The Word On The Street- September 23rd, 2012

On Sunday I attended Canada’s largest book festival, The Word on The Street. I was at the Toronto event but it takes place all across the country and is a must visit for bookish Canadians. I had attended last year and really enjoyed it but I wanted to step up my game a bit this time and volunteer as well as there’s no such thing as a lousy opportunity to get involved in the book community.

The event has a little bit of everything for everyone. There are children’s activity tents, book readings, talks from authors and publishing industry folk, and more book deals than I can wrap my mind around. They even had a special tent just to promote The Hobbit movie! Fun! I spent my morning checking out the various tents and talking to fellow book lovers. The crowds got a little intense at the major publishers tents but when book discounts are on the line, that can be expected.

In the afternoon I put on my The Word on the Street volunteer t-shirt and made my way over to the ScotiaBank Giller Prize tent where I volunteered as a Co-Stage Manager for the afternoon. The morning crowd seemed to think the afternoon was going to be a nightmare as David Suzuki and Jeff Rubin would be doing a talk, but everything went fairly smoothly and I had a lot of fun. I didn’t get to hear all of the talks but I handed David Suzuki his mic, so that’s something. Right?!

Giselle at BookNerd.ca also attended and got to see a bit more of the actual festival than I did (and took some awesome pictures), so be sure to check out her The Word on the Street Recap post. I wish I had gotten a chance to say hello to this awesome Canadian blogger but it looks like she had a great time.