By Stacey May Fowles

Oh, the seemingly endless toil and frustration of being an underpublished and underappreciated writer. There’s the mailbox full of polite, predictable rejections and the depressing rite of passage otherwise known as “open mic night.” When you finally emerge from it all, it’s certainly time to rejoice.
Thankfully Pages Books & Magazines’ This Is Not A Reading Series has stepped up to celebrate some of the lesser-known but soon-to-be-well-known players in Toronto’s vibrant literary scene. Tomorrow (Tuesday) night at 7:30, in honour of Daniel Scott Tysdal’s first-place win in Eye Weekly’s first ever short story competition, The Gladstone Hotel will host Emerging Writers Night. In full “not a reading” style, the event will instead feature an old-time radio performance of Tysdal’s winning story, complete with live on-stage sound effects. Tysdal is likely to find himself graduating to “established” shortly—he’s already experienced attention and praise for his debut poetry collection, which won the 2007 ReLit Poetry Award.
Hosted by Eye‘s Arts & Lifestyle editor (and talented, published poet) Damian Rogers and featuring moderation by Coach House’s (published) Alana Wilcox, the evening also offers up a chat with competition finalists about the writing process.
What’s the best way to attract hungry young writers to the event? Offer up a roster of elusive big name publishers’ logos on the invite—the Canadian arms of Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, and Random House are all sponsoring the event.

Photo by gbalogh from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.