Irish writer Roddy Doyle will be interviewed at the Pen Canada benefit. Irish writer Roddy Doyle will be interviewed at the Pen Canada benefit. (Amelia Stein/Random House Canada)

The Pen Canada benefit that opens this year's International Festival of Authors in Toronto will feature Canadian screenwriter Don McKellar interviewing Booker Prize-winning author Roddy Doyle.

Doyle, the Irish writer of The Commitments, A Star Called Henry and The Woman Who Walked into Doors, is also a dramatist and screenwriter.

McKellar, who won a Tony Award for his part in writing The Drowsy Chaperone, was screenwriter and co-star of the movie Blindness. The gala is a benefit for Pen's work defending freedom of speech and helping writers in exile.

The international festival, scheduled for Oct. 22 to Nov. 1 in Toronto, has a focus on Irish writers, with 16 slated to read or be interviewed.

Among them are:

  • Anne Enright, who won a Man Booker prize for The Gathering.
  • Novelist, poet and playwright Dermot Bolger.
  • Eugene McCabe, author of Death and Nightingales.
  • Crime novelist John Connolly.

Colm Tóibín will moderate a discussion on Irish literary tradition and the modern policies that have kept Irish writers at the forefront of international literature.

One of the highlights of the festival will be an interview with Farley Mowat, the Canadian author of Never Cry Wolf and Sea of Slaughter, who is writing a new memoir that he says is his final book.

Another veteran writer, Josef Skvorecky, Czech-born author of The Engineer of Human Souls, is to give a reading from his new novel Ordinary Lives.

There also will be a focus on writers from Quebec, with novelists such as Impac Dublin award winner Rawi Hage, Neil Bissoondath, Pan Bouyoucas, Hélène Dorion and crime writer Louise Penny to appear.

Dozens of other Canadian and international writers will be participating in the 11-day festival.

Other events:

  • Philosopher and critic Mark Kingwell interviews Don Thompson about contemporary art and his book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark.
  • Bill Douglas interviews cover designer Chip Kidd and graphic artist Lynda Barry.
  • A panel of New York Review of Books and Guardian journalists discusses the U.S. election.
  • Readings by authors shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award for Literature.

There are also readings devoted to children's books, crime books and travel books.

IFOA goes on the road this year to Hamilton, Burlington and Parry Sound, all in Ontario.