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The top ten events at this year’s International Festival of Authors

INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF AUTHORS Thursday (October 20) to October 30, at Harbourfront Centre (235 Queens Quay West). $18, students and youth under 25 free, packages available. ifoa.org. See listings.


Jay McInerney 

The bestselling American author pursues his obsessions with power in the publishing industry, cocaine and New York City in Bright, Precious Days. He’s a spectacular talker, as you’ll see when he reads from and talks about the new book.

October 21, 7:30 Fleck Dance Theatre

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David Szalay

Not on your radar? The Booker jury’s certainly noticed, giving him a spot on this year’s shortlist. All That Man Is is a series of stories, each of which takes place at a different stage in a man’s life. He’s on a slate with Rowan Hisayo Buchanan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan.

October 22, 1 pm, Lakeside Terrace

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Michael DeForge

The festival puts a special focus on graphic novels, including an exhibition created by Canuck cartoonist Seth spotlighting DeForge, Nina Bunjevac, Nick Drnaso, Jon McNaught and Chris Oliveros. We think DeForge is the one to watch, but all should be cool at an event called Five Artists, Five Ways: The Modern Graphic Novel. 

October 22, 8 pm, Lakeside Terrace

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Michael Helm

The Writers’ Trust shortlister reads from his exquisite novel After James – poetic, disturbing, hallucinatory – alongside Sharon Butala, Chris Chambers and Gail Anderson-Dargatz.

October 23, 1:30 pm, Studio Theatre 

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Suzana Tratnik

The Slovenian not only writes edgy stories about uppity little girls and emotionally challenged lesbian adults, she was a founder of Yugoslavia’s 80s LGBT rights and cultural movements. She sits on a panel, which I’ll be moderating, with Australian star Charlotte Wood, Amy Jones and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan to talk about pushing the envelope with female characters. 

Ocober 23, 3:30 pm, Brigantine Room

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André Alexis

Last year’s Giller winner is already back with a new novel, The Hidden Keys, about a heroin addict whose  father left her and each of her four siblings a mysterious object that leads to a mammoth inheritance – someone just has to find it. Reading with Alexis: GG nominee Anosh Irani, Farzana Doctor and Richard Russo

October 27, 8 pm, Brigantine Room

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Chris Hedges

One thing about journalist and activist Hedges: he holds nothing back. Doubtless he comes to IFOA ready to kick ass in a keynote address entitled The Price Of Truth In Journalism In A Post-Fact World. 

October 28, 9 am, Fleck Dance Theatre

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Madeleine Thien

We couldn’t fail to mention the way Canadian author Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing has conquered the English-language literary world. Her story, shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award, the Giller and the Booker, tracks a family of gifted classical musicians in China from Mao to Tiananmen Square. Thien reads alongside Alexandra Risen and Kate Taylor.

October 28, 6:30 pm, Brigantine Room

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Emma Donoghue

The Writers’ Trust Award winner for Room and Oscar nominee for its screenplay adaptation comes to town as part of the festival’s focus on contemporary Irish literature. We think of Donoghue as one of our own, but her new novel, The Wonder, is quintessentially Irish in setting and theme: an English nurse must determine the motivations of a possibly saintly child who’s fasting but not dying. And I get to do the onstage interview.

October 28, 8 pm, Fleck Dance Theatre 

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Jane Jacobs Tribute

Celebrating the centenary of the late great city planner’s birth, IFOA authors and admirers gather for a love-in in her honour. On the slate: Jacobs’s biographer Robert Kanigel (Eyes On The Street), former mayor David Miller and Nathan Storring and Samuel Zipp, co-editors of the Jacobs anthology Vital Little Plans.

October 29, noon, Brigantine Room

Find out more about this year’s IFOA here.

susangcole@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole

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