical and punctuated, and wholly unique, and marks the arrival of a bold new voice in Asian-Canadian literature. From Toronto to Macau to Hong Kong, Tokyo and Prague, this unexpected love story takes readers on a journey that both questions and delights.
AuthorSheung-King
PublisherBook*hug
What lies at the heart of the myriad issues plaguing modern society? Who has the answers? An elite team of thinkers come together to discuss how healthy living, climate reform,
What lies at the heart of the myriad issues plaguing modern society? Who has the answers? An elite team of thinkers come together to discuss how healthy living, climate reform, and social structures are connected.
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Cheryll Case practices a human rights approach to community planning. As founder and Principal Urban Planner of CP Planning, Cheryll coordinates with charities, private sector industries, and communities to resource the systems necessary to secure dignified living for all peoples.
David Miller is the Director of International Diplomacy and Global Ambassador of Inclusive Climate Action at C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. He was Mayor of Toronto from 2003 to 2010. Miller is a Harvard-trained economist and professionally a lawyer.
Joshna Maharaj is a chef, two-time TEDx speaker, and activist. Joshna is a regular guest on CBC Radio, a passionate public speaker, and co-hosts The Hot Plate, a food and drink podcast. She was the recipient of Restaurants Canada’s Culinary Excellence Award in 2018.
Karen K. Lee, MD, MHSc, FRCPC was born in Penang, Malaysia, and moved with her family to Canada at age eight. She studied medicine at the University of Alberta and completed residency training in Public Health and Preventive Medicine at the University of Toronto. Dr. Lee is an Associate Professor of Public Health and Preventive Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the University of Alberta. As an advisor, her clients and partners have included the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, the Australian Heart Foundation, several offices of the World Health Organization, and city, provincial and state governments and organizations around the world.
Dr. Lee has always known that health education, public service announcements, and our individual struggles are not enough. The world around us needs to change to support us in taking steps (literally and figuratively) to save our own lives. Working with civic leaders, city planners, and architects, she has been a pioneer in addressing today’s leading health problems, such as obesity, heart disease, strokes, cancers, and diabetes. Fit Cities is a riveting memoir of that work–the story of how Dr. Lee and her many teams of brilliant collaborators uncovered, and set about eradicating, the causes of a pandemic of unhealthy living. And every step of the way, it offers invaluable advice on how we can all help ourselves to live healthier lives.
AuthorKaren K. Lee
A citizen’s guide to making the big city a place where we can afford to live. Housing is increasingly unattainable in successful global cities, and Toronto is no exception – in part because of zoning that protects “stable” residential neighborhoods with high property values. House Divided is a citizen’s guide for changing the way housing can work in big cities. Using Toronto as a case study, this anthology unpacks the affordability crisis and offers innovative ideas for creating housing for all ages and demographic groups.
AuthorCheryll Case
If our planet is going to survive the climate emergency, we need to act quickly. As David Miller argues in Solved: How the World’s Great Cities Are Fixing the Climate Crisis, cities are more nimble than national governments when it comes to enacting reforms. Studies show that 70% of earth’s greenhouse gas emissions come from cities. Miller takes a comprehensive look at the sustainable initiatives that major cities have put in place to reduce their carbon footprints. If the world’s other cities adopt these practices, in pace and scale, Miller contends that we will finally resolve the climate crisis.
AuthorDavid Miller
Good food generally doesn’t arrive on a tray, but Chef Joshna Maharaj knows that institutional kitchens have the ability to produce good, nourishing food, because she’s been making it happen over the past 14 years. She’s determined to bring health, humanity, and hospitality back to institutional food while also building sustainability, supporting the local economy, and reinvigorating the work of frontline staff. Maharaj reconnects food with health, wellness, education, and rehabilitation in a way that serves people, not just budgets, and proves change is possible with honest, sustained commitment on all levels.
AuthorJoshna Maharaj
Worldbuilding starts in the world we already live in – hear from Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Tanaz Bhathena, and A.J. Vrana on their new books, and how they weave the places they
Worldbuilding starts in the world we already live in – hear from Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Tanaz Bhathena, and A.J. Vrana on their new books, and how they weave the places they call home into fantastic backdrops.
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A. J. Vrana is a Serbian-Canadian from Toronto, Canada. She lives with her two rescue cats, Moonstone and Peanut Butter, who nest in her window-side bookshelf and cast judgmental stares at nearby pigeons. Her doctoral research examines the supernatural in modern Japanese and former-Yugoslavian literature and its relationship to violence.
Kerry Seljak-Byrne is an autistic, queer and nonbinary publisher and writer living in Toronto. They are the Co-Founder, CEO and Publisher of Augur Magazine, Canada’s only SFWA-recognized pro-paying speculative fiction market, and Co-Director of the upcoming 2020 speculative fiction event AugurCon. As a speculative fiction writer, their work can be found in THIS Magazine, The Temz Review, and others. Find them on Twitter as @kercoby.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the New York Times bestselling author of the critically-acclaimed speculative novels Gods of Jade and Shadow, Signal to Noise, Certain Dark Things, and The Beautiful Ones; and the crime novel Untamed Shore. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Tanaz Bhathena writes books for young adults. Her latest book, Hunted by the Sky, is the first of a YA fantasy duology set in a world inspired by medieval India, with the sequel Rising like a Storm releasing on June 22, 2021. Her novel, The Beauty of the Moment, won the Nautilus Gold Award for Young Adult Fiction and has also been nominated for the Ontario Library Association’s White Pine Award. Her acclaimed debut, A Girl Like That, was named a Best Book of the Year by numerous outlets including The Globe and Mail, Seventeen, and The Times of India.
