It’s a beautiful, sunshine-y, summery day for an outdoor festival! Word on the Street is a Toronto classic I sorely missed during the pandemic. Its return last year was a highlight of my gradual return to normal life, and this year makes it officially back to being one of my favourite annual traditions.

Quick note: the festival doesn’t go all the way to Museum subway station this year; rather, it starts at Queens Park and follows the crescent up to Wellesley, with a small side arm by Grosvenor Street. I got off at the correct subway station only because the media booth was close to College, but I overhead a few other attendees laughing about how they got off at Museum station and were confused about the lack of bookish booths.

Lots of bookish and theatre swag at the festival this year. I was especially grateful for the cardboard fans from Mirvish and the Toronto Public Library union. Plus, check out this awesome Fabio card from Happily Ever After Books!

Meeting author June Hur was definitely a highlight for this year’s festival. Turns out she used to work at the Toronto Public Library, and she was at the TPL worker union’s booth giving away signed copies of her book The Red Palace. If you love Korean history and murder mysteries, I highly recommend checking this book out! It was one of my top 10 books in 2021, and I wrote a gushing review of it for Quill and Quire.

Just in front of the TPL union’s booth is that of the Royal Ontario Museum, and I couldn’t resist taking a photo of their absolutely adorable baby T.rex banner. Seriously, I would be a goner if I saw that creature in the wild. And not just because they’re such a deadly predator, but because I’d be so smitten by their cuteness that their parent may be right behind me before I even realize I’m in danger! Anyway, for anyone who likes museums, there’s a raffle for a free ROM membership, copies of A Field Guide to the Trees of Ontario for sale, and also ROM staff with objects you can touch and learn about.

I was also thrilled to see Happily Ever After Books back at the festival this year. They’re a bookstore dedicated specifically to romance books, which makes them exactly the kind of store I’d love to spend hours browsing in. They don’t have a physical storefront and focus mainly on online sales, so it’s always a bonus to see one of their pop-ups. Probably no surprise, their booth was often crowded, and I echo another customer’s wish that they had a bigger booth, because I definitely wanted more.

Somehow, I managed to control myself to buying only two books from Happily Ever After: The Make-Up Test (nerdy medieval lit romance? yes please!) and Behind the Scenes (because I absolutely loved the author’s other book Satisfaction Guaranteed). Bonus: the store owner, Jenny, has an incredible memory for faces, and recognized me from last year’s festival!

I also want to shout-out Word on the Street’s incredible media relations team. Their booth had coffee and tea for bloggers, bookstagrammers, and media outlets, as well as some fun bookmarks and ARCs. All of us got a copy of The Witch is Back and a choice of two other books. I selected Sunshine Nails and A Death at the Party, but it wasn’t an easy choice! The other books on the table also looked great, and if the blogger just before me hadn’t snapped up the final copy of Lisa See’s Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, I would’ve had a much harder time deciding.

The children’s area was a beautifully whimsical space called The Fantastical Book Garden. You entered through a storybook and exited through a beautiful illustration. And inside are book flowers. I didn’t look closely at all of them, but one flower featured Chris Hadfield’s An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. Kudos to whomever on the festival team designed this space. It felt like stepping into another world, and I especially love how it’s framed as a Fantastical Book Garden rather than just “The Kids Zone,” or some such. As an adult with no kids, I likely would’ve walked right past a Kids Zone, but this design invited people of all ages to experience the magic for ourselves.

I also always enjoy the Mirvish booth, and this year had a definite Harry Potter theme. There was a figure-eight railroad with the Hogwarts Express, buttons for each of the houses, and a poster of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child signed by the cast!

Also pictured is a Dundurn Press tote, which I won at the publisher’s spin-the-wheel game. It’s apparently the biggest of the prizes they have available, which makes me extra happy I won, and I especially love that the tote even has a side pocket with a button.

Another bookish treat was the Toronto Public Library Bookmobile. I didn’t go in, because my backpack was pretty bulky with books at this point and the bookmobile didn’t look very spacious. But bookmobiles make me think of small towns and children’s books, and it was a nice cozy touch in the heart of the city. I also won a pen at their spin-the-wheel game, which is perfect, because I go through pens pretty quickly.

Books I loved seeing: the Nguyen Kids series by Linda Trinh at the Annick Press booth. I reviewed the first book, The Secret of the Jade Bangle, for Quill and Quire, and absolutely loved it. And it was great to see Maria Ressa’s How to Stand Up to a Dictator at the Another Story Bookshop booth. Maria Ressa is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and an award-winning journalist from the Phillippines. She tirelessly speaks truth to power against authoritarian Philippine governments, and I very much admire her work and her courage.

Other highlights were a Soapbox Science area by Toronto Metropolitan University. I can’t remember what this particular scientist was talking about, but I overheard another telling folks how X-rays worked. Also, how awesome is Poesy? You could sit with one of their poets and they would compose a poem for you on the spot!

And finally, the highlight of any outdoor festival — the junk food! The corn on the cob and potato twists are my classic go-to’s at any festival. The Choco Churros looks so yummy I’m sorely tempted to come back tomorrow just so I could give it a try. Also, as someone who’s trying to reduce my meat intake, I’m beyond thrilled that this festival had a booth just for veggie hotdogs. I didn’t get a chance to look at their menu, but I’m curious if they actually offer a variety of options. (Fingers crossed!)

