Toronto Lit Up Announces Spring 2025 Season
Today, the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) announced the 18 new titles selected for the Spring season of Toronto Lit Up 2025-2026. The programme is a joint initiative with Toronto Arts Council that spotlights Toronto writers through supporting and promoting their book launch celebrations, bringing together communities of readers across the city.
The Spring season will take place between April 2025 and September 2025, and features new works for adults and young people from debut and established Toronto authors. Each author has a different story to tell and a different way to tell it, from a photography book by a former astronaut to the history of all your favourite Canadian punk bands. Discover the stories that capture the iconic character of Toronto’s neighbourhoods and the wealth of cultures that meet on our streets. From bookstores to bars, clubs to coffee shops, Toronto Lit Up has a book launch for everyone’s TBR needs.
The following new books will be featured:
● Matt Bobkin & Adam Feibel – In Too Deep: When Canadian Punks Took Over the World (House of Anansi)
● Dr. Roberta L. Bondar – Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight (Figure1Publishing)
● Matteo L. Cerilli – Bad in the Blood (Tundra Books)
● Catherine Bush – Skin (Goose Lane Editions)
● Antonio Michael Downing – Black Cherokee (Simon & Schuster)
● Alice Fitzpatrick – A Dark Death (Stonehouse Publishing)
● Farah Ghafoor – Shadow Price: Poems (House of Anansi)
● Kid Haile – Sometimes I Eat with My Hands (Groundwood Books)
● Maika Harper, illustrated by Kaja Kajfež – The First Peoples (Inhabit Media)
● Maggie Helwig – Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community (Coach House Books)
● Joelle Kidd – Jesusland: Stories from the Upside Down World of Christian Pop Culture (ECW Press)
● Hajer Mirwali – Revolutions (Talonbooks)
● Jacob McArthur Mooney – The Northern (ECW Press)
● Vinh Nguyen – The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse (HarperCollins Canada)
● Charlie Petch – Infinite Audition (Brick Books)
● Miranda Schreiber – Iris and the Dead (Book*hug Press)
● Teri Vlassopoulos – Living Expenses (Invisible Publishing)
● Tamla T. Young, illustrated by Raz Latif – Ready, Set, Mango! (Owlkids)
Events to launch and celebrate these titles will take place in person across Toronto from April to September. All events will be free to attend and open to the public. Stay tuned for dates and details to come at FestivalofAuthors.ca.
Between April 2016 and March 2024, Toronto Lit Up has presented over 200 events featuring over 250 Toronto authors and illustrators.
The Committee
Each submission is reviewed by the Toronto Lit Up Committee, composed of Ian Keteku (Creative Writing Instructor, OCAD U), Samia Madwar (Senior Editor, The Walrus), Hazel Millar (Co-Publisher, Book*hug) and Roland Gulliver (Director, Toronto International Festival of Authors).
