Taddle Creek showcases the workof authors and illustrators who live in the Toronto area. This has led to the perception "in some catty literary circles" that Taddle Creek is "Torontocentric". A typical issue of Taddle Creek will feature a mix of fiction, poetry, interviews, comics, essays, and photographs, The magazine also has an on-line component that features a large archive of previously published material, subscription information, book recommendations, and contributor bios. Utne Reader has described the magazine as "offbeat". According to Taddle Creek itself, it aims for an "urban" and contemporary attitude that avoids the "snowstorm on the prairie kind of thing" or even the confines of any one literary style, and calls itself "the journal for those who have come to detest everything the literary magazine has become in the twenty-first century." Broken Pencil's writers declared Taddle Creek a "gorgeous" magazine and said it had achieved "a track record of consistently publishing an extremely engaging collection of fiction, poetry and illustration."
Editorial guidelines and focus on proofreading
Editor Tobias used to be a fact checker at Canadian Business and he brings that quest for accuracy to Taddle Creek. Taddle Creek has emphasized the importance of grammar and proofreading in a number of ways. For example Taddle Creek has taken a firm but humorous stand against the erratic and error filled ways modern writers use apostrophes. It encouraged its readers to join in a letter writing campaign to inform misusers of apostrophes of the error of their ways. At another date it published all the errors it had ever made in a series of entertainingly "absurd" online error messages. Despite the lighthearted approach Tobias calls the error page a "serious business" and intends to report any new errors that slip through. The magazine has even offered free two year subscriptions to any readers that discover new errors. It has also published a reference book calledThe Taddle Creek Guidebook to Fact-Checking Fiction that aims to help writers avoid anachronisms and other factual errors. Broken Pencil comments on the perception that Taddle Creek has "very rigid grammar and submission expectations". Tobias himself notices that "sometimes their submissions guidelines seem to offend" but sees this as the result of "disparate senses of humour at play".
History
Founded in 1997 by publisher Conan Tobias, the magazine originally served Toronto's Annex neighbourhood with an annual Christmas issue. But the magazine later expanded both its focus and its output—to the whole of Toronto and to twice a year. Taddle Creek is published twice a year in June and December. By 2002, the magazine had found national distribution. In December 2007, the magazine celebrated its tenth anniversary with an unusually large, 72-page issue, a launch party at Toronto's Gladstone Hotel.
2001 Heritage Toronto Certificate of Commendation—Alfred Holden—"For writing that illustrates Toronto’s architecture and its contribution to the quality of the city."
