The Word On The Street Toronto Book & Magazine Festival – Cities Gone Viral: Assessing Canada’s Response to COVID-19

The first event in the 2020 City Imagines series considers COVID-19, its impact on communities across Canada, and the response by Canadians, our governments, and public officials. Moderator Shawn Micallef interviews author Thea Lim, writer and activist Nora Loreto and Toronto Star columnist Shree Paradkar.

Presented by The Word On The Street, City Imagines explores books that shape cities. Join us online for a wide ranging series of discussions about cities and the people who shape them. The full City Imagines schedule can be found here.

Streaming details for this session will be emailed to attendees before the event.

Shawn Micallef is a weekly columnist with the Toronto Star, co-founder of Spacing magazine, and an instructor at the University of Toronto. He is a frequent commentator on urban issues and is known for his passion for the city – its geography, architecture, culture, and people.

Thea Lim is the author of the novel An Ocean of Minutes, about a woman who becomes a migrant labourer to escape a pandemic and save her lover. It was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her writing has been published by Granta, the Paris Review, the Guardian, Best Canadian Stories, and others. She lives in Toronto.

Nora Loreto is a writer and activist based in Quebec City. She is the editor of the Canadian Association of Labour Media. Her next book, Take Back The Fight (Fernwood) will be published in October, 2020. Nora has been tracking COVID-19 deaths in residential care, nightly, for four months.

Shree Paradkar, a Toronto Star race and gender columnist, is the 2018-2019 recipient of the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy. The author of Betrayed: My cousin’s wrongful conviction for the murder of her daughter, Aarushi, she has been a journalist in Bangalore, Mumbai, Singapore and Toronto. Shree was recently awarded two Amnesty International Media awards for Human Rights reporting.

Register HERE.