11:30 AM - 12:00 PM :: Mad Hope - Heather Birrell

In the stories of Mad Hope, a science teacher and former doctor is forced to re-examine the role he played in Ceauşescu’s Romania after a student makes a shocking request; a tragic plane crash becomes the basis for a meditation on motherhood and its discontents; and a chance encounter in a waiting room tests the ties that bind us.

Heather Birrell is the author of I know you are but what am I? Her work has been honoured with the Journey Prize for short fiction and the Edna Staebler Award for creative non-fiction, and has been shortlisted for both National and Western Magazine Awards. Birrell's stories have appeared in Prism International, The New Quarterly, Descant, Matrix and Toronto Noir.

Coach House Books - $18.95 - Short fiction

12:00 - 12:30 PM :: Dr. Brinkley's Tower - Robert Hough

Robert Hough's wildly imaginative new novel takes us to 1931 and a tiny Mexican border town where the only industry is a run-down brothel. Enter Dr. Romulus Brinkley and his gargantuan radio tower, built to broadcast his revolutionary goat-gland fertility operation. Fortunes in the town change overnight, but not all for the good…

Robert Hough’s debut novel, The Final Confession of Mabel Stark, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. His second novel, The Stowaway, was a finalist for the IMPAC Dublin Award and chosen by the Boston Globe as one of the top ten fiction titles of 2004. The Culprits, was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Prize, the Commonwealth Award for Best Book (Canada and the Caribbean), and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

House of Anansi Press - $24.95 - Fiction

12:30 - 1:00 PM :: People Park - Pasha Malla

It’s the Silver Jubilee of People Park, an urban experiment conceived by a radical mayor and zealously policed by the testosterone-powered New Fraternal League of Men. To celebrate, the insular island city has engaged the illustrationist Raven, who promises to deliver the most astonishing spectacle its residents have ever seen. Soon, however, what has promised to be a triumph of civic harmony begins to reveal its shadow side. And when Raven’s illustration exceeds even the most extreme of expectations, the island is plunged into a series of unnatural disasters that force people to confront what they are really made of.

Pasha Malla’s first collection of short stories, The Withdrawal Method, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Trillum Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize (Best First Book, Canada & Caribbean) and longlisted for the Giller Prize. A frequent contributor to The Walrus, the Globe and Mail, and CBC radio, he is also the winner of an Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction, two National Magazine Awards for humour writing, and has twice had stories included in the Journey Prize anthology.

House of Anansi Press - $24.95 - Fiction
 

1:00 - 1:45 PM :: Short but Sweet
 

The Lease
Mathew Henderson

Inspired largely by the poet's experiences as a young man working in the Saskatchewan and Albertan oilfields, Mathew Henderson's The Lease explores masculinity and the roles morality, violence and hard labor play in it.

Mathew Henderson is a recent graduate of the University of Guelph’s MFA program. Originally from Prince Edward Island, he now lives in Toronto, writes about the prairies and teaches at Humber College.
Coach House Books - $17.95 – Poetry
 

Poison Shy
Stacey Madden

Brandon Galloway is a 29-year-old nobody, fumbling between dead-end jobs in a town full of drunks and prostitutes. When he lands a position with a pest control company and meets 21-year-old wild-child Melanie Blaxley while fumigating her apartment, Brandon’s life skips from hapless to hectic in no time. He is both attracted to and repelled by Melanie’s vulgar sensuality, but when her world starts to take its toll on his sanity, Brandon wonders how much more of her he can stand.

Stacey Madden holds a BA from the University of Toronto and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph. He lives in Toronto.

ECW Press - $18.95 - Fiction
 

The Love Monster
Missy Marston

In The Love Monster, Margaret H. Atwood, has psoriasis, a boring job and a bad attitude. Her cheating husband has left her. And none of her pants fit any more. Hope comes in the form of a dope-smoking senior citizen, a religious fanatic, a good lawyer and a talking turtle. And, of course, hope comes in the form of a love-sick alien speaking in the voice of Donald Sutherland…

Missy Marston's writing has appeared in various publications, including Grain and Arc Poetry Magazine. She was the winner of the Lillian I. Found Award for her poem, “Jesus Christ came from my home town.”

