As we start really revving up our 2016 festival, we\u2019d like to take a moment and formally welcome Evan Munday to The Word On The Street Toronto! Evan has taken over as the interim Festival Director while Heather Kanabe is away for the year, and will be leading the action to our next event on Sunday, September 25, 2016.<\/p>\n
We sat down with Evan to ask him the difficult questions and find out a little more about him.<\/p>\n
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You\u2019re certainly no stranger to The Word On The Street. How else have you been involved with the festival in the past? <\/strong><\/p>\n I’m pretty sure I’ve been involved in every The Word On The Street since moving to Toronto in 2004. I started back when the festival was on Queen West. I briefly served as a volunteer, but for most of those years, I was an exhibitor, working the table for my good friends and former employer, Coach House Books. As time moved forward, I started doing double-duty, sometimes presenting as an author, or \u2014 after leaving Coach House \u2014 becoming the weird bald guy who sometimes hosts the This Is Not the Shakespeare Stage.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That\u2019s right, you hosted the stage just last year, in fact, and did such a fine job that you\u2019re now the festival director. Well done. How has it been leading the festival so far? <\/p>\n Maybe we should be glad the festival doesn\u2019t run past 7pm. As you\u2019re no doubt already getting a firm grasp on the upcoming festival, what do you expect for this year at The Word On The Street? Are there any big changes planned?<\/strong><\/p>\n With our second year at Harbourfront, we aim to work out some of the kinks and hiccups from our first year. Last year’s festival went very well \u2013 the weather certainly helped \u2013 but with any location change, there was a bit of a baptism by fire \u2013 or so I’ve heard. \u00a0But I see my role more as shepherd than true festival director. Though director Heather Kanabe left to have an actual baby, The Word On The Street is\u00a0sort of\u00a0her baby now, too. I’m just making sure I return it to her in good shape.<\/p>\n There are a few exciting new things to talk about in this year’s festival: namely a stage featuring the best of Canadian Magazines, and a genre-themed tent, focusing on the best in Canadian science fiction, horror, fantasy, and maybe some comic books. I also keep pushing for the opportunity to take a short pedal-boat ride with your favourite author in the Natrel pond, but people tell me that would be logistically problematic.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Has anything surprised you so far about being the Festival Director?<\/strong><\/p>\n Though I anticipated the position would involve a lot of meetings, I was unprepared for the sheer quantity. In my former life as a book publicist, Arsenal Pulp Press’s publicist, Cynara Geissler, and I used to joke about one day being on the cover of\u00a0Meetings & Conventions Magazine\u00a0(which is an honest-to-goodness <a href=http:\/\/www.meetings-conventions.com\/Magazine\/<\/a>\u201c>magazine<\/a>). I feel I’m closer than ever to making that dream a reality as interim director of The Word on the Street.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Glad to hear your dreams may soon be realized. It sounds like you\u2019re really having a good time with the position. But when you\u2019re not in meetings, what are you reading? <\/p>\n What was your favourite book when you were growing up? <\/p>\n We know you have a lot of projects on the go all the time. Have you started anything recently that you\u2019d like us to know about?<\/strong><\/p>\n My current hobby \u2014 aside from writing kids’ books and illustration \u2014 is recording an inane podcast with my friend Lucy Cappiello about Archie comics. If you’ve ever read Archie digests and have more than a little patience, you might enjoy our rambling analyses of the latest adventures set in Pop’s Chocklit Shoppe. We also dig up some solid trivia: did you know the Archie comics are based on a Mickey Rooney movie from 1938? (If that sounds fascinating, you might love this podcast.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Evan Munday<\/em><\/strong> is the author and illustrator of Silver Birch-nominated Dead Kid Detective Agency series. The third book in the series, Loyalist to a Fault, debuts this September. He lives in Toronto, ON.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As we start really revving up our 2016 festival, we\u2019d like to take a moment and formally welcome Evan Munday to The Word On The Street Toronto! 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\nSo far, so good! Luckily, Heather Kanabe (festival director) left very detailed outlines and timelines, so I just have to make sure I’m keeping on top of schedules. But everyone has been very kind, from the staff to the board to sponsors and exhibitors. Of course, we’re currently in the planning stages for 2016. As it progresses, I imagine it will slowly degenerate to either a\u00a0Lord of the Flies\u00a0or\u00a0Purge-type scenario.<\/p>\n
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\nRight now, I’m reading\u00a0Under the Dusty Moon<\/em>\u00a0by Suzanne Sutherland. Sutherland is a writer of middle grade and young adult novels whose work I’ve been enjoying for years. Her latest book is a really fun novel about the daughter of a legendary Toronto musician who takes up with a group of feminist video-game designers (that\u00a0old story). Before that, I was reading\u00a0The Canadian Horror Film: Terror of the Soul<\/em>\u00a0edited by Gina Freitag and Andre Loiselle. I spent my January completely immersed in horror films (as well as a new job, obvi) and this anthology of essays gave me a solid Canadian perspective on things. (There’s an especially good essay that positions\u00a0Pontypool<\/em> (2008)\u00a0as a metaphor for the CRTC.)<\/p>\n
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\nProbably my all-time favourite book growing up was Ray Bradbury’s intensely creepy\u00a0Something Wicked This Way Comes<\/em>, but I also had a severe attachment to James Howe’s\u00a0Bunnicula<\/em>, the tale of a dog and cat who attempt to convince their owners they’ve bought an evil, vampire rabbit.<\/p>\n