Talking TIFA with Roland Gulliver: It’s back, in person, and packed with spectacular authors and events

Autumn’s shorter days and cooler weather beg for curling up with a good book – or several. This year’s Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) is ideally timed in that regard. After two years of virtual festivals due to the pandemic shutdown, this year’s festival is happening earlier in the fall — September 22 – October 2, 2022. It will be in person at Harbourfront Centre, in a new indoor and outdoor festival site. And in the “best of both worlds” category, there will also be complementary digital content. 

This timing is favourable not only for booklovers in general, but also for teachers seeking book recommendations for students as the school year begins. And the abundance of events and activities seem almost to guarantee attendees they will find that perfect story for cozy comfort in the coming long evenings.

As the festival opens, TIFA’s director Roland Gulliver is excited. After serving as the associate director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival for over a decade, he came to Canada to begin his role at TIFA in February 2020 – just one month before the pandemic shut down the world. Under his leadership, TIFA pivoted with considerable success to a virtual festival in 2020 and 2021. This past spring, he also oversaw the launch of the three-day Motive: Crime & Mystery Festival, the inaugural festival of these genres in Canada. He can’t wait for us to experience all that goes into the 11-day in-person edition of TIFA: the interviews, the book signings, the live readings, the parties, and all the events and activities for all ages.  

Gulliver spoke with SesayArts Magazine about highlights and not-to-be missed events of this year’s festival, the expanded and mostly-free TIFA Kids programme, and how TIFA reflects the multicultural and plurilingual Toronto.

SM: A month after you joined TIFA, the world was hit with the COVID pandemic. Although the festival that year likely wasn’t what you envisioned, the ensuing shift to a virtual festival in 2020 and 2021 was really impressive. Now that TIFA can be in person again, does it still reflect the goals you had for the festival when you came on as director, or have those goals evolved in the intervening time because of all that’s happened in between?

RG: When I arrived in February 2020, I had many ideas and ambitions to fulfill the potential for the live TIFA festival, and although we became digital for two years, we were able to successfully translate those onto an online stage: performances, masterclasses, critical conversations, new commissions and TIFA Kids. It also provided the opportunity to present more multilingual events and to create more digital content–podcasts like Write in the Neighbourhood, animations, digital maps–that responded to the medium. It also enabled us to reach new international audiences.

In 2022, after Motive, our first Crime and Mystery Festival in June, it is now really exciting to finally bring these programme ideas, projects and strands into the live in-person festival with our new festival dates this September, and creating a new indoor and outdoor festival site. Both the digital festivals and our in-person festivals aim to expand the diversity of, access to and possibility of storytelling for audiences of all ages, from booklovers to casual cultural experiencers looking for insight and entertainment. So, there will be film, exhibitions, walking tours, installations, music and more alongside an array of literary genres.

The live event is still a magical thing, but now we have the additional possibilities of digital events and content to complement this which makes the future very exciting – and that’s before discovering the wonderful books to be published each year!

SM: Toronto is one of the most multicultural and multilingual cities in the world. Would you like to speak about how this year’s programming reflects the city’s diverse audiences and communities, and also the politics and ideologies that we are living through?

RG: Toronto is a remarkable city of languages, cultures, nationalities and neighbourhoods. As a result, it is packed full of stories to discover and share. It is one of the many exciting challenges for TIFA–to grow to reflect and celebrate the city’s diversity, and to learn how to become a multilingual festival.

We began this in the last two years, and this year we will have events in Spanish, Bengali, Basque, French, Taiwanese and Sami languages, presenting local and international writers, including newly commissioned stories. We will also have the Spectacular Translation Machine which invites audiences to translate elements of a graphic novel.

Alongside this, it is incredibly important for a festival to reflect the issues of our times–authors have the unique skill of presenting the political through the deeply personal. Also, festivals should be a place to offer perspectives (the plural is very important) and insight on issues, a place for audiences to ask questions about what is happening in the world. As well as presenting a range of non-fiction and memoir to reflect this our Critical Conversations series deals with this directly with discussions each day on Ukraine, climate, affordable cities, Black Lives Matter, Indigenous reconciliation, digital futures and many more.

