You have to be good to get a table at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF): applications are juried. Creators come from all over the world to sell their work, mingle with contemporaries, and spend a weekend in Toronto. While some big names (Pendleton Ward, Kate Beaton, Ryan North) drew fans in droves, there were [...]

While the Toronto Comic Arts Festival will feature some comics rockstars like Kate Beaton, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Jeff Smith, and Alison Bechdel, there are plenty of less famous artists worth checking out. Here are a few we’ve got our eye on. Emily Carroll Carroll made a name for herself with the 2010 Halloween folktale comic [...]

Toronto Comic Arts Festival Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge Street) Saturday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m. FREE This weekend, happy nerds will descend on the Toronto Reference Library for the fourth annual Toronto Comic Arts Festival. The free convention takes up residence at the Toronto Reference Library and hopes to give the public [...]

The CONTACT Photography Festival runs from May 1 to May 31. We’ll be profiling selected artists and shows throughout the month. Full Frontal T.O. Urban Space Gallery (401 Richmond St. W., Suite 117) Book launch: May 9, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Photo exhibition: May 1–May 31; Monday to Saturday, 9 a.m.–7 p.m. Free Over [...]

Dear Toronto talked with Wilson in 2009 about the Seen Reading project. Julie Wilson, author of the new book Seen Reading, is funny, articulate, and self-deprecating. She has a fondness for both witty anecdotes and bathroom humour: an ideal cocktail party guest or, you might think, a good person to sit beside on a long [...]

The Toronto Public Library just released its annual report on usage statistics, and surprise, surprise: by almost every meaningful metric, the system was busier in 2011 than it has ever been before. This happened in the very same year that political pressure forced the TPL to agree to shed the equivalent of 107 full-time jobs. [...]

It’s difficult to read Montreal-based writer Taras Grescoe’s new book on public transit around the world, Straphanger, without feeling more than a few pangs of some serious transit envy. Written as a public-transit travelogue, it’s a fascinating look at the intense relationship between a city’s growth and its transit system. Reading Grescoe’s book, one comes [...]

How Beautiful We All Were… Portraits of Sixteen Canadian Poets by Shelly Grimson Miles Nadall JCC (750 Spadina Avenue) April 3–30; Monday to Friday 9 a.m.–9p.m., Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m.–7 p.m. Opening Reception: April 3, 7–9 p.m. FREE A young Michael Ondaatje lies outstretched on a bed of pebbles, shirtsleeves rolled up with the [...]

“What are you reading?” called out 17-year-old Nong Li. A rangy young guy in a backwards red ball cap reacted with surprise. After Li explained that she’s a volunteer with the Toronto Public Library, he was all ears. “Hey, where is the library?” he countered, letting Li practically walk him to a nearby branch. A [...]

“It was by chance rather than design that I became a bookseller,” Dora Hood wrote in the opening line of her autobiography, The Side Door. Forced to support herself and her two children after being widowed, Hood applied skill and luck to build one of the largest mail-order book businesses in Canada. After she retired [...]

Rabin Ramah saunters into the Academy of the Impossible as if he owns the place. In a way, he does, having curated its vibrant art, helped build the book shelves, and painted and assembled the stage. His hands-on approach echos the DIY ethos of the Academy, a new knowledge hub that encourages peer-to-peer learning, whether [...]

While browsing a used book store or fundraising book sale, you’ve probably noticed one of the many colourfully-designed covers adorning most volumes of the Coles Canadiana Collection series. Originally published as budget-priced paperbacks by the Coles bookstore chain, the series’ resurrection of long-out-of-print tomes in their original format, without any modern contextualization, was the 1970s [...]