I am co-founder and Literary Director of The Reading Line, a reading festival on two wheels, created in 2014. We ride along routes that need infrastructure improvements and stop at points of interest along the way, where authors read from their books.
Our routes in downtown Toronto have included the Green Line (a 5 km hydro corridor with the potential to be a continuous linear park for pedestrians and cyclists), Bloor Street, and Bathurst Street.
A variety of local authors have joined us for the rides, from novelists like Vincent Lam, Anne Michaels, and Kathyrn Kuitenbrouwer to non-fiction writers including Shawn Micallef, S. Bear Bergman, and Doug Saunders, and children’s authors and illustrators such as Frank Viva and Julie Kraulis. We also invite politicians, activists, and key change-makers to speak at our Book Rides on the importance of complete streets.
Our Book Ride in 2016 paid tribute to June Callwood and Jane Jacobs, in what would have been Jane’s centenary, and was voted one of the Best Jane 100 events in Toronto by NOW magazine. The Reading Line was nominated Best Reading Series in Toronto by NOW in 2016, and our 2018 Book Ride in Toronto was one of the top three weekend events in the city, according to NOW. (I know, so much love from NOW! We didn’t pay them, honestly.)
In 2018 our Book Rides took place in Brampton (partnering with The FOLD) and downtown Toronto.
