Should you be in Toronto this month, and interested in two book fairs selling books (and in one case paintings) that you are unlikely to see elsewhere, make time for one or both of the following:
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 11:30-4:30 p.m.
Meet the Presses’ Indie Literary Market, at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, 427 Bloor Street West, a couple of blocks west of Spadina
There will be almost 50 presses represented, including big hitters (Coach House Press, Porcupine’s Quill) and smaller presses like Nestlings Press. Lots of great books on display, for admiring and, just possibly, purchasing.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 12:00-4:00 p.m.
The Arts and Letters Club’s annual Small Works Show and Sale, 14 Elm Street, west side of Yonge a couple of blocks north of Dundas
This is always a popular show, offering not only books written by members of the club but walls full of small paintings, sculptures and photographs by some of the best professional artists in the business (they don’t call it the Arts & Letters Club for nothing). Added attraction this year: The first twelve visitors to spend $150 will win a caricature drawn on the spot by Alan King (former editorial cartoonist of the Ottawa Citizen, and the author-illustrator of a terrific new children’s book). And you get to see inside an amazing historical building.
Nestlings Press will have our two most recent books on offer – Aesop ASAP (50 Aesop’s fables in rhyming verse, illustrated by Anthony Jenkins) and News of the Day Lustily Shouted, full of breathtaking illustrations of the mean streets of Victorian London (think pickpockets and cutthroats) by Julian Mulock, with accompanying couplets and quatrains by Warren Clements. We will also have our backlist of some ten other titles, including If Famous Authors Wrote Nursery Rhymes, How to Get to Heaven and Back (a look at hundreds of movies about Heaven, Hell, angels and ghosts), and collections of the Fisher comic strip (Philip Street) and the Nestlings comic strip (Warren).