After a 2-year hiatus, the 48th Toronto Book Awards returns in-person to celebrate this year’s 5 shortlisted books

By: Shaki Sutharsan

The Toronto Reference Library has always been a safe haven for me. I can lose myself among the stacks for hours or scatter my creative menagerie out onto one of the tables by the windows. On Nov. 16, I aimed to step inside the library to attend the 48th annual Toronto Book Awards, the soles of my shoes slipping against the pavement as I scrambled to escape the bitter cold that had settled in the city this past November.

The Toronto Book Awards have been taking place in the city since 1974. The award, which offers $10,000 in prize money for the winner with each shortlisted author receiving $1,000, was first established to recognize the “literary merit” of novels that made a significant contribution to the city’s cultural landscape in the past year.

 This year, the awards received 73 submissions. The shortlisted novels and the winner were selected by a jury comprised of past shortlisted author Ann Y.K. Choi, poet Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, author Phillip Dwight Morgan, retired Toronto librarian Margaret Henry and Indigenous educator Brenda Wastasecoot.

Shivering inside the foyer of the library, I hauled myself into the elevator and headed to the second floor without stopping to consult the directory posted by the elevator bank – I’d been a frequent visitor since I was 10-years-old. When my parents had first taken me there, I remember craning my neck up to marvel at the cavernous walls of the library, bouncing excitedly in place at the thought of someday becoming one of the tired-looking students hunched over their laptop. 

Now firmly planted in the shoes of those bleary-eyed college students, I stepped off the elevator on the second floor, lugging my backpack into the Bram and Bluma Appel Salon, where the awards ceremony was taking place that evening. I stepped inside, feeling like an imposter, eyeing the wide wooden platform spanning the front of the room and the podium on top of it with second-hand trepidation.

The Appel Salon stretched back towards the bar and the refreshments table. Chairs were arranged into neat rows facing the stage and were already filling up with attendees. It seemed like I was one of the youngest people there, and I felt woefully inadequate. What did I know about literature? I was a rookie, still hesitant to tell people my ambitions as an author myself. I didn’t feel like I was allowed to call myself one yet.

As the crowd’s chatter began to hit a wall, a hush settled over the room as Ismail Alfa, the host of CBC Radio’s Metro Morning, took the stage.

“You’ll have to excuse me this evening if I pause every once in a while,” Alfa began with a grin as he stood behind the podium. “It’s just me kind of soaking in the energy of real people being in the same room as me.” 

A smatter of laughter drifted through the crowd and I found myself nodding along emphatically. Over the last two years, I’d almost forgotten that there are real people who exist beyond BookTok and enjoy novels as much as I do.

A heavy silence fell over the crowd when the first of the five shortlisted authors, Camilla Gibb, took the stage to read a passage from her novel, The Relatives. Gibb painted a solemn picture of Lila, the first character introduced in one of three intersecting storylines in the book. Lila is a social worker in Toronto assigned to a case where a young girl has been found wandering High Park in her pyjamas. 

I was taken back to afternoons in Grade 2 spent sitting on the carpet in front of my teacher, stricken with awe as I found myself enraptured with the story she was reading to us that day. I hadn’t felt that same feeling in years —- of being entirely lost in a story that I wasn’t reading on my own.

There is something soul-binding about having an artist share their work with you. It creates an intimacy that you would be hard-pressed to experience elsewhere. Whether it’s an artist’s exhibit of their work carefully put together or any instance of live music, the shared moment of artistic vulnerability and its subsequent reverence can be breathtaking.

When you sit in front of an author as they read from a story they’ve crafted and grown over months or possibly years, it can feel like they’re giving you a part of their heart. 

One by one, the other shortlisted authors – Falen Johnson, H.N. Khan, Sarah Polley and Adrienne Shadd – took to the stage to read from their own work. In the words they shared, I felt their vulnerability and allowed myself to sink into my own.

Johnson, a Mohawk and Tuscarora playwright and the host of CBC podcast, Buffy, said in a post-event interview that she’d never considered herself to be a writer. “I didn’t think I was smart enough to do it. I felt like it had to be done in a really specific way and that world wasn’t for me.”

At the event, Johnson read from her play, Two Indians, about what she described to be a “common experience” on reserves across Canada and the United States.

“Car accidents are a bit of an epidemic in our communities. We lose people … there was an accident that affected some people in my family and I wanted to look into that and try and find some healing in that,” Johnson said before reading an exchange between two characters in her play. 

Khan, a Pakistani-Canadian first-time author who grew up in Regent Park, read a passage from Wrong Side of the Court. His debut novel tells the story of 15-year-old Fawad Chaudhry as he navigates his love for basketball, his father’s death and his mother’s desire to arrange a marriage for him to his first cousin in Pakistan.

“This is a way for me to fantasize myself about two things I love: basketball and my mother’s cooking,” the author shared. 

Polley, who was awarded the 2022 Toronto Book Award for her memoir, Run Towards the Danger, joked about her book being “a series of personal essays that are written with the intention of making you feel really sorry for me.” The autobiographical memoir examines post-traumatic memory and our relationships with our bodies. On Jan. 13, Polley’s film, Women Talking, was released in theatres. 

Finally, Shadd read from an updated version of the book that she had written with the collaboration of Afua Cooper and Karolyn Smardz Frost, The Underground Railroad, Next Stop, Toronto! The passage told a poignant true story about two couples that made their way to Canada through the Underground Railroad.

As an aspiring author, I felt a sense of community in that room. I no longer felt out of place or intimidated. I realized this was a home for all readers, regardless of age or literary expertise. Similar to the library itself, it was a cultural centrepiece that, at its core, bred a love for storytelling and authentic learning. 

Johnson said she tells young writers to embrace being a storyteller. “We all have stories … try not to be intimidated by whatever preconceived notions about what the publishing world is like, what the literary world is like.”

When I left the Toronto Reference Library later that evening, with a signed copy of The Relatives cradled against my chest, I knew that I’d just witnessed a glimpse of what the real literary world looked like and it was nothing like I’d imagined. As I walked away from the setting of a myriad of my literary dreams, Johnson’s words reverberated quietly within me:

“Write your story, write your voice, because if you try to put those expectations on yourself of what you think it should be…, which I’ve been guilty of doing, it’ll just stifle you.”

Check out a live stream of the full event below: