HEATHER O’NEILL is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist. Her work, which includes Lullabies for Little Criminals , The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and Daydreams of Angels, has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize in two consecutive years, and has won CBC Canada Reads, the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the Danuta Gleed Award. Born and raised in Montreal, O’Neill lives there tod...
Feb 25, 2019•1 hr 10 min
Katharine Streip received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. She has published essays on Marcel Proust, Jean Rhys, Philip Roth, and William S. Burroughs. Her research interests include comedy, the novel, 19th c. Paris and modernism. I'm sitting in on some of her classes at Concordia University's Liberal Arts College , which offers "a unique Great Books, multidisciplinary Core Curriculum designed to provide the foundations of an education for life."...
Feb 18, 2019•1 hr 5 min
Sophie Schneideman has been an international rare book and print dealer for over 28 years, serving a long apprenticeship at Maggs Bros, an eminent book firm in Mayfair, and dealing as Sophie Schneideman Rare Books since 2007. She specializes in several areas of book collecting, the main focus being the Art of the Book, i.e. book illustration, private presses, fine binding, fine printing and livres d’artistes, particularly of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This includes prints and books ...
Feb 11, 2019•48 min
Henry Hitchings is an author, reviewer and critic, specializing in narrative non-fiction, with a particular emphasis on language and cultural history. His second book, The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English , won the 2008 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize . He is the president of the Johnson Society of Lichfield. As of 2018, he is chair of the drama section of the UK's Critics' Circle . He was a King's Scholar at Eton College before going to Christ Church, Oxford, and then to University Co...
Feb 04, 2019•36 min
I met with members of the Canada Council's Supporting Artistic Practice Program team last month to discuss changes made in 2017 to the literary book publishing grant program. Among other things we talk about the fact that programs are designed to benefit all Canadians, about phases in the spectrum of activities in artistic creation, supporting writers versus book production, professional development for arts professionals, new opportunities for literary publishers to get funding, the digital str...
Feb 01, 2019•43 min
The Bookseller is a British magazine reporting news on the publishing industry. In 2010 it was acquired from Nielsen by its then Managing Director, Nigel Roby , who is now Chief Executive, Owner and Publisher of the new, expanded entity. I met with Nigel at The Bookseller 's offices across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament, in London. Among other things we talk about the history and purpose of The Bookseller and its related enterprises; telling the trade about new books, informing rivals ...
Jan 28, 2019•45 min
James Daunt is Managing Director of the Waterstones chain of bookstores in England. Has been since 2011. We met at the Piccadilly store in London to talk about, among other things, J.P. Morgan, New York, silver spoons and begging bowls, genuine passion, store energy, author event programs, bookshops as social places, a core of regular customers, identifying up-and-coming writers, booksellers who read, booksellers who treat publishers with suspicion, Waterstones not selling shelf-space, caring en...
Jan 14, 2019•1 hr 19 min
Stephen Page is the Chief Executive Officer at Faber & Faber . We met at his offices in Bloomsbury, London, and invited Geoffrey Faber into the room. The three of us talk, among other things, about publishers being a race apart, comets, the unevenness of publishing, the low barriers to entry, maintaining humility, Paul Hamlyn, colour books and technological breakthroughs, the elasticity of books, e-books and the beauty of analogue, reading and shopping environments, seduction and hand-crafte...
Jan 07, 2019•1 hr 10 min
Will Atkinson is Managing Director of Atlantic Books, U.K. Prior to this he was, for many years, with Faber & Faber , serving as Director of Sales & Marketing from 2006 to 2014. During this time he spearheaded the Independent Alliance , a very successful sales organization that comprises some of the U.K.'s leading independent publishers, including Granta and Canongate. I met with Will at his offices in Bloomsbury, London. We talk here, among other things, about the Alliance (Faber, Canon...
Jan 02, 2019•1 hr 10 min
Hannah Knowles, Senior Commissioning Editor at Canongate Books in London, tells me what she does. I question her with the help of Geoffrey Faber. We talk, among others things, about track records, The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump , books with legs, back-lists, bestsellers, Robert Webb's How Not to be a Boy , selling rights internationally, inclusive lists, illustrated books, the right length of a book, redundant and obscure passages, the first 50 pages, popular culture, being on the writer's...
