A happy National Poetry Month to you! Established eight years ago by The League of Canadian Poets, National Poetry Month brings together schools, publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, and poets across the country to celebrate poetry. In April, you might trip over poems in some of the oddest places. Today, the festivities kicked off over breakfast at Toronto Reference Library’s Beaton Auditorium. With a morning of short readings hosted by The Globe and Mail’s Books......

We love Word on the Street but we always find there's way too much to do. So we've scoured the WOTS program and picked out the three things that you should try to hit up this Sunday at Queen's Park. Best of all, the whole event is free. 1) Margaret Atwood and the Long Pen (The Long Pen Tent, reading at 11am, signing all-day) Hear the grand dame of CanLit read from her new book.......

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......

Murmur, the green-eared audio art project that allows Torontonians to listen to neighbourhood stories through cellphones, goes literary and teams up with the City of Toronto Book Awards. They're recording stories with the five nominees at various locations in the city. Head down to Kensington Market to listen to Howard Akler read from his hard-boiled reporter meets thief story set in the dirty '30s, head to U of T to hear Stephen Marche read from......

The Scream Literary Festival is back and we decided to highlight a few of the lit's festival choice events for your perusal: 1) Tonight's opening gala at the Gladstone features GG award winner Dionne Brand and Euoniac Christian Bok among others. Free. 2) Poet Lisa Robertson reads her new collection The Men over a four course meal at L'Espress Bar Mercurio, Friday July 7th, 7:00pm. $60 with dinner. 3) The Scream Gala is at Hugh's......

The finalists for the City of Toronto Book Awards have been announced. The biggest name of the bunch is Giller winner M.G. Vassanji for his short story collection When She Was Queen. We're also happy that former Tall Poppy subject Howard Akler has been nominated for his hard-boiled reporter meet sexy pickpocket love story set in 1930s Toronto and pleased that the brains behind uTOpia weren't forgotten. The list is rounded out by Dionne Brand......

York U prof Amy Harris is the guest editor over at Reading Toronto this week and appropriately enough she's been posting on novels set in Toronto. There are a few stalwarts on the list like Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion, Atwood's Cat's Eye and Michael's Fugitive Pieces. She also gives a plug to Dionne Brand's What We All Long For, which TOist reviewed here and is now in paperback. One of the books......

Traditionally Canadian literature has been divided into two very logical halves, English and French. But within English Canadian Literature there really should be another division, one that reflects this city’s overwhelming dominance in English Canadian letters. The bulk of the country’s publishers are here. The country’s influential critics, journalists and chattering classes live, write and pontificate in the cafes and bars of the Annex, the Beaches and Queen St. West. This dominance translates into a......