For the past nine years, The New Yorker Festival has been one of the highlights of the fall cultural season in Manhattan. Each October, writers, thinkers and artists – many of them staff writers or contributors to The New Yorker – congregate for three days to discuss, debate, pontificate and read before thousands of literate types.
Scott Sellers is hoping some of this magic will migrate northward to Canada's Manhattan (a.k.a. Toronto) as the city hosts a brand-new literary and cultural festival from May 8 to 10.
Vice-president and director of marketing strategy for Random House of Canada, Sellers has been working on the idea for close to a year and he freely admits to “being inspired by” The New Yorker model.
“It's [about] trying to reach the reading public … and this is just one idea that came to us,” he explained.
“A lot of us are New Yorker readers here and we know about that festival and we thought, ‘Let's try a variation of it for Toronto.'”
At the same time, Sellers acknowledges the inaugural edition of the Toronto festival won't be quite as ambitious as its inspiration. No “gastronomic walking tours,” in other words, or visits to art galleries or book-themed brunches.
These may come in the future, he says. “Right now, we're still finding our way.”
Still, the agenda for the first-ever Globe and Mail Open House Festival and its roster of “acts” is impressive, details of which were released yesterday. Sellers has persuaded more than 25 writers, strategists, pundits and one politician (Toronto Mayor David Miller) to commit to the event. The participants include not only Canadians, such as Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine), Margaret MacMillan (Paris 1919), Elizabeth Hay (Late Nights on Air) and thinker Thomas Homer-Dixon, but also international figures: Pulitzer Prize nominee Ha Jin, veteran New Yorker staff writers Calvin Trillin and Adam Gopnik, British novelist Zoë Heller (Notes on a Scandal) and Oprah Book Club pick David Wroblewski (The Story of Edgar Sawtelle), among others.
This year's roster is heavily weighted toward individuals associated with Random House, Canada's largest trade publisher, Sellers agrees. But “we want to do outreach in the years to come with other publishers.”
All the activities will be paid admission – proceeds are earmarked for PEN Canada and the Frontier College literacy organization – and occur at the University of Toronto. Tickets go on sale Feb. 21 through UofTtix and the U of T Bookstore.
The Friday openerwill feature David Miller, urbanist Richard Florida and Rotman School of Management dean Roger Martin exploring how to make cities more resilient. Most sessions are expected to cost $15 each. The website (www.openhousefestival.ca) will be up and running in mid-February.
