Slideshow: George Stroumboulopoulos and celebrity librarian Nancy Pearl at the OLA Superconference

More than 4,700 library professionals, authors, and exhibitors descended on the Metro Toronto Convention Centre last week for the 2012 Ontario Library Association Superconference – the largest library conference in Canada, which ran Feb. 1–4.

Innovation was the theme for this year’s gathering, which featured more than 200 sessions and presentations by special guests such as Guy Gavriel Kay, Jonah Lehrer, Catherine Gildiner, Neil Pasricha, Nora Young, George Stroumboulopoulos, celebrity librarian Nancy Pearl, and Ontario Minister of Education Laurel Broten.

Click through the slideshow for a peek at what professional development and partying down look like in “library-land” (as one speaker put it).

Slideshow: Banff-Calgary WordFest highlights

The 16th annual WordFest: Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival took place this month, featuring more than 70 writers at over 60 events before wrapping up on Sunday. Here’s a look at some of the highlights:

Event photos: Agnes Walsh book launch

Last night at the Ship Pub in St. John’s, former Newfoundland poet laureate Agnes Walsh launched Answer Me Home: Plays from Tramore Theatre (Breakwater Books).

The event was hosted by actor, writer, and comedian Andy Jones and featured a performance by Pamela Morgan from the folk-rock band Figgy Duff. Actors Christopher Young and Mildred Dohey also performed an excerpt from the book.

(Photos courtesy of Breakwater Books)

Agnes Walsh reading to the audience

Andy Jones hosting the event

Pamela Morgan performing

Way to Display! Maggie Stiefvater’s Forever at Mabel’s Fables

Forever, the final instalment in Virginia author Maggie Stiefvater’s girl-meets-lycanthrope YA series, hits the streets this week. To celebrate, Toronto’s Mabel’s Fables gets all creepy and cold with its window display. (Photo courtesy of Scholastic Canada)

Event photos: Robert Munsch in Rigolet, Labrador

The heroine of Robert Munsch’s latest picture book, Give Me Back My Dad! (Scholastic Canada), was inspired by a young girl named Cheryl Allen whom Munsch met nearly two decades ago while on a fishing trip in Rigolet, on Labrador’s northern coast. Recently, Munsch returned to Rigolet to reconnect with Cheryl and her family, and to tell stories at a local school.

Above: Munsch, with Cheryl Allen and her daughter, Megan. (Photo courtesy of Scholastic)

Event photos: Writers’ Trust fundraiser featuring Camilla Gibb

On May 24, Camilla Gibb was the guest speaker at a fundraiser for The Writers’ Trust of Canada. Roughly 80 supporters gathered at the home of Sandra and Jim Pitblado in Toronto’s Rosedale neighbourhood to hear Gibb talk about her early life as a writer. The event was hosted by Chris Kelly, former chair of WTOC’s board of directors, and Wendy Pitblado, a former board member. (Photos courtesy of The Writers’ Trust of Canada.)

Gibb addresses the crowd.

Wendy Pitblado and Chris Kelly staff the book table, which offered Gibb’s books as gifts for the guests.

Event photos: Toronto Comic Arts Festival

Thousands of comics fans crowded into the Toronto Reference Library last weekend for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. “I remember when it was 100 people in a parking lot,” said one attendee, navigating through the line-up for Saturday’s discussion with American cartoonist Chris Ware.

This year’s event included over 300 publishers, artists, and authors from across North America.

The crowds at TCAF

Chester Brown signs autographs at the Drawn and Quarterly booth

Pop Sandbox’s Alex Jansen (left) and The Next Day illustrator John Porcellino

The Never Weres author Fiona Smyth

Lockpick Pornography and A Softer World author Joey Comeau

Selling merchandise at Owlkids

TCAF fans show their support

Way to Display: Type Books turns five

In celebration of its fifth anniversary, Type Books in Toronto (883 Queen St. W.) has put together a birthday-themed storefront. The window treatment is just part of the celebration, which culminates in a full-day, in-store party on April 30, and features books by 18 local authors who will perform at the event. Authors on the program include Andrew Pyper, Jessica Westhead, and Michael Redhill. The full line-up is listed in Type’s birthday flyer.

Griffin’s Poetry in Voice debut makes some noise

Charming with just a touch of old-fashioned drama, the first Poetry in Voice competition was an entertaining evening of bilingual poetry recitation from some of Ontario’s brightest high school students. The program is the brainchild of Griffin Poetry Prize founder Scott Griffin, whose own father celebrated his 100th birthday in the front row on Tuesday, at Toronto’s Young Centre for the Performing Arts.

Structured more like a civilized piano recital than a cutthroat American Idol take-down, the event pitted together 12 high school students, who had already won events at their individual schools, competing for the $5,000 top prize, plus an additional $2,500 for their school’s library ($500 of which must go towards poetry books). First and second runners-up received $1,000 and $500 (with $500 earmarked for poetry books).

Hosted by Albert Schultz, and judged by Karine Glorieux, Robert Lalonde, Diana Leblanc, Dennis Lee, Karen Solie, and Élise Turcotte, the students read like pros: performances ranged from straight-up recitation to fist-clenching drama, with only the rare stumble or awkward pause. Restricted from selecting contemporary Canadian poetry, the kids stuck to the classics: Eliot, Tennyson, Browning, Keats. Edgar Albert Guest’s “It Couldn’t Be Done” was read twice.

After two rounds, Anna Jiang (Grade 12, Victoria Park Collegiate Institute, North York), Spencer Slaney (Grade 10, Lockerby Composite School, Sudbury), and Jonathan Welstead (Grade 12, Upper Canada College, Toronto) received top marks, and went on to compete in the final death-match round.

Finalists Anna Jiang, Spencer Slaney, and Jonathan Welstead await the judges’ verdict.

Was it Welstead’s mastery of the Scottish accent in Robert Burns’ “To a Mouse” that captured the judges’ hearts? The Upper Canada College student won the top prize.

Welstead's winning smile.

Griffin has ambitious plans for Poetry in Voice, which recently got props from Oprah. Next year, the competition will be open to schools across Ontario and Quebec, and it will expand nationally in 2013.

Way to Display! Franklin’s 25th at Mabel’s Fables

Loveably imperfect, fundamentally decent, and slightly neurotic young animal characters are pretty thick on the ground these days, but one of the true originals, Franklin the turtle, turns 25 this year. To celebrate the 25th anniversary edition of Paulette Bourgeois and Brenda Clark’s Franklin in the Dark (Kids Can Press), Mabel’s Fables in Toronto went full-on half-shell for their window display. What other 25-year-old could get away with standing in the window of a bookstore on his birthday, waving at passersby and wearing nothing but a fireman’s hat? (Photo courtesy of Kids Can Press)