Detail of photo by the Frankfurt School from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.. This week is Freedom to Read Week, a national event that encourages Canadians to value their right to choose what they read, and to recognize the individuals who fight to protect that right. Celebrations against censorship are happening across the country—locally PEN Canada is presenting an evening of readings and performances to promote a new anthology, Writers Under Siege: Voices of Freedom......

Photo of d’bi.young.anitafrika and her son, Moon, courtesy of Women’s Press. Last week’s literary listings featured a number of events celebrating one man (Michael Redhill, who is likely exhausted and has since gone back to Narbonne, France) and One Book (Consolation). This week the obvious literary picks are two very talented, very different women. Recent winner of the Toronto Arts Council Foundation Emerging Artist award and one of Canada’s most celebrated young performers, d’bi.young.anitafrika......

Oh, the seemingly endless toil and frustration of being an underpublished and underappreciated writer. There's the mailbox full of polite, predictable rejections and the depressing rite of passage otherwise known as "open mic night." When you finally emerge from it all, it's certainly time to rejoice. Thankfully Pages Books & Magazines’ This Is Not A Reading Series has stepped up to celebrate some of the lesser-known but soon-to-be-well-known players in Toronto’s vibrant literary scene.......

Rheostatic Dave Bidini read his new book Around the World in 57 1/2 Gigs (see Torontoist's review) in the window of Pages Books yesterday. Over the course of five hours Bidini read the entire book—except, teasingly, for the last few lines—and played songs to shifting crowds gathered on the sidewalk. More photos after the jump.......

Photo by Pete Nema from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's hard to believe it's already been over six months since the Rheostatics played their final show at Massey Hall. You may be wondering what each of the members have been doing since, and in Dave Bidini's case the answer is easy: he has already found the time to travel the world, write about his journeys, and get his book published by McClelland & Stewart.......

An overflowing pile of books by paolo_dlk from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. The summer months may have left us a little dehydrated, a little sun burnt, a little flaky, and a little wordless, but after a long break, LitTO is returning to inform you how this fall season will revitalize your sense of word wonder. Yesterday the longlist for the 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize was officially announced. A record of 108 books were submitted......

Originally published by Viking Press in 1957, Jack Kerouac's On the Road has been wearing holes in the back pockets and floppy canvas knapsacks of gaggles of come-find-yourself road trippers and college-aged who-am-I types ever since. To coincide with the 50th anniversary of its publication, Wednesday night will see the Gladstone play host to something of a symposium on the life and legacy of their main man, Kerouac. Authors Ray Robertson and David Creighton will......

Briton Karl Pilkington - an unlikely cult figure even for Queen Street - is now available in pin-form at Pages Books & Magazines. For those out of the loop, Mr. Pilkington is the oddball star of a weekly, once-free Ricky Gervais pod-cast. Mr. Pilkington thinks gay people stay out too late on the weekends, and says Asian people don't age well. Despite these views, he's become something of a world-wide phenomenon. A mark of Mr.......

Sadly the slush had washed off a good part of Newmindspace's Valentine's Day sidewalk mural on Queen St. This literary inspired part right outside Pages Books though is still pretty clear.......