Gul has a star-shaped birthmark on her arm, and in the kingdom of Ambar, girls with such birthmarks have been disappearing for years. So when the Sisters of the Golden Lotus rescue her, take her in, and train her in warrior magic, Gul wants only one thing: revenge.
Cavas is ready to sign his life over to the king’s army. His father is terminally ill, and Cavas will do anything to save him. Until he meets Gul.
Dangerous circumstances bring Gul and Cavas together in Ambar Fort…a world with secrets deadlier than their own.
AuthorTanaz Bhathena
From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes a reimagining of the classic gothic suspense novel, a story about an isolated mansion in 1950s Mexico–and the brave socialite drawn to its treacherous secrets.
AuthorSilvia Moreno-Garcia
For centuries, residents of Black Hollow have foretold the return of the Dreamwalker—an ominous figure from local folklore said to lure young women into the woods and possess them. The boundary between fact and fable is blurred by a troubling statistic: occasionally, women do go missing. And after they return, they almost always end up dead.
Ancient grudges, forgotten traumas, and deadly secrets loom in the foggy forests of Black Hollow. Can three unlikely heroes put aside their fears and unite to confront a centuries-old evil? Will they uncover the truth behind the fable, or will the cycle repeat?
AuthorA.J. Vrana
Tune in to hear masters of their craft discuss breaking the fourth wall in books – what happens when the author of a story starts interacting with their characters, on
Tune in to hear masters of their craft discuss breaking the fourth wall in books – what happens when the author of a story starts interacting with their characters, on the page?
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Avi Silver is a queer, nonbinary author and editor of speculative fiction. They co-created The Shale Project, an award-winning indie arts collective, and are passionate about stories that wield tenderness as a tool of change. TWO DARK MOONS is their first novel.
Jo Walton is a multiple award-winning author, including the World Fantasy Award for Tooth and Claw, and the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Among Others. In addition to writing SF and fantasy, she also designs role-playing games and has published poetry. A native of Wales, she lives in Montreal.
Randal Graham is a law professor at Western University, where his teaching and research focus on ethics and legal language. His first novel, Beforelife, won the IPPY gold medal for fantasy fiction and was a top ten finalist for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. He lives in London, Ontario.
Something’s rotten in the afterlife. At least that’s how it seems to Rhinnick Feynman, the one man who perceives that someone in the afterlife is tugging at history’s threads & unraveling the past. Rhinnick sets off on a quest to put things right, which would be a good deal easier if Rhinnick didn’t believe he was a character in a novel, and finds himself facing off against Isaac Newton, Jack the Ripper, Ancient Egyptians, a pack of frenzied Napoleons, and the prophet Norm Stradamus. Undeterred by these terrors, Rhinnick recognizes himself as The Man the Hour Produced, the only one equipped to outwit the forces of science and mental health.
AuthorRandal Graham
He has been too many things to count. A dragon with a boy on his back. A scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a thief. A god.
But he is in fact nothing more than a character in the mind of Sylvia Harrison, author of thirty novels over forty years. He has played a part in most of those novels, and in the recesses of her mind, Sylvia has conversed with him for years.
But Sylvia won’t live forever, and he’s trapped inside her hollow of skull. When she dies, so will he – unless he can convince her otherwise.
AuthorJo Walton
Sixteen-year-old Sohmeng Par is sick of being treated like a child. When a failed coming-of-age ritual gets her thrown off the mountains and into the jungle below, she must learn to live in the deadly rainforest alongside a pack of reptilian predators and the strange human who rides with them.
Silver’s debut YA fantasy combines rich and immersive worldbuilding, giant lizards, and confident queer teens taking matters into their own hands. An empowering tale with hints of How to Train Your Dragon and Princess Mononoke, this story is for anyone who has ever felt like they are “too much”.
AuthorAvi Silver
Readers always wonder – how do authors get their start? Hear from three fantasy superstars, Nandi Taylor, E. Latimer, and K.S. Villoso, who navigated the world of self-publishing with aplomb!
Readers always wonder – how do authors get their start? Hear from three fantasy superstars, Nandi Taylor, E. Latimer, and K.S. Villoso, who navigated the world of self-publishing with aplomb! Moderated by Derek Kunsken.
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Derek Künsken has built genetically engineered viruses, worked with street children and refugees in Latin America, served as a Canadian diplomat, and, most importantly, taught his son about super-heroes and science. His short fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and multiple times in Asimov’s Science Fiction. His stories have been adapted into audio podcasts, reprinted in various Year’s Best anthologies, and translated into multiple languages. They have also been short-listed for various awards, and won the Asimov’s Readers’ Award in 2013. He tweets from @derekkunsken, blogs at BlackGate.com, and makes his internet home at DerekKunsken.com.
E. Latimer is the author of Witches of Ash and Ruin, and The Strange and Deadly Portraits of Bryony Gray. She lives on Vancouver Island, and her breakout success on the online writing platform, Wattpad.com, has resulted in a fanbase of over 100k followers, with over 20 million combined reads. She also vlogs weekly on the Word Nerds Youtube channel.
K.S. Villoso writes speculative fiction with a focus on deeply personal themes and character-driven narratives. Much of her work is inspired by her childhood in the slums of Taguig, Philippines. She is now living amidst the forest and mountains with her husband, children, and dogs in Anmore, BC.
Nandi Taylor is a Canadian writer of Afro-Caribbean descent based in Toronto. Her debut novel Given garnered over one million reads on the online story sharing site Wattpad and earned a starred review from ALA’s Booklist magazine. Common themes she writes about are growth, courage, and finding one’s place in the world.
