Results tagged “publishing”

Last February, when three of the four major publishers in Canada pulled out of Toronto's annual book industry trade show, BookExpo sadly bit the dust. The collective feeling, particularly amongst small press publishers and indie booksellers, was “where do we meet now?” The book industry is in trouble, and even major publishers are scared stiff by spiralling sales and the rise of ebooks. And so, with a need for real discussion, BookCamp was born.

Toronto is full of great stories and great storytellers who can convey every feeling and every action into words. To celebrate the city's literary pedigree, Torontoist sat down with Judy Fong Bates and Terry Fallis, two acclaimed Toronto-based authors, for a four-part series to discuss their journeys as writers and their visions for the future of storytelling.

Toronto is full of great stories and great storytellers who can convey every feeling and every action into words. To celebrate the city's literary pedigree, Torontoist sat down with Judy Fong Bates and Terry Fallis, two acclaimed Toronto-based authors, for a four-part series to discuss their journeys as writers and their visions for the future of storytelling.

If you're into the idea of kids with bigger, shinier brains and programs that facilitate such things, you might be familiar with Now Hear This!, Toronto's very own not-for-profit literary outreach organization. With a mandate of education through the arts, they do good things like hold Satire and Fake News Writing workshops for kids, complete with handouts from The Onion. Kind of idealistically akin to Dave Eggers' ass-kickingly progressive nonprofit, 826 National.

From left to right: Ox, Morning Gothic: New and Selected Poems, The Mechanical Bird, and Sympathy for the Couriers.

On Sunday afternoon, over 150 independent publishers, writers, artists and bloggers from across the continent will pack Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel for Canzine, Canada’s largest celebration of small press publishing and alternative culture.

"Coach House Alley" by chelseagirl

"Bookstore on Queen" by Trachsi from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

A big congratulations goes out to Toronto-based press House of Anansi for publishing this year’s ReLit short story winner, Bill Gaston’s Gargoyles. The ReLit award is set up to give well deserved attention to books produced by the independent presses throughout Canada. House of Anansi’s winning entry is joined a number of its other publications on the poetry and novel short list. (Also nominated for the long list was Torontoist’s very own Sharon Harris for her wonderful book Avatar.)

There are things that go on in this city at night that are far weirder than the leather-clad teenagers on Queen West. Did you know that vampires stalk High Park? Or that Toronto Police Services crossed into another dimension to investigate a suspicious death? No? Then you should check out Karen Bennett’s Fantastic Toronto project.

Would you want to read a book about the middle-aged agoraphobe son of a dead rock star whose life is transformed by a nine year old girl who wants to be a dog? Tish Cohen thinks you will, and Torontoist agrees. The Toronto native has just published her first novel, Town House, which she describes as an “urban anxiety tale”. There’s been a lot of buzz about it, not only in the musty halls of publishing but also in Hollywood, where the movie rights have already been picked up by Fox. Tish and her publishers are holding a free public launch party tonight at the Drake Hotel.

What if by chewing gum you could eliminate your body odor, cure yourself of cancer and take pictures with your eyes? You’d do it, wouldn’t you? Of course there may be a few side effects, but you don’t need to worry about that now, do you? Open your mouth and say ah!

Wednesday evening, join This Is Not A Reading Series, musical guests Stella Panacci and The Michael Brennan Band, and Toronto Star books columnist Phil Marchand as they celebrate the launch of Brad Smith’s newest novel, Big Man Coming Down The Road.

With the lamented demise of Toro, we continue to weigh in on the future of men’s magazines (for a past example, read this). Will they last? Do all middle-class men aspire to have a walk-in humidor? If you accidentally look at UMM, will you turn into one of these guys?

CS Richardson is a prize-winning book designer who has worked in publishing for over two decades. His work has been showcased at both the Leipzig and Frankfurt Book Fairs.

as part of their spring 2007 lecture series.

Ah, convergence. It's a word fraught with different meanings, competing motives, and opinions up the proverbial wazoo. To some, convergence is a paradise of synergy, cross-promotion, and massive profits. To others, it's confirmation that more and more information is being disseminated by less and less people. Wherever you stand, however, the world of Toronto media overlords might be on the verge of becoming a whole lot smaller, as Alliance Atlantis confirmed today that one of the companies it is in exclusive talks to sell itself to is none other than Canadian broadcasting and publishing behemoth CanWest Global.

Toronto graffiti artist Toivo (Finnish for "hope") has painted an eponymous rainbow around town for the past two years. Her optimistic messages span the downtown, but are most easily located on cement tree planters in The Annex and Little Italy. You’ll also find them in the quietest of laneways.

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to.

Ever dreamed of running your own magazine? Then Nicole Cohen wants to talk to you.

We've admired the work done by the people at WorldChanging for a long time. The blog has opened our eyes to the hundreds if not thousands of creative solutions out there to some very pressing problems. The fact that the blog is cautiously optimistic about the possibility of a green future is refreshing.

Bookninja pointed us to Julie Wilson's Seen Reading blog. Wilson works in the publishing industry here in Toronto but on her blog she becomes a literary spy of sorts. She makes a note of what people are reading in public, guesses where you are in the book and concocts a blog post that riffs on that.

A man is put into a coma by a falling object. He goes on to receive an 8 million pound settlement and with his newfound wealth obsessively tries to recreate a scene that he may have once witnessed. This is the premise for Tom McCarthy's Remainder, possibly one of the most imaginative novels to come out of the UK in the last few years. It's also a mesmerizing story of one man's struggle to come to terms with reality and also his struggle to cope with a nearly fatal trauma. McCarthy's novel also dissects the way we think, act and perceive the world around us but does so with so much literary style that the work never devolves into an intellectual swamp.

And where can we get some? 110 Spadina Ave. is the building that houses the House of Anansi Press among other things. The medium-sized publisher is having an amazing year. First was the news that two of their books, Rawi Hage's De Niro's Game and Gaetan Soucy's the Immaculate Conception, made it on to the weirdest Giller shortlist in years. Then this morning the boys and girls at Anansi got even more good news. Hage's debut novel about the Lebanese civil war was also picked for the Governor General's shortlist and Peter Behren's the Law of Dreams also got the thumbs up from the GG.

We learnt from DB Scott's Canadian Magazines blog that after 10 years Toronto Life is pulling the plug on its Summer Fiction Issue. Scott, who gets his copy of Toronto Life even earlier than Torontoist does, quotes from TL editor John Macfarlane's editors column:

Who needs an excuse to visit a pretty new bookstore? Type, the new bookstore near Trinity Bellwoods which we've mentioned before on this blog is having a very appropriate art show. Nano - Nano is the graduation show from OCAD’s “Nano-publishing: Independent Publications” program taught by Torontoist pal Shannon Gerard.

Strong Words, the indie reading series put on by Indiepolitik, is celebrating its first year anniversary. Why, it seems like just a few months a go we were coddling baby Strong Words, burping it, changing its diapers and now it's all grown up and publishing anthologies.

Why else would she go to all the effort of documenting "I love you" graffiti all over the city. We wrote about that project here and through the grapevine we heard that she's publishing a book and now even has a blog where she tracks permutations of "I love yous" on the interweb.

The Guardian Angels hold their first recruiting session and vow to be on the streets by the summer. The mayor and the chief of police gave them the cold shoulder last time but criticism is a little more muted this time around. Torontoist remains lukewarm on the volunteer crime-prevention group. We'd prefer to see trained police officers doing the job of crime prevention and community policing but can understand how people in the city feel frustrated by gun crime.