THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED: We regret to inform you that this event has been cancelled due to circumstances beyond our control. We hope to welcome Karma Brown to our stage another time in the near future, and apologize for any disappointment and inconvenience caused by this cancellation. Karma Brown’s Recipe for a Perfect Wife […]
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In this panel discussion, the future of cookbooks will certainly be influenced by AI, as it continues to streamline recipe generation. Platforms like the popular New York Times cooking app integrate AI-driven features for recipe recommendations and meal planning. Perhaps TikTok with its short form cooking content will change the face of cookbooks as people […]
Recently nominated for the 2023 Toronto Book Award, and winner of the 2023 Fred Kerner Book Award for Fiction, Sophie Jai’s debut novel Wild Fires (“Exquisite, evocative prose.” – Quill and Quire) explores the ways we mourn and why we avoid the very things that can save us. In her debut collection of short stories, […]
TIFA’s most provocative conversation series returns. Critical Conversations brings together authors and industry experts in candid conversation to examine the facets of culture and politics that shape the world around us and the books we read. Canada prides itself on its approach to newcomers, impressively raising its targets recently for migration in the coming years. […]
TIFA’s most provocative conversation series returns. Critical Conversations brings together authors and industry experts in candid conversation to examine the facets of culture and politics that shape the world around us and the books we read. Our relationship to the oceans has come into stark focus in recent months with the Titan submersible disaster. It […]
Join us in a conversation with two young Arab writers: Mazen Maarouf, a Palestinian-Icelandic writer, and poet whose short story collection “Gunmen’s Jokes” was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2019, and Mohamed Khelifi, a Tunisian writer and lawyer based in New York, whose novel “Flee” was awarded the Rambourg Award. In this […]
Considering the decline in demand for Arabic poetry from publishers, did this push poetry to resign from its old roles, as a voice for the oppressed, the forgotten and the powerless? Did Arabic poetry quit the idea of change and the yearning for freedom, or did it take on new roles and forms? Is writing […]
With the end of the Arab Spring, the dream of democracy has turned into a nightmare of violence in all its forms, including assassinations, terrorism, and coups. Join the Tunisian novelist Kamel Riahi, and the Egyptian-Canadian novelist May Telmissany, to discuss the reality of Arabic writing in exile today, and ask the question: do Arab […]
In a year when creators have voiced their disquiet and writers are striking over the financial and creative threats from technology, Sean Michaels’ new novel Do You Remember Being Born? couldn’t be more prescient. The story follows a 75-year-old poet who accepts a commission to collaborate with a mysterious new AI named Charlotte. Michaels has won […]
Two historic novels; two studies in collusion, complicity and culpability; two young people trying to take a stand and protect those they love; and one fascinating discussion. Kwame Alexander’s latest novel-in-verse, The Door of No Return, follows Kofi, a Ghanaian boy living in an Asante village under British colonial rule. Set in 1860, months before […]
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is a visual artist and storyteller. Raised on Haida Gwaii, he melds cultural hybridity and his political experiences as an Indigenous person with contemporary graphic literature to produce a unique genre called Haida Manga. In his new book JAJ: A Haida Manga he uses gorgeous imagery to bring to life the tumultuous history […]
Journeys of discovery shape two electrifying, propulsive novels, crossing cities and continents, transgressing boundaries of desire and love. Viola Di Grado is one of Italy’s most exciting young authors. In her novel Blue Hunger, a young woman escapes Rome for Shanghai where she embarks on a passionate relationship with a young Chinese girl running from […]
Patrick Errington and Erin Noteboom turn the poet’s unflinching clear-eyed gaze upon the world to make meaning of our surroundings, articulating the pain and loss of environmental destruction, and exploring scientific hypotheses of emotion. Patrick Errington’s award-winning collection the swailing couldn’t be more timely in addressing ecological issues through the metaphor of ‘swailing,’ a term […]
The short novel can have the most intense impact on the reader as every word carries significant weight and meaning. Portuguese writer and translator João Reis discusses The Devastation of Silence (translated by Adrian Minckley) and the story of a Portuguese prisoner of war struggling to find meaning amongst hardship, and someone to hear his […]
Like the best speculative fiction, Alexis Schaitkin takes us into a world eerily similar to our own where fictional distortions reflect our flaws and challenge our norms. Shortlisted for the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, Elsewhere conjures a claustrophobic community in which girls become wives and wives become mothers who are in turn idolised […]
Joseph Kai’s debut graphic novel Restless (L’Intranquille) introduces us to Samar, a young queer comic book artist living in Beirut, Lebanon 30 years after the end of the civil war, and a few months before the disastrous explosion of August 2020. Presented in Kai’s otherworldly palette, we share Samar’s experience as he wanders between anguished dreams […]
Seth is one of Canada’s most critically acclaimed authors whose graphic novel style has captured hearts and imaginations around the world. He is the first cartoonist to be nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize for his magnum opus Clyde Fans. His new book, Palookaville 24, is the latest installment in his one-man anthology project. Its […]
Award-winning writers David Bergen and Blaise Ndala come together for a fascinating discussion on their new novels, both gripping stories of displacement, political turmoil and betrayal. Scotiabank Giller Prize-winner Bergen’s Away from the Dead immerses us in Ukraine during the chaos of the Russian Revolution and a fight for love and sanctuary; while Ndala’s In […]
With today’s challenges of food production and globalisation, many are looking to a surprising place to safeguard the future: the past. In the tradition of Michael Pollan and Anthony Bourdain, Taras Grescoe offers an exciting and globe-trotting account of ancient cuisines and why reviving the foods of the past is the key to saving the […]
Bill Buford is perhaps the most literary of chefs, having cut his teeth as the founding editor of the iconic literary magazine Granta and founding publisher of Granta Books, followed by a stint as The New Yorker’s fiction editor. The culinary cravings proved too much as he gave it all up to train as an Italian chef, […]
Gyozas, pierogies, empanadas, siaopao… if the world’s cuisines share one common food it would be the dumpling, a dish that can be found on every continent on Earth and in every corner of Toronto. In What We Talk About When We Talk About Dumplings, a group of Toronto food writers, journalists, culinary historians and chefs […]
TIFA is delighted to welcome author and Oscar-winning director of Women Talking, Sarah Polley, to discuss her creative career and her memoir Run Towards the Danger, winner of the 2022 Toronto Book Award. In this fascinating conversation, Polley will discuss the role books, film and art have played shaping her life and work, how the […]
Richard Ford’s Be Mine marks the end of an era in American literature. Spanning four celebrated novels, one short story collection and almost 40 years, this fifth and final instalment of the iconic Frank Bascombe series is as funny as it is poignant in its confrontation of mortality. As he steps into the role of […]
Cities burn in the aftermath of political breakdown, children rule their own kingdom in the trees, and the future of society hangs in the balance in two apocalyptic stories from Tomas Hachard and Catherine Leroux. They’ll discuss disturbing dystopias and finding hope for the future. In Hachard’s debut novel, City in Flames, long distance lovers […]
