Carrie Snyder was a surprise Writers’ Trust fiction prize short-lister for Girl Runner, her story of a female long-distance Olympian. She reads from the novel November 1, 5 pm, at the Lakeside Terrace and joins the How We Live Now panel, November 2, 2 pm, at the Fleck. See listing.

Summarize your book in a tweet, i.e., less than 140 characters.

Aganetha Smart, a talented runner famous in the 1920s, lives alone and forgotten in a nursing home, now 104. But one last adventure awaits.

Who should star as you in your biopic? Why?

Emma Watson as my younger self. She’s strong yet small, like me. Optionally, Jessica Chastain, who is similar to me in age and who also has red hair.

What important book have you pretended to have read? Were you convincing?

Ulysses by James Joyce. I didn’t even try that hard, just nodded and smiled in hopes of not revealing my ignorance. I was 21 at the time. I don’t pretend any more.

Recount your weirdest encounter with a fan.

The guy who asked me to sign my book: “Thanks for the great night, [insert guy’s name here],” so he could show his ex-wife. Um, no.

Lena Dunham, creator and star of TV’s Girls, has received $3.5 million for her first book. Care to comment?

She’s amazing. Imagine having the confidence and talent to craft a career like that in one’s 20s. I hope she keeps killing it for years to come.

You’re ready to write the next bestselling dystopia for young adults. What’s the premise?

A killer virus is spreading, the bees are dying, trains carrying volatile liquids annihilate entire towns, and in the great nation to the south, even small children are being taught how to use the automatic weapons that every household stockpiles.

Do writers make good lovers? Why?

No better or worse than anyone else. But be warned, partners may discover they’ve been fictionalized and eternally pinned to the page.

Do book reviews still matter, or can you accomplish everything you need from social media?

I’m an old-school blogger, so I love social media. But let’s be honest. It’s exhausting and can turn a person into a one-note, one-woman publicity department. Therefore, it’s a pleasure to be read and reviewed.

Whose memoir do you not want to read? Why?

Our dogs’, Suzi & DJ’s. Actually, I would like to read that. What the hell is going on inside their tiny, neurotic brains?

Vancouver-based author Henderson, whose works usually gain attention from Canuck prize juries – he was a Writers’ Trust short-lister in 2008 for The Man Game – comes to the Authors  Festival with his new novel, The Road Narrows As You Go. He reads October 31, 7:30 pm, at the Brigantine Room and November 1, 5 pm, at the Studio Theatre. See listing.

Here’s how he answered our literary quips questionnaire.

Summarize your book in a tweet, i.e., less than 140 characters.

The unexpected life of Wendy Ashbubble after leaving her home in Canada to make it big in America with a newspaper comic called Strays

Who should star as you in your biopic? Why?

Aziz Ansari, because he’s my favourite actor these days.

What important book have you pretended to have read? Were you convincing?

I only ever had time to read the first issue of Matt Fraction’s Sex Criminals and yet I told Kevin Lee I agreed with him that it was one of the best books to appear on comic shelves in the past couple of years. I think he saw right through me.

Recount your weirdest encounter with a fan.

I’m usually the weird one.

Lena Dunham, creator and star of TV’s Girls, has received $3.5 million for her first book. Care to comment?

Lena Dunham is an amazing genius. Give her all the money and power.

You’re ready to write the next bestselling dystopia for young adults. What’s the premise?

I am not at all ready to do this, but the premise is always “us fuck them.”

Do writers make good lovers? Why?

Empathy.

Do book reviews still matter, or can you accomplish everything you need from social media?

Book reviews aren’t really about what an author needs but an addition to the intelligent conversation surrounding books, and social media is a perpetual suck-hole that inhales self-promotion like nitrous oxide.

Whose memoir do you not want to read? Why?

Gee, this makes me realize I haven’t read a single memoir since Have a Nice Day by the pro wrestler Mankind. 

Canadian author Donoghue, winner of the Writers’ Trust fiction award for Room, has returned to historical fiction with Frog Music, her lesbian-tinged account of life in late 19th-century San Francisco. She reads at the Authors Festival November 1, 7:30 pm, and is on the Forms Of Fiction round table November 2, 2 pm, both at the Brigantine Room.

Here’s how she answered our literary quips questionnaire.

Summarize your book in a tweet, i.e., less than 140 characters.  

#steamy #SF #1876 #unsolvedtruecrime #crossdress #frogs(amphibian) #Frogs(French) #burlesque #circus #motherhood #sexwork 

@EDonoghueWriter

What important book have you pretended to have read? Were you convincing? 

So convincing that I even deluded myself: for years I went around saying that I was such a geeky teenager, I read Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Finally I thought I’d “reread” it and discovered that I’d never get past the first long Freemasonery bit.

Recount your weirdest encounter with a fan. 

One wrote to tell me that she opens my novel in the middle of the night to smell its pages.

Lena Dunham, creator and star of TV’s Girls, has received $3.5 million for her first book. Care to comment? 

Good for that radiantly, unabashedly talented dynamo!

Do writers make good lovers? Why?  

Yes, the best kind. We have a tendency to script everything, but we’ll sound so eloquent and sincere that you won’t notice.

Do book reviews still matter, or can you accomplish everything you need from social media? 

In some ways they matter even more in the cacophony of media noise.  

Whose memoir do you not want to read? Why? 

For my book club I have to read Wave, Sonali Deraniyagala’s tale of losing her family in a tsunami, and I’m dreading how much it’s going to make me cry.   

Dionne Brand, Toronto’s former poet laureate, shows a passion for our city’s diversity and landscape in a new novel that touches on the lives of a range of character from committed activists to doomed thugs. The title, Love Enough, refers to the limitations and boundaries human connection both requires and resists.

Social worker June, who’s had a series of relationships with politicos like herself, is having trouble with her lover Sydney, who loves to shop and doesn’t share her activist leanings. Bedri, alongside his pal Ghost, is on a violent downward spiral. Bedri’s father is a way-overqualified cab driver, an economist who speaks five languages. Ghost’s and Lia’s mother is a drug addict with zero parenting skills.

Using potent poetic language, Brand weaves these characters’ stories – they often brush up against each other – into a powerful narrative. All yearn to liberate themselves from problematic relationships. A heartbreaking sequence in which June rejects birthday presents from Sydney in favour of one act of kindness and a hug per day from her lover reveals just how difficult even the simplest of gestures can be.

But what makes any book by Brand special is her portrait of Toronto, which brings moments of pleasure to local readers. Everything feels so familiar: the butt-ugly small-industry buildings on Dupont, the car-rammed Don Valley, the beautiful lake and the messed-up waterfront. And how many of us have sat in a taxi wondering about our Somali driver’s story? 

In Love Enough, our city seethes with love, pain, triumph and tragedy. Nobody writes about Toronto like Brand.

Brand reads Saturday (November 1), 3 pm, at Lakeside Terrace and joins the How We Live Now round table Sunday (November 2), 2 pm, at Fleck Dance Theatre.

Playwrights Canada Press is upping the ante for its seasonal launch, turning it into a bash celebrating the publisher’s 30th anniversary. Readings are still on the menu, this time by playwrights Sky Gilbert, Judith Thompson, Davis S. Craig, Kristen Thomson and David Yee. Perennial hosts NOW Magazine’s Jon Kaplan and yours truly are still on board, and Thirtybash! happens not at a bar but at Hotel Ocho (195 Spadina). A cocktail hour starts things off at 6 pm on Monday (November 3). See book listings.