The main event
At 17 years of age, the Scream in High Park Literary Festival can afford to poke fun at itself, or at least at the idea of the printed page in 2009. Organized this year under the loose rubric of “the book is dead,” the festival, known for spotlighting the bleeding edge of poetics and prose, has been expanding to include events outside of its namesake repurposing of High Park’s theatre. While that night is still the big draw of the week — and this year includes everyone from recent Trillium award winner Jeramy Dodds, to Can-thriller stalwart Andrew Pyper — the ancillary events are becoming the go-to places for absurd panel discussions and it-might-just-work conceptual larks. (Full disclosure: I am organizing one of those events.)
Scream In High Park, with Oana Avasilichioaei, Wakefield Brewster, Margaret Christakos, Peter Culley, Jeramy Dodds, Paul Dutton and Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, Lisa Foad, Susan Holbrook, Ryan Kamstra, Shani Mootoo, Andrew Pyper, Adam Sol. Jul 13. 7pm. PWYC ($10 sugg.). Dream Stage, High Park.
What’s for dessert?
A crowd favourite of Scream is the annual book-length dinner reading, and for only $40 you can enjoy a three-course meal and a reading by Dennis Lee of his 1972 GG winning collection, Civil Elegies. Let me get the most obvious joke out of the way: they will not be serving alligator pie. So please don’t die. While Lee is known by many as the author of children’s classics, his adult poetry — such as 2003’s joyfully cerebral and mercilessly minimal UN — is some of the most challenging and musical verse created in Canada. NB: The book-length reading is often a sellout event.
If Hope Disorders Words: Dennis Lee Reprised. Jul 10. 7pm. $40 (dinner plus reading),
$15 (reading only). The Toronto Archives, 255 Spadina Rd.
Coach House editor Alana WilcoxAs any struggling writer knows, the whims of an editor can seem mysterious, vague and idiosyncratic, but now that the book is dead and all, it’s time to dish on publishing’s secrets. This year, Scream inaugurates its “Stet” event in which several editors, including Coach House’s Alana Wilcox, will blind-edit the same work by an established, famous writer. Expect sparks when the edits are presented and the identity of the writer revealed. If you don’t know what “stet” means, you should, as it’s the one word a writer must know how to spell.
Stet: Redacting the Redacted. Jul 4. 7pm. PWYC ($5 sugg.). Mercer Union, 1286 Bloor W. 
The ghost of David Mirvish booksRip up the redeveloped pavement of Yorkville and the Annex and you’d find sedimentary layers of utopias past. Now, thanks to Scream, you won’t even have to use a pickaxe to find fossilized ponytails. Their new “Chapters 11” walking tour of deceased independent bookstores will revisit the recently departed (David Mirvish Books) as well as the original victims of big boxification (The Book Cellar). This event should prove the triple threat of the festival: it’s free, informative and profoundly melancholic.
Chapters 11: The Bankruptcy Walking Tour. Jul 4. 1pm. Free. Begins at the Victory Café, 581 Markham.