Festivals/Programmes: TIFA Presents

TIFA Presents: An Evening with John Irving

THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT Join us for a remarkable evening with internationally acclaimed author, John Irving, as he presents his sixteenth novel, Queen Esther – a powerful return to the world of his beloved classic The Cider House Rules. Spanning from Vienna in 1905 to Jerusalem in 1981, Queen Esther traces Esther Nacht’s extraordinary […]

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Emma Knight

Emma Knight‘s debut novel The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus is a Read with Jenna pick, a Giller Prize finalist, a New York Times bestseller and an instant #1 Canadian bestseller. She is a co-founder of Greenhouse, an award-winning Canadian beverage company, and has co-authored two nationally bestselling cookbooks, The Greenhouse Cookbook (2017) and […]

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Eddy Boudel Tan

Eddy Boudel Tan has been a finalist for the Edmund White Award, the ReLit Best Novel Award, and the Ferro-Grumley Award for his novels After Elias and The Rebellious Tide. He was named a Rising Star by Writers’ Trust of Canada in 2021. His short stories can be found in Joyland, Yolk, and various literary […]

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TIFA Presents: Between the Pages

PUBLIC ON SALE: October 16 Celebrate the best in contemporary Canadian literature at an evening showcasing the 2025 Giller Prize shortlisted authors. Join these exceptional authors as they read from their nominated works, share insights into their craft, and discuss the stories that earned them a place among Canada’s literary elite. Don’t miss this chance […]

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We Love You, Bunny

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER Shortlisted for the 2025 Giller Prize Named a Must-Read Pick by The New York Times, Oprah Daily, People, Associated Press, Marie Claire, Bustle, The Boston Globe, Goodreads, Women’s Wear Daily, and more “Dark academia clan, rise up! We Love You, Bunny feels like Han Kang’s The Vegetarian meets…Heathers.” —People The highly anticipated […]

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The Tiger and the Cosmonaut

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 GILLER PRIZE A noirish page-turner about a mysterious disappearance and a moving portrait of a Chinese Canadian family navigating insecurities, expectations, and simmering anger in their small BC town. Casper Han grew up the dutiful son of immigrants who never felt entirely welcome in their remote corner of British Columbia. Now […]

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The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus

INSTANT #1 BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 GILLER PRIZE A witty, warm and brilliantly told debut that is at once a love story, a story of female friendship and motherhood, and an irresistible mystery surrounding an extraordinary British family. Arriving at the University of Edinburgh for her first term, Pen knows her divorced parents back […]

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Queen Esther

After forty years, John Irving returns to the world of his bestselling classic novel and Academy Award–winning film, The Cider House Rules, revisiting the orphanage in St. Cloud’s, Maine, where Dr. Wilbur Larch takes in Esther—a Viennese-born Jew whose life is shaped by anti-Semitism. Esther Nacht is born in Vienna in 1905. Her father dies […]

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The Paris Express

From Emma Donoghue, author of Room, The Wonder and Pull of the Stars comes a taut and suspenseful historical novel that reimagines an 1895 French railway disaster, an event famously documented in dramatic photographs Set over a single day, as the morning train travels from the Normandy coast to Paris, men, women and children take their seats in the passenger […]

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Pick a Colour

From Giller Prize and O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa comes a revelatory novel about loneliness, love, labour, and class. An intimate and sharply written book following a nail salon owner as she toils away for the privileged clients who don’t even know her true name. “One of the greatest novels I have ever read.” RITA […]

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Qurat Dar

Qurat Dar was the City of Mississauga’s third Youth Poet Laureate and a Canadian Individual Poetry Slam National Champion. Qurat’s work has appeared in the Art Gallery of Mississauga, the Bradley Museum, and across the TTC network, among other places. Her first book of poetry, Non-Prophet, received the inaugural Claire Harris Poetry Prize and is […]

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Peter Aguero

Peter Aguero was born and raised in the wilds of South Jersey. He’s been working with The Moth since 2007 as a storyteller, host, instructor, and staff clergy. He makes his home in Queens, New York, with his wife, Dr. Fine.

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Nick Ullett

Nick Ullett arrived in the U.S. in the 60s as half of a comedy team. They played everywhere, did endless TV including six Ed Sullivan Shows, and had a ball. In the 70s he went into advertising and ended up as Creative Director of J. Walter Thompson in Los Angeles. He wrote his way back into […]

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Connie Shin

Connie Shin is the product of Korean immigrants. She is an only child but grew up believing she was separated from a twin named Michael. She currently brings that same fantastical way of thinking to her job as the Director of Student Life at a small school in New York City. This is not what […]

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TIFA Presents: The Moth

Join us for an unforgettable evening of true stories told live as The Moth Mainstage returns to Toronto as part of the TIFA Presents 2025 season. This signature event brings together storytellers from Canada and around the world to share bold, funny, and heartfelt tales that celebrate the art and craft of storytelling. The Mainstage […]

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John Irving

John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven. In 1992, he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. […]

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TIFA Presents: An Evening with Margaret Atwood

THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT Join us for the literary event of the year as Margaret Atwood launches her long-awaited memoir, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts. Written with her signature wit and candour, Atwood recounts a life shaped by wild northern landscapes, literary invention, and political upheaval that inspired her most iconic works. […]

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Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts

How does one of the greatest storytellers of our time write her own life? The long-awaited memoir from one of our most lauded and influential cultural figures. “Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives, and the one who writes. Though everything written must have passed through their minds, or mind, they […]

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TIFA Presents: Ian McEwan

Join us for an afternoon with Ian McEwan, the Booker Prize–winning author of Atonement and Saturday as he presents his genre-bending new novel of love, legacy, and literary intrigue. In What We Can Know, Ian McEwan invites us into a world of shifting truths, moving from a candlelit dinner in 2014 where a mysterious poem […]

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What We Can Know

From the Booker prize–winning, bestselling author of Atonement and Saturday, a genre-bending new novel full of secrets and surprises; an immersive exploration, across time and history, of what can ever be truly known. 2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife’s birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, […]

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TIFA Presents: An Evening with R.F. Kuang

Join us for an unforgettable evening with R.F. Kuang, the New York Times #1 bestselling author of The Poppy War, Babel and Yellowface. Kuang returns with her highly anticipated novel, Katabasis, a dark academia fantasy where two rival graduate students must journey to Hell to rescue their professor’s soul— perhaps at the cost of their […]

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Katabasis

Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek: The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All […]

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Rebecca F. Kuang

Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, and Yellowface. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now […]

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TIFA Presents: An Evening with André Alexis

Join Giller Prize-winning author of Fifteen Dogs, André Alexis, as he presents his dazzling new story collection, Other Worlds. Alexis masterfully connects worlds — real, invented, and uncanny — in these captivating tales that span from 19th century Trinidad to contemporary Toronto. Blending philosophical inquiry with wry humour and drawing on multiple literary genres, these […]

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