Toronto International Book Fair May Focus on India Next Year

Launching with its Lift-Off Opening Party on November 13th, and spanning three and a half days, the Association for Art and Social Change presented its INSPIRE! Toronto International Book Fair, with over 400 authors and their books, for all ages and interests, at eight stages and feature areas.

Toronto— Launching with its Lift-Off Opening Party on November 13th, and spanning three and a half days, the Association for Art and Social Change presented its INSPIRE! Toronto International Book Fair, with over 400 authors and their books, for all ages and interests, at eight stages and feature areas. Uniquely entertaining, the event drew 50,000 consumers to meet their favorite authors, discover new books, and shop for Christmas, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, November 14 – 16, 2014.

INSPIRE!, that featured many world famous authors, is Canada’s newest cultural event and greatest book-inspired Christmas and holiday shopping adventure for every reader, from age two to 92! In keeping with INSPIRE!’s objective to facilitate a dynamic and multi-faceted program of literary events that celebrate authors and readers alike, the Fair has named Indigo Books & Music Inc. as the official programming bookseller for five of its stage and book signing areas—The Main Stage, Discovery Stage, Piller’s Culinary Zone, Spark Stage and TD Children’s Stage.

John Calabro, the main inspirer behind Inspire, is looking far into the future, and, yes, far into the East. He says that he wanted to make the Indian fiction a centre piece of his launch this year, but couldn’t get it done due to logistics and limited resources. But next year may be different.

He told the Voice, “I was very proud of what we were able to accomplish in the first year. I would like to involve a committee of people from the consulate, tourism India, Indian-Canadian authors, the Indian-Canadian media, distributors and publishers from India and the Indian business community to create a plan and vision for having India has the focus country. Together they can build the centre piece of the book fair. The idea is to bring authors and celebrities that would entice the community to come out and celebrate Indian literary culture and Indian culture in general. Continue to engage South-Asian authors in Canada and build on this year’s fair, so that by next year we have a larger representation.”

This story originally appeared on The Weekly Voice.