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TRB Podcast: Ann Dowsett Johnston’s Drink
On Tuesday, September 24th, award-winning journalist Ann Dowsett Johnston read from her new book Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol over breakfast at The University Club for Ramsay Talks. According to Johnston, drinks have become skinnier, pinker, and sexier, and the new face of alcohol abuse is highly educated and wears heels. Both extensively researched and deeply personal, Johnston’s…
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The Night Prayer’s Lord, a Poem
The poem “The Night Prayer’s Lord” like most of the poems in my most recent collection, Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects (Wolsak & Wynn), pays homage to the late Irish poet Dorothy Molloy who, in 2004, died ten days before her first collection was published by Faber and Faber. Though I lived…
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Two New Poems by George Elliott Clarke
The poems happened completely by chance. This “chanciness” is deliberate. I begin to write something that’s vaguely about African slavery, and then a direction or impulse or voice imposes itself on the writing. These poems – Solomon 2 and Experience 1 – are based on my interpretation of how unlettered black (ex) slaves understood The…
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The Next Act of Books on Beechwood
Books on Beechwood, 35 Beechwood Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario. Jean Barton opened Books on Beechwood in 1994 and for nineteen years it has served as a hub hosting book signings, reading clubs, and children’s story-times for the Ottawa community. On a Saturday morning the aromas of coffee and baking from the scone shop next door bathe the store as shoppers…
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Two Unmissable Tuesday Book Launches: TRB’s Kelli Deeth and Dana Golan from Breaking the Silence
The Toronto Review of Books team is thrilled to point out that tomorrow night (Oct. 15) our senior editor Kelli Deeth launches her new collection of short fiction, The Other Side of Youth (Arsenal Pulp Press). The “Fall Fiction Feast” event at the Supermarket (268 Augusta Ave.) also features new releases from Dana Mills, Matthew Heiti…
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Nobel-Shaped Literature and the Politics of Prestige
Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize for Literature and many people – especially Canadians – are thrilled about what is widely portrayed as an achievement for Canada. I am too in my own way. Alice Munro is a favourite writer of mine and few books have moved me like Who Do You Think You…
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TRB Podcast: Shyam Selvadurai’s The Hungry Ghosts
On Wednesday, September 18th, Shyam Selvadurai read from his new book The Hungry Ghosts to a warm audience at the Bloor-Gladstone Library. With an insatiable hunger, and a mouth too small to ever fill its stomach, the hungry ghost offers an image of greed in Buddhist mythology. Selvadurai’s new book is the story of hungry ghosts…
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Congrats, Alice! Nation Chuffed by Nobel Win
Hearing the news about Alice Munro’s Nobel win this morning sent many Canadians to their shelves. Munro is an author to read in the morning and the evening, whose work repays frequent visits and recitations years later, and whose voice returns when you least expect it, yes, like a friend from your youth: “So one…
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Malcolm Gladwell, Chuck Palahniuk, and 1890s Print Culture in the Digital Age: T.O. Events for October 10-24, 2013
The William Morris Society of Canada presents a lecture called The Yellow Book, 1890s Print Culture and the Digital Vision. Lorraine Janzen Kooistra is a Professor of English and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Humanities at Ryerson University. She introduces The Yellow Book (1894-96), a seminal fin-de-siècle magazine that is now available online. 7PM.…
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Reading the Fine Print at Toronto’s Ben McNally Books
Ben McNally Books is located on 366 Bay Street, Toronto, Ontario. When the number six bus stops at Bay and Richmond, its doors open to a storefront adorned with the words “read the fine print.” Located in the heart of Toronto’s Financial District, Ben McNally Books is surrounded by towering concrete buildings, an endless stream…
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TRB Podcast: Love and Accusation with Catherine Bush and Douglas Glover
This Is Not a Reading Series at the Gladstone Hotel on September 17th featured Mark Medley of the National Post in conversation with Douglas Glover (author most recently of Savage Love) and Catherine Bush (whose latest is Accusation). Glover’s book is a series of short stories to join his repertoire of essays, prose, and nonfiction. Bush’s fourth novel, Accusation, tells the story of a journalist’s search…
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New Heights of Fandom: Sheila Heti in Conversation with Tavi Gevinson, Oct. 26
American teen superstar and public intellectual Tavi Gevinson is coming to Toronto again to launch the second yearbook of Rookie, her online magazine for girls. Writing for The Toronto Review of Books about last year’s Rookie Yearbook One (also from the Canadian press Drawn & Quarterly), Ryerson English Professor Laura Fisher said that the book synthesizes images, words, and…