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......

Torontoist favourites Emily Schultz and Brian Joseph Davis have launched a new web portal for original short fiction, hoping to thwart the idea that short stories are a dead scene by giving them a new venue for distribution. Dubbed Joyland, after Schultz's 2006 novel of the same name (but mostly because she already owned the sweet domain name and decided to double-dip), the site combines "a strict mandate (only short stories) to some principles......

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......

Next week, Taddle Creek, a Toronto-based literary magazine that publishes Toronto authors exclusively, will be celebrating their tenth anniversary. Expected to release a "giant-sized" Christmas 2007 Issue, the 72-page magazine has writing from Alex Boyd, Emily Schultz, Camilla Gibb, Stuart Ross, and many, many others, for the simple price of $4.95. The anniversary party will be at the Gladstone Hotel on November 28th, with readings, music by the Eradicators, door prizes, and maybe cake.......

You still have a few hours left, but Torontoist's Poetry Contest closes tonight! At the beginning of the new year, Torontoist launched a poetry contest to encourage the penning of new poems about our fair city. After judges Carly Beath, Stephen Cain, and Jay MillAr deliberate, we'll announce the winner plus five honourable mentions on April 10. We hope you've enjoyed our series of previously published Toronto poems, and look forward to presenting the winning......

"I’m going to Pakistan in November to share Q&A with young theatre artists during a festival celebrating Punjabi culture. I arrive on November 17. Look for more posts then." —Darren O’Donnell Thus begins Darren's account of his time spent presenting his interactive theatre work in rural Pakistan and in Mumbai, India. Video Show for the People of Pakistan and India is a collection of footage from his journey, and will be shown at The Centre......

Torontoist pals and favourite artistic couple (sorry Brangelina) Emily Schultz and Brian Joseph Davis are opening up the Centre for Culture and Leisure No.1 tomorrow night. The duo wanted to "provide a fluid, public space for play" and have opened up this spot just off Queen Street and Elm Grove Ave. Their inaugural event will include bike field trips by Carolyn Tripp, a video work by Phillip Monk and Pocket Game, some kind of scavenger......

Emily Schultz, author of Joyland, former editor of Broken Pencil and This Magazine is looking for your pledges. No, this is not a PBS style pledge drive where you get a special gift when you show your support. I steal from just about everyone who crosses my path. But my fear is that someone, someday, will recognize a very familiar description, moment, or trait that has cropped up in my work. Well, Schultz wants......

Looking for something to do Saturday afternoon besides antiquing? Check out the Toronto Small Press Fair at Trinity St.Paul Centre (427 Bloor St W.) between 11am-6pm. Stroll around different tables set up with some of our favorite indie rags like Kiss Machine and puddlepress. For extra indie lit points, go see Emily Schultz, John Terpstra and more read later that day at The Victory Cafe, 6-9pm.......

Tonight Pontiac Quarterly unleashes its second issue this year at The Drake Hotel (8pm). For those of you unfamiliar, PQ is a performance magazine where writers read their fiction, feature stories - even advice columns - on stage in front of a live audience. Coming around only four times a year (it's right there in the title!), The Torontoist looks forward to it like our mom looks forward to gardening season. This issue's theme......

Techie things like an internet poetry engine and video games meet decidedly non-techie things like books and their authors at the Gladstone tonight. Darren "Typewriter Man" Wershler-Henry and Bill Kennedy are launching Apostrophe and Apostropheengine.ca (not quite up yet). Their site hijacks searh engine results and spins them into poetry. They'll be doing a live demo. Emily Schultz will be joining them with videogames, 80s classic Combat to be exact. Why videogames? Because her novel......