As a princess of the Moonrise Isles Yenni has always put duty before her own desires. When her father falls gravely ill she sets out on an arduous journey to a magical academy in the far reaches of the Empire of Cresh. There is no room for failure, but Yenni struggles to learn the strange magic of Cresh as a cure continues to evade her. And complicating matters is Weysh, a dragon shifter who says Yenni is his Given―his one true partner ordained by destiny.
With her father’s life hanging in the balance and her feelings for Weysh deepening, Yenni’s greatest challenge has just begun―save her people, while following her heart.
AuthorNandi Taylor
Life can exist anywhere. And anywhere there is life, there is home.
In the swirling clouds of Venus, the families of la colonie live on floating plant-like trawlers, salvaging what they can in the fierce acid rain and crackling storms. Outside is dangerous, but humankind’s hold on the planet is fragile and they spend most of their days surviving.
But Venus carries its own secrets, too. In the depths, there is a wind that shouldn’t exist.
And the House of Styx wants to harness it.
AuthorDerek Kunsken
The sequel to The Wolf of Oren-yaro, and the second book in a character-driven epic fantasy trilogy that is perfect for fans of Robin Hobb and Mark Lawrence.
AuthorK.S. Villoso
Modern witchcraft blends with ancient Celtic mythology in an epic clash of witches and gods, perfect for fans of V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic trilogy and the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
AuthorE. Latimer
Good vs. evil? Natalie Zina Walschots and Sean Michaels are here to muddy the waters and complicate the metaphors with stories that inhabit the grey areas of this magical thing
Good vs. evil? Natalie Zina Walschots and Sean Michaels are here to muddy the waters and complicate the metaphors with stories that inhabit the grey areas of this magical thing called life.
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Derek Künsken has built genetically engineered viruses, worked with street children and refugees in Latin America, served as a Canadian diplomat, and, most importantly, taught his son about super-heroes and science. His short fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and multiple times in Asimov’s Science Fiction. His stories have been adapted into audio podcasts, reprinted in various Year’s Best anthologies, and translated into multiple languages. They have also been short-listed for various awards, and won the Asimov’s Readers’ Award in 2013. He tweets from @derekkunsken, blogs at BlackGate.com, and makes his internet home at DerekKunsken.com.
Natalie Zina Walschots is a freelance writer, community manager and bailed academic based in Toronto. She writes everything from reviews of science fiction novels and interviews with heavy metal musicians to to in-depth feminist games criticism and pieces of long-form journalism. She is the author of two books of poetry.
Sean Michaels is a novelist, short-story writer and critic. Sean’s debut novel, Us Conductors, received the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was nominated for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, Kirkus Prize for Fiction, the DUBLIN Literary Award, and (in translation) the Prix des libraires de Quebec.
Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. As a temp, she’s just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called “hero” leaves her badly injured.
Armed with only her anger and internet research acumen, she discovers her suffering at the hands of a hero is far from unique. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realizes she might not be as powerless as she thinks.
AuthorNatalie Zina Walschotts
Scotiabank Giller-winner Sean Michaels is back with his widely anticipated second novel, The Wagers, a deeply satisfying story of long odds, magical heists and the dizzying gamble of life. Where does luck come from? What is it worth? And how much of it do you need to be happy?
Theo, an aspiring comedian, grows anxious waiting for his big break and tries to change his luck by joining a gang of thieves who steal it from people who have more than their fair share.
AuthorSean Michaels
What is fact-checking? The term can mean a lot of things—anything from Daniel Dale’s live fact checks of US politicians to Facebook’s anti-disinformation efforts. But magazines have a long, and
What is fact-checking? The term can mean a lot of things—anything from Daniel Dale’s live fact checks of US politicians to Facebook’s anti-disinformation efforts. But magazines have a long, and mostly invisible, history of fact-checking their work, carefully going through a feature line by line to back up every detail. This discussion will bring together fact checkers and editors from The Walrus to discuss how the process of fact-checking an award-winning magazine has informed how they approach commissioning, writing, and editing long-form journalism—and how you can bring the skills of fact-checking into your writing and editing practice.
Event has already taken place!
Prior to joining The Walrus as senior editor, Hamutal Dotan edited long-form features for the Globe and Mail, commented on politics for the CBC, and led an online magazine to become the first to win a National Magazine Award without ever having issued a print edition.
Nicole Schmidt is a Berlin-based writer and fact checker. Prior to joining The Walrus as the Power Corporation of Canada Senior Fellow, she worked as the arts and culture editor at Toronto Life. Her writing has appeared in Maclean’s, the National Post, Yahoo, and Vice.
Viviane Fairbank is a writer and editor based in Montreal, formerly associate editor and head of research at The Walrus.
Public discourse in 2020 can seem like a wasteland of half-truths, dubious assertions, and outright falsehoods. How have media organizations and journalists responded? What can they do to provide the
Public discourse in 2020 can seem like a wasteland of half-truths, dubious assertions, and outright falsehoods. How have media organizations and journalists responded? What can they do to provide the depth and breadth of understanding that is required for Canadian democracy to persist and thrive? Award-winning journalist David McKie of Canada’s National Observer, Canadaland senior producer Kasia Mychajlowycz, and publisher Anya-Milana Sulaver of Peeps Magazine take stock.
Event has already taken place!
Anya-Milana’s career spans three decades featuring work as a documentary producer, filmmaker and cultural analyst. Peeps is the culmination of A-M’s professional and academic work, allowing her to put cultural theory into practice with her team to share ethically produced, engaging stories about people around the world.
David McKie is an Ottawa-based, award-winning journalist who spent 26 years honing his skills at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as an investigative producer. He is now the National Observer’s deputy managing editor. David teaches at the schools of journalism at Carleton University, the University of King’s College, and Ryerson University, and has co-authored three journalism textbooks and two user guides on freedom-of-information laws and privacy, respectively.
