Write the Neighbourhood

Sean Dixon, Margaret DeRosia and Patricia Scarlett

Write the Neighbourhood

Sean Dixon, Margaret DeRosia and Patricia Scarlett

4:30pm

Saturday, September 30, 2023

Brigantine Patio

60 mins

TIFA is proud to present a new collection of writing penned by local Toronto authors featured recently in Toronto Lit Up, a joint book launch initiative with the Toronto Arts Council. Authors were invited to write about the neighbourhood they each call home (literally or figuratively).

Each Write the Neighbourhood event will spotlight a selection of authors taking you on a tour around the city via the most reliable form of transportation Toronto has to offer — the written word! Whether it’s a short story or essay, poem or illustration, each author is sure to show you what they love about the city they call home.

At this event:

  • Sean Dixon
  • Margaret DeRosia
  • Patricia Scarlett

Toronto International Festival of Authors logo - Festival Dates: September 21 to October 1, 2023       

Free
Reading

How to attend

This FREE event requires registration. Pass Holders should register for free events as well.

TIFA is proud to present a new collection of writing penned by local Toronto authors featured recently in Toronto Lit Up, a joint book launch initiative with the Toronto Arts Council. Authors were invited to write about the neighbourhood they each call home (literally or figuratively).

Each Write the Neighbourhood event will spotlight a selection of authors taking you on a tour around the city via the most reliable form of transportation Toronto has to offer — the written word! Whether it’s a short story or essay, poem or illustration, each author is sure to show you what they love about the city they call home.

At this event:

  • Sean Dixon
  • Margaret DeRosia
  • Patricia Scarlett

Toronto International Festival of Authors logo - Festival Dates: September 21 to October 1, 2023       

Free
Reading

Featured Authors

Sean Dixon grew up in a family of 12, including his 8 siblings, parents and a grandmother, through several Ontario towns, predisposing him to tell stories about groups of people thrown together in common cause. His debut novel, The Girls Who Saw Everything, was named one of Quill & Quire’s best of the year. His previous books include The Many Revenges of Kip Flynn, The Feathered Cloak and the plays Orphan Song and A God In Need of Help. A recent children’s picture book, The Family Tree, was inspired by his experience of creating a family through adoption with his wife, the documentarian Kat Cizek.

Read more about Sean Dixon

A former waitress, ballerina, bookseller, and film publicist, Margaret DeRosia is a writer, editor, and historian originally from Michigan. She received her BA in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan and her PhD from the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where her dissertation, Detecting Desire: Envisioning Film Noir, was a Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ finalist for dissertation of the year. Margaret has taught film history, literature and digital media studies at the Universities of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz, Sonoma State University, the California College of Art, and Western University. Her debut novel, Eight Strings, was an instant bestseller in Canada, a work of queer historical fiction set in the glittering milieu of late nineteenth-century Venetian marionette theater (Simon & Schuster Canada, 2023). Currently, she resides in Toronto with her wife and two cats.

Read more about Margaret DeRosia

Patricia Scarlett's stories reflect contemporary Black life in Canada and explore the intersections of race, class, and culture through a Caribbean-Canadian lens. Her early experience in television was primarily in international sales. Looking to the many journals she had kept over the years about the inner and outer workings of the domestic and international TV industry, Patricia wrote her first novel Blinded by the Brass Ring. Patricia regularly attends industry trade events such as MIP-TV and MIPCOM in Cannes, France. She is the recipient of the 2020 Afroglobal Television Media Award. Raised in Montreal, Patricia now lives in Toronto.

Read more about Patricia Scarlett

4:30pm

Saturday, September 30

Brigantine Patio

60 mins

How to attend

This FREE event requires registration. Pass Holders should register for free events as well.

What to read

The Abduction of Seven Forgers by , Eight Strings by , Blinded by the Brass Ring by ,
TIFA 2023

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