Results tagged “margaretatwood”

It turns out that if you want to be a successful poet and $50,000 richer, you better consider going by your initials. The ninth annual Griffin Poetry Prize winners were announced last night at the Fermenting Cellar in the Distillery District, with A.F. Moritz winning the Canadian award for his book of poetry The Sentinal and American poet C.D. Wright winning the International prize for her book, Rising, Falling, Hovering.

Are you a stupid parent interested in embarrassing your child? Why not follow in the footsteps of Robert Edwards, who complained that Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale—a novel that his seventeen-year-old son was reading in English class at Lawrence Park Collegiate—was "rife with brutality towards and mistreatment of women (and men at times), sexual scenes, and bleak depression" and contained "profane language" and an unfair treatment of Christianity. Edwards filed a formal complaint with the Toronto District School Board in December, telling the Star he was "looking for justification as to why this is an appropriate book," even though the novel's Wikipedia page would have mostly taken care of that job for him. And now, the Star is reporting today that Edwards' formal complaint to the Toronto District School Board was roundly rejected by the board's book review panel—they're "very supportive" of keeping Atwood's Tale in the classroom.

Photo by Marc Lostracco.

Photo courtesy of WordFest. This Thursday the Toronto Reference Library will host a LongPen event with Margaret Atwood—inventor of the device—who will interview BBC personality and author Kate Mosse (not the model), who will be in Sussex, England. Conducted via video conferencing, Mosse will read from her newest work, Sepulchre, and answer audience questions, and will be able to sign books with the LongPen. Mosse's book will be available through Nicholas Hoare Books at...

Starting your art collection? Start small. At OCAD's sixth annual Whodunit? Mystery Art Sale on Saturday, you'll have over 800 pieces to choose from—all 5½" x 7½", all $75.00. Buy your favourite, then turn it over to reveal the name of artist. Depending on your luck and sleuthing skill, you could end up with a big-name bargain: in addition to the usual Canadian artists and OCAD alumni, faculty and students, this year's special contributors...

These days, everyone and their grandmother has a celebrity gossip blog. Perez Hilton became a millionaire by outing Lance Bass and defacing paparazzi photos, while TMZ.com (named for the Thirty Mile Zone surrounding Hollywood) came out of nowhere in 2005 and almost instantaneously became the top site to see celebrities behaving badly.

Photo by Word Freak

Photo by EIFF.

"March of the Penguins" by BrynJ.

As back-to-school fast approaches, excitement builds for one thing: the announcing of prestigious book awards. Congratulations go out to Toronto writer Michael Redhill for having his second book Consolation nominated for the Man Booker Prize. Redhill’s book is being hailed as regaining the oomph Canadian historical fiction has been lacking lately. The work, which was chosen as one of Torontoist's favourite books of the last year, is alternately gorgeous and revealing. It weaves together two narratives that center around a recent suicide and a sunken cargo ship, all the while balancing the stories against the evolving landscape of Toronto.

Welcome to Torontoist's new weekly Lit. Listings of all things bookish, wordy, and between the covers. We want to highlight the "lit" in Toronto's literary scene: as you, dear reader, may have noticed, a lot of writing about writing is dull, and could be improved with a bit of light.

In a time when Al Gore is predicting that global warming is the coming of the apocalypse, people are looking for creative ways to maintain a sustainable ecosystem without giving up their consumerist lifestyles. Toronto’s first Green Living Show will inspire ways to do just that.

Past Griffin Award recipient Christian Bök once stated, "The Griffin is the poetry award that can drastically change a poet’s life." Christian isn't exaggerating: the $100,000 prize, shared by two winners, is one of the largest poetry awards in the world. In a 2000 speech, Scott Griffin, founder of The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, explained, "the poetry prize had to be of sufficient size to make a statement that declared that poets and poetry are just as important as novelists and their works."

The tiny island nation of Grenada, one more piece of paradise in the Caribbean, is probably best known as the site of one of the more absurd military interventions in U.S. history (itself subsequently dramatized in an equally ludicrous film starring Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge).

