Donald Antrim is the author of three novels and a memoir entitled, The Afterlife , which is about the strained relationship he had with his mother, Louanne, an artist, teacher and alcoholic. In addition to receiving some of America’s most prestigious fellowships, he is a regular contributor to The New Yorker , a magazine that includes him amongst their "twenty writers for the new century." We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talk here about his mother’s death,...
Jun 05, 2008•38 min
Frank Wilson has been reviewing books professionally since October, 1964. For most of the last decade that he was Books Editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, he was given to retaining committed bloggers (e.g. Mark Sarvas , Scott Esposito , Ed Champion ) to review books. About ten years ago he started blogging at Books Inq . It is one of the most successful blogs in the literary blogosphere. I interviewed Frank at his home in Philadelphia. We talk about how he established his blog, about the poten...
Jun 01, 2008•36 min
" Margot Livesey grew up in a boys’ private school in the Scottish Highlands where her father taught, and her mother, Eva, was the school nurse. After taking a B.A. in English and philosophy at the University of York in England she spent most of her twenties [in Toronto] working in shops and restaurants and learning to write. Her first book, a collection of stories called Learning By Heart, was published by Penguin Canada in 1986. Since then Margot has published six novels: Homework, Criminals, ...
May 30, 2008•40 min
Anke Feuchtenberger was born in 1963 in East Berlin and is one of Germany’s leading comic illustrator/artists. Her award winning work has been published in numerous books, newspapers, magazines and anthologies, and includes paintings, drawings, comics, posters, prints, costumes and puppets. Her illustrations and comics are rendered in highly recognizable style, often featuring naked, childlike creatures with huge heads, wandering through strange, dream-like landscapes. Her haunting stories are a...
May 30, 2008•39 min
Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia under Malcolm Bradbury. He is the author of seven novels. The first, Burning Your Own (1988), set in Northern Ireland in 1969, won a Betty Trask Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal to talk about reassessing the past, the development and urban topography of his home town Belfast, cities versus nations, Disney, Tol...
May 27, 2008•44 min
Egyptian writer Alaa al Aswany was born in 1957 and studied dentistry in Egypt and Chicago. In addition to fiction, he writes on literature, politics, and social issues. His second novel, The Yacoubian Building , an ironic take on modern Egyptian society, was a significant best seller in and outside of the Arabic world. Chicago , a novel set in the city of that name was published in January 2007. The English translation is due out in bookstores this Fall. We met at the Blue Metropolis Internatio...
May 27, 2008•31 min
Born in 1929 in New York, educated at Columbia, John Hollander is a poet and literary critic. He has written more than a dozen books of poetry, and seven books of criticism, including Rhyme's Reason of which Harold Bloom said: "[it is] on all questions of schemes, patterns, forms, meters, rhymes of poetry in English, the indispensible authority..." and why I was so keen to interview him. According to New York Times , Hollander stresses the importance of hearing poems out loud: "A good poem satis...
May 27, 2008•21 min
André Alexis was born in 1957 in Trinidad and Tobago. His parents left for Canada when he was a baby. The family reunited in Ottawa when Alexis was four years old. He still remembers the trauma of this separation; it has coloured much of his writing since. Themes of absence, displacement, belonging and home animate his work. His debut novel, Childhood (1997), won the B ooks in Canada First Novel Award, and was a co-winner of the Trillium Award. Photo credit: Sari Ginsberg...
May 26, 2008•37 min
Andrew O’Hagan ’s most recent novel, Be Near Me , has just won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize . It is the story of an English priest who takes over a small Scottish parish in a post-industrial town by the sea; a story of art and politics, love and faith, and the way we live now, which pretty well summarizes the conversation we had this past weekend at The Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal. More specifically we talked about tragedy, escape, the determination not to be determi...
May 14, 2008•47 min
Find out why L.M. Montgomery was so skeptical about biography despite spending endless hours shaping and re-shaping her journals for public display, using them to incubate ideas for her novels. Find out too how biography can, according to Ms. Gammel, provide valuable cultural and historical context within which to interpret, understand and appreciate works of art. And, if this isn’t enough, listen to what makes Anne of Green Gables a classic: how it appeals to young and old; takes Emerson and gi...
