Robert Rulon-Miller is an antiquarian book dealer who lives, if not in a mansion, then at the very least in a great big house on Summit Avenue, one of the toniest in St. Paul, Minnesota. Not that toiling as a bookseller is anyway to get rich quick. He has worked hard for many years in the business, specializing in 'Rare, Fine & Interesting Books in Many Fields; 1st Editions, Americana; Literature; Fine & Early Printing; Travel; and the History of Language.' His most recent catalogue is t...
Feb 03, 2009•36 min
Rosemary Furtak was the librarian at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for more than 25 year. She was co-curator of ‘Text Messages’, an exhibit on artist’s books shown in 2009 at the Center. We talk here about her early championing of the artist book genre - her definition being: "a book that refuses to behave like a book ("like the 35,000 books that sit in the stacks"), the line between books and art, and words and art, and librarians and curators…and how to go about collecting artist books....
Feb 03, 2009•23 min
Biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist Victoria Glendinning was born in Sheffield, and educated at Somerville College, Oxford, where she read Modern Languages. She worked as a teacher and social worker before becoming an editorial assistant for the Times Literary Supplement in 1974. President of English PEN, she was awarded a CBE in 1998. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Southampton, Ulster, Dublin and York. Her biogr...
Jan 19, 2009•26 min
Tanja Jacobs is a well known actress, director, teacher and coach. She has worked in the professional theatre since 1981, and performed at most major theatres in Canada. She has been nominated for ten Dora Mavor Moore Awards and has won twice. As a director, her credits include 1002 Nights, Johann’s Cabinet of Wonders, Goddess , and Mid-Life Crisis . On television, besides her role as federal employee SM3 Sexsmith on Power Play , Jacobs has guest starred on many Canadian shows including Ready or...
Jan 19, 2009•22 min
Born, raised and currently resident in Ottawa, Canada, Christian McPherson’s poetry has appeared in a variety of print and online journals. He has won the John Spenser Hill Award and the Ottawa Public Library Short story Award. We met recently to discuss his first published collection called Poems that Swim from my Brain like Rats leaving a Sinking Ship. Listen as we talk, among other things, about death, the misery of TV news, and a light hearted approach to life....
Jan 19, 2009•25 min
Ross Raisin is a young British author born in Keighley, Yorkshire. He studied at the University of London, worked as a trainee wine bar manager and completed a postgraduate degree in creative writing at Goldsmith's College. His debut novel Out Backward ( God's Own Country in England) was published in 2008, and shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Priz e . It features Sam Marsdyke, a disturbed adolescent living in a harsh rural environment, and tracks his journey from an oddity to a malevolent...
Jan 07, 2009•39 min
Nadeem Aslam was born in Pakistan in 1966, moved to the UK as a teenager and now lives in London. He studied Biochemistry at the University of Manchester, but left to become a writer. His first novel, Season of the Rainbirds (1993) won a Betty Trask Award and the Authors’ Club First Novel Award, and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award. His second novel, Maps for Lost Lovers (2004), which took 11 years to write, won the 2005 Encore ...
Jan 06, 2009•32 min
This is part three of a series of interviews conducted with three acclaimed short storywriters: Rebecca Rosenblum , Nam Le , and Anne Enright. In each case we riff off those qualities which Flannery O’Connor thought best constituted a good short story. I’ve listed some of them here. Anne Enright was born in Dublin in 1962, studied English and Philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin, and went on to study for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She is a former RTE television ...
Dec 24, 2008•32 min
Joe Dunthorne is a graduate of the Creative Writing Masters program at UEA, where he was awarded the Curtis Brown Prize. His poetry has been published in Reactions 5, Magma, Smiths Knoll, and Tears in the Fence. His work has been featured on Channel 4, BBC Radio 3, 4 and in The Guardian and Vice magazine. We met at the IFOA in Toronto to discuss his debut novel, Submarine , why the behavior of teenage boys is often seen as abominable, the importance of getting laid, ambiguous characters, depress...
Dec 17, 2008•31 min
Bruno Racine was President of the National Library of France from 2007- 2016. Prior to this he held a variety of senior positions within the French government including: Director General Cultural Affairs for the City of Paris (1988-1993), Director of l’Académie de France à Rome (1997-2002), and Chairman du Centre Pompidou (2002-2007). He is also a writer. Non-fiction titles include his best-selling: Art of living in Rome and Art of living in Tuscany . His novel The Governor of Morée (Grasset) wo...
