The Toronto Small Press Book Fair is upon us. Since you enquire it's Saturday June 19 from 11: 00 am to 5:00 pm at The Great Hall, 1087 Queen Street West. So far so good. After all, the TSPBF (an acronym that could double as a writer's sobriety test) has been around for years and will, I'm guessing, see off its imitators and detractors. But...but I can't shake the notion that some aspects of the Fair could be better. It needs a permanent home. Traipsing from the JCC to the Tranzac Club to the Reference Library to The Great Hall is no way to build its reputation among the yet-to-be-converted. I know circumstances - cost, availability, pointless G-8 summit meetings - will necessitate the occasional change of venue, but with such long lead times disruptions can be worked around.

And since the summer event is the more anticipated of the two TSPBFs (the other is in the fall) and its timing dovetails with Luminato, which has gone from 0 to 60 in no time flat, why not attach the Fair someway somehow to what has become a splashy arts affair. The profile and the media coverage of the TSPBF would soar - OK, go up some - and small presses may well discover another stream of new, enthusiastic readers which is, surely, the point of the Fair. I realize some elderly hippies will object to the vulgarity of such an idea, but so what? Let them read their work to each other and remain pure. Oh, and since we're being heretical, here's something else to ponder: it's time to dump arts & crafts and anything else at the Fair that's not strictly literary.