Results tagged “torontobookawards”

WORDS: The winner of the 2009 Toronto Book Awards will be announced this evening by David Miller at the Toronto Reference Library awards gala. For a good overview of each of the five competing books, have a look at the City of Toronto’s Book Awards pages. The fifteen-thousand-dollar award is granted each year to the book with the most literary or artistic merit that best reflects Toronto. The five finalists were announced in a ceremony last week at the newly renovated Bloor/Gladstone library. Toronto Reference Library, Bram and Bluma Appel Salon (789 Yonge Street), 6 p.m., FREE.

ART: Some of Canada’s most noteworthy visual arts graduates are being celebrated at the seventh annual BMO 1st Art! Exhibition launch tonight. The show, which runs through November 1, will feature photography by the national winner Alex Kisilevich, who is a recent graduate of OCAD, along with pieces from a dozen regional winners who hail from across the country. Kisilevich’s haunting photograph was selected from among more than two hundred high-calibre entries, all of which were nominated by deans and instructors from Canadian visual arts programs. Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (952 Queen Street West), 11 a.m.–6 p.m., FREE.

THEATRE: Back by popular demand, Monty Python's Spamalot is having a month-long return engagement at the Canon Theatre. The Tony Award winner for Best Musical, Spamalot follows King Arthur (played by the hilarious Gary Beach) and his knights on their quest for the Holy Grail. The show is a must-see for Monty Python fans, but will still be lots of fun for everyone else, even if they don't grasp the multitude of subtle Python references. Canon Theatre (244 Victoria Street), 8 p.m., $69–$175.

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.

The Toronto Book Awards were established by City Council in 1974, and have honoured Torontoish books of literary or artistic merit ever since. The Awards Committee, Camilla Holland, Brian Jantzi, Winona McMorrow, Sarah Rotering and Herman Silochan, recently announced this year’s nominations. Your 2007 shortlist is:

Have you always said you couldn't get enough books? The Toronto Book Awards want to test your mettle.

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.

Murmur, the green-eared audio art project that allows Torontonians to listen to neighbourhood stories through cellphones, goes literary and teams up with the City of Toronto Book Awards.

The finalists for the City of Toronto Book Awards have been announced. The biggest name of the bunch is Giller winner M.G. Vassanji for his short story collection When She Was Queen. We're also happy that former Tall Poppy subject Howard Akler has been nominated for his hard-boiled reporter meet sexy pickpocket love story set in 1930s Toronto and pleased that the brains behind uTOpia weren't forgotten.