In addition to teaching, he is a data-journalism trainer who has conducted workshops for the Canadian Association of Journalists, the U.S.-based National Institute for Computer- Assisted Reporting, the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, and the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations. David also continues to offer data-journalism training at the CBC.
He has a Bachelor of Journalism degree and a Master of Journalism degree from
Carleton.
Prior to joining The Walrus as senior editor, Hamutal Dotan edited long-form features for the Globe and Mail, commented on politics for the CBC, and led an online magazine to become the first to win a National Magazine Award without ever having issued a print edition.
Kasia Mychajlowycz is an audio journalist, the host of Cool Mules, and senior producer of CANADALAND.
Cool Mules is a six-part podcast series, hosted by Kasia Mychajlowycz, investigating the cocaine-smuggling ring inside Vice Media.
Peeps Magazine, recently relaunched as an online publication, brings readers deeply researched stories about people and cultures around the world. Our stories are written by researchers who have spent months, even years, conducting participant observation and interviews with the communities they write about. Their work is published with world-class photojournalism and design to produce a lush reading experienced offering empathetic and nuanced pieces that put context and culture ahead of events.
The hosts of the Kobo Writing Life podcast, Stephanie McGrath and Joni Di Placido will share how Kobo has created a unique writing community for indie authors. They will delve
The hosts of the Kobo Writing Life podcast, Stephanie McGrath and Joni Di Placido will share how Kobo has created a unique writing community for indie authors. They will delve into how the create their episodes, share their interview techniques, and how they grew their podcast audience. They will also share how podcast marketing is rapidly evolving and how they have used their podcast to market not only Kobo Writing Life, but Kobo as a company.
Event has already taken place!
Joni Di Placido is Kobo’s Author Engagement Specialist and has worked with Kobo since 2017. She studied Italian and Spanish language and literature at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. She loves to read literary and contemporary fiction, and is always happy to share podcast recommendations!
Stephanie McGrath works on the Content Management team at Kobo Writing Life. She studied Book and Media Studies and English literature at the University of Toronto. She loves to discuss popular culture, true crime and the latest romance book she is reading.
This stream will feature picture books, novels, and graphic novels for readers of all age-groups, as well as the First Nation Communities READ award ceremony!
Live captioning is available for this programming stream
26sep10:00 am10:20 amFeaturedVirtual EventMy Day With Gong GongSennah Yee10:00 am – 10:20 am EST
A reading with children’s author Sennah Yee from My Day with Gong Gong. Ages 4-7.
A reading with children’s author Sennah Yee from My Day with Gong Gong. Ages 4-7.
Event has already taken place!
Sennah Yee is from Toronto, Ontario, where she writes poetry, short stories, and film criticism. Her first book, the creative non-fiction collection How Do I Look?, was published by Metatron Press in 2017.
May isn’t having fun on her trip through Chinatown with her grandfather. Gong Gong doesn’t speak much English, and May can’t understand Chinese. She’s hungry, and bored with errands. Plus, it seems like Gong Gong’s friends are making fun of her! But just when May can’t take any more, Gong Gong surprises her with a gift that reveals he’s been paying more attention than she thought. This charming debut expertly captures life in the city and shows how small, shared moments of patience and care—and a dumpling or two—can help a child and grandparent bridge the generational and cultural gaps.
AuthorSennah Yee
26sep10:20 am10:40 amVirtual EventMaggie’s TreasureJon-Erik Lappano10:20 am – 10:40 am EST
A reading with children’s author Jon-Erik Lappano from Maggie’s Treasure. Ages 4-7.
A reading with children’s author Jon-Erik Lappano from Maggie’s Treasure. Ages 4-7.
Event has already taken place!
Jon-Erik Lappano is a person who stays up too late working on curious things, including writing books for children. His debut picture book, Tokyo Digs a Garden, was the winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award. Jon-Erik lives in Stratford, Ontario, with his wife, three daughters, and a growing collection of things that glitter.
Maggie finds treasure wherever she goes. Whether it’s a button, a feather or a shiny stone, she picks it up and takes it home. At first the neighbours and city workers are grateful to Maggie for cleaning up; the mayor even gives her an award. But over time Maggie’s collection grows bigger and bigger, until it spills out of her house and garden in an unsightly mess. Her parents tell her “Enough treasure!” and eventually even Maggie realizes that something must be done. Finally, inspired by a bird outside her window, she finds a way to share her treasure that enchants and transforms the entire neighbourhood.
AuthorJon-Erik Lappano
26sep10:40 am11:00 amSalma the Syrian ChefDanny Ramadan10:40 am – 11:00 am EST
Children’s author Danny Ramadan reads Salma the Syrian Chef. Ages 4-7.
Children’s author Danny Ramadan reads Salma the Syrian Chef. Ages 4-7.
Danny Ramadan is a Syrian-Canadian author, award-winning activist, and public speaker. His debut novel, The Clothesline Swing, won multiple awards. His work in activism provided a safe passage to dozens of Syrian LGBTQ-refugees to Canada. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with his husband.
All Salma wants is to make her mama smile again. Between English classes, job interviews, and missing Papa back in Syria, Mama always seems busy or sad. A homemade Syrian meal might cheer her up, but Salma doesn’t know the recipe, or what to call the vegetables in English, or where to find the right spices! Luckily, the staff and other newcomers at the Welcome Center are happy to lend a hand—and a sprinkle of sumac.
With creativity, determination, and charm, Salma brings her new friends together to show Mama that even though things aren’t perfect, there is cause for hope and celebration.
AuthorDanny Ramadan
26sep11:00 am11:20 amVirtual EventA Likkle Miss LouNadia L. Hohn11:00 am – 11:20 am EST
A reading with children’s author Nadia L. Hohn from A Likkle Miss Lou. Ages 4-7.
