Ha Jin was born in China in 1956. After Tiananmen Square, he emigrated to the United States. Unlike most exiled writers Ha Jin was not established in his native language; he had no audience in Chinese, and so chose to write in English. He has published three collections of poetry, including Between Silences and Facing Shadows , and three collections of short fiction, Ocean of Words , received the PEN/Hemingway Award, and Under the Red Flag , won the Flannery O’Connor Award. His novel Waiting won...
Aug 17, 2009•37 min
This past Spring at the Blue Met Writers Festival , Donald Antrim conducted a workshop entitled: Fiction and Memoir: "Writing Ourselves" It was designed to explore the ‘challenging and often frustrating process of reading into one’s own work;’ and to identify aspects of that work which may have been underdeveloped, unnoticed, or even, avoided. As the syllabus put it: "Fiction and memoir are not, as a rule, brought together in workshops. And yet many of the concerns that are most important to all...
Aug 13, 2009•35 min
Rohan Maitzen has an Honours B.A. in English and History from the University of British Columbia and an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Cornell University. Since 1995 she has been a member of Dalhousie University’s English Department. Her main teaching area is the Victorian novel; she has a particular admiration for George Eliot and assigns her greatest novel, Middlemarch , whenever possible. I had the pleasure of ‘meeting’ Rohan online in the comments section of her blog Novel Readings . I admir...
Jul 29, 2009•45 min
Born in Los Angeles in 1946, Robert Bringhurst is an award winning Canadian poet, typographer and author. Perhaps best known for The Elements of Typographic Style – a reference book of typefaces, glyphs and the visual and geometric arrangement of type, he is also a respected translator of poetic works from Haida into English. He lives on Quadra Island, near Campbell River, B.C. We met in Ottawa to talk about his definitions of both the book, as articulated in The Surface of Meaning, and typograp...
Jul 28, 2009•29 min
A.B. Yehoshua was born in 1936 to a fifth-generation Jerusalem family of Sephardi origin. His first book of stories, "Mot Hazaken" (The Death of the Old Man) was published in 1962. He was an important member of the "new wave" generation of Israeli writers who differed from earlier writers by focusing on the individual rather than the group. Franz Kafka , Shmuel Yosef Agnon , and William Faulkner were all formative influences. Author of nine novels, three books of short stories, four plays, and f...
Jul 21, 2009•39 min
M. G. Vassanji was born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania. Before coming to Canada in 1978, he attended MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, where he specialized in theoretical nuclear physics. From 1978-1980 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Atomic Energy of Canada, and from 1980 to 1989 he was a research associate at the University of Toronto. During this period he developed a keen interest in medieval Indian literature and history, co-founded and edited a literary magazine (The Toronto Sou...
Jul 19, 2009•24 min
This from Contemporary Writers : " Zoe Heller was born in London in 1965 and educated at Oxford University and Columbia University, New York. She is a journalist who, after writing book reviews for various newspapers, became a feature writer for The Independent. She wrote a weekly confessional column for the Sunday Times for four years, but now writes for the Daily Telegraph and earned the title ‘Columnist of the Year’ in 2002. She is the author of two novels: E verything You Know (2000), a dark...
Jul 19, 2009•33 min
Nino Ricci’s first novel, the best-selling Lives of the Saints, won international acclaim and a host of awards, including, in Canada, the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and in England, the Betty Trask Award and the Winifred Holtby Prize. It was followed by In A Glass House and Where She Has Gone, which completed the trilogy that Lives of the Saints began, Testament, co-winner of the Trillium Award, and, The Origin of Species which won Ricci his se...
Jul 15, 2009•35 min
Margaret MacMillan was educated at the University of Toronto and at Oxford, where she obtained a B. Phil. in politics and a D. Phil. for a thesis on the British in India between 1880 and 1920. Her books include Women of the Raj, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, which won the 2003 Governor General’s Award, the Samuel Johnson Prize, the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice for 2002, Nixon in China, The Uses and Abuses of History , ...
Jul 10, 2009•36 min
Meir Shalev one of Israel’s most celebrated novelists, was born in 1948 in Nahalal, Israel’s first moshav. He is a bestselling author in Israel, Holland, and Germany; and he has been translated into more than twenty languages. His novels include A Pigeon and a Boy, Fontanelle, Alone In the Desert, But A Few Days, and Esau. Russian Romance (The Blue Mountain) is one of the top five bestsellers in Israeli publishing history. Shalev is often compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Prizes he has won inc...
