Ayelet Tsabari is Toronto Public Library's Winter/Spring Writer in Residence. Writers of memoir, fiction or creative nonfiction are invited to submit manuscripts for review and feedback.
Upcoming ProgramsAbout Ayelet Tsabari
Photographer: Jonathan Bloom
Ayelet Tsabari's debut story collection The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and was long listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. The book was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2016, and has been published internationally to great acclaim.
Her memoir in essays, The Art of Leaving, is due to be published in 2019 with HarperCollins Canada. Excerpts from the book have already won a National Magazine Award, a Western Magazine Award, and an Edna Staebler Award. She has also won a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, and is currently working on a novel, also under contract with HarperCollins Canada.
Ayelet was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. She grew up in a suburb of Tel Aviv, and travelled extensively throughout South East Asia, Europe and North America. In 1998 Ayelet moved to Vancouver, Canada, where she studied film and photography in Capilano University's Media Program. She directed two documentary films, one of which won an award at the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films. She wrote her first story in English in 2006.
She is a graduate of Simon Fraser University's The Writer's Studio, and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. Ayelet teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies.
Submitting Your Manuscript
Manuscripts are no longer being accepted as the maximum number of submissions (25) has been exceeded.
The Writer in Residence will meet with the first 25 authors whose manuscript submissions satisfy the requirements below. We regret that the Writer in Residence may not be able to meet with everyone who submits a manuscript. Meetings with the Writer in Residence are by appointment only.
For more information, call 416-393-7085.
Toronto Public Library typically hosts two residencies per year.
- A longer residency, usually four months, in the Spring
- A shorter residency, usually two months, in the Fall
Writers who have held residencies at the library include Gail Bowen, Chester Brown, Austin Clarke, Karen Connelly, Deborah Cooke, Farzana Doctor, Sarah Ellis, Rabindranath Maharaj, Elizabeth Ruth, Robert J. Sawyer, Karl Schroeder, Allan Stratton, Sugith Varughese, Tim Wynne-Jones, Alissa York, David S. Young and Kim Echlin.