What matters most
about a city?
A public square? The local farmer’s market? The monument of an obscure historical icon?
We believe that what matters most about a city is what matters to the people who live in it.
The square where their heart was broken. The house they grew up in. The bench in a park where they tried whiskey from their buddy’s mickey for the first time. The publishing house that sent them their first rejection letter.
Every city is built of places where people felt, lived, thought and created. Every city is a map of meanings.
We want to capture what matters to different people living here.
How does it work?
Here is the gist of it.
1. You download a mobile app, which is basically a map.
2. You find the closest geotag around you.
3. You walk there and find what’s tagged (let’s say it’s a cafe). You click the geotag.
4. You listen to an audio with a poem, a short story or an essay that mentions this very café right in front of you. It’s written by a contemporary author, and you can almost feel how the place is still warm from their recent presence.
5. You move on to the next tag, and the app makes a city an audiobook, written by contemporary authors.
What kind of works are we looking for?
We are collecting poems, essays and short stories including locations in Toronto.
Each piece should fit two criteria:
1. It should be written by a contemporary writer.
2. The location should be specific enough for us to tie it to a geotag.
Poems, essays and short stories are NOT required to be about these locations; they can be about anything, but the location should be included.
Share not only your works, but also those of your friends, profs, colleagues, etc. Anyone who can be called a contemporary author and who you think should be on the Toronto literary map for everyone to see! Send us the name and the title of the work and we’ll contact the author: prochshenko.a@gmail.com.
What happens next?
We will gather all submitted works and send them to the app creators and editors. They will select the final pieces to be included in the app. (This is the stage we are currently on!)
We will hire voice actors to record selected works.
We will connect with local artists to illustrate the works, and then we will compile all submissions into an accompanying book.
We will have a launch and organize readings with the authors.
We will apply for a grant from the Ontario Arts Council to support our efforts.