Each day of the Festival, tune in to hear how our world is being reshaped in search of a sustainable future. Experts will discuss how local, national and international politics, as well as societies, cultures and equity issues, are impacting our collective sustainability in a number of forms.

Authors, academics, activists, and experts will be in candid conversation reflecting on the topics that matter most today. Every day brings new speakers addressing the topics highlighted below, which are critical to understanding and shaping our world.

Topics include:

1. Sustaining the Self: The Mental Health Pandemic
2. Sustainable Living: Toronto’s Homelessness Crisis
3. Climate for All: Disability Rights & the Environment
4. Sustained Breath: Fighting for Clean Air
5. Space Travel: A Sustainable Future Frontier
6. Sustainable Agriculture: Putting Thought into Our Food
7. The New Inequality: Vaccine Ethics
8. The Politics of Water: Resources Vs. Rights
9. Sustainable Life: Community Care for an Aging Population
10. Our Times are Crisis: Covid, Climate & Disaster Management
11. Finding Truth & Reconciliation in Canada

Our Critical Conversations series garnered a tremendous response when debuted at last year’s festival. Building on the successes of last year, we have focused on the theme of sustainability in 2021.

Your support creates an open atmosphere to agree, disagree and provide thoughtful analysis on a sustainable future. Ensuring conversations like these take place advance our understanding of issues from multiple perspectives, and for that, we couldn’t be more thankful.

Your thanks includes our most generous recognition and thanks for all of our Critical Conversations digitally during the opening and closing of the event, additionally being recognized by the moderator of the event.

As each of the topics has special meaning, we wish to offer you the opportunity to support one or more topics specifically of interest to you. Individual event partners can support a specific Critical Conversation for $2,500.
 

Exceptional, entertaining and inspiring performances are presented every evening as we bring together some of the best artists, musicians and storytellers from Canada and around the world.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson in Concert
One of the most compelling Indigenous voices of a generation, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Noopiming), breaks open the boundaries between story and song in a stunning musical performance of sound, light and sovereign creativity.

Toronto Poetry Slam
Toronto’s largest poetry showcase returns for a fifth festival appearance, featuring some of Canada’s best spoken word artists and next generation stars. This high-energy spectacle of original content will leave you feeling inspired.

Literary Death Match
Experience text off the page like never before, as the internationally acclaimed Literary Death Match brings its circus to TIFA. A thrilling mix of famous and emerging authors will compete with performances of their most electric writing to reach a comic finale! It’s the writing world’s American Idol (without the meanness).

charles c smith
charles c. smith (Searching for Eastman) unveils an evocative programme of theatrical storytelling from the wind in the leaves collective. Don’t miss this multi-disciplinary performance, exploration and interpretation of the life and work of the brazen and brilliant gay, Black American composer Julius Eastman.

New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time
Drawn from millions of words, hundreds of interviews, and six years in the making, Craig Taylor’s New Yorkers is a grand portrait of an irrepressible city and a hymn to the vitality and resilience of its people. Taylor brings together a collection of performances and readings to capture the rise and fall and rise of love of the city, for this very special event.

In the Moment
Curated by Black Speculative Art Movement (BSAM) Canada and hosted by the ever charismatic, Toronto-born artist named Levyi-Alexander Love, In the Moment creates a space for Black LGBTQ2S+ folks and allies to be free, highlighting the vibrant vocals of three artists that identify as belonging to the Black LGBTQ2S+ community. Alongside performing, each will participate in BSAM’s version of song association to allow the audience to get to know the artists better.

On Time and Water
The power of storytelling is crucial in these times of climate crisis. Andri Snaer Magnason presents On Time and Water, created in response to a scientist: “If you cannot understand our scientific findings and present them in an emotional, psychological, poetic or mythological context, then no one will really understand the issue, and the world will end.”

Soundtracks and Stanzas
Whether it be written for the page, the silver screen, the slam, or the melody, every poet plays with language to reveal the inexpressible. Tune in to meet a new generation of Canadian poets who are pushing the possibilities and challenging the rules, through the physical, vocal and material elements of their poems. Curated and hosted by Britta B., we will celebrate the influence and indelible impact of dub poetry with Afua Cooper, Lillian Allen and d’bi young anitafrika.