Dec 24, 2018•48 min
Richard Charkin is a British publishing executive who has worked in the publishing business since 1972. He has held executive positions at Pergamon Press , Oxford University Press , Reed International / Reed Elsevier and Current Science Group, and is the former Chief Executive of Macmillan Publishers Limited and Executive Director of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck . We met in Bloomsbury, London to discuss some of the challenges Richard sees facing the publishing business. Among other this w...
Dec 17, 2018•1 hr 9 min
Throughout my twenties I harboured a strong desire to read the Great Books, but it wasn't until I'd finished university and come across Clifton Fadiman's Lifetime Reading Plan at the now defunct Book Den in Ottawa on MacLaren street, that I started to act seriously on the urge. It, and the 100 books recommended, had and continue to have a profound impact on my life. So, I was thrilled to learn that Anne Fadiman had written a memoir about her father called The Wine Lover's Daughter . Anne is an e...
Dec 10, 2018•47 min
David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic . In 2001 and 2002, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush. We met in Ottawa and talked about, among other things, his father Murray, a Bernini bronze , African art, reference books, Linda Frum's biography of her (and David's), mother Barbara, the mistrust of optimism, Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and women, loyalty, how to become an expert in almost anyth...
Dec 03, 2018•1 hr 7 min
Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is the author of thirteen books, including The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve; The Swerve: How the World Became Modern; Shakespeare's Freedom; and Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare . He is General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and of The Norton Shakespeare, has edited seven collections of criticism, and is a founding editor of the journal Representations. His hon...
Dec 01, 2018•30 min
"Beowulf Sheehan studied photography at New York University and the International Center of Photography. His childhood love of stories in books and music grew into an adulthood love of storytellers in the arts, entertainment, and humanities. Beowulf makes portraits, communicates ideas, and shares the stories of compelling artists and figures who impact society and culture." His book AUTHOR "captures the essence of 200 writers, historians, journalists, playwrights, and poets from 35 countries, fr...
Nov 26, 2018•56 min
John Shoesmith is Outreach Librarian at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto, and curator of the 2013 exhibition Death Greatly Exaggerated: Canada's Thriving Small and Fine Press which explored examples of the fine book-making craft in Canada since the year 2000 while nodding to Canada's small presses. We met at the Fisher and talked, among other things, about famed printer and book designer Robert Reid , Fraser Mines Revisited, Kuthan's Menagerie , McGill University Press, the Lande B...
Nov 19, 2018•52 min
Lumiere Press is the private press of Michael Torosian . In the fine press tradition, the books are composed in lead, hand printed and hand bound. The press is devoted exclusively to photography, and each book aspires in its concept, graphic design, and bookmaking craftsmanship to be the manifestation of its artistic content. The shop's first printing press was acquired in 1981, and in 1986 the publishing program was launched with the publication of Edward Weston: Dedicated to Simplicity . I met...
Nov 12, 2018•56 min
Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, essayist and poet in Toronto. He has worked as a book columnist for The National Post, and as the poetry editor of The Walrus . He is the author of three books: the poetry volumes Bloom and The Scarborough, and Strike Anywhere , a collection of his writing about literature, television and culture. His essays and investigative stories have appeared in The Atlantic , Slate , Toronto Life , The Walrus , The New Yorker , and elsewhere. He was the 2017 Ma...
Nov 05, 2018•1 hr 32 min
Elaine Dewar – author, journalist, television story editor—has been propelled since childhood by insatiable curiosity and the joy of storytelling. Her journalism has been honored by nine National Magazine awards, including the prestigious President’s Medal, and the White Award. Her first book, Cloak of Green , delved into the dark side of environmental politics and became an underground classic. Dewar has been called “one of Canada’s best muckrakers and “Canada’s Rachel Carson.” We met at her ho...
Oct 29, 2018•59 min
Peggy L. Fox is the former president and publisher of New Directions, was Tennessee Williams’s last editor, and is James Laughlin’s literary coexecutor. She lives in Athens, New York, where we met to talk about, among other things, her career at New Directions, Tennessee Williams, the Chinese poet Bei Dao, Norfolk confetti, contacts and connections, James Laughlin's literary influence, letter writing, re-introducing deceased giants, Barbara Elpler, W.G. "Max" Sebald, Gore Vidal, and New Directio...
Oct 22, 2018•1 hr 3 min
Richard Minsky is an American scholar of bookbinding and a book artist. He is the founder of the Center for Book Arts in New York City. We met in his studio in Hudson, NY to talk, among other things, about the proselytizing of book art, books as metaphors, the art of book covers, publishers' bindings, modernism, art history and the evolution of technology, Will Bradley, the acquisition of books, stamped book covers, gilt, the stamping process, the extraordinary lives of some book cover designers...