Véhicule Press - $19.95 - Fiction

1:45 - 2:15 PM :: The Dead Are More Visible - Steven Heighton

A parks & rec worker faces an assailant who does not leave the altercation intact. A medical researcher and his claustrophobic fiancée are locked in the trunk of their car after a failed carjacking (the thief can't drive standard). A young woman enters a pharmaceutical trial in the outer reaches of suburbia and slips between sleeping and waking with increasingly alarming ease. Pairing cultural acuity with depth and compassion, Heighton truly breathes new life into the short story.

Steven Heighton is the author of the novel Afterlands, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice along with a best book of the year selection in ten publications in Canada, the US, and the UK; and has been optioned for film. He is also the author of The Shadow Boxer, a Canadian bestseller and a Publishers Weekly Book of the Year.

Knopf Canada - $22.00 - Short fiction
 

2:15 - 2:45 PM :: Y - Marjorie Celona

“My life begins at the Y …” So begins the story of Shannon, a newborn baby dumped at the doors of the YMCA. Bounced between foster homes, Shannon longs to uncover her roots. Where is she from? Who is her true family? Why would they abandon Shannon on the very day she was born?  The answers lie in the heartbreaking tale of her mother, a girl herself, and one with a desperate fate. Through intimate observations, the two stories converge to shape a unique and lasting story of identity and family.

Marjorie Celona is the recipient of the John C. Schupes fellowship and Iowa Arts fellowship from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the Olive B. O’Connor fellowship from Colgate University. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Harvard Review, Glimmer Train, and Crazyhorse.

2:45 - 3:15 PM :: Sleeping Funny - Miranda Hill

In Miranda Hill's beguiling universe, the "real world" is recognizable and slightly askew, as if you were experiencing one of those strange dreams where you think you are awake -- or as if you've been "sleeping funny".  Here is a writer who can seamlessly inhabit the consciousness of a sixteen-year-old navigating an embarrassing sex-ed class, a middle-aged minister experiencing a devastating crisis of faith, and a pilot's widow coping with her grief by growing an unusual "victory garden" during World War II.

Miranda Hill's writing has been published by The New Quarterly, The Dalhousie Review and The Fiddlehead. Hill has worked in television and as a freelance writer and communications consultant. She is the founder and executive director of Project Bookmark Canada. She lives in Hamilton with her husband Lawrence Hill.

Doubleday Canada - $29.95 - Short fiction

3:15 - 3:45 PM :: Milosz - Cordelia Strube

Milo doesn’t quite have it all together. His acting career has stalled. His Latvian girlfriend dumped him. His miserable father has vanished. And Pablo and Wallace seem to have moved in to his house. Really, the only person Milo likes is Robertson, the autistic eleven-year-old who lives next door. So when Robertson gets bullied and his dad moves out, Milo is finally spurred to action. Milo being Milo, though, even his best intentions go awry, and soon Robertson’s dad is in the hospital, Milo’s lost in the woods during an acting experiment and Gustaw, his dad, may have returned from the dead.

Cordelia Strube has won the CBC Literary Competition for her play Mortal and the Toronto Arts Foundation Protégé Award and she has been shortlisted for the Prix Italia and the Governor General’s Award. Her eight previous novels include Milton’s Elements, Dr. Kalbfleisch and the Chicken Restaurant, Planet Reese and Lemon, which was longlisted for the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize and shortlisted for the 2010 Trillium Award.

