Our Mandate
The Toronto SpecFic Colloquium is hosted by the Chiaroscuro Reading Series and sponsored by Toronto-based press, ChiZine Publications.
Emerging from early magic realism, mythology and fable, from the work of science fiction authors who cut their teeth during the 1950’s golden age of pulp science fiction, and from the disturbing literary forays of horror writers inspired by Shelley, Poe, and Stoker, Canadian speculative fiction has begun to move in strange and provocative new directions, becoming something altogether different from its American counterpart and wholly itself.
We believe that Canadian authors may well prove to be the kind of rejuvenating force necessary to revitalize the “pulp” genres of fantasy, science fiction and horror writing. As Canadian publications including Neo-Opsis, OnSpec, Ideomancer, Challenging Destiny, the long-running Tesseracts collections, and our own ChiZine Publications become increasingly prominent markets for speculative fiction, we want to establish a dialogue between senior and junior authors, between authors and editors, and between authors and readers in order to encourage the growth of this important literary domain.