Ontario

If you want city events that anchor the province's literary calendar, this tag gathers them. The Word On The Street Toronto and the Toronto International Festival of Authors both belong here, and both are downtown affairs rather than rural fairs.

Book festivals in Ontario tend to mean readings, panels and long tables of new releases, with the audience close enough to ask questions. That is the shape of what follows.

Ontario's book fairs sit in a different tradition from the state fairs of California, Texas or Florida, and from the literary gatherings of England and Scotland. The Word On The Street Toronto fills a street with publishers, magazines and booksellers, the kind of event where you leave with a bag rather than a single title. Toronto International Festival of Authors runs on readings and conversations with writers from Canada and elsewhere. What the two share is a city readership: dense, walkable, used to hearing authors in person.