Reading: Tash Aw, Andrea De Carlo, Jason Guriel, Colm Tóibín

Tash Aw’s debut novel, The Harmony Silk Factory, won the Whitbread First Novel Award and a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Aw is Malaysian by birth but now lives in London, England. He presents his second novel, Map of the Invisible World, the psychologically rich tale of three lives indelibly marked both by their own past and the past of Indonesia.

Andrea De Carlo is the author of 14 previous novels, which have been translated in 26 languages. His non-literary endeavours include photography and music, and working as an Assistant Director for Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. A contributor to Greenpeace’s “Writers for the Forest” campaign, his books are printed on recycled or Forest Stewardship Council certified paper. De Carlo presents his most recent novels in English, Windshift, Sea of Truth, and Techniques of Seduction.

Jason Guriel’s work has been widely published in American, British and Canadian magazines. He is the author of one previous collection of poetry, Technicolored, and his work was anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry in English. He also received the Frederick Bock Prize from Poetry magazine in 2007. Guriel presents his second book of poems, Pure Product, which celebrates the purity of complicated feelings and reveals the true impurities of life through his whip-smart, charismatic and mischievous style.

John Macfarlane is the Editor and Co-Publisher of The Walrus. He is also the Chair of the Canadian Journalism Foundation.

Colm Tóibín is the award-winning author of five internationally bestselling novels – including The Blackwater Lightship, and The Master, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award – and a collection of short fiction, Mothers & Sons. In 2008 Tóibín served on the jury for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and became the first ever guest curator at IFOA. He presents his new novel, Brooklyn, which was longlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize. “Tóibín’s genius,” says the New Yorker, “is that he makes it impossible for us to walk away.”