Interviews with writers about what happens months after a new book comes out, when the launch parties are over, the reviews are all done, and it’s time to start writing again.
Honest, funny conversations about a part of the writing life that rarely gets talked about, and that few authors are prepared for the first time they land in it.
New episodes every Monday.
September 16, 2024: Christine Estima
Christine’s debut book is The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society, published by House of Anansi Press in 2023 and included in the CBC’s list of best Canadian fiction for that year.
Christine and I talk about dealing with sexist idiots, about how she uses moments of rejection to propel her forward in her writing and her career, and about her new book, a fictional take on a notorious and tragic literary relationship.
September 9, 2024: Carl Wilson
That book was originally published in 2007 by Bloomsbury Publishing as part of the 33 1/3 series of books about popular music. An expanded edition was published in 2014 that included essays by Nick Hornby, Krist Novoselic, Ann Powers, Mary Gaitskill, Sheila Heti, and others, as well as a new afterword by Carl.
Carl and I talk about, of course, Céline’s recent performance at the Paris Olympics, about the unlikely popular and academic success of Let’s Talk about Love, and about the two book-length works he wants to complete—one a biography of the beloved singer-songwriter David Berman, the other a treatise on the legitimacy of crying as a critical response to great art.
September 2, 2024: Peter Darbyshire
I’m doing something slightly different in this episode, because Peter actually has three books that are about to be published: The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, The Dead Hamlets, and The Apocalypse Ark, which are all part of his Cross series of supernatural thrillers. All three books are being published in October by Wolsak & Wynn. However, all three were previously published by another small indie press, in 2013, 2015, and 2016 respectively.
Peter and I talk about how running the COVID-19 social media response for a provincial health authority gave him a new perspective on the apocalypse, about getting the Cross series reprinted—and why it needed to be—and about how the stretch of time since his last new work of fiction speaks to something of a crisis of faith when it comes to his own writing.
August 26, 2024: Michael Christie
Michael’s most recent novel is Greenwood, which was published in 2019 by McClelland & Stewart. That book was a national bestseller and won Le Prix du Livre de SQY and the 2020 Arthur Ellis Award for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing. It was also shortlisted for the 2020 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize; it was also longlisted for the Giller Prize and was a 2023 Canada Reads finalist.
Michael and I talk about how his writing career has been influenced by his previous semi-pro skateboarding career, about converting Greenwood into a TV series, and about how, while working on his new novel, he had to resist the temptation to copy the narrative formula that had worked so well in Greenwood.
August 19, 2024: Deborah Dundas
Deborah’s first book is On Class, which was published by Biblioasis in 2023. That book was a Hamilton Review of Books best book of 2023 and was shortlisted for the 2024 Speaker’s Book Award. The Winnipeg Free Press called On Class “a nifty, provocative little book.”
Deborah and I talk about working on the most-discussed literary story of the decade: the revelations about the late Alice Munro and her family, and about how she initially wanted to say no to working on that story. We talk about some of the progress and great conversations about class she has seen since publishing her book, and how she feels just a little less like an outsider in Canada’s literary culture.
August 12, 2024: Jackie Khalilieh
Jackie and I talk about how her identity as an autistic person and a Palestinian Canadian inform the kinds of stories she wants to tell, about some of the negative response her book has received from readers who perhaps wanted its autistic main character to conform to a particular ideal, and about how she can’t go on Goodreads without stripmining the site for data and projections about her own writing career.
August 5, 2024: Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
Kathryn’s most recent book is Wait Softly Brother, which was published by Wolsak & Wynn in 2023 and was longlisted for the Giller Prize. The Toronto Star said that Wait Softly Brother is “rich with the true stuff of imagined lives, and the imagined stuff of true lives,” and “is a glorious enchantment indeed.”
Kathryn and I talk about how the enormous emotional, existential, and even geographic changes she has gone through in past decade have impacted her writing—for the better—about how Wait Softly Brother came out of a very public writing experiment after she started to think her career was over, and about her compulsive need to transform every experience into the seed for more writing.
July 29, 2024: Kelly S. Thompson
Rachel Matlow, author of Dead Mom Walking, wrote that “with this heartwrenching yet hopeful book, Kelly has turned her loss and grief into something beautiful.”
Kelly and I talk about how her current writing practice is informed by her years in the military and by her chronic illness, about the worst response to her writing she has ever received, and about how publishing Still, I Cannot Save You has led to some expected, but no less agonizing difficulties with her extended family.
A quick warning: Kelly and I joke around a lot in this episode, but there are also a few tears: the conversation covers some very difficult and traumatic territory, such as addiction and domestic abuse.
July 21, 2024: Rollie Pemberton (Cadence Weapon)
The Toronto Star called Bedroom Rapper “an intriguing window into a creative mind that takes creativity and the constant betterment of that creativity very seriously.”
Rollie and I talk about his relentlessly curatorial approach to art and the world, about the need for more and better artistic criticism, and about why he thinks books and writing will soon eclipse music as his central creative pursuit.
July 14, 2024: John Valiant
John and I talk about how the devastating things he writes about in Fire Weather really are our new reality, about the fact that he is still talking publicly about the book almost every single day—even a year after it was published—and about why the novel he had been planning to write instead of Fire Weather will probably remain unwritten.
July 8, 2024: Alissa York
Alissa’s most recent book is Far Cry, which was published by TK in 2023 by Random House Canada. The Toronto Star said Far Cry is “dazzling and brilliant” and called it “a transfixing, glorious novel.”
Alissa and I talk about the Humber Creative Writing program, how she makes herself disconnect from social media, and most other social things, when she is working on a book, and where she begins when she is starting a new novel.
July 1, 2024: Cody Caetano
The Toronto Star said about Half-Bads in White Regalia that “Caetano’s voice leaps off the page with a rhythmic, hip-hop style right from the first page.”
Cody and I talk about some of his pre-publishing jobs, and how they relate to his current ones, about how he handles being someone from a very different background than most people in the book world, and what it’s like to be a writer who is also an agent—someone who knows how the sausage gets made.
June 24, 2024: Nina Dunic
The Toronto Star called The Clarion “a wonderful, and promising, debut.”
Nina and I talk about her how she has dealt with nervousness around getting interviewed – it involves cognac – about maintaining distance between her fiction writing self and her real self, and about the surreal feeling she gets watching her debut book, which she was certain would disappear without a trace, get all of this recognition from critics, readers, and award juries. (We recorded this conversation shortly before she won Trillium Prize, but we talk about that, too.)
June 17, 2024: Nathan Whitlock
My guest interviewer on this episode is Julie S. Lalonde. Julie is an internationally recognized women’s rights advocate and public educator. Her book Resilience is Futile: The Life and Death and Life of Julie S. Lalonde was published by Between the Lines in 2020. It was named one of the best books of the year by CBC Books and the Hill Times and won the 2020 Ontario Speaker’s award. It also won an Independent Publisher Book Award in 2021. (In addition to all that, Julie was the very first guest I had on this podcast.)
Julie and I talk about the differences between publishing your first book and publishing your third, how to deal with other authors sucking up all the sales and attention, and the author I consider my dream-get for this podcast.