Oct 16, 2018•57 min
Michel Tremblay was born in Montreal in 1942. He studied graphic arts and became a linotypist like his father and brother. He wrote his first play Le Train in 1959 and with it won the 1964 Radio Canada Young Author's Competition. But it was his second play Les Belles-Sœurs that established him as an important writer - the first play to use Joual and feature working class women on the stage, the first of a cycle of plays set in the Plateau Mont Royal district of Montreal. He went on to write a se...
Oct 08, 2018•1 hr 11 min
Patrick deWitt was born on Vancouver Island in 1975. He has also lived in California, Washington, and Oregon, where he currently lives with his wife and son. He is the author of two novels, Ablutions and The Sisters Brothers , which won Canada's Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. Here's how the jury described it: "Brothers Eli and Charlie Sisters are at the centre of this “great greedy heart” of a book. A rollicking tale of hired guns, faithful horses and alchemy. The ingenious prose...
Oct 05, 2018•26 min
This from Simon and Schuster : " Anna Porter was born in Budapest, Hungary, during the Second World War and escaped with her mother at the end of the 1956 revolution to New Zealand, where she graduated with an MA from Christchurch University. Like so many young Kiwis, after graduation she travelled to London, England, where she had her first taste of publishing. In 1968, she arrived in Canada, and was soon swept up in the cultural explosion of the 1970s. At McClelland & Stewart, run by the f...
Oct 01, 2018•45 min
Ian S. MacNiven 's authorized biography of Lawrence Durrell was a New York Times Notable Book for 1998. He has edited two collections of Durrell's correspondence (with Richard Aldington and Henry Miller), is the author of numerous articles on literary modernism, and has directed and spoken at conferences on three continents. He is also a past president of the D. H. Lawrence Society of North America and of the International Lawrence Durrell Society. MacNiven resides on the west bank of the Hudson...
Sep 24, 2018•1 hr 30 min
Adrian King Edwards is the proprietor of The Word Bookstore near McGill University in Montreal; has been for more than 40 years. I met with him at his home to talk books, second-hand versus used, the John Schulman scandal in Pittsburgh, trust, stories, longevity, authors' obscure childrens' books, policemen checking the spices, David McKnight's collection of Canadian literary periodicals, Canadian poetry, letterpress books, changing values, changing definitions of rare, Glenn Goluska, clean orga...
Sep 17, 2018•47 min
Through his work as a writer, editor, and photographer, Terence Byrnes came to know and to photograph many Montreal-based writers throughout their careers. "For ten years, he photographed them in places where they felt at home, but not always at ease. 'Most contemporary literary portraits,' Byrnes says, 'are as highly burnished as Playboy nudes or as homespun as family snapshots. When I made these images, I was an interloper the writers had to react to.” Closer to Home: The Author and the Author...
Sep 10, 2018•1 hr 11 min
Bill Samuel is the grandson of the founder of Foyles bookstore and was long-time Vice-Chairman of the company. Samantha J Rayner captures the spirit of the enterprise when she writes "[Foyles] emphasised that trial and error was an integral part of learning what makes for success. Foyles is not just a bookshop – they have tried all sorts of enterprises to generate more revenue: sheet music, musical instruments, literary lunches, book clubs, film production and even aeroplanes!" I met with Bill i...
Sep 07, 2018•8 min
Priscila Uppal, poet, author, and English professor at York University, challenges traditional psychological and anthropological models of mourning in her new book We Are What We Mourn: The Contemporary English-Canadian Elegy , suggesting that Canadians mourn differently. Traditional models define successful mourning in terms of detachment from the loved one who has died; the ability to cut the strings of grief, and to step into the roles of mothers and fathers vacated by the dead. To become unn...
Sep 05, 2018•48 min
Robert Lecker is a Canadian scholar, author, and Greenshields Professor of English at McGill University in Montreal, where he specializes in Canadian literature. He has held a number of prominent positions in the Canadian publishing industry throughout his career. He co-founded ECW Press in 1977, he co-edited the Canadian literary journal Essays on Canadian Writing between 1975 and 2004, he has edited several anthologies of Canadian and international literature, and he currently heads a literary...
Sep 03, 2018•1 hr
