15 TIFA Events Book Lovers Can’t Miss
Image courtesy Toronto International Festival of Authors
The Toronto International Festival of Authors is back this fall at Harbourfront Centre! From September 22 to October 2, you can attend 200 events and activities—both digitally and in-person—that include conversations, readings, performances and much more. Below is a list of events that caught our eye and appeal to the kinds of writing we celebrate as a magazine. You can purchase tickets or passes on the TIFA website, and we hope to see you there!
September 24
September 24 at 11am
Harbourfront Centre’s Bays & West Lawn
Free and open to the general public
Meet the people behind the pages of Canada’s independent publishing houses at TIFA’s small press market. With over 15 presses attending from across Ontario and Quebec, you won’t want to miss this unique opportunity to check out the variety of small press offerings, from limited edition handmade poetry chapbooks to more larger-scale print productions of poetry and fiction.
From micro presses to medium-sized indie presses, the market will showcase some of the richness and inherent diversity of small press production in Canada. All presses attending are also part of the Small Press Map of Canada. Explore the digital map here. This exhibition is part of the free, outdoor events at #FestofAuthors22. It is open to the general public.
Resistance in Dystopia: Gabe Calderon & J.M. Miro
September 24 at 11:30am
Lakeside Terrace at Harbourfront Centre
$12.00 - $17.00
Journey into two incredibly vivid, dangerous and wonderous new worlds as authors Gabe Calderon and J.M. Miro (pen name for author Steven Price) present their riveting new books. Set in a dystopian future in which a faceless spiritual entity has infiltrated the world to subjugate humans, Calderon’s Magodiz powerfully centres the vital cultural legacy of Two-Spirit peoples to their communities.
Miro’s exquisitely written Ordinary Monsters presents a catastrophic vision of the Victorian world – and of the gifted, broken children who must save it while navigating the nature of difference, belonging and the shadowy edges of the monstrous. Calderon and Miro come together to discuss their masterful use of fantasy to illustrate and augment the challenges their characters face, all of which have real-world significance.
The Art of the Memoir: Cody Caetano & Isaac Fitzgerald
September 24 at 1pm
Harbourfront Centre Theatre
$12.00 - $17.00
Sharing deeply personal stories can be at once terrifying and healing, which makes the memoir genre so very necessary. Presenting two highly anticipated new memoirs are bestselling authors Cody Caetano and Isaac Fitzgerald. Winner of the 2020 Indigenous Voices Award, Caetano’s Half-Bads in White Regalia captures the chaos, wonder, warmth and humour of coming of age, amongst tangled family history. Fitzgerald, a frequent contributor to The Today Show and Buzzfeed Books editor, presents the memoir-in-essays Dirtbag, Massachusetts which details a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, and a lifelong battle through trauma to self-understanding and acceptance.
Ask the Expert: Literary Trends in Canada from Coast to Coast to Coast
September 24 at 1:30pm
Stage in the Park
Free and open to the general public
Sit down with the experts to learn the “who, what, where, when and how” of literature. This series of free, outdoor events will satiate your curiosity about all things books! This event features an engaging conversation between TIFA Director Roland Gulliver and Canadian author Charlie Foran. Join the conversation to learn more about literary trends here in Canada, what makes Canadian writing unique from other countries and how it changes from city to city. You will walk away with a new understanding of what makes CanLit stand out.
September 25
Poetry Reading: Pamela Mordecai & Shani Mootoo
September 25 at 4pm
Stage in the Park
Free outdoor event
Find your poetry fix at our Stage in the Park and hear two of Canada’s best poets with Shani Mootoo and Pamela Mordecai reading from their poetry collections.
Mordecai’s de book of Joseph, the third book in her epic trilogy based on characters and stories from the Bible pays tribute to her Jamaican culture and the vernacular.
Mootoo’s Cane | Fire is a memoir in verse, following the narrator’s personal journey from Ireland to San Fernando to Canada, elevating the story with the author’s own artwork.
Sensational Satire: Zarqa Nawaz & Miguel Syjuco
September 25 at 6:30pm
Brigantine Room in Harbourfront Centre
$12.00 - $17.00
Don’t miss this playful, provocative conversation between Zarqa Nawaz, creator of the hit CBC series Little Mosque on the Prairie, and acclaimed Filipino author and educator Miguel Syjuco. The two authors will speak to how they each managed to put a satirical, humorous spin on complex political issues in each of their latest novels. Nawaz offers up more infectiously likeable characters in Jameela Green Ruins Everything.
When Jameela’s imam suddenly vanishes, she is certain he was taken by the CIA for torturous interrogation, and soon becomes entangled in an international plan targeting an egomaniacal leader of a terrorist organization. Syjuco will present I was the President’s Mistress!! – a fast-paced, animated and hilarious satire covering politics, faith, history, memory and the ongoing war over who determines the truth.
September 27
September 27 at 6pm
Fleck Dance Theatre
$12.00 - $17.00
Award-winning Canadian author Iain Reid launches his fourth novel, We Spread, a genre-bending philosophical suspense about a woman sent to a long-term care residence. When the days blur together and she begins to feel uneasy in her new home, she begins to wonder: is it an effect of aging or is she an unknowing participant in something more unsettling? Reid’s New York Times bestselling debut I’m Thinking of Ending Things has been translated into more than 20 languages and adapted into a Netflix film. Join us for a thrilling discussion with Reid about art, life and death.
