Amish Morrell and Diane Borsato longlisted for the 2022 Toronto Book Awards
Amish Morrell and Diane Borsato have been longlisted for the 2022 Toronto Book Awards for their book, Outdoor School. The awards recognise outstanding books inspired by the City of Toronto.
Outdoor School describes experiential and community-based art projects that present an alternative to scientific, commercial and colonial conceptions of land and nature in the face of climate change and mass extinction. These art practices include activities like mushroom foraging, water witching, trespassing, pumpkin-boat sailing, cloud identifying, ravine running, honey extracting, spell conjuring, rabbit hunting, coyote walking and more. The project calls attention to creative, counter-cultural works that are focused on education, community and place, and blur the boundaries between art and life, nature and culture.
For more than a decade, the Outdoor School project has provided a framework for interdisciplinary artists to come together and share projects that reimagine ways of relating with the landscape.
Amish Morrell is an educator, curator, editor and writer. He teaches at OCAD University in Toronto. From 2008 to 2017 he was Editor and Director of Programs at C Magazine, one of North America’s foremost visual arts magazines. He has also curated numerous exhibitions and developed public projects including Nightwalks with Teenagers with Mammalian Diving Reflex; The Sauna Symposium with Hart House at the University of Toronto; and Reading the Bruce Trail with Public Studio. He divides his time between Toronto, ON, and Cape Breton, NS.
Diane Borsato is an artist, naturalist and educator. She is an associate professor of Experimental Studio at the University of Guelph. She has exhibited her work involving mushrooms, bees, raptors, orchards and tea in galleries and museums around the world. She lives in Toronto, ON.
About the Toronto Book Awards: These awards were established by the Toronto City Council in 1974 to recognise outstanding books inspired by the City of Toronto. The books considered must contain some clear Toronto content and be published between March 1, 2021 and May 31, 2022 to be considered for the 2022 awards. There are no separate categories as all genres are judged together.