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ChiSeries Toronto

  • 152a Augusta Avenue Toronto, ON, M5T 2L5 Canada (map)

ROUND venue

The Chiaroscuro Reading Series Toronto Branch hosts authors in the SF, fantasy and horror genres, every 3rd Wednesday of the month in the ROUND Venue in Kensington Market. Hosted by Sandra Kasturi. Ukulele virtuosity by Kari Maaren!

Authors reading:

Christian Baines has written on travel, theatre, film, television, and various aspects of gay life, factual and fictional. Some of his stranger thoughts have spawned novels, including queer urban fantasy series The Arcadia Trust, the horror novella Skin, and Puppet Boy, which was a finalist for the 2016 Saints and Sinners Emerging Writer Award. Born in Australia, he now travels the world whenever possible, living, writing, and shivering in Toronto, Canada on those odd occasions he can’t find his passport.

Peter Chiykowski launches his new book BE A TURTLE! He is the creator of the award-winning webcomic Rock Paper Cynic, the mind behind viral Twitter sensation Dad Joke Han Solo, and the author of five books, most recently Postcards From Impossible Worlds (ChiZine Publications) and his brand-new collection of comics Be a Turtle. He has twice won the Aurora Award for “Best Graphic Novel” from the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, and his writing, art and humour have appeared in or been covered in books, newspaper articles, blogs, tabletop games, video games, and magazines coast to coast, including Newsweek, Huffington Post, Globe and Mail and Entertainment Weekly.

Suri Parmar is a Toronto-based writer and filmmaker who is currently teaching screenwriting and film production at Ryerson University's Image Arts program. She is an alumna of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing and Reykjavík International Film Festival’s Transatlantic Talent Lab for rising filmmakers. Her fiction has been published in Crannóg magazine, Vague Visages, and New Haven Review.

Douglas Smith is a multi-award-winning author described by Library Journal as "one of Canada's most original writers of speculative fiction." His fiction has been published in twenty-six languages and includes the urban fantasy novel, The Wolf at the End of the World, the collections Chimerascope and Impossibilia, and the translated collection La Danse des Esprits. His writing guide, Playing the Short Game: How to Market & Sell Short Fiction, is a must-read for any short story writer. Doug is a three-time winner of Canada's Aurora Award, and has been a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award, CBC's Bookies Award, Canada's juried Sunburst Award, and France's juried Prix Masterton and Prix Bob Morane.

Kari Maaren is as the sparrow's flight through the mead hall, metaphorically speaking. The author of Copper Cylinder-winning Weave a Circle Round, the composer of songs about terrible elves and problematic movie trailers, the creator of time-travel comics that are read by almost six people, Kari is nearly always trying not to mark. She probably doesn't like your shoes.

Note that the Round Venue is not currently accessible--it is on the second floor, up a flight of stairs.

The ChiSeries is sponsored in part by grants from the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council - Conseil des arts de l'Ontario, ChiZine Publications and donations from attendees. Bakka-Phoenix Books is the official bookseller.

Earlier Event: May 15
Ren Revival Poetry Workshop
Later Event: May 16
Guernica and Inanna Book Launch