Change is afoot for the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) – after 50 years at the Harbourfront Centre, the festival is moving elsewhere and striking out on its own as an independent organization as of April 1.

TIFA has begun a new partnership with the University of Toronto’s Victoria College and its Centre for Creativity. TIFA will announce the changes to the public at an event with Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on March 13. 

Festival director Roland Gulliver says the move to independence is “a natural next step” in the evolution that TIFA has been undergoing since he came on board in 2020. 

The third annual Motive Crime and Literary Festival will be the first event to take place at the festival’s new home, and will run from June 27 to 29. Motive was launched in 2022 and marked TIFA’s return to in-person events after the COVID-19 pandemic sent literary festivals online. 

“We’re going to leave Harbourfront, and be a fully functioning organization all ourselves and all grown up,” Gulliver told Q&Q. “When we made Motive, we began to see that by creating a genre-specific festival, we were able to reach an audience much more directly and much more successfully.”

The main literary festival will be held from Oct. 29 to Nov. 2, marking a return to its traditional fall schedule. In 2022, TIFA shifted its dates to late September and early October. Gulliver said the festival’s return to October and November complements both the Vancouver Writers’ Festival and the Ottawa International Writers Festival. 

“Moving into that late October time slot enables us to be a stronger festival contingent when looking at touring international authors,” he said. 

But the 2025 edition of TIFA will be significantly shorter. The festival’s traditional 11-day format has been trimmed down to five days. The exact locations for this year’s events are still to be determined, as it works under its new partnership with Victoria College. TIFA will also continue to work with previous partners Koerner Hall and the Toronto Public Library. 

A new addition this year is a romance festival, under development in partnership with Kobo, that will run Nov. 21 to 23. 

Other established programming – such as the International Visitors (IV) Programme, Toronto Lit Up, and the year-round TIFA Presents events – will all continue.

Gulliver says there were a number of factors that led to the decision to pursue independence, including a desire for a more central location. The festival’s location at Harbourfront Centre down by Lake Ontario, while lovely, was an issue for audience access “whether real or perceived.” Another factor was how the festival could best respond to audiences’ changing behaviours. 

“The pandemic showed that reading was vital in terms of our mental health, and it has changed the landscape that we’re all looking to navigate,” Gulliver said. “I think all arts organizations [are] looking at ways to adapt and be nimble, to look at how we can collaborate and find ways to be adventurous and ambitious but also be secure in what we’re doing.” 

Building on its existing connections with the University of Toronto – many of its professors have participated in the festival as authors, panellists, and authors over the years – TIFA began to explore the possibility of working to present the festival in partnership with Victoria University at U of T. Those conversations with president and vice-chancellor Rhonda McEwen and principal Alex Hernandez began after the festival wrapped in September 2024, Gulliver said. In a press release, McEwen says

“We are still in the early stages but we are both excited by the opportunities that this will offer both organizations,” Gulliver said. 

“We founded our new Centre for Creativity to foster collaboration across sectors, and we see TIFA as an ideal new partner in this vision,” said McEwen in a press release. “This partnership will not only enrich Toronto’s literary landscape but also create new opportunities for experiential learning, engagement, and storytelling innovation for our students and community.”

TIFA and the Harbourfront Centre, which has been undergoing its own organizational restructuring since new CEO Cathy Loblaw came on board in the summer of 2024 (including such changes as the closure of the Fleck Dance Theatre and significant staff cuts), have been in conversation about this change for the past five or six months. TIFA’s staff are still working out of the office at Harbourfront. 

TIFA was founded by Greg Gatenby in 1974 as the  International Readings at Harbourfront, and launched with 18 authors from 12 countries. Over the decades, TIFA has hosted authors from more than 100 countries, including 22 Nobel laureates, with literary giants such as Saul Bellow, Jamaica Kincaid, Hilary Mantel, Gwendolyn Brooks, Umberto Eco, and Susan Sontag among those who have graced the festival’s stages.