Now that the temperature’s dropped, it’s time to gather ’round and get cozy like it’s story time in the city. There are tons of great readings to choose from this fall:
- TIFF’s slightly frumpy cousin, the International Festival of Authors is on from October 19th to 30th. But who needs glitz? Readings by Joan Didion, Ken Babstock, Michael Ondaajte, Gary Shteyngart and dozens of others, as well as an interview with Douglas Coupland on Marshall McLuhan, and Seth in conversation with Daniel Clowes all promise to be more interesting than Brangelinacloonadonnagosling.
- The Toronto Reference Library has some great authors lined up for their Appel Salon series. Jefferey Eugenides will be discussing his highly anticipated novel, The Marriage Plot on October 24th. Umberto Eco will be there on November 16th to talk about his latest novel The Prague Cemetery as well as “semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory” for the legion of The Name of the Rose fans out there. The tickets are free, but are sure to go fast.
- For something a little different, check out Ron MacLean, Canada’s unofficial poet laureate, at the Appel Salon series on November 3rd.
- Or, check out The Wrecking Ball, a series that combines heavy metal and short stories, on October 22nd. There will be readings by Jessica Westhead and Jamie Popowich and music by Kosmograd and Black Faxes.
Once a year, Word on the Street moves the written word off of dusty shelves and radiating screens and into the fresh air of Queen’s Park. There is always a surprising amount of energy and fanfare, especially for a literary event, as local publishers set up shop on the city streets that so often inspire their books. Though the festival has wrapped for another year, Toronto publishers Diaspora Dialogues are cleverly keeping words on the street with their interactive project, the LitToronto Map, which asks writers to contribute their site-specific flash fiction or poetry. The creative snippets of writing are then pinned to an online map, for everyone to explore. A look at the map reveals stories around every corner and behind every door, intersecting in surprising ways as they are read at the fleeting pace of a stroll through the streets. As a bonus, if you submit your piece before October 15th you are automatically entered in a contest to win some great prizes.
The project is well timed with the recent release of Amy Lavender Harris’s Imagining Toronto, an engaging survey of representations of Toronto in fiction, poetry and essays. Harris’s book reminds us of some of the fantastic writing that has been inspired by our city. She cites Dennis Lee on the Annex: “Drifting north to the street-storey / turrets and gables, the squiggles and arches and / baleful asymmetric glare of the houses he loves / Toronto gothicâ€. For poet Corrado Painia, “the summer is different on College…the pantograph of a streetcar / tears through the viscera of the sky / hunks of watermelon / bits of pistachio ice cream / scraps of tomato / and threads of parmesan and pecorino / rain / upon the tables of Collegeâ€. Alvin Rakoff portrays Kensington Market: “Baldwin Street was a mass of colours. Not organized. Not neatly planted arrays. Not row on row of pristine perfection. As with the front of other peoples’ houses. Not here. But higgledy-piggledy. Random. Colours Bombarding the eye. Colours.â€
The writing featured in Harris’s book doesn’t always glorify Toronto’s streets and landmarks, but it is always vivid and evocative. In his book Consolation, Michael Redhill offers a cynical image of Toronto’s city hall, which looks “like a broken ice-cream cone with a tumour in the middle.†The C.N. Tower is also often a lightning rod for civic skepticism, called an “…unplunged hypodermic — / a bubble of thin air†by Diana Fitzgerald Byden, and “a monument to nothing, a space-ship that would never have lift-off†by Gwendolyn MacEwen.
Imagining Toronto presents us with some of the best writing about Toronto so far, by some of our most celebrated writers; with Diaspora Dialogues’ new project, Torontonians can add their own writing to a living anthology about this city.
Curious about what your favourite writers from our latest issue have been up to? Here’s an update:
If your turn-offs include library privatization, illiteracy and “mayoral†types, you could win a lunch date with Susan Swan! Swan, along with ten other Torontonian authors including Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje, is participating in the My Library Matters to Me contest, which offers winners the opportunity to visit a “Toronto literary site†with one of the authors and have lunch with them at one of their favourite restaurants. To enter, submit a short written or video essay about why libraries matter to you.
Steven Heighton never finished his last short story, but luckily ten other authors did. Riffing on the new collaboratively authored crime novel “No Rest for the Dead,†The National Post enlisted eleven writers to join forces on a short story, with each author writing a section and then passing it along. The result is a fun and fascinating read, an ambiguous mix of crime and romance in a number of tongues, not unlike the “motley library†of paperbacks kept by the main character. The authors prove themselves to be creative and versatile writers as well as engaged readers, as they pick up and transform each other’s narrative cues.
Priscilla Uppal spent some time writing poems courtside at the 2011 Roger’s Cup, as the official poet-laureate of the tennis tournament. She proved her stamina, endurance and dexterity, writing at least a poem a day in a wide range of forms, from a sonnet to an abecedarian. Her poems celebrate the kinetic beauty of the sport as well as it’s emotional side, exploring the power and vulnerability of competition. She plans to publish them in a chapbook, but for now, you can read them here.