A reading with children’s author Nadia L. Hohn from A Likkle Miss Lou. Ages 4-7.
Event has already taken place!
Nadia L. Hohn is a dynamic “story lady” who has presented to audiences in Canada, United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jamaica, and Trinidad. Her first two books, Music and Media in the Sankofa Series were published by Rubicon Publishing in 2015. Her award-winning first picture book, Malaika’s Costume was published in 2016, Malaika’s Winter Carnival in 2017, and Malaika’s Surprise in 2021 by Groundwood Books. Nadia is also the author of Harriet Tubman: Freedom Fighter, an early reader by Harper Collins published in December 2018. A Likkle Miss Lou: How Jamaican Poet Louise Bennett-Coverley Found Her Voice, nonfiction picture book about the performer, playwright, author, and Jamaican cultural ambassador, Louise Bennett-Coverley otherwise known as Miss Lou, was published in 2019 (Owlkids). Nadia was 1 of 6 Black Canadian Writers to Watch in 2018 by CBC Books. Nadia was a touring presenter in Alberta for the 2019 TD Canada Children’s Book Week. In summer 2019, Nadia was the writer in residence at Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver, British Columbia and for Open Book. Nadia has served as a mentor for the Writers’ Union of Canada’s BIPOC Connect and instructs writing for children at the University of Toronto’s School for Continuing Studies. Nadia is an elementary school teacher in Toronto. She holds an honours arts degree in psychology from the University of Waterloo as well as Bachelor and Master of Education degrees from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (OISE/UT). She is a candidate for the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree program at the University of Guelph-Humber. Nadia is currently working on middle and young adult novels, a play, and more picture books.
A Likkle Miss Lou tells the story of Jamaican poet and entertainer Louise Bennett Coverley’s early years growing up in Jamaica. As a child, the poet, better known as Miss Lou, loved words—particularly the Jamaican Creole, or Patois, that she heard all around her. As a young writer, Louise felt caught between using British English, as her teachers instructed, and Patois. The book provides readers with an immersive look at an important figure in our cultural history and insight into Louise’s uplifting and inspiring journey to find her own voice. With rich, warm illustrations and Jamaican Creole in the text bringing the story to life, A Likkle Miss Lou is a modern ode to language, girl power, diversity, and the arts.
AuthorNadia L. Hohn
A science notebook is essential to a scientist’s work! Whether they’re in the lab or in the field, scientists record their observations, thoughts and questions in their science notebooks. Learn
A science notebook is essential to a scientist’s work! Whether they’re in the lab or in the field, scientists record their observations, thoughts and questions in their science notebooks. Learn how to keep track of your experiences. The Ontario Science Centre presented this papermaking tutorial as part of our Summer Spectacular programming on August 25th – learn how to make your own notebook from recycled paper and dried plant materials. Roll up your sleeves and get ready to go from pulp to paper!
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A reading with children’s author Andrea Curtis from A Forest in the City. Ages 8-12. Closed captioning sponsored by Anansi/Groundwood.
A reading with children’s author Andrea Curtis from A Forest in the City. Ages 8-12. Closed captioning sponsored by Anansi/Groundwood.
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Andrea Curtis once planted trees in Northern Ontario and is now an author of books for children and adults. Her children’s non-fiction titles include Eat This!, which received two starred reviews, and What’s for Lunch?, named to VOYA’s Honor List. She has also written the young adult novel Big Water. Andrea lives with her family in Toronto.
Angela Misri is an award-winning journalist, author and educator. Her detective series, called The Portia Adams Adventures, is set in the 1930s, and her first middle-grade series is called Tales of the Apocalypse, and the first book, Pickles vs the Zombies and was published by Cormorant books (2019). The second book in the series is called Trip of the Dead and will be out in the spring of 2021.
This beautiful book of narrative non-fiction looks at the urban forest. It discusses the problems that city trees face such as the abundance of concrete, traces the history of trees in cities over time, and consider how we can create a healthy environment for city trees. The urban forest is a complex ecosystem, and we are a part of it. Trees make our cities more beautiful and provide shade but they also fight climate change and pollution, benefit our health and connections to one another, provide food and shelter for wildlife, and much more. It is vital that we nurture our city forests.
AuthorAndrea Curtis
A reading with children’s author Michael Hutchinson from The Case of the Missing Auntie. Ages 8-12.
A reading with children’s author Michael Hutchinson from The Case of the Missing Auntie. Ages 8-12.
Event has already taken place!
Angela Misri is an award-winning journalist, author and educator. Her detective series, called The Portia Adams Adventures, is set in the 1930s, and her first middle-grade series is called Tales of the Apocalypse, and the first book, Pickles vs the Zombies and was published by Cormorant books (2019). The second book in the series is called Trip of the Dead and will be out in the spring of 2021.
Michael Hutchinson is a member of the Misipawistik Cree Nation, north of Winnipeg. He currently lives in Ottawa, Ontario where he works at the Assembly of First Nations, which advocates for First Nation families and communities across Canada. He wrote this book to instill pride in Indigenous youth and educate others about First Nation communities.
The Mighty Muskrats, four cousins from the Windy Lake First Nation, are off to the city to have fun at the Exhibition Fair. But when Chickadee learns about Grandpa’s little sister, who was scooped up by the government and adopted out to strangers without her parents’ permission many years ago, the Mighty Muskrats have a new mystery to solve. Once in the bright lights of the big city, the cousins face off with bullies, meet some heroes and unlikely teachers, and learn some hard truths about their country’s treatment of First Nations people.
AuthorMichael Hutchinson
A reading with author J. Torres and illustrator Tim Levins from The Case of the Missing Auntie. Ages 8-12.
