Diaries: Reality and Fiction. A Dialogue Between Literature and Arts

Once debated as a literary genre in its own right, the diary has evolved into an influential creative form across literature, cinema, visual art, music, comics, and journalism. Its distinctive sense of time, intimacy, and subjective perspective continues to shape how personal experience is transformed into artistic expression.

Building on its inaugural edition featuring writers and thinkers including Margaret Atwood, Alberto Manguel, and Philippe Lejeune, the second Toronto International Forum for the Art of Diaries explores the relationship between diaries and other art forms.

This year’s Forum also celebrates diaries rooted in lived experience through guest of honour Ian Brown and his books Sixty and Seventy, which explore ageing through daily observation, philosophical inquiry, and personal reflection.

9:00 a.m. | Welcoming Remarks and Introduction to the Forum

Opening remarks by Kamel Riahi (author, Massey Fellow) in Arabic and Dr. Walid El Khachab (Professor of Arabic Studies, York University) in English.