Results tagged “coachhousebooks”

Yesterday, Torontoist packed into the charming wood-panelled ballroom of the Gladstone Hotel along with throngs of passionate food lovers for the launch of The Edible City: Toronto's Food from Farm to Fork, hosted by This Is Not a Reading Series. The latest in Coach House Books' ambitious uTOpia series, which selects one broad aspect of Toronto each year and corrals some of the city's most influential writers to tackle it—past publications addressed the city's future (uTOpia), the environment (GreenTOpia), and arts and culture (The State of the Arts)—The Edible City delves into all things food.

FILM: Starting tonight and ending Saturday is the Ryerson University Film Festival (RUFF), an annual end-of-year screening of graduating film students' final projects. The opening night screens nine short films from the class, which is certain to offer up some gems from the city’s young film talent. Case in point: many of the films screened over the next few nights are picked up by international film festivals and shown around the world. Royal Cinema (608 College Street) 7 p.m. $10.

So you think you know the history of Toronto's water? Taddle Creek used to flow down Philosopher's Walk, Garrison Creek used to flow through Trinity Bellwoods Park, all of the land below Front Street used to be in the lake, and R.C. Harris built everything; what else is there to know? Well, how about the mighty Laurentian River that flows from Georgian Bay to Lake Ontario right through High Park? That's just one of the surprises exposed by HTO: Toronto’s Water from Lake Iroquois to Lost Rivers to Low-flow Toilets published late last year by Coach House Books. The book's two-and-a-half dozen essays and accompanying photos document our changing relationships through time with the natural and artificial watercourses that flow through the city.

DISCUSSION: If anything is going to force you to stop triple-flushing (we know it's sometimes necessary) when you next use the washroom, it's tonight's talk inspired by Coach House Books' latest publication, HTO: Toronto's Water from Lake Iroquois to Lost Rivers to Low-flow Toilets. Join in the debate about Toronto's past, present, and future relationships with water, before we sell it all to evil corporations and then have to battle against pirate armies with strange half-dreaded hair and football shoulder pads who will roam our privatized lake system, pillaging private vessels as they please. Hart House Debates Room (Hart House Circle, University of Toronto), 7–9 p.m., $5.

Every Tuesday afternoon, Torontoist rounds up the city's literary news, including book deals, events, local sales, author happenings, and insider information from the book industry.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Tonight at Lennox Contemporary, join the Magenta Foundation for the launch of Flash Forward 2008, a photographic anthology showcasing up-and-coming photographers. The photos in the book were chosen from entries in the 2008 Flash Forward competition, the Magenta Foundation's annual adjudication of emerging talent. The launch is complemented by an exhibition showcasing these photos, which will run until October 26. Lennox Contemporary (12 Ossington Avenue), 7 p.m., FREE.

Every Tuesday afternoon, Torontoist rounds up the city's literary news, including book deals, events, local sales, author happenings, and insider information from the book industry.

Every Tuesday afternoon, Torontoist rounds up the city's literary news, including book deals, events, local sales, author happenings, and insider information from the book industry.

Every Tuesday afternoon, Torontoist rounds up the city's literary news, including book deals, events, local sales, author happenings, and insider information from the book industry.

Photo of Emily Schultz from her website.

Photo detail of Shary Boyle's Ouroboros, courtesy of Conundrum Press.

Photo by Tom (hmm a rosa tint).

Photo by blimpa.

You really have to wonder how performance artist and sexual activist Louise Bak always manages to schedule the very best mix of the Toronto literary scene for her Box Salon series. The successful poet and CIUT "Sex City" host founded the event back in 1998, and a decade later it is still the most entertaining literary night out in Toronto. While many other reading series can be hit or miss, the Box is consistently fresh, fun and, well, not all that “literary”—Bak curates an evening that keeps testing the boundaries of what literature is, regularly including filmmakers, playwrights, fashion designers, and musicians amongst the regular stock of poets and prose writers.