A reading with author J. Torres and illustrator Tim Levins from The Case of the Missing Auntie. Ages 8-12.
Event has already taken place!
Angela Misri is an award-winning journalist, author and educator. Her detective series, called The Portia Adams Adventures, is set in the 1930s, and her first middle-grade series is called Tales of the Apocalypse, and the first book, Pickles vs the Zombies and was published by Cormorant books (2019). The second book in the series is called Trip of the Dead and will be out in the spring of 2021.
J. Torres is a Canadian comic book writer. Best known for his run on DC Comics’ Teen Titans Go, the Eisner-nominated Alison Dare, and TD Summer Reading Club title Bigfoot Boy. Winner of the Shuster Award for “Outstanding Writer,” Torres has worked with characters from A (Archies) to Z (The Mighty Zodiac).
Tim Levins studied Fine Art and Classical Animation before breaking into the comic book business. He worked on the Eisner Award-winning DC Comics series Batman: Gotham Adventures; illustrated many titles for DC, Marvel Comics and Archie Comics, and has drawn several children’s books. Tim lives with his family in Midland, Ontario.
Isaac may be the G.O.A.T (Greatest Of All Time) in his hockey video game, but after a championship game-losing accident, he’s an epic fail on actual ice. Unfortunately, the Pods’ robot scout from Planet Galaxia doesn’t know this, and beams him up and away to be the new superstar of their terrible team—the worst in the GL (Galaxian Hockey League). But the interstellar game isn’t quite like hockey on Earth. The stakes are much higher. Can Isaac score a win in the Galaxia Championship Tournament…and get back to home ice?
AuthorJ. Torres and Tim Levins
A reading with author Dani Jansen from The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life. For teens and young adult readers.
A reading with author Dani Jansen from The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life. For teens and young adult readers.
Event has already taken place!
Angela Misri is an award-winning journalist, author and educator. Her detective series, called The Portia Adams Adventures, is set in the 1930s, and her first middle-grade series is called Tales of the Apocalypse, and the first book, Pickles vs the Zombies and was published by Cormorant books (2019). The second book in the series is called Trip of the Dead and will be out in the spring of 2021.
Dani Jansen is a teacher and writer who lives in Montreal. She should probably also be ashamed to tell people that she named her cats after punctuation symbols (Ampersand and Em-Dash, in case you’re curious). For more information about Dani please visit danijansen.ca
Alison Green, desperate Valedictorian-wannabe, agrees to produce her school’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That’s her first big mistake. The second is accidentally saying yes to a date with her oldest friend, Jack, even though she’s crushing on Charlotte. Alison manages to stay positive, even when her best friend starts referring to the play as “Ye Olde Shakespearean Disaster.” Alison must cope with the misadventures that befall the play if she’s going to survive the year. She’ll also have to grapple with what it means to be “out” and what she might be willing to give up for love.
AuthorDani Jansen
A reading with author Alexandra Latos from Under Shifting Stars. For teens and young adult readers.
A reading with author Alexandra Latos from Under Shifting Stars. For teens and young adult readers.
Event has already taken place!
Alexandra Latos lives with her husband and young children in Alberta. Under Shifting Stars is her first young adult novel. Visit her at alexandralatos.com, or on Twitter and Instagram @alexandralatos.
Angela Misri is an award-winning journalist, author and educator. Her detective series, called The Portia Adams Adventures, is set in the 1930s, and her first middle-grade series is called Tales of the Apocalypse, and the first book, Pickles vs the Zombies and was published by Cormorant books (2019). The second book in the series is called Trip of the Dead and will be out in the spring of 2021.
This heartfelt novel follows twins Audrey and Clare as they grapple with their brother’s death and their changing relationships–with each other and themselves.
AuthorAlexandra Latos
A reading with author Elizabeth MacLeod from Meet Terry Fox. Ages 4-7.
A reading with author Elizabeth MacLeod from Meet Terry Fox. Ages 4-7.
Event has already taken place!
Elizabeth MacLeod is the author of many Canadian nonfiction titles including the Canada Close Up series titles Canadian Government, Canada’s Trees and Canadian Money in addition to the award-winning Scholastic Canada Biography series and Canada Year-By-Year. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Jeff Szpirglas is the author of over 20 books for young readers, including the recent “Tales From Beyond The Brain” series from Orca and the “Countdown to Danger” series from Scholastic Canada. He writes about films and film music for Rue Morgue Magazine, including the just-released Planet Wax: Classic Sci-Fi/Fantasy Soundtracks on Vinyl from 1984 Publishing. Amazingly he also finds the time to be a) husband, b) father, and c) full time classroom teacher. Follow him, if you dare, at jeffszpirglas.com.
Terry Fox’s remarkable story, just in time to mark the 40th anniversary of the Marathon of Hope!
In Meet Terry Fox, the legendary story of how Terry Fox came to run the Marathon of Hope is chronicled: —his love of sports as a child and teenager; his devastating bone cancer diagnosis; the hospital stay that inspired him to do something to raise awareness about this disease; the poignant moment he dipped his artificial leg in the waters of St. John’s, Newfoundland; and the heartbreaking moment he ended his run. This was also the moment his truly inspiring legacy began.
AuthorElizabeth MacLeod
27sep10:20 am10:40 amVirtual EventNuitau’s CapBob Bartel, Jeff Szpirglas10:20 am – 10:40 am EST
A reading with author Bob Bartel from Nuitau’s Cap. Ages 4-7.
A reading with author Bob Bartel from Nuitau’s Cap. Ages 4-7.
Event has already taken place!
