TINARS: The Edible City
Are you ready for the best food fight of the fall literary season? No, put down that cream pie. We’re talking about a panel debate featuring such celebrated culinary commentators as Steven Biggs, Sasha Chapman, Sarah B. Hood, Lorraine Johnson and Joshna Maharaj. Dick Snyder, editor of City Bites magazines, will act as moderator.
Is there a better way to celebrate the launch of The Edible City: Toronto’s food from farm to fork (Coach House Books), a collection co-edited by Christina Palassio and Alana Wilcox? Rest assured, there will be fun food-related activities such as a Toronto-themed cookie-decorating contest.
Marc Glassman, Executive Director of This Is Not A Reading Series (TINARS), will host the afternoon. – A TINARS event presented by The Force For Cultural Event Productions, Coach House Books, Gladstone Hotel, NOW Magazine, and Take Five On CIUT.
ABOUT:
THE EDIBLE CITY If a city is its people, and its people are what they eat, then shouldn’t food play a larger role in our dialogue about how and where we live? The food of a metropolis is essential to its character. Native plants, proximity to farmland, the locations of supermarkets, immigration, food-security concerns, how chefs are trained: how a city nourishes itself might say more than anything else about what kind of city it is.
With a cornucopia of essays on comestibles, The Edible City, co-edited by < Palassio and Wilcox, considers how one city eats. It includes dishes on peaches and poverty, on processing plants and public gardens, on rats and bees and bad restaurant service, on schnitzel and school lunches. There are incisive studies of food-safety policy, of feeding the poor, and of waste, and a happy tale about a hardy fig tree.
Together they form a saucy picture of how Toronto – and, by extension, every city – sustains itself, from growing basil on balconies to four-star restaurants. Dig into The Edible City and get the whole story, from field to fork.
CHRISTINA PALASSIO is Managing Editor of Coach House Books. Palassio is a mouthful to say. Luckily, most people just call her Christina, even when she's keeping the business end of Coach House together with a very very small piece of string.
ALANA WILCOX is the Editor-in-chief of Coach House Books, where she co-founded the uTOpia series. She also serves as the past chair of the Literary Press Group and is the author of a novel, A Grammar Of Endings (Mercury Press).
STEVEN BIGGS is a horticulturist who regularly writes for Country Guide, Edible Toronto and Small Farm Canada magazines, specializing in stories on food, agriculture and gardening.
SASHA CHAPMAN is an award-winning food columnist for Toronto Life magazine and a frequent contributor to Canada's major newspapers and magazines.
SARAH B. HOOD writes about food for the National Post, Canadian Business, Hosting and her own EatLocallyBlogGlobally.com. She teaches writing at George Brown College and edits sections of online magazine Suite101.com.
LORRAINE JOHNSON writes about the environmental, social, political and practical imperatives of gardening. Her book City Farmer: Adventures in Feeding Ourselves will be published in spring 2010 by Greystone Books. She lives in Toronto with three chickens and two cats.
JOSHNA MAHARAJ is the former chef at The Stop Community Food Centre, and is currently the chef at Food Studio, the fresh market cafe in the ROM.
DICK SNYDER is the editor of City Bites magazine, Toronto's guide to great food and drink. He also writes about food for enRoute, Zoomer, Fashion and Good Food Revelation.
Visit: www.tinars.ca
CONTACTS
The Edible City: Evan Munday, evan [at] chbooks [dot] com, (416) 979-2217
This is Not A Reading Series, Chris Reed, coordinator [at] tinars [dot] ca
