Event photos: Taddle Creek launch, Roddy Doyle, Sebastian Junger, and more

Taddle Creek launched its summer “out-of-towner” issue along with Dani Couture’s poetry collection Sweet and Peter Darbyshire’s novel The Warhol Gang at Jet Fuel coffee shop on Friday, June 11.

Dani Couture reads from Sweet in Jet Fuel’s backyard

Montrealer Sarah Gilbert reads from her Taddle Creek essay, “Neighbourhood Watch,” about Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood

Author Roddy Doyle poses with children at Nelson Mandela Park Public School for the launch of A Toronto Alphabet, a book created out of a three-month workshop conducted by Small Print Toronto and Luminato with elementary-school-aged children. (Photo courtesy of Chris Reed)

Toronto author Gillian Cummings signs copies of her debut YA novel, Somewhere in Blue, with Lobster Press sales rep Heather Bruder at Nicholas Hoare in Toronto on May 27. (Photo courtesy of Lobster Press)

Globe and Mail journalist Ian Brown (right) interviews author Sebastian Junger about his new book, War, at the Toronto Reference Library on May 31. (Photo courtesy of Toronto Public Library)

Event photos: Bronwen Wallace Award

Yesterday evening, the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers was handed out in Toronto. This year’s winner of the $5,000 prize, which is given in alternating years to fiction and poetry, was 29-year-old Kilby Smith-McGregor for her story “The Bird in Hand.” Smith-McGregor lives in Toronto and is working toward an MFA in creative writing at Guelph University; her work has appeared in Brick, Dublin Quarterly, and The Cyclops Review. (Photos courtesy of the Writers’ Trust of Canada)

Smith-McGregor is flanked by the two other finalists: Claire Tacon (left, who was nominated for “Dumb Dog”) and Shashi Bhat (“Indian Cooking”)

Two members of the prize jury: authors Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer (left) and Susan Glickman. The third juror, Trevor Cole, is not pictured

Prize founder Carolyn Smart poses with Writers’ Trust of Canada executive director Don Oravec

Event photos: Louise Penny and Stanley’s furry onstage adventures

On May 1, Louise Penny was presented with the Agatha Award for Best Novel for The Brutal Telling (Hodder Headline/Hachette) at the Malice Domestic convention, held in Bethesda, Maryland. (Photo by Robin Templeton/ Courtesy of Hachette)

Stanley’s Party, an adaptation of Linda Bailey and Bill Slavin’s Stanley’s Party and Stanley’s Wild Ride (both published by Kids Can Press), is running to the end of May at the Manhattan Children’s Theater in New York City. In the play, Stanley is the loutish husband to Stella, sister of Blanche… oh wait. Above: Stanley helps one of his furry friends through the fence. Ruh roh! (Photo courtesy of Kids Can)

Event photos: Forest of Reading and Stroll

The annual Forest of Reading event took place at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre on May 12 and 13. Above, some of the authors nominated for the various awards prepare to read to the audience, while showing remarkably uniform taste in jacket colour. (Photos courtesy of Authors at Harbourfront Centre)

Authors at Harbourfront director Geoffrey Taylor addresses a Forest of Reading reception held on May 13 at Il Fornello restaurant. Now that’s a jacket, people!

“One small table and two microphones….” Shawn Micallef launched his book Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto (Coach House Books) on May 18 at Toronto’s Lula Lounge. Above: EYE Weekly senior editor Ed Keenan (left) and Micallef get their skinny nerd on, duet-style. (Photo by Rick/Simon/Courtesy of Coach House)

Event photos: K.V. Johansen in Macedonia, Ian McEwan in Toronto, and Watch This Space at the Wychwood Barns

Canadian YA fantasy writer K.V. Johansen was recently a guest of the 22nd International Book Fair held in Skopje, Macedonia. Over a period of three days, beginning April 12, Johansen launched the Macedonian translation of her 2007 novel Torrie and the Snake-Prince (Annick Press), received the Anna Frank Literary Award, participated in a panel discussion on fantasy literature in Canada and Macedonia as part of a Day of Canadian Culture organized by the Canadian Embassy in Belgrade, and addressed a literature class at a Skopje university that had been studying one of her short stories. Above: Johansen at the University American College Skopje. (Photo by Chris Paul)

“Quick: name four things you know about Canada!” On April 18, Ian McEwan (left) was interviewed onstage by author and broadcaster Ian Brown at the Toronto Public Library’s Appel Salon. McEwan got stranded in Toronto for a few days, thanks to Iceland’s volcano, and may even use the experience as the narrative hook in a new novel. Too bad the title Mostly Harmless is already taken. (Photo by Dona Acheson/Courtesy of the TPL)

