Corey Mintz is a freelance food reporter (New York Times, Globe and Mail, Eater and others), focusing on the intersection between food with labour, politics, farming, ethics and culture. He has been a cook, a restaurant critic and is the author of How to Host a Dinner Party, which chronicled 192 dinner parties he hosted with fascinating people including politicians, refugees, criminals, artists, academics, acupuncturists, high-rise window washers, competitive barbecuers and one monkey.
You are invited to the virtual launch of THE NEXT SUPPER by Corey Mintz on November 24 at 7 pm ET. It will be a fascinating conversation about why and how the hospitality industry must change. This is a free Toronto Lit Up event, but if you’re planning to attend, please register in advance. A reminder there is also the option to purchase a delicious charcuterie platter from our restaurant partner, Richmond Station, to enjoy during the event. They will ship anywhere in Canada (at no additional cost) but the deadline to order is November 14.
From the farm to the curbside pickup parking spot, everything about the restaurant business is changing, for better or worse. The Next Supper tells this story, and offers clear and essential advice for what and how to eat to ensure the well-being of cooks and waitstaff, not to mention our bodies and the environment. Books are available for pick up from Good Egg, or delivered within Canada.
This event will take place virtually. A Zoom link will be provided in advance of the event.
Toronto Lit Up is a multi-year initiative, started in 2016 by the Toronto International Festival of Authors and the Toronto Arts Council, to spotlight Toronto writers and empower local artists with career-building opportunities. Between April 2016 to December 2020, Toronto Lit Up has produced 119 events to launch 143 books by 212 Toronto authors. Toronto Lit Up book launches take place throughout the year at venues across the city. They are open to the public and free to attend. Click here for more information.
Join Toronto Lit Up, Brick Books and A Different Booklist on Thursday, November 4, 2021 at 6:30pm ET to celebrate the launch of Assiyah Jamilla Touré’s book Autowar. The virtual event will feature Kim Ninkuru, Yemisi Adeleye, Ra’anaa Brown and host nènè myriam konaté.
Autowar is a visceral, vital, unblinking debut collection of poems exploring kinesthetic memory and longing, inherited violence, and the body as a geographical site. For some of us our first lessons are in how much pain we’re made to think we deserve–and the resulting scars are always meant to be kept secret. Assiyah Jamilla Touré’s debut collection is a record of those scars–not those inflicted on us by the thousands of little wars we live in everyday, but those that come afterwards, those we inflict upon ourselves to mark the path. You can get your copy of Autowar from A Different Booklist here.
About the special guests joining Assiyah Jamilla Touré:
NÈNÈ MYRIAM KONATÉ (b.1993, tio’tia:ke/mooniyang/montreal) is a child of ayiti and mali’s diasporas living between tio’tia:ke/mooniyang and ottawa, unceded kanien’keha:ka and algonquin anishinaabeg territories. their transdisciplinary practice is concerned with somatic knowledge(s) and storytelling. nènè is the founder of the clap back, a dialogue-based space that facilitates the emergence of transdisciplinary experiences by exploring relationships between pop culture and lived realities.
KIM NINKURU is a multimedia artist from Bujumbura, in Burundi, currently residing in Toronto. She uses performance art, installation, video, spoken word and movement to create pieces that give her the chance to explore and express rage, love, desire, beauty, or pain in relation to her own body and mind. Her work heavily questions our preconceived notions of gender, race, sexuality and class. It is grounded in the firm belief that blackness is past, present and future at any given moment.
YEMISI ADELEYE is an earrings enthusiast and a multidisciplinary artist based in Tiohtià:ke “Montreal”. Their main medium right now is DJing.
Originally from Brampton, Ontario, RA’ANAA BROWN received her BA and MA at Laurentian University’s McEwen School of Architecture. She is currently pursuing her PhD research on the intersection of Black art and activism (artivism) at Concordia University. Ra’anaa is the Co-Founder and President of Black Lives Matter Sudbury and Installation Coordinator for Up Here: Urban Arts Festival, where she has contributed her talents to the development of many Afrocentric artistic installations. As an artist, activist, and academic, Ra’anaa is dedicated to creating space for people of colour and continually promoting anti-racist practices and social justice.
Toronto Lit Up is a multi-year initiative, started in 2016 by the Toronto International Festival of Authors and the Toronto Arts Council, to spotlight Toronto writers and empower local artists with career-building opportunities. Between April 2016 to December 2020, Toronto Lit Up has produced 119 events to launch 143 books by 212 Toronto authors. Toronto Lit Up book launches take place throughout the year at venues across the city. They are open to the public and free to attend. Click here for more information.
Assiyah Jamilla Touré is a multidisciplinary artist of West African descent. They were born and raised on Skwxwú7mesh land and lived for many years in Kanien’kehà:ka territory (Montreal) and are now based on the lands of the Mississaugas of the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Wendat (Toronto). In 2018 their chapbook feral was published by House House Press. Autowar is their first full-length collection.
Starkie Mak is an artist and writer deeply in love with expressive drawing and painting. Her paintings have been exhibited across Europe and Asia. She illustrated for children’s magazine Cotton Tree and is an art teacher educating children. The classic novel The Secret Garden sparked her interest in literature. Literature and illustration are indispensable parts of her life. She studied creative writing at the University of Oxford. She moved to Toronto from Hong Kong in 2018.
Join Mawenzi House on Tuesday, September 28, 2021 at 7pm ET to celebrate the launch of charles c. smith’s poetry book, searching for eastman. The free Toronto Lit Up book launch will take place at 918 Bathurst Centre for Culture, Arts, Media and Education. The doors will open at 6:45pm ET if you would like to attend in person or you can watch from the comfort of your home via Zoom.
searching for eastman is a multidisciplinary performance—a choreopoem—in four acts, based on the interpretation of four of Julius Eastman’s compositions—evil nigger; prelude to st joan; stay on it; and gay guerrilla. Making use of different artistic forms—poetry, theatre, music, dance, video and digital—it is inspired by the African griot tradition, the Harlem Renaissance (eg the work of Langston Hughes with jazz and Kurt Weil), and the Black Arts movement (eg Amiri Baraka’s work with Sun Ra). You can purchase your copy of the book from Mawenzi House here.
Toronto Lit Up is a multi-year initiative, started in 2016 by the Toronto International Festival of Authors and the Toronto Arts Council, to spotlight Toronto writers and empower local artists with career-building opportunities. Between April 2016 to December 2020, Toronto Lit Up has produced 119 events to launch 143 books by 212 Toronto authors. Toronto Lit Up book launches take place throughout the year at venues across the city. They are open to the public and free to attend. Click here for more information.
charles c. smith is a poet, playwright and essayist who has written and edited fourteen books. He studied with William Packard at New York University, at Herbert Berghof Studio as well as the Frank Silvera Writers’ Workshop. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry Canada Review, Quill and Quire, Descant, Dandelion and Fiddlehead. He is Executive Director of Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario and Artistic Director of the Wind in the Leaves collective. His recent books include travelogue of the bereaved, The Dirty War: The Making of the Myth of Black Dangerousness, whispers and destination out.