Jun 24, 2009•29 min
Clarke’s Bookshop, the most famous in Cape Town, specializes in selling southern African books to universities and libraries that teach and have an interest in same. Established in 1956 by Anthony Clarke, the Long Street shop today remains much the same as it was 50 plus years ago: filled with book-lined, wooden-floored rooms spread over two levels containing an eclectic mix of new and used, rare, out-of-print, academic and popular books sold to customers local and institutions foreign. Catalogu...
Jun 17, 2009•25 min
Crime novelist, film director, children’s author and award-winning journalist, Margie Orford was born in London and grew up in Namibia and South Africa. She has studied under J M. Coetzee, and worked in publishing with the African Publishers Network. In 1999 she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and while in New York she worked on a groundbreaking archival retrieval project, WOMEN WRITING AFRICA: The Southern Volume. She lives in Cape Town, where we met to discuss another of her many projects:...
Jun 14, 2009•35 min
In a conversation I had with him, Canadian critic, editor and short story writer John Metcalf hauls off on both the Giller Prize and two-time winner M.G. Vassanji; the former for boosterism and an inability to distinguish between good and bad literature (for placing two-time winner Alice Munro in the same category as Vassanji), and the latter for being a person who, ‘there’s no question,’ can’t " handle the English language". I met with Vassanji in Montreal at the Blue Met Writers Festival osten...
Jun 09, 2009•10 min
Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s literary publishing house. ‘ It is dedicated to connecting readers with great international authors and their works. Publishing twelve books a year and running an online literary website called Three Percent , Open Letter is one of only a handful of U.S. organizations with a commitment to cultivating an appreciation for international literature.’ ‘Chad W. Post is the director of Open Letter, a press dedicated to publishing literature in translation. H...
Jun 05, 2009•28 min
Damon Galgut is a writer based in Cape Town. He wrote his first novel, A Sinless Season (1984), when he was seventeen. Small Circle of Beings (1988), a collection of short stories, was followed by The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs (1991), the story of a young white man on military service who suffers a nervous breakdown. The Quarry (1995), was made into a film by a Belgian production company. The Good Doctor (2003), is set in post-Apartheid South Africa, and explores the relationship between two d...
Jun 04, 2009•33 min
This from contemporary writers : One of South Africa’s most distinguished writers, André Brink was born in 1935. Poet, novelist, essayist and teacher, he began work as a University lecturer in Afrikaans and Dutch Literature in the 1960s. He began writing in Afrikaans, but when censored by the South African government, began to also write in English and became published overseas. He remains a key figure in the modernisation of the Afrikaans language novel. His novel, A Dry White Season (1979), wa...
May 23, 2009•51 min
Stephen Johnson is Managing Director of the South African publishing firm Random House Struik. We talk here about the merger, the independence of SABC (the state owned South African Broadcasting Corporation), Cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro , Random House Struik’s political power, Apartheid’s banning of Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty , the current government’s under-funding of libraries, political corruption and the loss of early promise, Apartheid by other means, freedom, story-telling and other explan...
May 21, 2009•26 min
I interviewed Canadian critic/editor/writer John Metcalf on his love of Books and Book Collecting. The same afternoon we also talked about the process of book reviewing, whether or not the use of insult and/or invective is ever justified and if so, when. John is known as a ‘blunt’ critic; one who tells his un-sugared truths directly, who is not reticent to attack ‘with savagery’ books he feels 'insult' him. The conversation refers, among other things, to the Salon des Refuses exercise undertaken...
May 14, 2009•36 min
JENNY HOBBS is a novelist and freelance journalist who lives in Franschhoek, South Africa. She is the author of four novels, Thoughts in a Makeshift Mortuary, The Sweet-Smelling Jasmine, The Telling of Angus Quain , and Video Dreams , four non-fiction books, and short stories published and broadcast locally and by the BBC. She reviewed books for many years and has written for and worked on TV book programmes, both as a presenter and interviewer. She’s also the Literary Director of the Franschhoe...
May 12, 2009•19 min
Dawn Arnold is Chair of the Frye Festival in Moncton, New Brunswick. Jane Urquhart, Wayne Johnston, Neil Smith, Alexandre Jardin and Miriam Toews are among the many authors who will participate in this year’s ten day event. Dawn and I talk here about the history of the Festival, Northrop Frye’s thoughts on imagination and new worlds, the benefits to children of learning more than one language, how writing affects understanding, Moncton strip clubs, Acadie, French language childrens’ authors, Ric...
