This year's IFOA - the International Festival of Authors - takes place in Toronto from October 20 to 30th at the Harbourfront Centre. The 2010 festival includes authors such as Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections, Freedom), David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob Zoet), and William Gibson (Neuromancer, Spook Country).

Now in its 31st year, the festival provides a great forum to discover new and buzzed-about Canadian fiction. Highlights from the schedule include Etobicoke-raised Dave Bidini who will read from his recent novel Home and Away: In Search of Dreams at the Homeless World Cup of Soccer. It's a story about a ragtag group of individuals who overcome the odds of poverty and addiction through sport.

Word On The Street warms my heart. Every year, same feeling. Books. Magazines. Bespectacled authors. Readings. Giant city park (Queen's Park.) And as a contributor to various Toronto-based publications, I'm always dumbfounded by the sheer mass of people who turn out for Word on the Street on the last weekend of September. I mean, us bookish types aren't big fans of the daylight or large groupings of strangers. But then again, Yann Martel was signing Life of Pi. Oh goody.

But seriously, an entire, blossoming festival for "celebrating reading and advocating literacy" just warms the ol' ticker. And no exceptions for this year's 21st annual edition.

After facing a financial crisis in December, then some management shuffles a few months ago, the Toronto Women's Bookstore has finally re-opened its doors.

A couple of weeks ago I posted an interview with photographer Caitlin Cronenberg about her new book of nude photos. It seems that some took exception to this post and accused me (or rather, the site) of only feigning interest in the book because of the author's last name. Not true.

Caitlin Cronenberg has been getting a lot of press lately. For those who haven't seen any of these articles let me summarize: she's the daughter of one of Toronto's most famous filmmakers. She just self-published 1,500 copies of Poser, a book featuring black and white nude photography. She doesn't drink, she likes to dance and, yes, she has posed naked for a photographer before.

This coming Thursday she'll be celebrating the official launch of Poser so in advance of that I caught up with her to ask her a few questions about her book and the challenges of self-publishing.

Getting book industry people to start talking is pretty easy - just ask them to give you a recommendation. That's the thinking that's gone into the Keepin' It Real Book Club's ongoing promotion of Keep Toronto Reading - a month of blog posts featuring videos of literary industry insiders highlighting the books they've recently enjoyed.

The format is simple: 30 days, 30 recommendations. It's a take on the spirit behind Keep Toronto Reading, a festival that's meant to give the city ideas for new books to pick up (from the Toronto Public Library, of course). The end of April means the end of the fifth annual Keep Toronto Reading festival and, each year, the events gain more steam from both institutions and grass-roots supporters.