It is with\u00a0great pleasure to announce the inclusion of a new member to The Word On The Street family, Loribeth Gregg! Loribeth is our new Programming Assistant and will be with us for a few months to help keep all the best parts of the festival running smoothly.<\/p>\n
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We took some time to talk with her this week regarding the deepest and darkest questions in life, and let us tell you, it hasn’t taken her long to become a part of the gang.\u00a0Caution: If you really\u00a0like couscous, you may be reading about your future best friend.<\/p>\n
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What book(s) are you reading now?<\/strong><\/p>\n Too many at once! Birdie<\/em> by Tracey Lindberg, Pastoral<\/em> by Andre Alexis, and, because I am a total apple-polisher, our Festival Director Evan Munday\u2019s Dead Kid Detective Agency<\/em> (I should mention that that last one happens to be a great book, too. Goth kids, Canadian history, and murder<\/em>? Doesn\u2019t get better than that).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What part of reading brings you the most joy?<\/strong><\/p>\n I suppose when I\u2019m genuinely surprised by something. Not necessarily a dramatic plot twist, but something that hadn\u2019t occurred to me is brought to light, or a character reacts in a way I didn\u2019t expect. The first thing that comes to mind is in Andre Alexis\u2019 Fifteen Dogs<\/em>, when it was revealed to me what the structure of the rest of the book would be. I don\u2019t want to go into detail for the sake of those who haven\u2019t read it, but I will say that a mournful \u201cOh NOOOOOO\u201d could be heard by anyone within 100 feet of my apartment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Have you ever fallen in love with a character from a book?<\/strong><\/p>\n Not in a romantic way, but there are some I love like sisters. Flavia from Alan Bradley\u2019s Flavia de Luce series is my best literary friend. She\u2019s a brilliant 12-year-old girl who solves gruesome murders in small-town England in the 50s, and her musings on womanhood, sisterhood, and life and death always speak right to my heart.\u00a0 In As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust<\/em>, Flavia is at boarding school in Toronto, and takes a walk across the Price Edward Viaduct to St. James Cemetery, which happens to be very close to my apartment. I nearly had a heart attack as I\u00a0thought she might be coming round for tea. If only.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What does your reading space look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n I tend to read whenever I have a spare moment and have had the foresight to bring a book with me. My most recent reading space was the back of the route 29 Dufferin bus. Other hotspots include the doctor\u2019s office next to a child with whooping cough, and waiting for the GO train after just missing the one before it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Do you judge a book by its cover? (don\u2019t worry, we won\u2019t judge you)<\/strong><\/p>\n Absolutely, all the time. I have huge respect and admiration for the designers of a great book cover. The initial reason I was drawn to Pastoral<\/em> was that endlessly intriguing cover with the portrait of the sheep. (Google it right this moment, I insist). I also judge books by their titles, but that\u2019s a whole different conversation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you could chat with any living writer, whether they speak English or not, who would they be and what would your first question be for them?<\/strong><\/p>\n Probably Joseph Boyden. I\u2019ve almost met him several times: at literary festivals, in a Native literature class I took, and once as we crossed paths on the street but I got nervous and kept walking and regretted it for the rest of my life (thus far). I would probably ask him a question I\u2019m sure authors hate: What\u2019s next? I need more! (No pressure, Mr. Boyden.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you could commission a sequel to any book you wanted, which one would it be? And, if you\u2019re brave enough, what would you want it to be called?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m generally not a fan of sequels, but now that I think of it, a continuation of Through Black Spruce<\/em> would completely blow my mind. I would love to know more about Annie\u2019s sister, Suzanne, and what exactly she was doing while Annie was looking for her. As for a title, I\u2019m definitely not brave enough. As I said, I judge books by their titles, and would forever judge myself if I gave this theoretical book a bad one.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you could come back in another life as an edible crop, what you want to be? And what dish would you want to be made in to?<\/strong><\/p>\n The first thing that came to mind was couscous, though upon further research it turns out couscous doesn\u2019t just grow out of the ground in tiny little balls of deliciousness. Apparently,\u00a0couscous is made from semolina which is made from durum flour which is made from wheat. So I\u2019d like to be a good ol\u2019 stalk of wheat which will someday be delicious couscous.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Two men went into a restaurant. They both ordered the same dish from the menu. After they tasted it, one of the men went outside the restaurant and shot himself. Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n The dish they ordered is the most delicious thing ever pulled out of the ground and crafted with human hands (it\u2019s definitely couscous-based in my mind). The first man, a food critic, realizes he\u2019ll never enjoy anything ever again as much as he enjoyed that meal. His life has lost all\u00a0meaning, and so he decides to end it. The second man burned his tongue on a Tim Horton\u2019s hot chocolate earlier that day and can\u2019t really taste anything, so he lives. But the real question is: Who has suffered more?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is with\u00a0great pleasure to announce the inclusion of a new member to The Word On The Street family, Loribeth Gregg! Loribeth is our new Programming Assistant and will be with us for a few months to help keep all the best parts of the festival running smoothly. We took some time to talk […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":4233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4227"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4231,"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227\/revisions\/4231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}