This weekend, Hamilton will host its annual Supercrawl in the historic James Street North area, an open-doors street festival that showcases the city’s thriving arts and culture scene, and brings in talent from abroad. This year’s event will feature musicians including A Tribe Called Red, Arkells, Spoon, and Four Tet, local art and performance exhibitions, and for the first time, reading installations from several of the city’s authors.

During the festival, “listening posts” dedicated to the work of various authors will be set up in the James Street North area. The listening posts will feature a short write-up on each author and his or her book, a cover image, and a QR code linking to an audio recording of the author reading. In many of the readings, the city of Hamilton features prominently: Chris Panell reads from his latest poetry collection, Nervous City; John Terpstra reads from his “Hamilton classic” Falling into Place; Krista Foss reads from her novel inspired by the 2006 Caledonia land dispute, Smoke River; and Hamilton’s Second World War–era Italian community is brought to life in Vince Agro’s reading of his novel The Good Doctor. Miranda Hill will read from her story collection Sleeping Funny.

The new initiative is led by Wolsak & Wynn publisher Noelle Allen, and presented by the Hamilton Arts Council Literary Advisory Committee. At Wolsak & Wynn, which is located in a James Street North storefront adjacent one of Supercrawl’s music stages, Allen says she’ll be “putting on a pot of tea or six and giving people a place to escape the chaos.” As with the monthly, lower-key art crawls, Wolsak & Wynn will remain open to sell books and promote its authors.