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In Search of a Designer for the TRB Team
The Toronto Review of Books (TRB) is looking for a graphic designer to join its volunteer team. We’re looking for someone who is familiar with the glittering history of book design and the visual brio of tablets and the web, and who is able to combine those traditions to make bright, fresh, and engaging images…
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Sheila Heti and the Myth of Support: Artists, Audiences, and Class from Stratford to Toronto
It’s getting harder to be a creative in this country, but it’s also becoming more difficult to be a paying audience member. In a recent post on Back to the World, Sheila Heti argues that it’s time for “a New Canadian Myth for New Canadian Times,” one that will recognize the major support creators in this country get…
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Game theory, Type Books, and the secrets of Yelp: Bookishness for Apr. 29, 2013
Gaming game theory “A week before the test, I told my class that the Game Theory exam would be insanely hard—far harder than any that had established my rep as a hard prof. But as recompense, for this one time only, students could cheat.” Window Dressing On the glory of Kalpna Patel’s Type Books storefronts (image…
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Women and Boxing in Canada: Last Woman Standing at Hot Docs
Reviewed in this essay: Last Woman Standing, directed by Juliet Lammers and Lorraine Price, Canada, 2013 at Hot Docs 2013. The key to a good sports documentary—especially for those of us who don’t feel especially enraptured by the intrigues of competition—is in reminding viewers that sport is actually a field of relationships, and in bringing…
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Health Care in America: Reichert and Zaman’s Remote Area Medical at Hot Docs
Reviewed in this essay: Remote Area Medical, directed by Jeff Reichert & Farihah Zaman, 2013, United States If there’s a single, insurmountable psychic obstacle to a Canadian’s long-standing fantasy of one day moving to New York it is this one: health care. No other facet of American life (save sometimes guns and prisons) makes the…
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Do you have ideas for The Toronto Review of Books?
In four digital issues of essays and poetry a year, and a daily blog, Chirograph, The Toronto Review of Books (TRB) covers print, Internet, e-books, street corners, festivals, songs, thoughts, Toronto, and other artworks. We’re always looking for new contributors and fresh perspectives, so if you have ideas for essays, single review posts, recurring series, audio or video projects, or any other kind…
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Stan Rogal’s Brautiganesqe
In this special feature for Chirograph, rob mclennan presents the essay he wrote as a preface for Stan Rogal’s Love’s Not The Way To (Toronto ON: Bookland Press, spring 2013). “That’s why I forgot the bottle this morning because the Japanese squid fishermen are asleep and I was thinking about them being asleep.” -Richard Brautigan, The…
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Oil sands, Pussy Riot, and Arnaud Maggs: A guide to the 2013 Hot Docs Festival
Toronto’s twentieth annual Hot Docs film festival begins April 25th and will screen 205 films over eleven days. The complete list is here — but here are a few that caught our interest. The festival will kick-off with director Shawney Cohen’s The Manor, a film about his journey back to Guelph, his home town, to…
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Streamed Theatre, History Mapped Online, and James Reaney’s First Play: Inbox No. 1
We get lots of notices about intriguing events and projects each week. Here’s a sampling. ▶ Nathan Ng describes the Historical Maps of Toronto as follows: “If you’ve ever wondered what ‘Muddy York’ looked like 200 years ago, and then wanted to trace the city’s development over the following century, this ought to pique your…
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Revisiting ab-ex: the return of modern artist Milly Ristvedt
Art lovers of Toronto, take heed. You have only a few days left in which to witness the comeback of a storied Canadian artist. Milly Ristvedt was, in the 1960s and ’70s, a practitioner of abstract expressionism, in the vein of Mark Rothko. And while her work can be seen at the Art Gallery of…
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Earth Day, dragons, and Hot Docs picks: Bookishness for Apr. 22, 2013
Borrow, grow, return Happy Earth Day! To celebrate, why not check out the newly opened Markham Grows Seed Library at Markham Public Library’s Milliken Mills Branch (7600 Kennedy Road) where Markham residents can check out free, organic, heirloom seeds? Don’t live or work in Markham? Check out the Toronto Seed Library. Then get outside! Unfortunately… …this award…
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Hell in the Round: Soup Can Theatre’s A Hand of Bridge and No Exit
Reviewed in this essay: A Hand of Bridge & No Exit, Soup Can Theatre, which ran Mar. 27-30 at the New Tapestry Opera Studio Soup Can Theatre’s double bill of A Hand of Bridge and No Exit in theatre-in-the-round style emphasizes the blunt reality that we can never get away from other people. No Exit…