It is forgivable to forget that Toronto is the prevailing backdrop to the stories and poems collected in the anthology TOK: Writing the New Toronto. The anthology itself is not exactly about Toronto—devoid of any superficialities of Toronto pride and a "what Toronto means to me" mentality—choosing instead to showcase a continually shape-shifting Toronto. Edited by Helen Walsh, TOK is the first installment of the series—presented by Diaspora Dialogues and published through the Zephyr......

We bet few of you have been to the Toronto Archives. We didn’t even know where it was until last night, when we attended theToronto Book Awards. But stepping into the foyer to be greeted by a room covered in photos and maps of our city’s history, it struck us at just how fitting it is to hold the ceremony here -- books honoured for their fluent portraits of Toronto stories in a building that......

- Shameless mag launch, with performances by Republic of Safety and Cougar Party. "Screenings of horror shorts and scenes from horror classics by Filmmaker/Video DJ James King, on-site makeovers by our team of professional special-effects makeup artists, prizes and more," all taking place on Sunday at the rapidly swankifying Gladstone hotel. - Toronto Life's latest issue contains the disembodied heads of Montreal band Broken Social Scene. But it's online edition has former IFOA authors......

So, the shortlist for the new and improved Scotiabank Giller Prize was announced this morning. TOist will cut to the chase: Joseph Boyden wuz robbed. Not only could we not put Three-Day Road down, the novel also straddles the literary and commercial quite nicely (it was Isabel Allende’s pick for this major book club, fer Pete's sake). While delighted that David Bergen made the cut, TOist worries that the literary establishment may once again have......

Smog alerts, humidity, heat, makes you want to just sit in the park doesn't it? And wouldn't your evening picnic be a little nicer with some of Toronto's best writers? It's the basic premise for the Scream Literary Festival, what started as a one night reading in High Park has now expanded into a nearly two week long fest that stretches across the city. There's a special Scream edition of literary art installation Murmur in......

The Year that Was: We won't presume to have seen it all, or read it all, or eaten it all. And so, a digested list of good things that happened in and around the GTA and the universe this year. Okay, in and around this year. Arrested Development, the DVD: A show everyone can love, and a replacement for the Office DVD, which we watched until we could watch no longer. "Unlimited juice...This party's gonna......

Giller prize nominee Paul Quarrington is a pretty nice guy, and he'll come to your book club meeting so long as it's co-ed. This Torontoist learned at a party last weekend, where Quarrington and fellow writerly chum Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall joked that they only wrote to get girls. Whether that motivation lands him the Giller, we'll wait and see. Especially when Quarrington is pitted against favourites Alice Munro and Miriam Toews. Meanwhile, Torontoist's favourite new author,......