After a year of upheaval, the Toronto International Festival of Authors has changes aplenty in store
While 2021 will once again run as a digital festival, 2022 includes changes such as a new festival date and a mini-fest devoted to crime writing.
The madness of war: David Diop’s brutal and beautiful At Night All Blood Is Black
The novel, which won the 2021 Man Booker International Prize, questions where duty and friendship end and insanity begins.
“I wanted to stimulate people”: Canadian playwright Brad Fraser on provocation, the theatrical establishment, and his new memoir
“I realized the adult world was every bit as fucked up as anything else."
Fundraiser to rebuild largest English-language bookstore in Gaza raises more than $210,000 to date
“Even under the blockade, it made us feel as a part of the world,” says one writer and translator about the cultural significance of the demolished store.
Stolen goods: metafictional wheels within wheels abound in Jean Hanff Korelitz’s thriller The Plot
The novel is among a series of recent thrillers that focus on writers behaving badly.
While mainstream publishers wage internal wars, a new upstart threatens to import online polarization into the print sphere
The potential for importing internet and cable news level divisiveness into publishing appears more dangerous than the tradition of publishing across the political spectrum.
“They don’t see it until they see it”: Cheryl Thompson on Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kevin Hart, and the legacy of a complicated literary figure
The through-line in Thompson’s book involves a historical inability on the part of Western culture to see Black people as fully human.
Tales of Transgression: Joris-Karl Huysmans’s demonic inferno, Là-Bas
Huysmans shared his protagonist’s disgust with humanity and longed to create a new kind of literature.
“Literally, we just started Googling”: Shelley Youngblut on Calgary Wordfest’s new online streaming service, Imagine on Air
The Calgary literary festival’s streaming service is one part of an ecosystem that will include online content and live events.
Running in the family: Jordan Abel’s multimedia, polyvalent memoir addresses issues of identity and cultural heritage in the face of intergenerational trauma
Griffin Poetry Prize winner Abel has crafted a cross-genre work that addresses questions of identity and the ways we are affected by past hurt.