Bob Bartel served as regional coordinator for the Mennonite Central Committee in Happy Valley, Labrador from 1986-89—a life-altering experience. During that time, he supported the Innu struggle against NATO supersonic flight training. He learned of Nanass’s story from her aunt, and tells it with her permission. Bob now lives in Saskatoon.
Jeff Szpirglas is the author of over 20 books for young readers, including the recent “Tales From Beyond The Brain” series from Orca and the “Countdown to Danger” series from Scholastic Canada. He writes about films and film music for Rue Morgue Magazine, including the just-released Planet Wax: Classic Sci-Fi/Fantasy Soundtracks on Vinyl from 1984 Publishing. Amazingly he also finds the time to be a) husband, b) father, and c) full time classroom teacher. Follow him, if you dare, at jeffszpirglas.com.
Nutaui’s Cap tells of a young Innu girl, Nanass. The low-level flying of NATO supersonic jets disrupts her family’s traditional way of life, endangering them and the wildlife they depend upon, so Nanass’s father and other members of the Sheshatshiu community decide to occupy the military’s runways. Nanass eagerly joins in the social action, but then her father is arrested. Nanass has little to comfort her except his well-worn ball cap, and the promise of the land itself that the resilience, wisdom, and strength of the Innu people will one day triumph.
AuthorBob Bartel
A reading with author Hasan Namir from The Name I Call Myself. Ages 4-7.
A reading with author Hasan Namir from The Name I Call Myself. Ages 4-7.
Event has already taken place!
Hasan Namir was born in Iraq in 1987 and came to Canada at a young age. He graduated from Simon Fraser University with a BA in English. His debut novel God in Pink won the Lambda Literary Award for gay fiction in 2016. He is also the author of the poetry book War/Torn. He lives in Vancouver.
Jeff Szpirglas is the author of over 20 books for young readers, including the recent “Tales From Beyond The Brain” series from Orca and the “Countdown to Danger” series from Scholastic Canada. He writes about films and film music for Rue Morgue Magazine, including the just-released Planet Wax: Classic Sci-Fi/Fantasy Soundtracks on Vinyl from 1984 Publishing. Amazingly he also finds the time to be a) husband, b) father, and c) full time classroom teacher. Follow him, if you dare, at jeffszpirglas.com.
Moving from age six to adolescence, The Name I Call Myself touchingly depicts Edward’s tender, solitary gender journey to Ari: a new life distinguished and made meaningful by self-acceptance and unconditional love. Throughout this beautiful and engaging picture book, we watch Ari grow up before our very eyes as they navigate the ins and outs of their gender identity; we see how, as a child, they prefer dolls and princess movies, and want to grow out their hair, though their father insists on cutting it short, “because that’s what boys look like.” Who will Ari become?
AuthorHasan Namir
A reading with Jennifer & Adam Young!
A reading with Jennifer & Adam Young!
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Jennifer & Adam Young live on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, with their two daughters and their dog, Johnny Cash. An accomplished visual artist, Adam is best known for his original, whimsical, and vividly colourful depictions of Eastern Canada.
Once upon a fine morning, a little shed awakens to discover she isn’t quite the same as she used to be. Uncertain and feeling as if she no longer fits in, she decides to leave home and sets out to sea. All alone on the wide, wide ocean, she meets an extraordinary new friend who sees how special she really is, and with newfound confidence, the little red shed returns home and inspires everyone to cherish their differences.
AuthorAdam & Jennifer Young
Stories in the Sky… Discover a storybook in the sky with the Ontario Science Centre! Learn about constellations and their importance to astronomy, history and culture during this live event.
Stories in the Sky… Discover a storybook in the sky with the Ontario Science Centre! Learn about constellations and their importance to astronomy, history and culture during this live event. Then, connect the stars in new ways during a fun, hands-on activity!
Event has already taken place!
A spooky presentation with author Nathan Page and illustrator Drew Shannon on their new graphic novel Montague Twins: The Witch’s Hand! For teens and young adult readers.
A spooky presentation with author Nathan Page and illustrator Drew Shannon on their new graphic novel Montague Twins: The Witch’s Hand! For teens and young adult readers.
Event has already taken place!
Drew Shannon is an illustrator based in Toronto. Other books Drew has illustrated include, Out of the Ice, Extreme Battlefields, and This Is Your Brain on Stereotypes, out now from Kids Can Press. The Montague Twins is his first graphic novel.
Nathan Page was born in Kingston, Ontario, where he began writing and performing at an early age. The Montague Twins: The Witch’s Hand is his first graphic novel. He lives in Toronto with his cat, Marlowe.
On a lazy summer day, a sudden storm leads twin detectives Pete and Alastair Montague to a mysterious box that holds long buried secrets. With those secrets unearthed, an explosive chain of events begins that challenges everything they have ever known.
But there are people in their sleepy New England town who want to keep their secrets buried, and the Montague twins are a threat that needs to be stopped. Can they prevail over the powers that be, or will they meet a terrible fate?
AuthorNathan Page
Rising star Alisha Sevigny and author of beloved classics Kenneth Oppel read from their highly anticipated series sequels and share a trade secret or two on how they keep their
Rising star Alisha Sevigny and author of beloved classics Kenneth Oppel read from their highly anticipated series sequels and share a trade secret or two on how they keep their readers hooked and impatient for more. For teens and young adult readers.
Event has already taken place!
Alisha Sevigny is the author of The Lost Scroll of the Physician, the first book in the Secrets of the Sands series, and the acclaimed young adult novels Summer Constellations and Kissing Frogs. She lives in Toronto.
Kenneth Oppel is the author of numerous award-winning books for young readers, including the Silverwing trilogy, Airborn, The Nest, Inkling, and Bloom. He lives in Toronto with his wife and three children. Visit him online at www.kennethoppel.ca.