+

Thanks to the Word of the Street Festival for inviting me and my blog to be part of the fun!

As author Natalie MacLean describes it, her memoir Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much is about a “bad vintage” in her life. She jokes that there are “lots of dismal D’s in the subtitle,” but as anyone who met the author at her book event earlier this month can likely attest, the key phrase in the subtitle isn’t the “dismal D’s,” but rather the image of a phoenix rising from the ashes.

In an interview by Angela Aiello during the event, Natalie shared how she chose the title because witches resonated with her. “They get their strength from within, not from external validation,” she said, citing the white witch of Narnia as ironically satisfying for her “goody-two-shoes” younger self. Fire, of course, has an unfortunate historical association with witches, yet the author turns the element into a symbol of power. For her, witches are “strong women who’ve been through fire and come out the other side stronger, wiser, and fiercer.”

In Natalie’s case, her year of fire began with a google alert about an article accusing her of improperly attributing quotes on her website. While she tried to fix her error, industry rivals had picked up on the article and came after her. Beyond a memoir, Wine Witch is also an expose on sexism in the wine industry, and Natalie shared how the comments directed at her got pretty personal at times. She also pointed out the sexism inherent in wine tasting notes, how lighter and “more accessible” wines tend to be described with feminine adjectives, whereas “sommelier” wines are described in more masculine terms.

And speaking of wine, the book event on May 10th featured three glasses of Creekside wine for all the guests. There was a sauvignon blanc bubbly when we arrived, a sauvignon blanc before the author interview, and finally a syrah before the book signing. The bubbly was my personal favourite, but mostly, I was just glad of this sorely-missed opportunity to celebrate a book with fellow book lovers in person. So many blogger previews have shifted to a virtual format during the pandemic, and haven’t yet reverted to in-person, that when Natalie offered me a media pass to this event, I jumped at the chance. (Fun fact: Apart from festivals, this is my first in-person book event post-pandemic, and my last in-person book event pre-pandemic was the launch of another Dundurn Press title: J.J. Dupuis’ Roanoke Ridge. So thank you to Dundurn Press for keeping my bookish social calendar active!)

Even better, this event had a pretty swanky feel, which made the evening feel particularly special. It was at Clio, a social club in Toronto (former site of the Spoke Club). I can’t remember if I’d ever been to the Spoke Club before it closed, but I’ll be honest: when I looked that Clio’s website, I was intimidated. What does one wear to a social club that did primarily exclusive, members-only experiences? I had genuine anxiety about being turned away at the door and having to show Natalie’s email to be let in, but ultimately decided that if I could brazen it out in a denim skirt at Kevin Kwan’s ultra-swanky Crazy Rich Asians book launch at the Shangri-La Hotel, I could totally do this.

Fortunately, the organizers were thoughtful enough to have someone at the door greeting guests and directing us to the elevator. The elevator itself was funky-awesome with unusual wallpaper of large flowers. And by the time I got to the event space and saw the space packed with people chatting happily on plush white sofas and chairs, I was fully relaxed and ready to enjoy myself.

In fact, the overall atmosphere turned out to be pretty relaxed. Angela and Natalie seem to be good friends, and their interview had a very lighthearted, conversational feel. The people at my table were also really friendly. One of them told me how they love driving around the countryside, discovering new wineries, and sometimes even helping to harvest grapes. Another had enjoyed some of Natalie’s online wine classes, and had brought a stack of earlier titles for the author to sign. And a third took photos for a friend who loved Natalie’s writing but couldn’t make it that evening.

Natalie also shared some tips on moderating your wine consumption during the interview, of course with the disclaimer that she’s not a medical professional and different people find different strategies effective. I personally thought this tip was helpful: ask yourself, what’s the thought before the thought that says I need a drink? If it’s just “I had a bad day,” follow up by asking yourself if there’s something else you can do to make yourself feel better. And of course, if the answer is that a glass of wine would be really helpful, then there’s no judgment here. But as someone who often goes immediately from “ugh what a day” to “I need wine,” I appreciated the suggestion to be more mindful of that thought process.

I also really loved Natalie’s suggestion to be more mindful in general about the wine we drink. She shared that she wants people to see wine not just as being about the drink, but being about the people behind that drink. And so she likes to highlight stories of women in wine. I love that; I often select my wine based on the label design, but I would love to know more about the people and families behind those labels. And of course, make more mindful decisions about which wines and which wineries I want to support.

Ultimately, at least based on the interview at the event, the book to me felt very much like an act of courage. I love the phrase Natalie used in talking about writing this book: “post-traumatic growth.” She said she had to write this book because she “makes sense of [her] world on the page.” It took her a few years before she could shape her writings about her experiences into a book; she quoted Glennon Doyle’s adage to write “from a scar and not an open wound.” Yet it was important to make that effort and turn this into a book for publication, because as a poet (I missed the name and can’t find it online) said, “right now, there’s someone with a wound in the same place.”

I’m excited to read this book for myself, and I hope any wine witch out there who happens to be going through a bad vintage of their own can find their way to this book.

+

Thank you to Natalie MacLean and Dundurn Press for the media pass to this wonderful evening!