International Spoken Word Showcase
Making the most of our freedom to travel – digitally! Finger snaps at the ready to give a warm welcome to some of the world’s leading spoken word poets, gracing the festival stage for a lively performance of rhyme, repetition, improvisation and word play.

Begin By Telling
Meghan Remy, frontperson and creative core of the band U.S. Girls, presents her debut book and memoir, Begin by Telling. This hybrid presentation of music and conversation will showcase how this Juno and Polaris Prize-nominated musician has become one of the most vital storytellers of her time.

The New Embassy
Be transported to the titular Bohemian Embassy, Toronto’s most famed countercultural artistic hub of the 1960s. Two-time national poetry slam champion Jennifer Alicia Murrin has curated this unique lineup of artists, inspired by the now-fabled coffee house.

We have all missed live performances for their breathtaking shared moments of joy, heartbreak, and self-realization. While we cannot promise shared moments, we can promise thought provoking, highly entertaining performances with a range of talent second to none.

Our thanks to you include our most generous recognition and thanks for all of our Daily Performances digitally in the opening and closing of each event. If you choose to support our Daily Performances before August 21, we can include our thanks for your support in the introduction to all the events recorded by our own Roland Gulliver, Director of the Toronto International Festival of Authors.

Artists and authors are loved by each person for their own connection and reasons. We wish to offer you the opportunity to support one or more of the Daily Performances specifically of interest to you. Individual event partners can support a specific Daily Performance for $2,500.

From picture books to podcasts the festival explores what it means to be a young person in the world today: dealing with heartbreak and hardship, exploring the self and identity, learning how to grow up without falling down, and how to find happiness and the space just to have fun!

Your support for this project is one that can bring lasting educational opportunities in this digital era for children and youth of all ages. We are all captivated by the magical power of storytelling whether it is on the screen or the page, in a comic book or on a stage. Support for TIFAKIDS is a magical opportunity you won’t forget.

During the Festival, we will explore life, love and laughter and celebrate the wizardry of words to make sense of our worlds. Educators, parents and caregivers have learned to navigate a new digital landscape; children are digital natives.

The pandemic has hit children and young people hard with schools closed, activities cancelled and friendships fractured but we’ll all come together through shared experiences, conversations, discussions and creativity to build communities for young people to feel connected and heard.

Our digital platform brings authors and illustrators together. We have lined-up leading authors and illustrators of books for young people of all ages from Canada and around the world appearing in nearly 30 events that your support will help us broadcast across each day of the Festival.

Curated elements of our TIFA KIDS events will be available year-round for free on our website for parents, caregivers and educators to access.

As part of our TIFA KIDS offering, you can support us as we broadcast the virtual ceremony for this year’s Canadian Children’s Book Centre Awards as well as featured authors and illustrators such as:

• Caldecott Medal winners Brian Selznick, Kate DiCamillo, Jon Klassen and LeUyen Pham
• Newbery Award winners Kate DiCamillo and Patrick Ness
• International writers and illustrators from Barbados, Ireland, UK and US

Supporting our young people in Toronto, Canada, and around the world includes the very best in Canadian children’s writing by exploring the world from a diversity of perspectives including neurodiversity and sight impairment as well as from many cultures and heritages with fun, free connections to authors year-round, this is one of the most heart-warming gifts of support you could give.

We invite you to be a part of adding joy, discovery and excitement to the digital world, and foster love for reading, books, and authors. Your support strengthens our ability to present free, digital activities to surprise and delight the entire family all year round, with specific recognition offered to you during every TIFA KIDS event.

Take an audio journey through the neighbourhoods that inspired your favourite Toronto stories. Write in the Neighbourhood returns for a second season, with a new roster of local authors as your city guides.

In each episode, local authors bring their neighbourhoods to life through readings, interviews, and ambient recordings. In 2020, the festival featured Sidura Ludwig, Jillian Tamaki and Natasha Ramoutar, exploring their own neighbourhoods of Thornhill, Parkdale and Scarborough.

This year our exciting lineup features episodes with Silmy Abdullah, Elaine Bomberry, Erica Commanda, Mnawaate Gordon-Corbiere, Uzma Jalaluddin, Perry King, Andre Morissea and Jason Ryle.

As a supporter of Write in the Neighbourhood, we offer you our thanks within these podcasts with a personalized thank you recorded by the author at the beginning of the podcast and at the end in the credits of the production.