Jerry Kelly is a calligrapher, book and type designer. His work has been honored many times - his designs have been selected more than thirty times for the AIGA “Fifty Books of the Year.” In 2015 he was presented with the Goudy Award from The Rochester Institute of Technology. Kelly has served as Chairman of the American Printing History Association, and President of The Typophiles. He is an active member of several committees at The Grolier Club. He has written many articles and several books o...
Feb 10, 2020•1 hr
McNally Jackson Books is an independent bookstore based in New York City owned and operated by Sarah McNally, a former editor at Basic Books and the daughter of Holly and Paul McNally, founders of McNally Robinson Booksellers based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Sarah opened her first of seven stores in 2004 as a branch of McNally Robinson. In August 2008 she established McNally Jackson as an independent company. In October 2019 she met me. We consorted in the basement of her flagship store. Two thirds ...
Feb 03, 2020•1 hr
Chip Kidd is an American graphic designer best known for his book covers. Based in New York City, Kidd is arguably the most famous dust jacket designers in the world. He has been credited by many as having spawned "a revolution in the art of America book packaging,” despite having no recognizable style. In fact, he says that “A signature look is crippling… [because] the simplest and most effective solutions aren’t dictated by style.” It has been said by many that the history of book design can b...
Jan 27, 2020•51 min
Bay Area letterpress printer, designer, and publisher Peter Rutledge Koch is recognized as one of the most accomplished printers and typographic designers of his generation. Here he is in his own words: "For the past thirty-two years I have cultivated a cross-media dialogue between art, philosophy and literature. I have conducted my business as a fine-art printer as a means of creating and transmitting my own ideas about language and form, both by creating my own work and by designing and direct...
Jan 20, 2020•48 min
Classical Pursuits is a cultural and educational travel company based in Toronto, Canada, specializing in small group literary travel and learning vacations. It provides adventures for the mind and travel for the soul - to places like Hemingway's Paris, Joyce's Dublin, Dante Alighieri's Italy, and Flannery O’Connor’s Savannah and the Andalusia family farm in Georgia. It offers both scheduled small group tours and private educational group travel planning for existing groups. Ann Kirkland is the ...
Jan 18, 2020•12 min
Steven Heller wears many hats and has written and/or published many books (190+ to date). For 33 years he was an art director at the New York Times , originally on the OpEd Page and for almost 30 of those years with the New York Times Book Review . Currently, he is co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author Department, Special Consultant to the President of SVA for New Programs, and writes the Visuals column for the New York Times Book Review . We met at his office in New York to talk about Jackets ...
Jan 16, 2020•53 min
Charlotte Gray is one of Canada’s best-known writers, and author of ten acclaimed books of literary non-fiction. Born in Sheffield, England, and educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, she began her writing career in England as a magazine editor and newspaper columnist. After coming to Canada in 1979, she worked as a political commentator, book reviewer and magazine columnist before she turned to biography and popular history. She's been a judge for several of Canada's ...
Jan 12, 2020•1 hr 4 min
Marc Côté is the publisher of Cormorant Books , "a literary house noted for the discovery and development of Canadian writing talent and the publishing of Québécois fiction translated into English." He has won Canada's Libris Award for Editor of the Year twice and Cormorant has won the Libris Award for Small Presses three times. At Cormorant, Marc has acquired and edited many award-nominated books. Prior to taking over at Cormorant in 2001, Marc cut a wide swath through the halls of Canada's boo...
Jan 07, 2020•1 hr 57 min
Serge Loubier is President and CEO of Marquis Book Printing , "Canada’s number one monochrome book printer," founded in 1937. As Serge puts it: "Along with my love of book printing and manufacturing and all the technology that goes into it is a passion for the end result. Literature as an art form is about contributing to culture, challenging assumptions and fueling our desire to learn. I appreciate the value of every book that we produce and take great pride in upholding the very highest standa...