September 28
Do Androids Dream?: Victoria Hetherington & Olga Ravn
September 28 at 6pm
Harbourfront Theatre
$12.00 - $17.00
In their latest novels Canadian author Victoria Hetherington, and Danish poet and novelist Olga Ravn feature worlds struggling to harmonize human life with artificial intelligence (AI). Ravn’s The Employees is a critique of life governed by the logic of productivity and was shortlisted for both The International Man Booker Prize and the first Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction.
The story follows the crew of the Six-Thousand Ship, where humans and humanoids complain about their mundane work lives until they discover mysterious objects that make them question what it means to be human and to feel love. Heatherington’s Autonomy takes place in a dystopian future in which human bodies are either threatened or irrelevant; where the planet is threatened by climate change, where illness plagues humans and where AI is the only hope to get jobs done.
September 30
The Future is Speculative: Kim Fu & Anna Moschovakis
September 30 at 3:30pm
Harbourfront Centre Theatre
$12.00 - $17.00
We’re living in a digital world, and authors Kim Fu and Anna Moschovakis know it. Their latest books of genre-defying speculative fiction explore the effect of technology on human nature and community. Canadian writer Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century features short stories that introduce us to a girl who is growing wings on her ankles, a Kafkaesque bug infestation, and a haunted doll. American writer Moschovakis’s novel Participation is a dystopian love story between members of two virtual reading groups amidst environmental collapse. Join us for a discussion of worlds and stories that blur the boundaries of the real and fantastic.
October 1
October 1 at 1:30pm
Fleck Dance Theatre
$12.00 - $17.00
Audience favourite Dionne Brand, award-winning Canadian author and Toronto’s 3rd Poet Laureate, presents her latest book, Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems. Comprised of intense new work and eight prior volumes – originally published between 1982 and 2010 – the collection captures the intimaces and disillusionments of wars and revolutions so profoundly that you’ll learn to witness the world in a whole new way. Brand will take you on a journey through her imagination through temporal worlds of past, present and future. Join her, and discover first-hand why Brand is one of Canada’s most significant artists today.
The Future is Fluid: Chi Ta-wei
October 1 at 5:30pm
Lakeside Terrace at Harbourfront Centre
$12.00 - $17.00
Speculative fiction is truly timeless, as demonstrated by Taiwanese author Chi Ta-wei in The Membranes. The classic queer fiction – originally published in Chinese in 1995 — has now been translated to English 25 years later by Ari Larissa Heinrich. The novel explores a woman’s quest for understanding set against a late-21st century world where humanity has migrated to domes beneath the sea, and powerful media conglomerates dominate using exploited cyborg labour. Join the author for an enthralling discussion about his book and the future of queer identity and impacts of capital regimes.
October 1 at 6pm
Harbourfront Centre Theatre
$12.00 - $17.00
Multi-disciplinary Canadian artist and seven-time Lambda Literary Award finalist Vivek Shraya (I’m Afraid of Men) returns to TIFA to present her latest book, People Change. An insightful and honest handbook that inspires us to discover other versions of ourselves, People Change is both a radical embracing of change and a meditation that challenges Western concepts of identity. Dually inspired by Hinduism and Madonna, Shraya will share her impulse to constantly change, and reflect on why many of us fear change or are drawn to it. Join us for this liberating conversation on living a life of re-invention.
Making HERstory: Manahil Bandukwala & Karolina Ramqvist
October 1 at 6:30pm
Main Loft in Harbourfront Centre
$12.00 - $17.00
Join authors Manahil Bandukwala & Karolina Ramqvist in a discussion on their books revolving around female historical figures and what they leave behind. Pakistani-Canadian Bandukwala’s debut poetry collection, MONUMENT, is a conversation with Mumtaz Mahal, a 16th-century Mughal Empress. Mumtaz Mahal’s story moves beyond the walls of the Taj Mahal through time and space. Swedish author Ramqvist’s The Bear Woman retells the life of French noblewoman, Marguerite de la Roche who was abandoned on an island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Each author blends fact and fiction in timeless storytelling, relevant even after centuries.
October 2
Making Love with the Land: Joshua Whitehead
October 2 at 1pm
Harbourfront Centre Theatre
$12.00 - $17.00
Following his acclaimed Giller-Longlisted debut novel, Jonny Appleseed, Joshua Whitehead’s new book of non-fiction explores indigeneity, queerness, language and land. A hybrid of writing formats, including essays, notes, memoir and confessions, Making Love with the Land is a vulnerable, heart-wrenching account of what it means to live and write as a queer Indigenous person. Whitehead illuminates the current cultural moment in Canada in which everyone – Indigenous and non-Indigenous – is navigating new ideas about how the land shapes us, our ideas, our histories and our bodies.
Reframing the Rom-Com: Lily Chu & Sonya Singh
October 2 at 7:30pm
Lakeside Terrace at Harbourfront Centre
$12.00 - $17.00
Dive into two delightful debuts from Toronto-based rom-com authors Lily Chu and Sonya Singh. Chu’s The Stand-In reveals how a life can turn on its head when a young woman is asked to become an official stand-in for a famous Chinese cinema actress with whom she shares an uncanny resemblance. Singh’s instant national bestseller, Sari, Not Sari, is an ode to her own personal dating experiences and follows the adventures of a relationship-averse businesswoman trying to connect with her South Asian roots with the help of an unlikely companion. The authors will share how they balance light-hearted storytelling with poignant themes of parental death, culture and identity.
See you here at Harbour Front Centre!