Over the past little while, Torontoist has been quietly absorbed in The Alphabet Game: a bpNichol reader. Edited by Darren Wershler-Henry and Lori Emerson, The Alphabet Game is an essential anthology for any reader of bpNichol, and is a great starting point for those who have yet to discover his work.

Will people ever appreciate the fine architecture or heritage value of such widely-detested buildings as Robarts Library or the Sheraton Centre? If history is any guide, they will—but only if the buildings manage to survive our collective hatred (or apathy) for another 40 years or so.

Ok, so we're starting to get the message that we need to act on this whole "we're killing the planet" thing, and fast. But amongst all the noise about how much trouble we've gotten ourselves into, it's sometimes hard to hear the solutions and see the positive ideas. Enter GreenTOpia, the third installment in Coach House Books' uTOpia series, which is being released at a party this weekend into our eagerly outstretched arms. As we...

November 14 to 18 marks the return of the Reel Asian International Film Festival. Last night, the Japan Foundation played host as filmmakers and media types gathered at a press conference to kick off the 11th annual incarnation of the fest. And with more than 70 independent works from all over the world, this year’s Reel Asian Festival will be worth cracking open that golden piggy bank for.

"Coach House Alley" by chelseagirl

So, what’s scarier: a zombie infestation or the melting of the polar ice caps? This is an urgent and legitimate question! And later this week, Toronto cineastes can compare and contrast, for just as the After Dark Festival winds down, the Planet in Focus International Environmental Film & Video Festival springs up. Running from October 24 to 28, Planet in Focus is the most acclaimed film festival of its environmentally-minded ilk. This year, to coincide with the International Polar Year (which 2007 is, as you are doubtlessly already aware), the festival’s Spotlight Program is entitled Polar Visions. (Hint: these visions may include the melting of large volumes of ice.)

Photo by Word Freak

The late Paul Haines’ Secret Carnival Workers was launched at the end of last month, the occasion marked with a concert by his daughter, Emily (his other daughter is television journalist Avery Haines). Torontoist has been mulling over the book, comprised of poetry, fiction, jazz journalism and album liner notes, since then.

The immediate instinct when reading Human Resources is to see the poems as rants against the pervading office mentality of faster-harder-cheaper. Toronto poet Rachel Zolf shows adept skill at parroting corporate language in order to highlight the flawed cogs of internal memos and style guides. Each section of her text is flanked by familiar rhetoric: writing “persuasive body copy” requires the writer to “start selling on the first line” and “burn out meaning”; writing for the internet commands that one “filter, impose trespass” before “[thinking] branding.”

Hanging out in the city with Torontoist's Summer Reads.

A big congratulations goes out to Toronto-based press House of Anansi for publishing this year’s ReLit short story winner, Bill Gaston’s Gargoyles. The ReLit award is set up to give well deserved attention to books produced by the independent presses throughout Canada. House of Anansi’s winning entry is joined a number of its other publications on the poetry and novel short list. (Also nominated for the long list was Torontoist’s very own Sharon Harris for her wonderful book Avatar.)

If last week’s key word on the literary scene was “big,” as in prizes, galas, festivals, sold-out readings, visiting writers, and BookExpo, we get back to normal-ish this week. In fact, we’ve not had such a low-key stretch since March.

Often, ideas are continually improved through the feedback of others. Other times, an idea is at its best when first conceived, and can only be diluted from there.

If headliner Christian Bök can’t do it, no poet can. Christian is the author of two outstanding poetry collections from Coach House Books: the 'pataphysical encyclopedia, Crystallography, and the best-selling Griffin award-winning Eunoia, which employs only one vowel in each of its five chapters. From Chapter E (for Rene Crevel):

For over forty years, Toronto’s Coach House Books has consistently offered stellar choices in all things literature. With a catalogue that includes writers such as Anne Michaels, Di Brandt, Steve McCaffery, Michael Ondaatje and bpNichol, one can't go wrong by supporting this local press.