On Sunday October 28, 2012 at 11 am, I’ll be hosting a roundtable event on behalf of the Humber School for Writers at the International Festival of Authors, at Harbourfront Centre, in Toronto.

The event is called “How We Write” and features authors Richard Scrimger, Eva Stachniak and me talking about the craft of writing fiction. Come on down, and find out (in just over an hour!) how we approach story and novel writing from start to finish.

This Sunday, September 23, 2012, I’ll be repping the Humber School for Writers at the Scribendi.com Wordshop Marquee at Toronto’s Word on the Street festival. At 2 p.m. ECW’s Jack David and I will be doing on-the-spot flash assessments of manuscript first pages in a session called “How Am I Doing So Far.” At 3 p.m., I’ll be hosting Cynthia Good’s talk, “The Insider’s Guide: How to Get Published in Perilous Times” and at 4 p.m. I’ll host Greg Ioannou (Iguana Books) and Luba Lesychyn (author of Theft by Chocolate, in the “Straight to E-Book” session.

Rain or shine, see you there! The Wordshop Marquee will be located on Queen’s Park Crescent East between Wellesley and St. Joseph. The full lineup of the marquee’s events can be seen here.

On Friday July 20, 2012, I’ll be hosting an event called “Shifting Tides of History” at the Lakefield Literary Festival in lovely Lakefield, Ontario.

Acclaimed Canadian authors Frances Itani (Requiem) and Steven Heighton (The Dead Are More Visible will read from their works and I’ll lead a discussion with them about common themes in their writing and other exciting subjects yet to be revealed.

My novel The Restoration of Emily is the featured book for June at Book Buzz, the Toronto Public Library’s Virtual Book Club. Join the discussion – about the writing process, frozen shoulders, and architectural metaphors – here.

At 1:30 p.m. on Saturday June 2, 2012, I will be leading a special Grey Cup 100th Anniversary Edition of the free Heritage Toronto “Hidden Treasures in North Rosedale” walking tour.

In honour of this year’s 100th anniversary of the Grey Cup, special guest Michael Januska, author of the forthcoming history book Grey Cup Century (Dundurn) will address the group about the 1st Grey Cup game, played in 1909 between teams from the University of Toronto and the Parkdale Canoe Club at Rosedale Field, now Rosedale Park, pictured here adorned by a football team from St. Andrew’s College school, which bordered the park back in the day.

For more fun, historical facts about this site and others on the tour, join my co-leader Ed Freeman and me at 1:30 pm on Saturday June 2, at the southeast corner of Beaumont Road and Glen Road in North Rosedale.

At the Humber School for Writers event at this year’s International Festival of Authors in Toronto, I was pleased to host a short reading by the HSW/IFOA Author for a Day contest winner, Kate Belcher. Kate is a British expatriate, ex-museum curator and ex-clown who placed second in the 2010 Toronto Star Short Story Contest, and was a 2011 CBC Literary Awards finalist. She is currently finishing a children’s novel about a boy who accidentally triggers a nightmare invasion. You can read more about her and her writing here.

Kate’s reading was followed by a talk about writing craft by Suzanne Desrochers, Humber School for Writers alumna, and author of the bestselling novel Bride of New France. Suzanne was remarkably poised and coherent for someone who had given birth to her second child only six weeks before. She had interesting stories to tell about her path to publication, including that she abandoned navel-gazing type contemporary stories in favour of historical fiction, which she researched by taking a master’s degree in history. She is now following up that degree with a Ph.d., beginning work on her second novel, and caring for her young children. Which makes her either an inspiration or a superhuman. Click here for more info about her.

The final part of the event was the flash assessments of manuscript pages submitted in advance by some of the people in attendance. To do this, I was joined by the gracious and thoughtful Kate Cassaday, an editor of Harper Collins Publishers. We did our best not to bruise too many egos in the process – and we did not spend our entire time looking as skeptical as we do in this pic, while entertaining a question from the audience, I think. Our hope was that everyone who attended the event could consider themselves a winner.

Again this year, I’m going to be hosting and assessing first pages of manuscripts at “The Word Doctors Are In” Master Class event presented by the Humber School for Writers at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto.

This year’s event takes place on Sunday October 23, 2011, from 11 am to 1 pm in the Brigantine Room in the Harbourfront Centre. Author Suzanne Desrochers (Bride of New France) will speak about her approach to writing fiction, the winner of the Author for a Day contest will read the winning entry; and HarperCollins Editor Kate Cassaday and I will evaluate manuscript first pages submitted in advance by attendees.