Listen here: Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. On February 25, Dr. Carolina Cambre was invited to speak at the Toronto Semiotic Circle as part of their monthly lecture series. Her lecture, titled “The Semiotics of Artifice in the Case of Che Guevara’s...
Reviewed in this essay: Food Sovereignty in Canada: Creating Just and Sustainable Food Systems, edited by Hannah Wittman, Annette Aurélie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiebe. Fernwood Publishing, 2011. Food issues abound these days, from northern communities that lack access to affordable food, to foodborne illnesses initiated by poor industrial hygiene practices, to community-driven initiatives...
Reviewed in this essay: Vanguard of the New Age: The Toronto Theosophical Society, 1891-1945, by Gillian McCann. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012. On 26 March 1891, some of Canada’s early avant-garde artists, labour activists, and feminists sat in the parlour of an esteemed Spadina Avenue home to discuss “The Key to Theosophy on Karma.” Spurred by a growing interest...
Reviewed in this essay: The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball from the Men Who Played It, by Lawrence S. Ritter. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2010. As winter turns to spring, the sports fan’s mind turns to baseball. Arguably, it’s the most literary of all the sports, even if only by volume: authors as diverse as Philip Roth, Chad Harbach, Jim Bouton, David...
Grant Lawrence is probably best known to Canadians as a voice on the radio (or podcast). He has been the host of various CBC Radio shows for years, and has weekly podcast, CBC Radio 3 Podcast with Grant Lawrence, that showcases Canadian indie music. He was also the lead singer in The Smugglers, an indie rock band out of Vancouver. Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and...
Last night, Charles Foran won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize, the richest prize in Canadian literature. Foran’s book, Mordecai: The Life and Times is the unauthorized biography of one of Canada’s great, and somewhat controversial, novelists, Mordecai Richler. Since its release in October 2010, Mordecai has won both the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non...
Charlotte Gill started tree planting as a summer job during university. That first summer turned into a 17-season career that saw Gill plant over 1 million trees all over Canada. When not on the cut blocks, Gill started writing. Her debut short story collection Ladykiller was shortlisted for the 2005 Governor General’s Literary Awards and won the Danuta Gleed Award and a B.C. Book Prize in...
In the lead-up to the announcement of the winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize, The Toronto Review of Books will feature Q&As with each of the five finalists. In 2007, Richard Gwyn published John A: The Man Who Made Us, the first volume in his biography of Canada’s first prime minister, which won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Nonfiction. John A. was a also...
In the lead-up to the announcement of the winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize, The Toronto Review of Books will feature Q&As with each of the five finalists. Up first is Ray Robertson, whose book Why Not? Fifteen Reasons to Live is an exploration of what makes life worth living. After publishing his sixth novel, Robertson, who had a history of obsessive...
It wasn’t long ago that the Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize was in jeopardy – longtime sponsor Nereus Financial dropped out in 2008 – but in May the Writers’ Trust announced a new partnership with former lieutenant-governor of Ontario Hilary Weston. The non-fiction has been renamed to reflect its new sponsor, and the first finalists for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize were...