Dec 16, 2008•19 min
AMITAV GHOSH is one of India’s best-known writers. His books include The Circle of Reason , The Shadow Lines , The Glass Palace , Incendiary Circumstances and The Hungry Tide . Born in Calcutta in 1956 Ghosh studied in Dehra Dun, New Delhi, Alexandria and Oxford. His first job was at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi. He earned a doctorate at Oxford before he wrote his first novel, which was published in 1986. He is married to the writer, Deborah Baker, and has two children, Lila and Nay...
Dec 10, 2008•22 min
Junot Díaz was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and is the author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao which won the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. He is the fiction editor at the Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We met at the IFOA in Toronto , and talked about, among other...
Dec 05, 2008•32 min
Nam Le has won the £60,000 Dylan Thomas Prize . It recognizes the best young writer in the English-speaking world, with the goal of ensuring that the inspirational nature of Dylan’s writing lives on. I met with him in Toronto at the IFOA . This is part two of a series of interviews conducted with three acclaimed short storywriters: Rebecca Rosenblum , Nam Le , and Anne Enright. In each case we riff off those qualities which Flannery O’Connor thought best constituted a good short story. Nam is au...
Nov 15, 2008•33 min
Joseph Boyden won The 2008 Giller Prize for his novel Through Black Spruce. We talk here about the novel, and the psychic distance Joseph requires to write novels about Northern Ontario and the Cree; the similarities between North and South, James Bay and New Orleans; snowmobiling over vast amounts of snow-covered bush, isolation in the wilderness; bridges between communities, oral culture, First Nation humour, respect for myths and legends, and soapboxes. Please excuse the abrupt ending!...
Nov 12, 2008•23 min
Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library , founded in 1946, is a not-for-profit organization for people interested in books and libraries. Its purpose is to stimulate public interest in the library, purchase library materials, and support other cultural and educational programs in Tompkins County. Each year since inception the Friends have held a book sale in Ithaca New York. It now ranks among the ten largest (250,000 to 300,000 books, CDs, records, etc. per year) in the United States Bery...
Nov 11, 2008•27 min
Listen to my interview with Aleksandar Hemon on his National Book Award nominated novel The Lazarus Project here, and at The Quarterly Conversation.
Nov 11, 2008•36 min
David Carruthers , owner/proprietor of St. Armand Papers in Montreal takes us through the process of how he produces paper that is used in the letterpress printing of books. We talk about pure fibre rags, old jute coffee bags, cover stock, denim and blue paper, beaters, pulp, and vat-like structures for pulp, and machines that take 95% of the moisture out of the pulp and flatten it so that it can be stored in sheets that look and feel like blotting paper and then treated with substances such as ...
Nov 05, 2008•27 min
I first heard about Michael Lista in a workshop conducted by Meeka Walsh, Editor of Border Crossings magazine. She raved about him: "Michael is a remarkably gifted young poet who lives in Montreal. He has a special interest in the points of intersection between science and poetics." These points live dramatically in the person of Louis Slotin, a scientist from Winnipeg involved in the Manhattan project and development of the atomic bomb, and Lista’s desire to capture a day in his life. On May 21...
Nov 04, 2008•40 min
This is part one of a series of interviews conducted with three acclaimed short storywriters: Rebecca Rosenblum , Nam Le , and Anne Enright. In each case we riff off those qualities which Flannery O’Connor thought best constituted a good short story. We start with Rebecca Rosenblum, author of Once , " a collection of sixteen stories portraying the constricted and confused lives of the rootless twenty-somethings — students, office techies, waitresses, warehouse labourers, street hustlers — who in...
Nov 01, 2008•27 min
Patricia K. Macarthy is author of The Crimson Series, three books, to date, about vampires. We talk here about what makes Vampires so appealing to so many people, about their being symbolic of man’s desire for supremacy, women’s desire to be consumed, about the fringe elements of society, the attraction of eternal youth and immortality, confidence, the perfect villian whose weapon is seduction, alpha males, power, the lack of conscience, film, Halloween, the draw of fantasy, the defiance of deat...
