"The Quill & Brush was established in 1976 as an outgrowth of a part-time business run by Allen and Patricia Ahearn who started collecting and cataloging books in the early 1960s. The Ahearns have over 45 years of experience in the field. At present the Quill & Brush is operated by Allen and Pat and their two daughters, Beth Fisher and Sue Regan. The Quill & Brush specializes in first editions of literature, mystery/detective fiction and poetry, as well as collectible books in all fi...
Jun 21, 2010•32 min
Apr 07, 2010•2 min
Nicholson Baker is an American writer of fiction and non-fiction. As a novelist he often focuses on describing the minute physical detail of our surroundings, straws and escalators for example, writing on provocative topics such as voyeurism, phone sex and planned assassination. Enthusiasts laud his ability to explore and illuminate the human psyche, critics call him a boring gadfly. Much of his non-fiction deals with the printed word, how it’s presented , stored, consumed. We talk here about th...
Mar 28, 2010•32 min
Writer/comedian A. L. Kennedy lives and works in Glasgow and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2003 she was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'. Her novel Day (2007), won the Costa Book of the Year Award. She reviews and contributes to most of the major British newspapers, and has been a judge for both the Booker Prize for Fiction (1996) and The Guardian First Book Award (2001). Her first book, Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains (199...
Feb 19, 2010•37 min
A small college cannot hope to have a large library, but if it sets to work along the right lines it may aspire to the possession of a fine one… A book may be a thing of beauty, and an example of a great craft which we must not allow to die. The means of craft and the aspiration toward beauty live on in our College library. — Robertson Davies, the Founding Master Since its inception in 1963, the Library at Massey College has developed special collections in the History of the Book as well as sup...
Feb 18, 2010•50 min
" Robert Fulford is a Toronto author, journalist, broadcaster, and editor. He writes a weekly column for The National Post and is a frequent contributor to Toronto Life, Canadian Art, and CBC radio and television. His books include Best Seat in the House: Memoirs of a Lucky Man (1988), Accidental City: The Transformation of Toronto (1995), and Toronto Discovered (1998)." This is how the man describes himself on his website . I’d only add that I think he is the best of his kind. I sat down with h...
Feb 07, 2010•42 min
Kevin Gilmartin is a professor of English at California Institute of Technology, and visiting professor at the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at York University in England. He is the author of Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1996) and Writing against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain, 1790-1832 (Cambridge, 2007), and the co-editor with James Chandler of Romantic Metropolis: The Urban Scene of British Culture, 1780...
Jan 15, 2010•37 min
Richard Coxford is the former proprietor of Bytown Bookshop in Ottawa, Canada. He has been collecting fine/press books for many years. We talk here about their history, and the joys and challenges of hunting them down.
Jan 12, 2010•38 min
Richard Landon is Director of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and Professor of English. He has taught courses on aspects of the history of the book and bibliography for many years in the University of Toronto’s Graduate Department of English and the Faculty of Information. Among his publications are Bibliophilia Scholastica Floreat (2005), Ars Medica (2006), ‘Two Collectors: Thomas Grenville and Lord Amherst of Hackney’ in Commonwealth of Books (2007), ‘The Elixir of Life: Richard Garnett, t...
Jan 11, 2010•38 min
In 1841 Thomas Babington Macaulay observed that “it is good that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good.” In his new book Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars , highly regarded copyright lawyer Bill Patry concurs with Macaulay, arguing that ‘copyright should la...
Dec 15, 2009•23 min
Published in 1908, Anne of Green Gables is the first in a series of bestselling novels by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery . Although often dark and complex, and at times racy, the ‘Anne’ novels are today considered by most to be children’s books. Inspired by similar girls’ stories of the time, and her own childhood experiences in rural Prince Edward Island, Montgomery’s writing has affected generations of women around the world, perhaps none more so than another Canadian, novelist Jane Urqu...
Dec 10, 2009•41 min
Copyright activist, speaker, teacher (how about ’speacher’…or ’spreacher’), columnist, science fiction novelist, short story writer, co-editor of Boing Boing , and the very manifestation of articulate dynamism, Cory Doctorow was in Ottawa to promote his novel Little Brother. a fast paced, current-day 1984-like polemic calling for teens to subvert security measures, especially those used by governments that claim to "defend my freedom by tearing up the Bill of Rights.” As Austin Grossman puts it ...
