Writer in Residence - Shawn Micallef

Sometime it seems like not much is written
about Toronto, that it doesn't exist in print and in our imaginations the way,
say, New York does for New Yorkers or London does for Londoners. The opposite
is true though, there's been an incredible amount of writing done about this
city, both in fiction and non-fiction. This is, after all, a city of writers, and
some of them even write about the city they live in. In Amy Lavender Harris's book,
Imagining Toronto, she compiles hundreds of pages of Toronto mentions found in literature,
and in this town full of smart people with a bunch of universities (particularly ones with Canadian History and Urban Planning departments), the local
history and analysis shelves at the library at filled with books.

And yet we
think nobody writes about Toronto.

Part of the reason is we've been trained to
not get too excited about this place, but with my writer in residency I hope we
get change that, a little bit, and turn more people into Toronto writers,
especially ones writing about the parts of the city we don't hear too much
about. Much of the Toronto writing that does exist involves the old City of
Toronto, while the former cities and burroughs tend to go unexplored (though
there are numours exceptions).

We've planned a bunch of walks starting
from Toronto Public Library branches across the city over the next two months,
and I hope both locals and people that just want to explore a new
neighbourhood come out. I'm certainly not an expert on any of the neighbourhoods we'll walk
through, but I do like to wander,
so I hope you'll come and walk and talk about the neighbourhoods we pass
through, sharing your own thoughts, memories, or ideas and asking questions. The idea is to get a little excited about the places we live.

Walking often leads to writing, being in
the place gets us thinking. It's how I usually write about a place; I'll go for a long walk through it first that might seem aimless, but ideas always come. I hope participants on the walk will feel compelled to write about
their neighbourhoods (either the one we walked through or another) or share
their existing non-fiction writing with me. Let's chat about it, and we'll even be
posting some of it here on this blog until December. We will be accepting manuscripts until the end of November.

I'll also be posting snippets of research
items I gather in the stacks and other thoughts here. Perhaps some of that will
inspire you to write too. Happy, sad, criticial, or celebratory, Toronto needs it all.

The more voices in the city, the better
we'll know ourselves and each other.

Picture taken at Albion Road and Islington Avenue.