Earlier this month, beloved Canadian book blog Bookninja asked its readers if they felt top literary novelists faced unfortunate book rebranding "to meet the purchasing habits of an embiggened sector of stupid readers." A cover contest was proposed by founding editor George Murray, where readers were asked to create and submit their own wildly inappropriate covers for literary classics, and general bookish hilarity ensued. What began as the banter of a bunch of book......

Just when you really thought you'd seen it all, Keep Six Contemporary curator Rafi Ghanaghounian brings us Explicit Fantastic. The brand new author series (accompanied by a recently opened art show) brings some A-list writers out of the bars and Brigantine Room and into the—wait for it—laundromat. Tonight, Hollywood Coin Lounge (180 Ossington Avenue) will play host to some scribes aiming to unload some dirty words. The idea behind the ongoing series is to bring......

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's no secret that fall is the season of the book fair and festival. First we were enjoying the last of the summer sunshine at Word On The Street, and then we took in the crowds at another fantastic (albeit sweaty and for some of us, drunken) Canzine. This weekend......

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. Big national awards news today as the finalists for the Governor General's Literary Awards were announced at Ben McNally Books this morning. No real surprises (or excitement, really) as writers Nino Ricci and Rawi Hage predictably found themselves on the fiction list, along with David Adams Richards, Fred Stenson, and......

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. Last Wednesday evening Gil Adamson beat out great writers such as David Chariandy and Andrew Wedderburn to be awarded the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award at the Drake Hotel. While her win is little surprise to anyone (her novel The Outlander has been collecting awards across the country and......

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. On Thursday evening Derek McCormack will launch his latest, The Show that Smells (ECW Press), at Trash Palace (89B Niagara Street). Only a few pages into this sprint-paced novella, it's immediately apparent that McCormack has created something innovative, entertaining, and quite possibly (dare we say it) ground-breaking. With its biting......

Photo by Jen Cooper. Once a year, on the last Sunday of September, Queen's Park is transformed into a haven for lovers of the written word. Not only is Word On The Street a great chance to find both book and magazine publishers offering deep discounts and freebies, but readers also get a chance to meet their favourite scribes in person. With more than 250 exhibits, about 250 of Canada's top authors, poets, storytellers,......

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's only the third week of September and we're already well into the madness that is the fall book season—for book lovers it's one cocktail-filled night after another until December. And with the introduction of This Is Not A Reading Series' TINARS for Tots program, which had a very successful......

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. Obviously the big Canadian literary news this week is Monday morning's announcement of the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. The jury, comprised of Margaret Atwood, Bob Rae, and Colm Toibin, selected 15 worthy titles out of 95 books submitted. The list includes some obvious choices, such as Nino Ricci and Austin......

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. No real surprises or upsets at today's Toronto Book Award shortlist announcement by Mayor David Miller at the Toronto Reference Library. As anyone could have predicted, the list included Barbara Gowdy's Helpless and David Chariandy's Soucouyant, novels that have both already racked up a number of other nominations and awards.......

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......

Going to see a staged reading is pretty much the theatrical equivalent of watching a live jam band, only in this case the target audience is not inhalant abusers. It’s like a play, but with no movement and featuring an additional character—Mr. or Mrs. Reads The Stage Directions. The HOTscrawlsfestival is a showcase of this often overlooked art form, which puts a focus on the writer and the actors, throwing away such frivolities as......

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......