Every Tuesday afternoon, Torontoist rounds up the city's literary news, including book deals, events, local sales, author happenings, and insider information from the book industry. The Eden Mills Writers' Festival—the Toronto literary community's annual out-of-town oasis—is celebrating its twentieth birthday this summer. This year's festival, a mere forty-five minutes west of Toronto, starts this Friday and includes workshops, seminars, and the popular "festival day" on Sunday. Some of the big appearances this year include David......

Every Tuesday afternoon, Torontoist rounds up the city's literary news, including book deals, events, local sales, author happenings, and insider information from the book industry. The big news this week is that the literary community's beloved I.V. Lounge Reading Series is no more. Last Saturday series curator and host Alex Boyd announced on his blog that, due to the lounge closing for what could be a year-long renovation, the reading series is officially over. Acclaimed......

Every Tuesday afternoon, Torontoist rounds up the city's literary news, including book deals, events, local sales, author happenings, and insider information from the book industry. Tomorrow the 3 Day Novel Contest comes to Toronto for a visit. Born in Vancouver, this literary institution has been a torturous rite-of-passage for brave writers every Labour Day weekend since 1977. Hundreds of writers from around the world now compete for the coveted top prize of publication. Celebrate the......

Every Tuesday afternoon, Torontoist rounds up the city's literary news, including book deals, events, local sales, author happenings, and insider information from the book industry. It would be an understatement to say that Toronto author Gil Adamson has had a pretty good year. Last Friday Adamson's first novel, The Outlander, was announced as the winner of The Relit Award, a prize that recognizes books by Canadian authors published by independent Canadian presses. Outlander has been......

Every Tuesday afternoon, Torontoist rounds up the city's literary news, including book deals, events, local sales, author happenings, and insider information from the book industry. The 25th annual Hillside Music Festival happens in Guelph this weekend and Toronto's Coach House Books will be along for the ride. The indie press will be packing up some of its authors and bringing them to the site, allowing attendees to catch some lit alongside great musical acts like......

Every Tuesday afternoon, Torontoist rounds up the city's literary news, including book deals, events, local sales, author happenings, and insider information from the book industry. The Toronto Poetry Slam is back this Friday at the Drake Underground, featuring the music of Mark Berube and the Patriotic Few. Produced and hosted by the very talented Dave Silverberg, The Slam is decidedly one of Toronto's more interesting and energetic poetry nights. Friday marks the start of a......

Every Tuesday afternoon, Torontoist rounds up the city's literary news, including book deals, events, local sales, author happenings, and insider information from the book industry. The brilliantly self-deprecating humourist David Sedaris is coming to Canada to promote the release of what has been descibed as an older and wiser essay collection, When You Are Engulfed in Flames. The Toronto events on his Canadian mini-tour happen Thursday and Friday at the Manulife Centre Indigo and Ben......

Every Tuesday afternoon, Torontoist rounds up the city's literary news, including book deals, events, local sales, author happenings, and insider information from the book industry. The Scream Literary Festival is hitting Toronto in a big way—there are a number of great events about town that book lovers will want to catch. Torontoist's picks this week include Thursday's Scream Alumni Night, featuring an amazing line-up of Ken Babstock, Priscila Uppal, Kevin Connolly, Stuart Ross, and the......

This Saturday, Pride Toronto has teamed up with The Word On The Street for the second annual Proud Voices Reading Series. It's a talent-packed day-long celebration of queer writers, showcasing the best of Canada's literary skill by bringing both established veterans and emerging authors to the James Canning Gardens Stage (Gloucester and Dundonald). The series starts at 3:00 p.m. and features back-to-back readings by a variety of authors, including the award-winning Ivan E. Coyote, celebrated......

Photo by room929 from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. In a literary twist on the current Sex and the City craze, this week the Victory Cafe plays host to Text and the City, a spotlight on four female writers as part of the Fictionista Reading Series. Shari Lapeña, Dede Crane, Linda Leith, and Laura Lush will each grace the upstairs stage this Thursday starting at 7:00 p.m., and we're told that unlike their Sex and......

Photo by king_frankenstein. Graphic novel and comic book geeks rejoice—this is your week! Tonight acclaimed Norwegian cartoonist Jason comes to Toronto to launch his new work Pocket Full of Rain. Popular Annex comic shop The Beguiling will be hosting this free event at its neighbour, The Central (603 Markham Street), tonight at 8:00 p.m. Not only that, but next Wednesday The Beguiling will also partner with The Toronto Public Library and The Merril Collection......