May 10, 2009•25 min
Former Pittsburgh Post Gazette Books Editor Bob Hoover wrote about books with the paper for more than 20 years. We talk here, at a noisy diner in the shadow of the Heinz ketchup factory, about the role of a books editor, Pittsburgh’s lively literary arts scene, blogs, the 800-900 review copies Bob receives each month, and keeping readers current about everything book related. We also talk about Bob’s connection with authors David McCullough and Michael Chabon, and his disconnect with Philip Roth...
May 07, 2009•2 hr 33 min
John Metcalf is best known as a writer/editor who has worked with many of Canada’s foremost short story writers including Michael Winter , Terry Griggs, Steven Heighton, and Caroline Adderson. Born in Carlisle, England, and educated at the University of Bristol, he emigrated to Canada in 1962. In addition to writing his own novels, short stories and essays, he for years edited the work of others at the Porcupine’s Quill . He is currently Senior Editor with Canadian Notes and Queries magazine. Me...
May 01, 2009•38 min
Chris Cleave was born in London and spent his early years in Cameroon. He studied Experimental Psychology at Balliol College, Oxford, and now writes a column for the Guardian newspaper. His debut novel Incendiary won a 2006 Somerset Maugham Award, was shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize, and is now a feature film. Chris lives in London with his wife and two children. We met to talk about his engaging, important new novel Little Bee . Topics discussed include masks, truth-telling,...
Mar 23, 2009•27 min
Luise von Flotow is an associate professor in Translation Studies at the University of Ottawa with a special interest in translation and gender. In 1992, her translation of Deathly Delights was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. Her most recent book is the English translation of Girls Closed In by Quebec author France Theoret. I spoke with Luise in her offices in Ottawa about Canada as a mecca for translation, efforts to convince government of the potential for this industry to expand...
Mar 15, 2009•31 min
Jessa Crispin is editor and founder of Bookslut.com "a monthly web magazine and daily blog dedicated to those who love to read. We provide a constant supply of news, reviews, commentary, insight, and more than occasional opinions." Author Jana Martin describes her this way: "Certainly she’s a reader, a great reader, and she knows how to make one good party after another, whether in a beer-poster-clad upstairs room at the Hopleaf or Bookslut . She’s a hostess for all of us, a sundress’d impressar...
Feb 19, 2009•36 min
I was in Chicago and met with Keith Michael Fiels, Executive Director of the American Library Association . According to The ALA Constitution the purpose of ALA is “…to promote library service and librarianship.” Stated mission is “To provide leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.” In 1998 the ALA Council voted commitment to five Key Ac...
Feb 19, 2009•59 min
A lifelong resident of Illinois, Levi Stahl works at the University of Chicago Press . For the past three years he has maintained a literary blog, I’ve Been Reading Lately. He has written for the Poetry Foundation, the Chicago Reader, the Bloomsbury Review, the New-York Ghost, the Quarterly Conversation, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His short fiction has recently been published in the New York Moon. Levi is also an editor with Joyland - Chicago edition (he’s currently accepting submissions...
Feb 12, 2009•36 min
Mr. Wikipedia tells us : "Rain Taxi is a Minneapolis-based book review and literary organization. In addition to publishing its quarterly print edition, Rain Taxi maintains an online edition with distinct content, sponsors the Twin Cities Book Festival, hosts readings, and publishes chapbooks through its Brainstorm Series. Rain Taxi’s mission is “to advance independent literary culture through publications and programs that foster awareness and appreciation of innovative writing.” As of 2008, th...
Feb 05, 2009•29 min
Kathy Stransky co-owner, with her husband, of Midway Used and Rare Books on University Avenue in St. Paul Minnesota for the past 35 years, talks about the impact of the Internet, Half Price Books moving in down the street, high tech book scouts, rapid transit, and thieves, on her business. Gloom and doom? Yes, it’s been hard, but still, despite diminishing returns, nothing can beat doing what you love for a living. Nothing can beat the complete joy of reading either, says Stransky. Listen too fo...
Feb 05, 2009•21 min
Today is Family Literacy Day! Literacy is defined as “the ability to understand and employ printed information in daily activities at home, at work and in the community - to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.” Four out of 10 adult Canadians, age 16 to 65 - representing 9 million Canadians - struggle with low literacy according to Statistics Canada. This means they are denied the pleasures and benefits of, among other things, reading literature. Literature, as John...
Feb 05, 2009•28 min
