Golnaz Taherian | Arts Editor
Featured Image: The festival featured bustling book sales as well as newspaper, magazine and book booths. | Golnaz Taherian
The Word On The Street is an annual Canadian literary festival that hosts a variety of author readings, career panels, and writing workshops. This year, the festival took place from Saturday, September 22, to Sunday, September 23 at the Harbourfront Centre.
The crowded festival featured bustling book sales as well as newspaper, magazine, and book booths. Overall, it was an exciting cultural celebration of Canadian literature, featuring a plethora of writers and publishers.
Mike O’Connor, a professional writing professor, runs a booth intended to facilitate networking with writers. They also publish a spontaneous festival anthology called Word on the Street [2018] Instant Anthology.
“The writing student volunteers solicit the work from the people attending the festival. They edit the work, lay it out, and it is then published as an eBook on Kobo by 4 p.m. before the end of the festival,” O’Connor says.
O’Connor talks about how the professional writing program at York aims to help establish a foundation for the students to break into the writing market. Through the program, students are trained not only to write but also to edit, publicize, sell, and publish. “The students will make their living as idea and story merchants, the programs show the students how to project their stories and ideas out into the world,” he says.
Justin Lauzon, a creative writing and English York Alumnus, is a former Marketing & Communications Coordinator at the festival. This year, he volunteered for Programming Captain on TD KidStreet.
Lauzon has been involved with the festival since 2015, and he notes that, despite all the hard work, it’s always a worthwhile experience, fuelled by the passion of the many members and volunteers who work to build the event.
“I got to interact with attendees and performers more than I have in the past and hearing how great everything was going really felt good,” Lauzon says of his experience as a volunteer this year.
Lauzon talks about how York provided him with both a platform for his writing career, and access to the community. Through York, he made the organic transition into the Toronto literary scene. Then, a few years after graduating from the program he was invited to participate in York’s Crossroads Literary Festival as a presenter and host.
“Crossroads has helped me connect with the next group of writers attending York, and that has been a sincere pleasure. It seems that I am continually brought back to York to some extent,” Lauzon says.
David Alexander, festival director, celebrates the festival as an excellent platform for diverse writers working in a multitude of genres.
In addition to praising the recently added new festival day, he mentions that “WOTS Plus+ succeeds in hosting vibrant conversations about new books, civil society, and important issues facing us as citizens of Toronto.”
When asked about how this festival has been changing the Canadian literary scene, he replied: “It provides publishers with an opportunity to connect with the reading audience directly. And it provides aspiring writers and publishing professionals with the opportunity to meet and attend informative panels on things like strengthening your pitch, finding an agent, or starting a magazine.”