There was an unexpected windfall for Green P as a major dump of snow, along with high winds and freezing rain, turned much of the GTA into a parking lot during the evening commute yesterday. Apart from the traffic mayhem, fallen trees and power outages have also been a problem throughout the city. It sure looks pretty, though.

While trolling Craigslist, we came across an intriguing apartment listing. Does your heart belong to the Annex -- home to sushiterias, frat houses, and highbrow cultural elite like Margaret Atwood and Adrienne Clarkson? Move to the neighbourhood, and you too could be closer to a Giller Prize win.

For every prestigious award shows there will be people who complain that the prize is rigged. The Gillers, Canada's most prestigious literary award, is no stranger to this. In its 13 year history the prize has been criticized for its bias towards larger publishers, to Ontario authors and any number of other shortcomings.

In an effort to provide better service to its customers, the Toronto Public Library has changed the hours of operation for most of its 99 branches. The new hours, which can be found on the TPL website, are effective as of today. Most of the larger branches are now open at 9AM, while some community branches have had a significant change in the hours they are open, so be sure to check the new hours before heading out to your local branch.

What started off as a magazine about education issues in Canada has gone on over the years to serve as a springboard for dozens of Canada's best journalists: people like Naomi Klein, Rick Salutin, Stan Persky, Margaret Atwood and others.

Hmm, maybe the CBC finally came to its senses and realized that reality shows like the Dragon's Den and the One are about as good an idea as "Nuts and Gum". Well, the Ceeb has agreed to develop tv movies and mini-series based on works of Canadian literature.

In a bizarre and tragic scene yesterday, former Toronto Blue Jay (and current New York Yankee) pitcher Cory Lidle perished after flying his plane into an apartment building in New York.

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.

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 houses the same.

Margaret Atwood is signing books, actually she's using her newly developed machine to sign books. It seems that Atwood is sick and tired of doing endless book tours and signing countless books, so she's invented a machine that allows her to remotely sign books. Torontoist sympathizes with Atwood, who is approaching 70, and would find whirlwind publicity tours tiresome after the 30+ books she's done. Frankly, if the invention let's Atwood spend more time writing she can use as many remote controlled signing devices as she wants! After all the Beatles did their best work (Sgt. Pepper's, the White Album) after they stopped touring, what does that tell you?

Descanter Mark sends us this post about the literary mag's swish fundraiser tonight:

Toronto writer Sheila Heti waxes romantic about The Arcade Fire in the new issue of Walrus magazine. Her contribution to the summer "Love Letters" feature is addressed to Régine and makes reference to digging tunnels, naming babies and other activities held sacred by Montreal’s finest. The note, affectionately signed ‘W’, could or could not be inspired by the Fire’s spring show at the Danforth Music Hall. The magazine is on newsstands now and also features love notes from the likes of Douglas Coupland, Margaret Atwood and Leonard Cohen.

Thanks to Gawker, we feel better about the time we fell asleep during Copenhagen. Apparently, we're not alone. Authoress and inventoress Margaret Atwood also finds time to fall asleep on cultural evenings out. But only after first boring the audience with her own speechery.

Last week we waded through the digital bookshelves to unearth for you two like livres. Today, we see that the publisher of one of said books, Anansi, has gone loopy on us. Not that you shouldn't enter their excellent 'NOT the Usual Suspects' Contest. You should always enter any contest that involves coercing Margaret Atwood into participaing in a line-up. We just hope that the signed copies she provides for the contest won't be courtesy of her 'Signotron.' You deserve only the best, dear readers! No machine-manufactured signage for you.

Toronto's very own Margaret Atwood has made the list of nominees for the worst named award ever! The Man Booker International Prize will be awarded every two years to an author writing in English or whose works have been widely translated into English. The award was created after criticism that the annual Man Booker prize was only awarded to authors in the UK and the Commonwealth.

What's more, we get a Monday Report shot of Margaret Atwood inventing the character of a hockey-husky authoress. If this doesn't convince the powers that be to bring back the NHL, TOist cannot fathom what will! So scary and so excellent. Who needs articles when you can just look at the pictures? The guiding philosophic principle of TOist's life.