Canada’s largest literary award, the Giller Prize, was handed out last night, but in another room across downtown from the Four Seasons, many of Toronto’s aspiring writers, book lovers, journalists, and university students gathered for quite a different evening. They came to see Joan Didion, the widely loved and widely read American author, who was [...]

Book awards season is upon us, and the biggest of them in Canada is the Giller Prize. A few minutes ago, at a press conference at the Four Seasons, the shortlisted books for this year’s prize were announced. They are: David Bezmozgis for his novel The Free World (HarperCollins) Lynn Coady for her novel The [...]

Canadians everywhere were shocked and saddened by the sudden passing of Jack Layton. The public outpouring of affection for the man and admiration for what he stood for was an extraordinary moment in our country’s history. What made it so unique was the melding of grief with optimism, the sense that we needed to celebrate [...]

WHERE: House of Lancaster (Bloor and Margueretta streets) WHEN: Saturday, 11:26 a.m. (top) and 11:45 a.m. (bottom) WHAT: Billed as “the largest poetry reading in history,” 100,000 Poets for Change takes place in venues across Toronto, and in countries around the world today. Toronto poets started with breakfast and readings at the House of Lancaster, [...]

Book reviews in Canada are becoming an increasingly rare art form. And yet Jessica Duffin Wolfe is leaping on board, albeit in a way that embraces new media. The Toronto Review of Books will launch on September 20 as a quarterly, online-only journal. Don’t be misled by its name, though–founder Duffin Wolfe is hot to [...]

In the Annex, past Honest Ed’s and just down Bathurst street, there’s a little island. An island where books spur imagination and parents are welcome to learn right alongside their kids. Little Island Comics is a bookstore with the unique distinction of being one of the only comic shops in the world that’s completely aimed [...]

Last week, while the rest of Toronto was focused on Pride, a free Arkells concert, and the Hot Docs acquisition of Bloor Cinema, Internet Archive Canada was laying off 75 per cent of its employees. On Wednesday July 6, all employees participated in an organization-wide conference call where they were told that due to drastic funding cuts, the layoffs were unavoidable. On Thursday, the company sent out the list of affected staff: out of the 47 employees working, 33 will be laid off effective August 12.

Participants in one of Improv Everywhere’s previous MP3 Experiments take part in an all-out balloon war. Luminato is about to embark on its fifth year, and like any respectable five-year-old’s birthday party, this year’s all-encompassing arts festival is chock full of magicians, good eats, and music. There’s even an afternoon concert with They Might Be [...]

Postcard of Parade at Stanley Barracks, 1910, from the Toronto Public Library’s Digital Collections. In the 19th century, British officers garrisoned at the New Fort in Toronto—now better known as the Stanley Barracks—had active social lives. Perceived by Torontonians as educated and cultured, the British officers received countless invitations to tea parties, dinners, and dances. [...]

The worst part of the Toronto Comics and Arts Festival (TCAF)—if you can call it that—wasn’t keeping the impulse purchases in check (tough). Nor was it reconciling the sinking realization that we, unlike all the exhibitors within the Toronto Reference Library, lacked any artistic talent whatsoever. No, the real trouble was that, in what’s become [...]

One of Marie Day’s original drawings of Edward from the children’s book Edward the “Crazy Man.” About 10 years ago, theatre designer and children’s author Marie Day, a longtime Cabbagetown resident, was walking down Parliament Street when a man dressed elaborately in a robe of green and orange garbage bags and dancing down the sidewalk [...]