For 47 years, the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) has returned to bring together readers and writers from all over the globe to explore and celebrate the joy of stories.
TIFA is Canada’s largest and longest-running literary festival. New this year, is the inclusion of a Festival of Indigenous Stories as part of its programming. Overall, the festival will host over 100 events with some of the world’s most beloved authors.
Hye’s Picks at TIFA 2026
Below I share my picks of events that I hope you add to your TIFA lists for this weekend.
Friday, October 30 at 4:30pm
The Bard, Rewritten
Daniel Hahn and Ann-Marie MacDonald
Hear from the authors on adapting and translating Shakespeare. Hahn is a translator who travelled the world talking about Shakespeare with actors and writers for his book If This Be Magic. MacDonald’s award-winning play Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), is a modern revisioning of Shakepeare’s Othello and Romeo and Juliet.
Friday, October 30 at 6:30pm
Stories We Inherit
Gigi L. Leung and Intan Paramaditha
In Gigi L. Leung’s Everyday Movement (translated by Jennifer Feeley), two university roommates and their circle of friends navigate their normal lives while also living through Hong Kong’s 2019 protests, confronting questions of identity, democracy, and belonging. In Intan Paramaditha’s Night of a Thousand Hells, three sisters grapple with grief and their grandmother’s haunting prophecies when the youngest commits a devastating act of violence. Together, Leung and Paramaditha explore memory, fear, political unrest and the forces that shape our lives.
Friday, October 30 at 6:30pm
Imagining Resistance Beyond Colonies
Quill Christie-Peters, Nardi Simpson, Jesse Wente, and Kirli Saunders
Part of the Festival of Indigenous Stories
Join Anishinaabe writer and artist Quill Christie-Peters, Yuwaalaraay storyteller, composer and singer/song-writer Nardi Simpson, and Anishinaabe writer Jesse Wente for a rich discussion of craft, sovereignty, and new creative horizons. Moderated by award-winning Gunai writer and artist Kirli Saunders.
Saturday, October 31 at 11:30am
Folklore & Fierce Women
Bar Fridman-Tell and Lindsay Wong
Loosely based on Welsh mythology, Fridman-Tell’s Honeysuckle follows Daye, a girl literally made from flowers as a friend for Rory, and their changing relationship as the seasons change and Rory grows up. Wong’s Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies follows a broke MFA dropout, who agrees to become a corpse bride to save her family, only to become entangled in witchcraft and societal expectations. Together, the authors explore friendship, womanhood, transformation and the stories we inherit.
Saturday, October 31 at 12:30pm
In Other Worlds
Portia Elan, Huang Chong‐Kai, and Jeremy Tiang
Join the authors as they discuss their speculative fiction novels. Told through different perspectives, Huang’s The Formosa Exchange (translated by Tiang) chronicles the lives of Taiwanese and Cuban residents who have woken up to discover that they have switched spots, and now must grapple with living in their new homes. In Elan’s Homebound, four lives are tied together across centuries by an unfinished videogame and their longing for connection, exploring love, loss, technology and humanity’s search for home.
Saturday, October 31 at 2:30pm
Blood on the Page
Craig DiLouie and Emily A. Weedon
DiLouie’s The Summer Fun Massacre follows a Texas deputy investigating a new massacre at a summer camp where a deadly tragedy occurred nine years earlier and his connection to the case. Weedon’s Hemo Sapiens follows a local police officer whose pregnant wife frequents a medspa that may have ties to a series of blood-drained murders. Together, they’ll explore the dark side of horror, bloodlust and the things that lurk just beneath the surface.
Saturday, October 31 at 4:00pm
Home Sweet Haunted Home
Jessica Hamilton and Sophia Hannan
Jessica Hamilton and Sophia Hannan will discuss their stories where something is lurking just behind every door. In Hamilton’s The Woods, a grieving mother moves her family into a secluded house in the forest, only to discover that something ancient and malevolent may be lurking among the trees. Hannan’s We Were Never Here follows a teenage ghost hunter who returns to a haunted manor with her friends after her girlfriend’s mysterious death, only to discover that something followed them home.
Sunday, November 1 at 12:00pm
Bright Machine and Dark Stars
Canisia Lubrin and Hind Shoufani
Bright Machine is Lubrin’s highly anticipated new collection which, as ever, is stylistically inventive, topically challenging, shining a bright light on humanity. In Dark Star Requiem, Shoufani writes with stark precision about grief, desire, and exile, and how art endures when everything is gone.
Sunday, November 1 at 2:30pm
Losing the Plot: Banned Books, Brain Rot, and The Fight for Free Minds
In an age of AI slop, declining literacy levels among children, and increased book banning in schools, is our culture slowly abdicating the skills and freedom necessary for sustained reading. Join three thinkers to discuss the challenges facing reading and offer ideas about what we can do about it. Rhe conversation is moderated by Adam Sol, featuring Ira Wells, I. Augustus Durham, and Vass Bednar.
Sunday, November 1 at 4pm
Housing Inc.: Leilani Farha
In Housing Inc.: A Global Takeover and Our Fight for Home, the 2026 CBC Massey Lecture, Leilani Farha examines how homes around the world have increasingly been treated as financial assets, with devastating consequences for affordability and access. Farha explores the forces driving the global housing crisis and the people pushing back.
TIFA is taking place at Victoria University in the University of Toronto until November 1, 2026.
The on-site TIFA Box Office will be located in the lobby of Victoria College.
For more festival details and schedule, please visit festivalofauthors.ca.