Dec 07, 2009•12 min
Kate Pullinger is a novelist who also writes for film and various digital platforms. Born in Cranbrook British Columbia she went to high school on Vancouver Island, dropped out of McGill University, worked for a year in a copper mine in the Yukon, traveled, and eventually settled in London. Pullinger has written two short story collections; her novels include When the Monster Dies (1989), Where Does Kissing End? (1992), A Little Stranger and most recently The Mistress of Nothing which has just w...
Nov 26, 2009•26 min
Listen here as famed author of The Life of Pi and self proclaimed political gadfly Yann Martel absorbs a barrage of punishing jabs I throw at him over his book What is Stephen Harper Reading? and punches back at a (former) Canadian Prime Minister whom he clearly holds in disdain.
Nov 26, 2009•31 min
Larry Thompson established Greyweathers Press several years ago because of a "love of beautifully designed type skillfully arranged on a well-proportioned page." His original plan was to print letterpress books only, however, as his enterprise evolved Larry became interested in relief block prints and now includes these in his work. Editorial focus is on the literature both of 19th and early 20th century British and American writers and young, unpublished writers. All printing and typesetting is...
Nov 21, 2009•31 min
Researching ‘literary’ Portland (Maine) before trekking down there, I came across mention of Rabelais Book shop . What an interesting concept it’s built upon: the vertical integration of new titles on food, wine, gardening and farming, with rare out-of-print books. Patrons therefore inhabit several distinct categories: Book lovers and collectors from around the globe, food lovers and cooks from around the block. Situated in Portland’s East End next door to Hugo’s (chef Rob Evans won the 2009 Jam...
Nov 13, 2009•36 min
After working his way up through the publishing trade during the 1950s and 1960s, Tom Doherty became publisher of Tempo Books in 1972 and later Ace Books. In 1980 he established his own publishing firm Tom Doherty Associates Inc., with the help of several investors including silent partner Richard Gallen (of Dell Emerald Books fame), and with it the Tor Books imprint. Early Tor titles included Norton’s Forerunner; Fred Saberhagen’s Water of Thought; Poul Anderson’s Winners, Starship, Exploration...
Nov 11, 2009•25 min
David Hartwell has worked as a Science Fiction and Fantasy editor for Signet, Berkley Putnam, Pocket (where he founded the Timescape imprint and created the Pocket Books StarTrek publishing line), and Tor (where he headed Tor’s Canadian publishing initiative, and introduced many Australian writers to the US market). Since 1995, his title at Tor/Forge Books has been "Senior Editor." He chairs the board of directors of the World Fantasy Convention and is an administrator of the Philip K. Dick Awar...
Nov 09, 2009•41 min
Roderick ‘Rocky’ Stinehour is a very pleasant, accomplished gentleman from Vermont. He’s also recognized internationally as a printer of high repute and a designer of beautiful, scholarly books. His career spans over much change in printing technology and the way in which books are produced and distributed. In 1950, after graduating from Dartmouth College, he, along with his wife and brother, established The Stinehour Press in the village of Lunenburg, Vermont. From modest beginnings the Press f...
Nov 06, 2009•34 min
Claire Van Vliet is the owner of the Janus Press founded in 1955 located, since 1966, in Newark, Vermont. Janus Press has to date produced approximately 100 publications — books, pamphlets, and broadsides- , many of them designed, illustrated, type-set, printed (sometimes on paper made by the artist), and bound by Van Vliet herself in a well-equipped studio, printshop, bindery of her own design. Born in Ottawa, Canada, she has lived in the United States since 1947. After graduating with an MFA d...
Nov 02, 2009•35 min
Galway Kinnell was born February 1, 1927 in Providence, Rhode Island. He has been hailed as one of the most influential American poets of the latter half of the 20th century. Educated at Princeton and Rochester Universities, he served in the United States Navy, after which he spent several years traveling, in Europe and the Middle East. His first book of poems, What a Kingdom It Was, was published in 1960, followed by Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock (1964). Upon his return to the United States...
