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.

Again this year, the Humber School for Writers and the International Festival of Authors are presenting the Author for a Day contest (administered by lucky me).

Submit two pages of fiction or narrative non-fiction by October 7, 2011 for a chance to read at the October 23, 2011 “Word Doctors Are In” Master Class event at the IFOA at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, followed by a literary lunch with the event speakers.

Entries (maximum 600 words) should be cut and pasted into the body of an email, identified by genre, and sent with name, address, phone number, and proof of contest entry fee payment to authorforadayifoacontest@gmail.com by October 7, 2011. The $15 contest entry fee can be paid to the Harbourfront Centre Box Office at this link.

The winning entry will be chosen by Humber School for Writers faculty.

This Sunday, September 25th, I’ll be doing some hosting and speaking for the Humber School for Writers at the Wordshop Marquee tent at Toronto’s free Word on the Street festival. I’ll host various author and editor speakers (see full lineup here) starting at 2:00 pm.

This Saturday, May 7th, 2011 at 1:30 p.m. I’ll be co-leading a free Heritage Toronto and Jane’s Walk walking tour of Toronto’s North Rosedale neighbourhood with the catchy title of “Hidden Treasures in North Rosedale.” I originally designed and wrote this walking tour partly as a way to promote my novel The Glenwood Treasure, which is set in a fictionalized version of North Rosedale, and also so that I could repurpose some of the research that I did while writing that novel.

My new Rapid Reads book, And Everything Nice, was officially published on April 1. You can read the opening chapter of it here, and you can buy it online here. And you can come hear me talk about it – and about my other novels – when I give a talk about Food in my Fiction at the Danforth and Coxwell branch of the Toronto Public Library on Wednesday April 20, 2011 at 6:30 pm.

Also, here’s a little review of it from Booklist:

“In And Everything Nice, twentysomething Stephanie, a Gap store manager, meets local TV personality Anna after she joins a church choir. After a blackmailer steals Anna’s journal and threatens to publically reveal its juicy details, Stephanie tries to help Anna trap the culprit and land an exciting new job at the same time. Many readers will find Stephanie’s voice, both street-smart and strongly principled, to be a winning combination.”  -  Gillian Engberg