Photo by micgormit from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. This week internationally acclaimed author Maggie Helwig launches her new novel Girls Fall Down (Coach House Books) at the Toronto Women's Bookstore (73 Harbord Street). Torontoist is always happy to see local writers using Toronto as a setting for novels, and Helwig doesn't disappoint. In her rendering, a biological outbreak on the TTC sends the city into a panic, as stricken citizens are collapsing in subways......

Photo by gp0256 from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. If great female writers is what you're after this week, you're in luck. Tonight you can catch the always entertaining and edgy poetry of Tara-Michelle Ziniuk (Emergency Contact) at The Art Bar Poetry Series. Rumour has it that she'll be publishing her next collection, tentatively titled Somewhere To Run From, with Tightrope Books in spring 2009. The writer, performer, and activist will be joined by Sharon......

Photo by Tom (hmm a rosa tint). Get ready for an overload of launches—spring has finally sprung in the book world. Things certainly start off right as tomorrow Coach House Books hosts their spring launch at Stones Place. As far as book parties go, Coach House has a real knack for showing revelers a real good time. The evening will feature performances by writers from their current catalogue, including Maggie Helwig, Claudia Dey, Jordan......

Photo by blimpa. A welcome literary sign of spring is National Poetry Month, a country-wide event that kicked off locally this morning with a shindig at Ben McNally Books featuring Poet Laureate for Canada, John Steffler. Until the end of April Toronto will see a wide variety of events and readings, each devoted to celebrating the cultural value of poetry. The first poetry event of note is this Wednesday's NicholBack, an ingeniously titled tribute......

The fantastic Ibi Kaslik is back with a follow-up to her stunning debut novel, Skinny (a book that cracked the New York Times best sellers list for two consecutive weeks earlier this year—no small feat for a young Canadian writer). Kaslik's latest offering, The Angel Riots (Penguin Books), is the fictional chronicle of two up-and-coming Montreal bands, and speculation has already surfaced that the author (who, while in high school, was in a band with......

Now that National Poetry Month is over, it’s time to recover from the full schedule of festivities (spring detox cocktails, anyone?), and to share poems which garnered Honourable Mentions in Torontoist’s Toronto Poetry Contest. Watch out for five new Toronto poems and poets in May. Our first poem, by Matthew Tierney, was written at the intersection of King and Yonge streets. Of "The Man Who Knew from Cool," Matthew says: I could argue that this......

How is National Poetry Month treating you? On the second week of celebration, Torontoist is beginning to buckle a little under the strain of too much fun, but it warms our hearts to witness the large number of bookish events offered this April. We are happy to announce the winners of our poetry contest as part of the nationwide festivities. Back in January, Torontoist launched a Toronto poetry contest to encourage the writing of......

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......

Reading Toronto states "the city is a book with 100,000 million poems." Torontoist is aware of many poems that have been written by Toronto poets, but thinks there is ample room in the GTA for a few more (maybe a million-or-two would improve the present un-poetic monstrosity that is Dundas Square). We're also curious to know where new poems are being written: During TTC commutes? On the picturesque grounds of Casa Loma? Under the......