On April 25, the Small Print series hosted the launch of Marc Ngui and Hadley Dyer’s Watch this Space: Designing, Defending and Sharing Public Spaces (Kids Can Press). The event – which, though kid-friendly, had the potential Google minefield title of “Doing It In Public” – was held at Toronto’s Wychwood Barns, and featured a chalk-drawing contest as well as a panel discussion featuring Dyer and Ngui, along with city trustee Josh Matlow, city councillor Joe Mihevc, and Spacing magazine’s Matthew Blackett. Above: Small Print’s Chris Reed introduces the panel. (Photo courtesy of Kids Can Press)

Event photos: David Eddie’s Toronto launch

Last Thursday in Toronto, Globe and Mail columnist David Eddie launched his collection Damage Control: How to Tiptoe Away from the Smoking Wreckage of Your Latest Screw-up with a Minimum of Harm to Your Reputation. Here are some snaps from the event, which took place at the United Steelworkers Union Hall. (Photos by Paul Terefenko / Courtesy of McClelland & Stewart)

David Eddie, looking sophisticated in black and white

McClelland & Stewart president and publisher Doug Pepper addresses the crowd

Eddie’s editor, Pat Lynch

Event photos: Tom Jokinen thinks outside the box at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel

On Tuesday night, CBC Radio producer Tom Jokinen (left) launched his new memoir Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker-in-Training (Random House Canada) at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel as part of This Is Not a Reading Series. Above: Jokinen is interviewed by Torontoist’s books editor (and Q&Q contributing editor) James Grainger.

Jokinen, who signed books after the event, told the crowd he wanted to find out what actually goes on at a funeral parlour. “It’s a really mysterious process,” he said. “Somebody dies, they disappear for a couple of days, and then they magically pop up at a funeral in a casket or as a bag of ashes – and in between is this mysterious Alice’s rabbit hole where nobody knows what goes on.”

Event host Marc Glassman, co-artistic director of TINARS and former owner of Toronto’s Pages Books & Magazines, with Grainger. (All photos by Laura Godfrey)

Event photos: Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae, Margaret Atwood, John English, and more at Politics and the Pen

On March 10, The Writers’ Trust of Canada held its Politics and the Pen fundraising dinner at Ottawa’s Fairmont Château Laurier. At the event, author John English was presented with the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing (which is sponsored by CTVglobemedia) for the second volume of his Trudeau biography, Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau: 1968–2000 (Knopf Canada). This year marks the 10th anniversary of the prize. (All photos by Jake Wright/Courtesy of The Writers’ Trust of Canada)

Justin Trudeau, federal MP and, obviously, son of the late subject of English’s prize-winning bio.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and his wife, Zsuzsanna Zsohar.

CBCers (former and current) Peter Mansbridge, Senator Pamela Wallin, and Don Newman.

Politics and the Pen co-chairs Patrick Kennedy and Charles King.

Laureen Harper (wife of PM Stephen) and Liberal MP Bob Rae. (You see? Books do bring people together.)

Clare Carey, wife of the British High Commissioner, Margaret Atwood, and Jacqueline LaRocque, manager of public policy at GlaxoSmithKline.

Former deputy PM (and the evening’s co-host) Anne McLellan abandons Ottawa air-kiss protocol and moves in to hug prize-winner John English while MP Jay Hill (the evening’s other host) either awaits his turn or looks on nervously.

Event photos: Rod McQueen launches BlackBerry in Toronto

Last night, journalist Rod McQueen celebrated the launch of his latest book at Books for Business in downtown Toronto. The book, entitled BlackBerry: The Inside Story of Research In Motion (Key Porter Books), is about the Waterloo, Ontario-based tech giant.

Books for Business founder and president Jane Cooney with Key Porter managing editor Jonathan Schmidt.

McQueen (left) hand-sells a stack of his books to reader Rick Fitzgerald.

Cupcakes decorated with confectionary BlackBerrys – the device, not the fruit.

Event photos: Jon Turk (ka)yaks about his new book for Ben McNally’s The Fine Print

On Feb. 4, Ben McNally hosted author, adventurer, and semi-pro kayaker Jon Turk at the Dora Keogh in Toronto’s Danforth neighbourhood as part of his series The Fine Print. Turk was there to talk about his new book, The Raven’s Gift (St. Martin’s Press/H.B. Fenn and Company).

Turk regales the audience with tales of foiling a rifle-toting local with only a snowmobile, a cigarette, and a steely gaze. (All photos courtesy of The Fine Print/Ben McNally Books)

H.B. Fenn’s Tom Best, The Fine Print’s Holly Kent, Rupert McNally of Ben McNally Books, and Turk do an impromptu impression of Jean Chrétien’s famous “kitchen cabinet.” (I think Rupert’s playing Roy Romanow…)