WORD ON THE STREET Readings, panels and, book tables at Queens Park Circle (University north of College), Sunday (September 22), 11 am to 6 pm. Free. thewordonthestreet.ca. See listing.
This year’s all-day literary love-in features nearly 150 authors of all kinds, with lots of stuff for kids, too. Wander around, peek into the tents (I’m hosting at the Great Books Marquee from 3:30 pm until the end of day), chow down at the food trucks and pay attention to these writers in particular.
MARY SWAN
4:30 pm, Remarkable Reads Tent
Swan was Giller-shortlisted for her strangely beautiful, almost experimental The Boys In Trees, and comes back with My Ghosts, another intricate novel about family secrets (Knopf).
JOSEPH BOYDEN
3 pm, Bestsellers Stage
Boyden has turned into Canada’s foremost aboriginal writer, snagging the Giller Prize for Through Black Spruce in 2009. His new book, The Orenda (Hamish Hamilton), again searches our nation’s soul, this time through a fictional account of a First Nations elder who connects with a sympathetic Jesuit missionary.
NICOLE LUNDRIGAN
12:45 pm, Great Books Marquee
I was knocked out by Lundrigan’s dread-filled novel, Glass Boys, which copped a spot on my top-10 books list. In The Widow Tree (Douglas & McIntyre), she again mines the roiling emotions of teenagers in the story of a trio who find Roman coins and can’t agree on what to do with them.
JAMES CUNNINGHAM
noon, Bestsellers Stage
Hard to resist the host of the Food Network’s Eat St., who hits town with Eat St.: Recipes From The Tastiest, Messiest, And Most Irresistible Food Trucks (Penguin). You know where to park yourself.
KATRINA ONSTAD
11:30 am and 3:30 pm, Toronto Book Awards Tent
Onstad’s deft Everybody Has Everything (McClelland & Stewart), about a woman struggling with her disinclination to have children, was one of NOW’s top 10 books of 2012 and is on the short list for the Toronto Book Award.
BRIAN FAWCETT
3:30 pm, Great Books Marquee
The local writer famous for messing with just about every genre returns to fiction for the first time since 1993 with The Last Of The Lumbermen (Cormorant), about a man living a lie in a logging town in northern BC.
ELIZABETH RUTH
1:45 pm, Great Books Marquee 5 pm, Wordshop Marquee
In her politically complex novel Matadora (Cormorant), Ruth tells the story of a young woman determined to become a matador in 1930s Spain.
HELEN HUMPHREYS, PRISCILA UPPAL
2 pm, Wordshop Marquee
Humphreys (Nocturne, HarperCollins) and Uppal (Projection: Encounters With My Runaway Mother, Thomas Allen), both authors of memoirs about family members, sit on a panel aptly named Skeletons In The Closet.