Dec 30, 2019•1 hr 11 min
Sheila Fischman is a renowned Canadian translator who specializes in translating works of contemporary Quebec literature into English. Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan she was brought up in Ontario, and holds an M.A. from the University of Toronto. She is a former editor of the Montreal Star's book section, as well as a columnist for The Globe and Mail and the Montreal Gazette and a broadcaster for CBC Radio. She's also a founding member of the Literary Translators' Association of Canada and has ...
Dec 23, 2019•1 hr 10 min
A specialist in Canadian publishing history, Janet B. Friskney, is the author of New Canadian Library: The Ross-McClelland Years , 1952-1978 (published by the University of Toronto Press). Her publication credits include articles on the Methodist Book and Publishing House of Toronto, nineteenth-century Bible and tract society activity in Canada, and the history of publishing for the blind in Canada. She served as Associate Editor to Volume 3 of the History of the Book in Canada , and edited and ...
Dec 13, 2019•1 hr 26 min
Chester Gryski holds a B. A. (Hons) in Political Science and Economics from the University of Toronto and a J. D. from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. He was called to the Ontario bar in 1976. He has acted for MPAC and its predecessor assessing authorities since 1976. In those 40 years, he has dealt with all types of properties and all issues with a particular emphasis on industrial properties and contaminated lands. Outside of his legal practice he is an ex officio Director of the A...
Dec 09, 2019•1 hr 15 min
Daniel Woolf is a British/Canadian historian. He served as the 20th Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario from September, 2009 to June, 2019, when he returned to teaching and research. He was previously Professor, Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He studied history at Queen's and Oxford Universities, and is the author of many books, including The Oxford History of H...
Dec 05, 2019•1 hr 12 min
John Ivison is a Scottish Canadian journalist who is Ottawa Bureau Chief for the National Post . Raised in Dumfries, Scotland, he worked as a reporter for The Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh and as deputy business editor of Scotland on Sunday . He was educated at the University of Glasgow, McMaster University and the University of Western Ontario, where he earned a masters degree in Journalism. He moved to Canada in 1998 as part of the team that launched the National Post, and has covered provin...
Dec 01, 2019•1 hr 6 min
This past summer Meghan O’Rourke was appointed editor of The Yale Review . In an award citation the Whiting Foundation praised her “far-reaching and ambitious” work, and noted that her “voice stands out for its power and originality.” She is the author of the memoir The Long Goodbye (2011) and the poetry collections Once (2011), Halflife (2007), and Sun In Days (2017) , which The New York Times named one of the 10 Best Poetry Books of the year. Her essays and poems have appeared in magazines suc...
Dec 01, 2019•20 min
Sandra Campbell , a graduate of Carleton and Ottawa Universities, specializes in Canadian and Caribbean (Bermuda) women’s writing, in particular for the period 1880-1940. She has a particular interest in women’s autobiography as well as gender, and the publishing industry. Professor Campbell has taught at Carleton, the University of Ottawa and McGill University, and as a Visiting Lecturer at Bermuda College. She is the author of numerous articles and co-editor of three anthologies of short ficti...
Nov 21, 2019•1 hr 5 min
Michel Gauthier has enjoyed a distinguished career in the field of festival events, tourism and recreation. He was instrumental in coordinating the participation of HRH Princess Margriet of the Netherlands in the 50th Anniversary Celebrations of the Canadian Tulip Festival, an organization that he managed from 1992 - 2005. This flagship event draws millions of visitors from all over the world each spring to Canada’s capital city. From 1984-1988 he was Executive Director of Winterlude , another o...
Nov 21, 2019•1 hr 3 min
"In 1989, Scott deWolfe began selling Shaker books, ephemera, photographs and manuscripts. Frank Wood had been selling used and rare books since the 1970s. Both worked for the Sabbathday Shaker Community in Maine. When the two realized they would make good business partners, they started doing shows together in 1990. Two years later, during a snow storm on April Fool's Day, the doors to De Wolfe & Wood opened for the first time." I met with the two of them at their store in Alfred, Maine to ...
