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How It Works A Festival Pass is your ticket to explore the 2024 Festival! Come for an evening, a weekend, or every day of the Festival! Tickets and passes are required to attend most staged, indoor events, but are not required to attend events in The Bays, TIFA Kids events, exhibits and installations, or visits […]
Lauren Beck (Mount Allison University, Canada) is professor of Visual and Material Culture Studies and the Canada Research Chair in Intercultural Encounter. She researches visual culture and place identity. Her recent books include Canada’s Place Names and How to Change Them (2022), Illustrating el Cid, 1498-Today (2019) and Transforming the Enemy in Spanish Culture (2013), […]
Shawn Micallef is the author of Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness, Full Frontal TO: Exploring Toronto’s Vernacular Architecture and The Trouble With Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure. He’s a Toronto Star columnist, instructor at University of Toronto, a Senior Fellow at Massey College and a co-founder of Spacing magazine. […]
Marcus Kliewer is a writer and stop-motion animator. His debut novel We Used to Live Here began life as a serialized short story on Reddit, where it won the Scariest Story of 2021 award on the NoSleep forum (eighteen million members). Film rights were snapped up by Netflix, and it was acquired by Simon & […]
A graphic novelist and filmmaker, Barrack Zailaa Rima was born in 1972 in Tripoli, Lebanon, and has lived in Brussels for more than 30 years. A former member of the Beirut-based Samandal collective, she is the author of several graphic novels, editorial cartoons and compelling works of comics journalism including Le conteur du Caire, Beyrouth […]
Born in the heart of rural Quebec, Justin Giovannetti Lamothe has worked as a journalist in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. His reporting has focused on the human drama at the centre of such major events as the rail disaster in Lac-Mégantic and the wildfires in Fort McMurray, and has earned him an investigative award […]
Liane Moriarty is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Truly Madly Guilty, Big Little Lies, The Husband’s Secret, The Hypnotist’s Love Story and What Alice Forgot. She lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and two children.
Saad T. Farooqi holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Kingston University London and a BA in English Literature from the American University of Sharjah. His short stories and poems have appeared in various international magazines. His shining moment on stage was accidentally setting his poem on fire by standing too close to a candle. […]
Yuval Noah Harari is a historian and philosopher, best known for his bestselling books, including Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. His works have sold over 45 million copies in 65 languages, making him a highly influential public intellectual. Born in Israel in 1976, Harari earned his […]
Jenna Tang is a Taiwanese writer, educator and translator who translates between Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French and English. She is a board member and chair of the Equity Advocates Committee at the American Literary Translators Association. Her translations and essays are published in McSweeney’s, Lit Hub, The Paris Review, Latin American Literature Today, World Literature […]
John Vaillant’s acclaimed, award-winning non-fiction books, The Golden Spruce and The Tiger, were national bestsellers. His debut novel, The Jaguar’s Children, was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. His most recent book, Fire Weather, won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Non-Fiction, was a finalist for the […]
Dr. Marie Wilson (CM, ONWT, MSC) spent six years crisscrossing the country as a commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. She has spoken throughout North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand on the potential of reconciliation. Born in Ontario, she has lived, studied and worked as a journalist, teacher, professor, trainer and […]
Ruha Benjamin is an internationally recognized writer, speaker and professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where she is the founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. She is the award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code and editor of Captivating Technology, among many other […]
One of Italy’s most critically acclaimed contemporary novelists, Nicola Lagioia has been the recipient of the Volponi, Straniero and Viareggio awards. In 2015, he won the Strega Prize for Ferocity (Europa, 2017). He has been a jury member of the Venice Film Festival and was the programme director of the Turin Book Fair from 2018 […]
Cheryl Isaacs can often be found running through the Carolinian forests of Southwestern Ontario, where she has fearlessly enjoyed the trails for years. Her Kanien’kéha culture often appears in her writing. The Unfinished is her debut novel, though her work has appeared in numerous Indigenous publications.
Margaret Augustine was born in Malta and first made a connection with Atlantic Canada when she started her master’s degree in Island Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island, which is where she met her now-husband, Dr. Patrick Augustine, of Elsipogtog First Nation. Margaret has been a community member in Elsipogtog for many years. […]
Born in Switzerland in the 1980s, Léonie Bischoff moved to Brussels to study comic books and fall in love with the city and the medium. Her works at first were short stories in collective projects before she expanded to longer formats, in solo, team work and adaptation. She gained visibility by adapting Camilla Läckberg’s Fjallbacka […]
Jeffrey J. Wilkinson, PhD, is an American Jew who lives in Canada. He holds a doctorate in Education from the University of Toronto and works actively in the Jewish community and beyond on issues relating to trauma and the Israel-Palestine struggle. Jeff’s partnership with Raja, borne out of deep listening and learning together, has become […]
Born and raised in Taiwan, picture book author Lian-En Lin excels in using mixed media collage, acrylic paint and water-based crayons. Her creative content is often inspired by her current feelings and life experiences, typically starting with images before incorporating words. By day, she is a calm and gentle illustrator, but by night, she transforms […]
Shelley Wood is a Canadian writer and journalist. Her breakout debut novel, The Quintland Sisters, sold approximately 50,000 copies in North America and debuted as a #1 bestseller on the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail fiction lists, holding the top spot for five weeks, then ending the year as #7 on the list […]
Holly Pester is a poet and writer. She has worked in sound art and performance, with original dramatic work on BBC Radio 4 and collaborations with Serpentine Galleries, Women’s Art Library and Wellcome Collection. Pester lives in Colchester, England.
Chinenye Emezie‘s short stories and essays have appeared in Africa Book Club, Kalahari Review, Book Lovers Hangout and Opinion Nigeria. She is the 2013 winner of the Africa Book Club Short Story Competition. Born in a House of Glass is her first novel. Born in Nigeria, she currently resides in Richmond Hill, Ontario.