Apr 22, 2008•57 min
William Deverell , has been widely hailed as Canada’s greatest ‘literary mystery’ writer. This from his website: "Deverell worked as a journalist for seven years, with Canadian Press Montreal, the Vancouver Sun and the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, where he was night city editor while at the University of Saskatchewan law school and editor of the student newspaper. As a member of the British Columbia, Alberta and Yukon Bars, he was counsel in more than a thousand criminal cases, including thirty murde...
Apr 21, 2008•45 min
In honour of Poetry Month, here is my interview with Canadian poet, critic and political writer, David Solway . We first discuss what constitutes a great poem in the context of ‘political’ and other agendas that some poets incorporate into their work. According to Solway, great poems consist of authentic, incontestable, memorable language, with vivid power, lapidary quality and prodigious rhetorical flow, which takes time, education, reflection and maturity to work itself into themes of human im...
Apr 07, 2008•39 min
Sally Cooper’s second novel, Tell Everything , delves into the darkest regions of the human soul, and lends credence to Kipling’s line: "The female of the species is deadlier than the male." During our conversation about Tell Everything we discuss topics including: the media and murder, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, …body parts in ponds, Rapunsil and crime plays, three way sex, the blurred, complicated lines of consent, the fear of self revelation, and love, self protection, shame and accepta...
Feb 28, 2008•40 min
The Brattle Book Shop , founded in the Cornhill section of Boston in 1825, has been in the hands of the Gloss Family since 1949. Over the years George and his son Kenneth built this shop into one of the largest antiquarian book shops in the United States. Ken is the current proprietor of The Brattle Book Shop. He is a past President of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America’s New England Chapter. He also sits on the Associate Board of the Boston Public Library. Ken appraises books an...
Feb 24, 2008•40 min
Haslam’s Books, now Florida’s largest new & used book store, was established in St. Petersburg in 1933 by two avid readers, John and Mary Haslam. After World War II they were joined by the second generation, Charles and Elizabeth. The business began to expand. In response to customers’ requests, new technical books were added, then Bibles and religious books and finally a complete line of trade books and a large section for children. The business has moved four times to accommodate growth. T...
Feb 24, 2008•16 min
Ian Brookes is Editor-in-Chief of The Chambers Dictionary which was first published in 1901 and most recently updated in 2006. We talk here about lexicographers, Samuel Johnson, Scotland, the speed of language change getting quicker, Chambers’ unique focus on old, Scottish, literary, historical words with humorous, sardonic definitions, such as mallemaroking and pock pudding, use of the dictionary by crossword puzzle and word game enthusiasts, Wikipedia’s Hawaiian roots, the charm of browsing, t...
Feb 23, 2008•24 min
Kathryn Court joined Penguin Books in 1977 and became Editorial Director two years later. In l984 she was named Editor in Chief of Viking Penguin and in 1992 Senior Vice-President, Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Penguin Books. She was named President of Penguin Books in August 2000. Authors she has worked with include: Reinaldo Arenas, Andrea Camilleri, J.M. Coetzee, Slavenka Drakulic, Mary Relinda Ellis, Robert Fagles, Josephine Humphreys, Garrison Keillor, Nora Okja Keller, Donna Leon, Mary...
Feb 06, 2008•39 min
Patrick McGahern has been selling books in Ottawa, Canada since 1969. His store specializes in used and rare books: Canadiana, Americana, Arctic, Antarctic, Travel, Natural History & Voyages, Illustrated & Plate Books, Irish and Scottish History and Literature. More than 30,000 titles are stocked at the Glebe store . Thousands of rare, scarce and interesting books are offered through their Catalogues which are published six times a year. Almost 10,000 titles are featured in their online ...
Feb 06, 2008•55 min
Margie McMillan is co-owner of the award winning Granny Bates Children’s Bookstore in St. John’s Newfoundland. We talk here about longevity and research as a reason for success, the brilliance of Graham Oakley and The Church Mice , the difference between back lists and mid-lists, schools as bread and butter, booksellers as literary critics, driving through the Swiss alps, new products that are called books, movies and cereal.
Jan 28, 2008•27 min
At the time of this interview, John Freeman was president of The National Book Critics Circle . Founded in 1974, the NBCC is a non-profit organization consisting of nearly 700 active book reviewers who honor quality writing and communicate with one another about common concerns. We met at BookExpo in New York and talked, among other things, about the NBCC’s awards program , the blog called Critical Mass , and the Campaign to Save Book Reviews which addresses the alarming shrinkage of newspaper b...
