Tonight, The Fifteenth Annual Scream Literary Festival launches its six-day festival with readings by Dennis Lee and Souvankham Thammavongsa at The Gladstone Ballroom. Performances by George Elliot Clarke, and robots belonging to Shapour Shahidi are also promised, and it sounds like audience members are invited to make art with weird, old science textbooks. This year's festival “considers the strange alchemy of poetry and science, through readings, panels, and performances.” On July 9th, the festival......

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. Fear not. The Scream Literary Festival is adding more information to their website every week. On July 3rd, the festival kicks off with readings by Dennis Lee and Souvankham Thammavongsa, films by Shapour Shahidi, and......

Yesterday, a friend wrote: We should work to accept that it is unknowable whether one (person, perception, point of view) is objective or subjective. The problem is that there's no test to know, or, if there is such a test, we have no way of knowing that the test works. Tonight: throw the test out the window, folks! It’s House of Anansi’s Poetry Bash, featuring new books by Dennis Lee, Barbara Nickel, Erin Moure, and......

How many poets does it take to fill Dundas Square? No, this is not some bad joke. It's actually a post on this weekend's World Jam. Friends of the Poet Laureate and Diaspora Dialogues are filling Dundas Square with 50 poets from noon ot midnight this Sunday, Sep. 3rd. Molly Peacock, George Elliot Clarke, Afua Cooper, Stuart Ross, Teenah Edan are just one tenth of the poets they've got lined up for this event. It's......

What's behind that screen? It might just be 26 City Idol candidates. After using Dennis Lee's "Spadina" to get past the first round, I'll be trying to make it past the second hurdle at the second round of City Idol. I may read my favourite moments from various novels set in Toronto, then again I might not. The political fisticuffs (ok, speeches) are on Thursday night 7pm at the Kathedral (Queen and Bathurst). This......