Golnaz Taherian | Arts Editor
Featured image courtesy of Golnaz Taherian
The Toronto International Festival of Authors is an annual festival that celebrates literature, and connects enthusiastic readers with talented writers from across the globe. This Festival provides a platform for readers to meet, learn from, and engage with contemporary and international scribes.
This year, the event took place from October 18 to October 28 at the Harbourfront Centre. The festival, which is Canada’s largest and oldest festival of liturature, hosted a plethora of panel discussions, interviews, readings, book signings, and book sales.
Festival Director Geoffrey E. Taylor noted that language and literature are fundamental tools for presenting ideas and spreading knowledge.
“This Festival is honoured to facilitate such critical thought-exchange—a true platform for celebrating the sharing of stories—and we have created a solid base for the variety of discussions on how critical the written word is in helping to make sense of the modern world,” he says.
“At this year’s Festival, our themes include intergenerational dialogue, cultural identity and understanding, as well as gender diversity, with a spotlight on Indigenous authorship and emerging writers,” he adds.
Content and Community Assistant Ardo Omer was responsible for managing the Festival’s social media platforms, creating online content, interacting with the Festival’s internet community and conducting interviews with authors, and other industry insiders.
When asked about her most satisfying experience in the Festival, she replies: “It’s great to see people take a photo with their favourite author at a signing and then post it on Instagram, or live tweet a really thought provoking and/or funny event. I love that social media translates to real world excitement, which then find its way back onto social media, and we’re part of that excitement too. It’s also nice to meet authors in-person after doing an interview with them, like Michael Berry.”
Event Coordinator Emily Jung pointed to the challenges of staying organized in a festival hosting roughly 60 events and programs. However, she noted that the dedication and support of the working team ensured things “ran smoothly.”
She went on to say: “Every year, we hear from our authors and participants that our Festival is incredibly well organized and welcoming. Seeing how many events and programmes our staff members have to juggle, this is a reputation we are proud to keep.”
A panel discussion of note featured the finalists for the 2018 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, which is an award that celebrates the best Canadian novels or short stories. Jen Neale was in attendance to discuss her latest book ‘Land Mammals and Sea Creatures’.
This emotionally stark novel has two storylines. One it depicts animals committing suicide; the other is a human tale. Julie’s father, Marty, has returned from war and struggles with PTSD and suicidal ideation. Love plays a significant role in this book as Julie experiences tremendous agony over her father’s desire to die. Julie desperately wants to save his life.
Neale noted that the idea for this novel stemmed from a burning question: “What if the environment became so hostile that animals didn’t want to live here anymore? It felt necessary to apply that question to ourselves too, as the ones who are creating this environmental calamity, and just ask questions about self destruction and how that applies to us as a species and individuals.”
She stated that although Canadian nature is associated with visions of splendorous beauty, the aim of the book is to show the ugly side of the natural world. She wanted to portray a side of Canada far removed from the postcards of paradise we often see.
When asked about why she chose a whale as one of the animals that commits suicide, she replies: “All of us see whales as these pure, intelligent and gorgeous beings. It was very intentional to have something so beautiful appear as ugly, just reflecting what we are doing to this planet.”
Rawi Hage, a finalist for Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, spoke about his novel ‘Beirut Hellfire Society’. In it, the protagonist Pavlov lives in a cemetery during Lebanon’s fifteen-year civil war. Suffocating in a religious, conservative country torn apart by sectarian violence, Pavlov yearns for freedom. This is a world where, if you are gay or an atheist, society doesn’t even afford you the dignity of a burial, but instead cremates you.
When his father dies, Pavlov is initiated into the eponymous sect of which his father was a member. This is a society which celebrates sexual freedom and liberty from religious conservatism. Pavlov yearns to live a detached life like a dog, in the author’s words: “very simple and ascetic, void of any artifice.”
When asked about what inspired him to write this story, Hage says: “I construct this secular imaginary society to give options to people who don’t fit there because of their sexual orientation, or choosing to be an atheist.”
He adds: “My intention was to transform Beirut, not to re-document Beirut’s war.”
Within the brutal plot, there is a strain of black humour. He noted that people in war, amidst all the rubble and corpses, often use humour as a coping mechanism against the awful reality. However, with the humour, “the underlying theme is sadness.”
Another panel featured Canadian writers whose books fit into the thriller genre.
Joy Fielding was among the thriller writers sitting on the panel. Her book, ‘The Bad Daughter’, is centered on a vicious home invasion. Robin, the protagonist, is dealing with the shooting of her estranged father along with his stepdaughter and second wife. She is forced to return to her California hometown in order to deal with the fallout of the invasion, as well as the messiness of her family life.
When asked about her writing process, Fielding replies: “I like to have an outline because it’s like if you’re making a dress, it’s easier if you have a pattern. You don’t have to stick to it; it’s not carved in stone.”
“I think if you’re writing any kind of suspense, then you really need to know where you’re going to end up in order to build it properly, so you’re always escalating the tension and upping the ante,” she continues.
When writing in such a genre as thriller, one must strive to engineer a very tight and logically consistent plot. Thus, Fielding highlighted the deep importance of having a structural goal in mind. Otherwise the writer will end up in knots, going back and doing plenty of rewriting, which can be frustrating.
Fielding said she usually sets her novels in the U.S. For instance, ‘The Bad Daughter’ is set in a small town in California. She said that she finds the landscapes in the U.S. to be more isolating and easier to become lost within. She found that the themes of isolation in the book were best expressed through a California landscape.
Another thriller writer present at the Festival was Linwood Barclay, the author of ‘A Noise Downstairs’. The novel involves a protagonist who is mentally stricken after nearly being murdered. His wife, eager to alleviate his PTSD, buys him a typewriter. However, the man soon becomes convinced that the typewriter has a mind of its own.
When asked about his writing process, Barclay noted that he starts with a basic sense of the plot’s direction, and then lets the story unfold organically. Eschewing a written outline, he stated: “I’ve got the blueprint for the whole house, but I don’t know what’s in any of the rooms.”
Beginning with a sturdy foundation, but not a strict outline, the author noted that he dives into writing knowing a few basic facts. He knows the actions of the main characters, their psychological makeup and the book’s ending. However, the bulky middle of the book is unknown territory which he explores and maps out while writing.
When asked about the geography of his books, he noted that he prefers to write a mid-sized setting, such as a “large town or small city.” He said that it enhances the realism, stating that: “It’s big enough that it’s interesting and it has enough settings and things that are going on, but it’s small enough that people can be connected and it’s believable.”
It’s impossible to explore the Toronto International Festival of Authors without encountering at least one new fresh idea, book, or writer.