Oct 10, 2008•28 min
Margaret Visser is a writer/broadcaster who lives in Toronto, Barcelona, and France. Her subject matter is the history, anthropology, and mythology of everyday life. Born in South Africa, she attended school in Zambia, Zimbabwe, France (the Sorbonne) and Canada. She taught Greek and Latin at York University for 18 years. Her books include Much Depends on Dinner , The Rituals of Dinner , The Way We Are , and The Geometry of Love ; all have been best sellers. Many have won awards. Her most recent ...
Oct 01, 2008•44 min
This from Random House : "Miriam Toews…was born in 1964 in the small Mennonite town of Steinbach, Manitoba. She left at eighteen, living in Montreal and London and touring Europe before coming back to Manitoba, where she earned a B.A. in film studies at the University of Manitoba. Later she packed up with her children and partner and moved to Halifax to attend the University of King’s College, where she received a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Upon returning to Winnipeg with her family in 199...
Sep 18, 2008•19 min
Listen here to my conversation with Craig Poile, co-owner of Collected Works , an innovative independent bookstore based in Ottawa, Canada (now closed). We talk, among others things, about a rudimentary webcam-teleconferencing system dubbed ‘Great Talking Head,’ that Craig has set up to get big name authors, such as Julian Barnes and Peter Carey, and their fans, together in his bookstore; about bookseller-publisher relations, in-store writing workshops and print-on-demand....
Jul 18, 2008•36 min
Distribution is a critical spoke in the publishing cycle, and yet it’s surprising the scant amount of thought many small publishers give to how their books will eventually be sold, and how much it will cost to get their titles into the stores. Most new titles issued by small/self publishers wont ever be stocked on the shelves of chain superstores, not even for a short tryout period. Only a tiny fraction of these titles are ever selected directly by discount merchandisers or supermarkets, despite...
Jul 01, 2008•37 min
Harlan Coben’s latest novel HOLD TIGHT debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list — and simultaneously debuted at #1 in the London Times. Winner of the Edgar Award , Shamus Award and Anthony Award – the first author to win all three – international bestselling author Harlan Coben’s critically-acclaimed novels have been called "ingenious" (New York Times), "poignant and insightful" (Los Angeles Times), "consistently entertaining" (Houston Chronicle), "superb" (Chicago Tribune) and "must ...
Jun 29, 2008•37 min
Jaap Blonk is a self-taught composer, vocal performer and sound poet. As a vocalist, Blonk has performed around the globe exciting audiences with his powerful stage presence and childlike improvisation. Live electronics have over the years extended the scope and range of his concerts. Besides working as a soloist, he has collaborated with many musicians and ensembles, including Maja Ratkje, Mats Gustafsson, Nicolas Collins, Joan La Barbara, The Ex, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble and the Ebony Ban...
Jun 23, 2008•36 min
Lindsey Davis was born and raised in Birmingham, read English at Oxford, then joined the civil service, which she left in 1985.She started writing about Romans in The Course of Honour, the remarkable true love story of the Emperor Vespasian and his mistress Antonia Caenis. Her research into First Century Rome inspired The Silver Pigs, the first outing for Falco and Helena, which was published in 1989. Starting as a spoof using a Roman ‘informer’ as a classic, metropolitan private eye, the series...
Jun 18, 2008•40 min
Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of that country’s civil war. He immigrated to Canada in 1992. He is a writer, a visual artist, and a curator whose debut novel , De Niro’s Game (2006), was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2006 Governor General’s Award for English fiction. It won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. House of Anansi Press published Rawi’s eagerly anticipated second novel, Cockroach , in 2008. He lives in Montreal where I caugh...
Jun 11, 2008•34 min
Edward Pettit is a freelance book reviewer and writes the Bibliothecary blog . He also pursues graduate studies in literature at bucolic Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and teaches writing at La Salle University in Philadelphia. After having spent the first twenty-seven years of his life in the same Philadelphia neighborhood (Olney), he now resides just outside the "Athens of America" in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania with his lovely wife, five daughters and lottsa books. Oh, and one other thing, he...
Jun 08, 2008•28 min
Derick Dreher has been the Director of the Rosenbach since 1998. He has an M.A. in the History of Art from Yale University,and is a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton. A Fulbright scholar, he was awarded a Kress International Research Fellowship, for research in Germany. A specialist in graphic arts of the Renaissance, he has published on a variety of subjects, including prints and drawings ranging from Dürer to Daumier, and has spoken internationally on drawings, rare books, libraries and th...
Jun 06, 2008•52 min