Oct 15, 2009•27 min
Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002) was born in Armenia in 1908. His photographer uncle, George Nakash, brought him to Canada in 1924. After apprenticing in Boston with John H. Garo, Karsh settled in Ottawa in 1932, where he began his professional career. By 1936 he was photographing visiting statesmen and dignitaries, among them President Franklin Roosevelt. His December, 1941 portrait of a bull-doggish Winston Churchill, symbolizing Britain’s wartime resolve brought Karsh international attention. Among t...
Oct 07, 2009•25 min
Writer, journalist, comic reader, Cartoon Historian, intermittent blogger, and over-tired family man Brad Mackay is the author of a biographical essay which appears in The Collected Doug Wright Volume One (Drawn and Quarterly, 2009). First of a two-volume set, the book – designed by well known Canadian cartoonist Seth - presents a comprehensive look at the life and career of one of the most-read, best-loved cartoonists of the 1960s. The work draws from thousands of pieces of art, pictures, and l...
Oct 05, 2009•30 min
This from the incomparable British Council’s contemporary writers website: Born in Southport in 1969, David Mitchell grew up in Malvern, Worcestershire, studying for a degree in English and American Literature followed by an MAin Comparative Literature, at the University of Kent. He lived for a year in Sicily before moving to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught English to technical students for eight years, before returning to England. In his first novel, Ghostwritte...
Oct 03, 2009•32 min
What’s the difference between a First Edition, a Fine Press Edition and an Artists’ Book? Joshua and Phyllis Heller work with me to help define the boundaries. The two of them established Joshua Heller Rare Books, Inc . in Washington DC, in 1985. The company specializes in “contemporary fine printing and beautifully illustrated books, the Private Press Movement, modern fine bindings, and books about books. [Their] much admired catalogues, illustrated in full color, are d...
Sep 29, 2009•26 min
John Bidwell is Astor Curator of Printed Books and Bindings at the Pierpont Morgan Library , before which he was Curator of Graphic Arts in the Princeton University Library. He has written extensively on the history of papermaking in England and America. The Printed Books and Bindings collection at the Morgan contains works spanning Western book production from the earliest printed ephemera to important first editions from the twentieth century. Holdings enc...
Sep 23, 2009•38 min
Shakespeare wrote Hamlet before James l came to the throne. Events in the play reflect many of the real world concerns that Englishmen had about being ruled by a foreigner. At the play’s end, Denmark’s line of rulers is extinguished, and a foreigner (Fortinbras) takes the throne. James was married to Anna of Denmark, some feared that if he were to attempt a military takeover, he might call on the forces of his brother in law Christian IV of Denmark. King Lear was written after James’s succession...
Sep 16, 2009•33 min
Crime novelist Denise Mina is the author of a trilogy of novels set in Glasgow: Garnethill (1998), which won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Memorial Dagger; Exile (2000); and Resolution (2001). Sanctum (2002), is the story of a forensic psychiatrist, convicted of killing a serial killer. The Field of Blood (2005) is the first in a new series, the second in the series, The Dead Hour, was published in 2006, and the third, Slip of the Knife, in 2007. Denise also writes short stories, o...
Sep 03, 2009•38 min
Terry Griggs is the author of a collection of short stories, Quickening , which was nominated for a Governor General’s Award, and two novels, The Lusty Man , and Rogues’ Wedding , shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Award. She has also written two books for children, Cat’s Eye Corner , shortlisted for a Mr. Christie’s Book Award and a Red Cedar Award, and most recently a sequel, The Silver Door . In 2003 she received the Marian Engel Award . Born on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron,...
Aug 22, 2009•28 min
Karl Siegler is a founding member of the Association of Book Publishers of British C olumbia and the Literary Press Group of Canada ; he has served as president of the Association of Canadian Publishers twice, and was one of the founding members of the Simon Fraser Centre for Studies in Publishing and its Masters in Publishing Program. He’s also the publisher at Talonbooks. Talonbooks has published Canadian poetry and drama since the publishing house was established in 1963. According to some da...
Aug 22, 2009•32 min