Dec 13, 2007•25 min
Bernard Margolis was President of the Boston Public Library (BPL) from 1997-2008. Founded in 1848, the BPL was the first large free municipal library in the United States. Mr. Margolis has served on the Governing Council of the 63,000-member American Library Association (ALA), and has won many awards including “Colorado Librarian of the Year", two John Cotton Dana library public relations awards, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ “Award of Excellence? for his library-sponsored “Ima...
May 24, 2007•37 min
John Wronoski is a rare book dealer who specializes in literature, and primary works in the history of ideas in English, German, French, Spanish, and Russian. His shop, Lame Duck Books , contains 'the most significant selection of 19th and 20th century Spanish language literature in the world,' and important originals of 17th and 18th century English poetry. In addition to performing the traditional role of bookseller, John serves as 'agent in the institutional placement of archives' for some of...
May 21, 2007•49 min
Elias Khoury is author of eleven novels including Little Mountain and Gates of the City . He is currently professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University, and editor in chief of the literary supplement of Beirut’s daily newspaper, An-Nahar . We talk here, at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival , about his latest novel in English Gate of the Sun , of how great literature speaks to what is human and how religion doesn’t; of how telling stories helps ...
May 10, 2007•47 min
Peter Behrens’ short stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly , Tin House , Saturday Night , and The National Post and have been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories and Best Canadian Essays . He was born in Montreal and lives on the coast of Maine with his wife and son. We talk here, at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival , among other things about voice and poetry in his debut novel The Law of Dreams , Winner of The 2006 Governor General’s Literary Awa...
May 03, 2007•34 min
Lydia Davis is a contemporary American author and translator of French. From 1974 to 1978 she was married to Paul Auster , with whom she has a son. She has published six collections of short stories, including The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories (1976) and Break It Down (1986). Her most recent collection is not Samuel Johnson Is Indignant, but rather Varieties of Disturbance , published by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux . Her stories are acclaimed for their brevity, poetry, philosophy and humou...
May 03, 2007•31 min
C.S. Richardson is an accomplished book designer who has worked in publishing for over twenty years. He is a multiple time recipient of the Alcuin Award (Canada’s highest honour for excellence in book design) and a frequent lecturer on publishing, design and communications. A rare bird indeed, he recently published his first novel The End of the Alphabet , and is currently at work on his second. We talk here about C.S. Lewis, the role of the book designer, the award winning Bedside Book of Birds...
Apr 19, 2007•36 min
Barbara Clubb is City Librarian and CEO of the Ottawa Public Library, past president of the Canadian Library Association, a member of the International Relations Committee of the ALA/Public Library Association; a director for the Canadian Writers Foundation and Monthly Book Reviewer for CBC Ottawa Radio One. In this fascinating, wide ranging conversation we talk about the role of a city librarian now, at the turn of the 21 century; about library as place…where loitering is okay; accessibility, p...
Apr 18, 2007•52 min
John Metcalf is a highly regarded author who happens to have edited many of Canada’s foremost short story writers, including Lisa Moore , Alice Munro , and Michael Winter . Born in Carlisle, England, and educated at the University of Bristol, he emigrated to Canada in 1962. In addition to his own writings (novels, stories and essays), he currently holds the un-salaried post of Senior Editor at the Porcupine’s Quill of Erin, Ontario and is the editor of Canadian Notes and Queries . He resides in ...
Apr 07, 2007•50 min
Amanda Earl writes erotic fiction in Ottawa, Canada, as much for her own pleasure as anything else. Her stories have consistently been selected for publication in Carroll and Graf’s annual Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica . Amanda publishes and writes poetry, is managing editor of the Bywords Quarterly Journal, and hosts Bywords.ca , a website invaluable to Ottawans interested in local literary events. We talk here about the definitions of erotica and pornography (a common joke: “Erotica is when...
Mar 25, 2007•29 min
Ronald Cohen is author of the Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill published in 2006: a ‘richly annotated work’ containing thousands of entries, with detailed descriptions of each work by Churchill, including information on content, typography,paper, illustrations, maps, facsimiles, bindings, dust jackets, publication and printing history, translations, and library/collection locations, plus circumstances of publication. Cohen’s fascination with Churchill began during his time w...
Mar 23, 2007•41 min
