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.

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.

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.

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.

All this for only $35! For more info and to buy tickets, click here.

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.

At the witching hour of 5:00 p.m., I’ll be sharing the stage with Jack David of ECW Press, and trying not to be witchy while we jointly do public assessments of first pages of manuscripts submitted onsite that day.

Last week I was fortunate to be teaching at the Humber School for Writers Summer Workshop in Creative Writing in Toronto, alongside my fellow faculty members Nino Ricci, Richard Bausch, Wayson Choy, Isabel Huggan, Julia Glass, Olive Senior, Bruce Jay Friedman, John Metcalf, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Alistair MacLeod, Erika De Vasconcelos, David Bezmozgis, and Frieda Wishinsky.

Though I’ve taught the workshop for several years, I always wonder and worry beforehand how the week will go, how the group chemistry will develop. My group of five this time were diverse in interests and background – three are working on serious novels, one is writing a travelogue/memoir, and the fifth writes short stories – and they seemed a little subdued at first.

I had to work harder than usual to get them to laugh at my jokes, but by the end of the week, friendships had formed among them, they appeared willing to take at least some of my writing advice, and if they weren’t exactly eating out of my hand, they did seem to enjoy the Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Nut Cookies I baked to mark the bittersweet moment of our parting, when, after a convivial and thought-provoking week spent sharing the writing life, we all left the workshop to go write in solitude.