The Creative Science

It’s All About Perspective: Good Stories About Bad Men

Author and freelance writer Nate Hendley will be discussing, in detail, the true stories of villains in Canadian history. From the Donnelly family—accounted for murder and robbery on numerous counts—to the Toronto Bank robber Edwin Alonzo Boyd, Hendley will teach you not only a history lesson but will inadvertently show you the true characterization of antagonists in stories.

When: February 22; from 2:00 pm-3:30 pm
Where: Don Mills TPL branch: Auditorium; 888 Lawrence Avenue East
Register: At information desk or call 416-395-5710

Motives, Metaphors, and Metaphysical Readings: Why Reading Novels is Good for You: The Science of Fiction

So I hear you like to read fiction. And? What do you think makes reading the creative words so beneficial? It is pure fiction isn’t it? Talking of a world, a lifestyle, that may realistically elude so many of us?

Novelist and scholar Keith Oatley, Professor Emeritus of the University of Toronto, has spent 20 years researching the cognitive and emotional processes of reading and writing fiction. Join him explain his theory that fiction works like a “simulator running on our minds.” Fiction has always worked as a means of understanding worlds that we cannot live in, and at the moment science cannot provide us with the means of experiencing our wildest fantasies like the creative word can.

When: February 28; from 7:00 pm-8:15 pm
Where: Locke TPL branch: program room; 3083 Yonge Street