Fans left desperate for more at the end of Bloom will dive into this second book of the trilogy–where the danger mounts and alien creatures begin to hatch.
AuthorKenneth Oppel
During Ancient Egypt’s Second Intermediate Period, Sesha, a young physician in training, her brother, Ky, and her fellow scribe Paser strive to save Egypt and outwit the power-hungry Queen Anat.
In the second book in the series, the lines in the sand become blurred as Sesha comes to know and respect the Hyksos, Egypt’s enemies, and she wonders what she can do to prevent them from going to war with her people.
AuthorAlisha Sevigny
27sep2:00 pmVirtual EventFirst Nation Communities READ Ceremony2:00 pm EST
First Nation Communities READ announces the winners for the combined Children’s and Young Adult/Adult categories. Chosen by a jury of Indigenous librarians from across Ontario, these titles represent the best
First Nation Communities READ announces the winners for the combined Children’s and Young Adult/Adult categories. Chosen by a jury of Indigenous librarians from across Ontario, these titles represent the best of Indigenous literature from across Turtle Island today. The title selection announcement for FNCR 2020-2021 will take place at Toronto’s Virtual Word on the Street Festival on Sunday September 27, 2020. The authors of the selected title will be the recipients of the Periodical Marketers of Canada Indigenous Literature Award and will each receive a $3000 cash prize. Tune in for the announcement & readings from the winners!
Event has already taken place!
Master the craft of poetry or feed your inner restaurant critic. Write and draw a short comic or learn to make your own art book.
Do you want to write poetry but have some trouble getting started? Embrace spontaneity and the spirit of fun in Vallum’s Poetry For Our Future! Outreach Program Workshop led by
Do you want to write poetry but have some trouble getting started? Embrace spontaneity and the spirit of fun in Vallum’s Poetry For Our Future! Outreach Program Workshop led by Montreal-based poet, Greg Santos. Here, poets of all levels are welcome and will be encouraged to use playful and unconventional prompts to create their own original poems.
Greg Santos is the author of Blackbirds (2018), Rabbit Punch! (2014), and The Emperor’s Sofa (2010). He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from New York City’s The New School. He regularly works with at-risk communities as a creative writing instructor and he teaches at the Thomas More Institute. He is the Editor in Chief of the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s online literary journal, carte blanche. He is an adoptee of Cambodian, Spanish, and Portuguese descent. He lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal with his family.
In his third DC Books title, Ghost Face (2020), Greg Santos explores what it means to have been a Cambodian infant adopted by a multicultural Canadian family. Through a uniquely playful and self-reflective series of poems that pay moving homage to his adoptive parents, and explore the fantasies of a lost family and life in Cambodia, Santos leads the reader through his visceral process of unlearning and relearning who he is and who he might become.
AuthorGreg Santos
While it may be true that everyone’s a critic, not everyone knows how to put their thoughts about food into words. In this interactive, 90-minute mini-clinic, the celebrated journalist and
While it may be true that everyone’s a critic, not everyone knows how to put their thoughts about food into words. In this interactive, 90-minute mini-clinic, the celebrated journalist and restaurant critic Chris Nuttall-Smith teaches one of food writing’s most fundamental skills: describing what’s good and what’s bad so readers feel like they’re at the table. We’ll discuss some of food writing’s most powerful (and entertaining!) plaudits and takedowns and learn the basics of eating like a critic. And with a couple of snack-sized, in-class assignments, participants will aim to put their own eating experiences into delicious words.
Chris Nuttall-Smith is a well-known restaurant critic and food writer, whose influence, according to The Guardian is “colossal.” He’s worked as food editor, chief critic and dining columnist at Toronto Life, restaurant critic for enRoute (he wrote the magazine’s celebrated Canada’s Best New Restaurants list), and more recently, national food reporter and Toronto restaurants columnist for the Globe and Mail. His critical and feature writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Esquire, New York magazine, Toro, and Lucky Peach, among other publications. He is a resident judge on Top Chef Canada, as well as the floor reporter for Iron Chef Canada. Chris is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He lives in Toronto.
27sep11:00 am12:30 pmComic Speedrun with Jade ArmstrongJade Armstrong11:00 am – 12:30 pm EST
Let’s “speedrun” a comic! In this workshop, we will write and draw a short (1-2 page) comic in 1.5 hours. Together we will brainstorm story ideas, talk about different drawing
Let’s “speedrun” a comic! In this workshop, we will write and draw a short (1-2 page) comic in 1.5 hours. Together we will brainstorm story ideas, talk about different drawing styles and share fun tricks to getting a comic done quickly. The goal of this workshop is “done is better than perfect”. Bad drawings can make beautiful comics.
Materials: paper, pencil, pen. . . or whatever you want to write on and write with!
Jade Armstrong is a non-binary cartoonist working from Ontario. They love biking, sweets, and transit advocacy. Their contemporary middle grade graphic novel “Section Leader” is coming out from Random House Graphics Fall 2022.
27sep1:30 pm3:00 pmCreative Art Books with Shari KasmanShari Kasman1:30 pm – 3:00 pm EST
Learn what it takes to self-publish your own art book. In this workshop, Shari Kasman will go through the necessary steps in making your own book, from production to distribution.
Learn what it takes to self-publish your own art book. In this workshop, Shari Kasman will go through the necessary steps in making your own book, from production to distribution. It would be particularly useful for those with books in progress.
Participants should have available a set of images or other book material they intend to use for their own projects, if possible, in addition to any art books from your own shelf, or from the library.
Shari Kasman self-published the photobooks, Galleria: The Mall That Time Forgot and Goodbye, Galleria, and is the author of a collection of short fiction, Everything Life Has to Offer. She lives in Toronto.
