Yesterday a friend and I made a pilgrimage to Toronto to the 29th annual Word On the Street. This is a festival that celebrates the written word, from publishers to authors and everything in between.
This wasn’t the first time I’ve been to this event. In fact, the first time I went it was with the same friend. We drove up to Toronto and parked at the Yorkdale Mall and took the subway to Queens Park where the event was held.
It was a good thing my friend knew her way around Toronto because of the two subway stops closest to it, one was just a bit too soon, and one was just a bit too late. A couple of years later I went again with a different friend and forgot which stop was better, so we just ended up following the crowd. LOL
I don’t know when they switched the venue from Queens Park to Queens Quay, but that’s where we had to go this year. I will say one thing about the move, it’s easier to get to. We drove to Oshawa (about halfway between our town and Toronto) and took the GO train to Union Station. From Union it was just a few blocks worth of a walk to the waterfront – actually, very close to where the hotel the hubby and I stayed at when we had our holiday at the beginning of the summer.
Although we agreed that it wasn’t as nicely laid out as when it was in Queen’s Park, we still had a good time. And I managed to come home with a pile of loot:
You can click on the picture to see a bigger version of it, but basically, the stack of books on the left are ones I paid for (at greatly discounted prices), while the rest of the stuff was freebies.
Several things have changed over the years. One was a greater presence of poetry. There were whole booths devoted to poetry, not just the occasional book, and I received several free poems – one was a tiny little scrap of paper in a tiny envelope, it was really cute (the presentation, not the poem).
Another thing that changed was a greater self publishing presence. It was so long ago when we last went that there was still a stigma attached to self-publishing. This time around there were a lot of micro presses and self publishers, as well as booths advocating self-publishing and offering all kinds of information.
One of the things I liked seeing best was the number of writing groups with booths. Some of these offered classes (with draws to win a spot), some of them had information about meetings, and most of them had writing prompts to give away. There really was something for everyone.
We came away footsore but happy, although we didn’t think it was as big as when it was at Queens Park. After I got home and was looking at my map (which was a freebie that I just stuck in my bag) I discovered the reason why. There was a long building that went from the road to the waterfront – we never went past the building but apparently there was a whole other section of booths on the other side of it. And a lot of stuff inside the building as well.
D’oh!
Oh well, guess that just means we’ll be better prepared next year.
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