Photo by kygp. Tonight the seven finalists for the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize will be reading at the MacMillan Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Tickets for the reading are completely sold out, so instead you'll have to settle for a copy of the anthology to get close to the nominees. The Canadian shortlist includes David McFadden and Nicole Brossard, and can be found here. The winners, who each receive $50,000, will be announced on Wednesday......

Photo of Emily Schultz from her website. The 21st annual Trillium Book Award shortlist was announced last Friday morning. The six English-language finalists include Barbara Gowdy's Helpless, Gil Adamson’s The Outlander, Robert Hough’s The Culprits, and Dennis Lee’s Yesno. Local indie poet (and Torontoist fave) Emily Schultz is up for the $10,000 English language poetry prize for her collection Songs for the Dancing Chicken. All the nominees will come together for a free public......

Photo detail of Shary Boyle's Ouroboros, courtesy of Conundrum Press. This week artist Shary Boyle will be making an appearance at David Mirvish Books to promote her recent Conundrum Press release, Otherworld Uprising. The book, which features full-colour reproductions of Boyle’s recent series of porcelain figurines, also includes a fiction contribution from Toronto's Sheila Heti (who has been getting some stateside press recently for collecting the presidential dreams of Americans). Boyle will be signing......

Photo by raveneye | José. This week Toronto's favourite literary voyeur, Julie Wilson, relaunches her Seen Reading site, giving her very entertaining habit of spying on readers a whole new look. The biggest new feature is a podcast for every entry—lit geeks can listen to Julie while on transit, sitting beside someone who’s reading on transit, while listening to Julie talk about someone who’s reading on transit. As Julie herself said to Torontoist, "Very......

Photo by petite corneille. Torontoist's lit pick this week? On Thursday award-winning Winnipeg author Chandra Mayor is in town to launch her short story collection, All The Pretty Girls, at Toronto Women's Bookstore. The evening is a bonus triple bill, as Mayor will be joined by two local femme favourites—Debra Anderson (Code White), and Zoe Whittall (Bottle Rocket Hearts). Rumour has it Whittall will be reading from a draft of her latest, currently untitled......

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......

Photo by Jonathan Ponce from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's a bit of a slow week on Toronto's literary event calendar, as most publishers are in the final, frantic phases of producing their new spring catalogues. Enjoy your rest now, because things are going to get real busy come April. Having said that, there are a few gems for book lovers to attend before the snow finally melts and a packed schedule of spring......

Panel from Emily Pohl-Weary and Willow Dawson's Violet Miranda: Girl Pirate #4, courtesy of Willow Dawson. Ten weeks of fantastic, free writing workshops have just been announced as part of the Parkdale Street Writers program. Coordinated by the multi-talented poet, YA author, and Kiss Machine founder Emily Pohl-Weary, the workshops start April 1 and are led by some kick-ass local writers and artists, including Mariko Tamaki, Willow Dawson, and Kristyn Dunnion. You don’t have......

Photo of Julie Wilson, courtesy of Julie Wilson. Julie Wilson has become a favourite in literary entertainment over the past few years. Since 2006, her popular blog Seen Reading has been keeping Toronto book geeks amused by tracking the city's public reading habits. The concept is both simple and ingenious—Wilson spots a stranger reading, guesses where they are in the book, transcribes the passage onto her blog, and then lets her imagination run wild.......

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......

You really have to wonder how performance artist and sexual activist Louise Bak always manages to schedule the very best mix of the Toronto literary scene for her Box Salon series. The successful poet and CIUT "Sex City" host founded the event back in 1998, and a decade later it is still the most entertaining literary night out in Toronto. While many other reading series can be hit or miss, the Box is consistently fresh,......

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......

Next Saturday, Toronto Poetry Slam brings you the last slam of the season, with some of the city’s brightest and wordiest battling it out for the last remaining place in the semi finals. Finalists will have a shot at the 2008 Toronto Poetry Slam Team, which competes at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and the US National Poetry Slam (this year to be held in Madison, Wisconsin). This month’s event also features a guest......

The amount of events this week are bursting at the seams. Keep Toronto Reading is kicking it into full gear this month with various readings across library branches, Lit Lunches, and various One Book events. There are just too many to list here. Visit the KTR calendar to see all event details and plan out your literary excursions. And if you have any kids, you can join Gisèle from TVOKids for various library tours, as......

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.......