SM: What events or authors are you especially excited about at this year’s festival?

RG: I am excited by so much in the programme: headliners like Ian McEwan and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa; Canadian cultural icons like Martha Wainwright and Ali Hassan; welcoming some good friends from Scotland like Irvine Welsh and A.L. Kennedy; meeting some great Canadian writers whose work I have loved for years but never had the opportunity to properly meet like Lisa Moore, Rawi Hage, Shyam Selvadurai, Heather O’Neill, Alexander McLeod, Joshua Whitehead.

We have two incredible headline events with The Moth on October 1^st at Koerner Hall–they create astounding storytelling events across North America but only the second time they have appeared in Canada. And Theater of War who will create the most remarkable, powerful conversation, in-person and online, using T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land as the focus to discuss the war in Ukraine, on September 25. Both will be spectacular!

SM: I am an enthusiastic and longtime reader of children’s literature, and I was excited to learn that this year’s TIFA Kids programme is the largest it’s ever been. Does this increase reflect a more engaged readership, in your observation? And what programming have you created to engage young readers that they cannot afford to miss this year?

RG: A book festival is a celebration of words and stories for all ages, and the joy of bringing that to young audiences adds a special energy to proceedings. Bringing families into the festival community is incredibly important, not least to make our audiences, and book buyers of tomorrow. A key part of the (mostly free) TIFA Kids programme is to offer accessible, engaging, interactive, fun experiences for all ages whether that is dropping in for 10 minutes or enjoying the whole day.

We have created over 30 dynamic and engaging performances, talks, workshops and presentations –many of which will be free–featuring authors, illustrators and performers from Canada and overseas exploring themes of identity, history and culture, environment, science and imagination.

We have created a range of outdoor spaces for kids to enjoy in particular:

Storydrop: Presented in partnership with The Children’s Book Bank, offers free and hands-on outdoor activities – dress up as their favourite book character; contribute to the creation of the Great Collage Creature, or cozy up for an afternoon of reading in the book nook.

The Happiness Collectors: a journey of sounds and silliness to learn the best ways to collect happiness – and most important of all, how to pass it on! The show invites group audiences to travel the world using interactive headphones. 

SM:  What titles are on your fall reading list? 

RG: The delight and curse of the job is that there is so much to read in the world. Coming from the UK to Canada I have loved the change of publishing perspective taking in more of the US, Caribbean and Asia. So my to-read pile is ever fluctuating! I am looking forward to reading the new novel from Moth founder George Dawes Green and the new Rebus novel in November from my good friend Ian Rankin; I am fascinated by books about reading so How to Read Now by Elaine Castillo is calling out to be read; the new novel from Celeste Ng will be a highlight for the fall; Afterlives by Nobel winner Abdulrazak Gurnah…

SM: Who are some up-and-coming authors whose works you recommend?

From Canada, I am excited by the new books from Kim Fu; Tsering Yangzom Lama; Chelsea Vowel and Elise Levine. The latter has had several books out but deserves more!

In their own countries they are hugely established but there are some amazing international writers in translations: Olivia Wenzel, Leonara Miano, Uxue Alberdi, Chi Ta-wei.

SM:  What’s happening in the landscape of literature in Canada that you want to highlight?

RG: I find the landscape fascinating. It is in a time of change and flux as it responds to and reflects the changing of the mainstream cultures. It is built on a legacy of remarkable storytelling; I love how comfortable Canadians are with short stories but now that is moving into exploring hybrid forms bringing more voices to the fore.

SM: What is the biggest surprise or thrill to have come out of being the Director of TIFA so far?

RG: All of the job has been thrilling. Lots of people said it must have been hard arriving in a pandemic which it was, but it offered lots of new ways of engaging with authors and audiences. And the joy of the job is that it continually surprises, with books that take your breath away, audiences’ reactions to events, the books you discover through the year. Which all contributes to the biggest thrill of discovering books and authors and ideas to share with the Toronto audience; that is very special.

For information and tickets to TIFA, visit festivalofauthors.ca.

© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2022