Coach House Books - $19.95 - Fiction

3:45 - 4:30 PM :: The Writer and the Body

Reading may be a cerebral pursuit, but the books featured in this segment will invite you to focus on the physical. Sexuality, power, illness, and frailty are just some of the themes Allison Baggio, Tamara Faith Berger, and Erin Knight have each explored in their latest works. Join these authors for a panel discussion about the inspiration writers draw from the human body and its complexities.

In the Body

Allison Baggio

In The Body is a collection of short stories and a novella which explore the connection between the physical and spiritual worlds. This collection is a stunning examination of the clash between how we perceive our own bodies and how we are perceived by others.

Allison Baggio is the author of Girl In Shades, which was hailed by Chatelaine as "a remarkable first novel." Her fiction and commentaries have appeared in publications all across Canada, including Room, subTerrain, Today's Parent, and Toronto Star.

ECW Press - $18.95 – Short Fiction

Maidenhead

Tamara Faith Berger

Myra, naive and curious, is on a family vacation to the southernmost tip of Florida. Here she meets Elijah, a charismatic Tanzanian musician who seduces her at the edge of the tourist zone. Myra longs to lose her virginity to Elijah, and is shocked to learn he lives with Gayl, a secretive and violent. When Myra and her family return to an unnamed, middle-class, grey Canadian city, Gayl and Elijah travel north.  There they infiltrate Myra’s life. As Myra enters worlds unfamiliar of sex, porn, race and class, she explores territories unknown in herself.

Tamara Faith Berger was born in Toronto. She wrote porn stories for a living and attempted to make dirty films before publishing her first book, Lie with Me, in 1999. Maidenhead is her third book. Berger is a graduate student at UBC working on her Masters of Fine Arts.

Coach House Books - $18.95 - Fiction

Chaser

Erin Knight

Chaser is a book of poems that grows from the troubling premise that each of us lives in a state of pre-diagnosis. Our bodies are never under our control, and when illness strikes we must redraw the boundary between the well and the unwell, interacting with the world differently. In bracing, electric language and form, the book’s three threads explore different notions of consumption, wellness, discovery, and growth.

Erin Knight is the critically acclaimed author of The Sweet Fuels, which was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and longlisted for the ReLit Award in 2008. “Healthy Human Carrier,” a selection of poems from Chaser, was a finalist for the 2010 CBC Literary Awards. Her work has appeared in numerous major literary journals, including Arc, Event, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, Prism International, and Qwerty.

House of Anansi Press - $19.95 - Poetry

4:30 - 5:00 PM :: Stray Love - Kyo Maclear

A boy born of an adulterous affair, whose race and parentage are unclear…an obsessive journalist who feels alive only on the edge of danger…a beautiful but distracted young woman who seems ill-equipped for life – when these three mismatched people come together in London during the 1960’s, their lives are changed forever.

Kyo Maclear was born in London, and grew up in Toronto. She is the author of two novels: The Letter Opener and, most recently, Stray Love, both published by HarperCollins Canada. A dual British-Canadian citizen, Kyo is also a visual arts writer and the author of two critically acclaimed children’s books: Spork and Virginia Wolf.

A Phyllis Bruce Book, published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. - $29.99 - Fiction
 

5:00 - 5:30 PM :: Love and The Mess We're In - Stephen Marche

Love and the Mess We're In is a calligrammatic novel about the power of love in the middle of personal, political and environmental decay. Viv and Clive are cheating on her husband Tim in Buenos Aires, while he is recovering from a nervous breakdown in an insane asylum in Newmarket, Ontario. Through a series of text-shapes drawn from various calligraphies and print cultures, the story emerges of their various attempts at love and betrayal.

Stephen Marche is a novelist and culture columnist. Marche is the author of two novels, Shining at the Bottom of the Sea, and Raymond and Hannah, and a work of non-fiction How Shakespeare Changed Everything. He currently writes a column for Esquire magazine, a weekly column for the National Post and has written about literature and politics for Salon.com, The New Republic, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Maclean's, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Walrus.

Gaspereau Press - Fiction