Nov 15, 2019•59 min
Earlier this year the Beinecke Library hosted an exhibition entitled Bibliomania; or Book Madness: A Bibliographical Romance . It takes its name from the history of “arrant book-lovers” written by Thomas Frognall Dibdin. "It follows these lovers of the book through four case studies, observing the powerful and often unexpected relationships of books with their readers, owners, authors, collectors, and creators." "Every Book in the World! explores the passionate collecting and printing history of...
Nov 10, 2019•54 min
John Sawatsky is a Canadian author, journalist and interviewing consultant. Born in Winkler, Manitoba, he attended Simon Fraser University in the late 1960s graduating in political science. He started his career as an investigative reporter in the 1970s. While working as Ottawa correspondent for the Vancouver Sun he published a series of articles on misdeeds of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, for which he received the 1976 Michener Award. He left daily journalism in 1979 to write books, among...
Nov 04, 2019•1 hr 4 min
Laura Claridge has written books ranging from feminist theory to biography and popular culture, most recently the story of an American icon, Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners , for which she received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. This project also received the J. Anthony Lukas Prize for a Work in Progress, administered by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Born in Clearwate...
Nov 01, 2019•48 min
Barabara Slate is "an artist, cartoonist, graphic novelist, comic book creator, and writer. She is one of the few female artists who has created, written, and drawn comics for both DC and Marvel Comics." In 1986 Barbara created 'Angel Love' for DC Comics, an adult-themed series for teenagers. In an exhibition review, The New York Times described her art as "emphatically of our time with its narrative of passion, gun violence, and female assertiveness." Her textbook, You Can Do a Graphic Novel , ...
Oct 29, 2019•55 min
James Daunt is the founder of the Daunt Books chain, and since May 2011 has been managing director of the bookshop chain Waterstones . In June 2019, he became the CEO of the US bookstore chain Barnes & Noble , acquired by Waterstones's parent, Elliott Advisors for $683m. We met last year in London to discuss Waterstones's impressive turn-around. We met last week in a small room (with apologies for the loud-ish air ventilation system) in the basement of the Union Square branch of Barnes &...
Oct 20, 2019•35 min
Leslie Hurtig was born into a house of books and has had a long, successful career in Canada’s book industry. She has worked for some of Canada’s best bookstores, acted as a sales representative and publicist for some of North America’s great publishers, and worked as a foreign rights and contracts manager at Raincoast Books. Leslie sat on the Board of Directors for the Vancouver Writers Fest before taking on her "dream job" position as Artistic Director. Jan Walter has spent her life around boo...
Oct 14, 2019•1 hr 1 min
Bruce Fye is an American retired cardiologist, medical historian, writer, bibliophile and philanthropist. He is emeritus professor of medicine and the history of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, and was the founding director of the institution’s W. Bruce Fye Center for the History of Medicine, named by the Clinic in his honour as a result of his philanthropy. In addition to building up a large collection of books, offprints, and autographs relating to the history of cardiology, and to Sir William Os...
Oct 10, 2019•1 hr 32 min
Christopher Lyons , is the head librarian of rare books and special collections at McGill University's McLennan Library. He was formerly in charge of McGill’s Osler Library which holds the collection of it’s founder, Sir William Osler (1849–1919). A major figure in modern medical history, Osler is "well known as a scientific researcher, a great medical pedagogue, a humanist, and an advocate for a patient-centered approach to medicine." "Born in Ontario and educated at McGill University...where h...
Oct 05, 2019•1 hr 1 min
Ambassador Bruce Heyman is an American businessman and served as United States Ambassador to Canada under Barack Obama from 2014 until 2017. He appears regularly on CBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg, CTV, CNBC, and other media outlets as an expert on trade and bilateral issues. Bruce lives in Chicago with his wife and co-author Vicki Heyman who was an American cultural envoy in Canada, leading cross-border conversations and programs related to the arts, social innovation and youth engagement. She is ...
Oct 03, 2019•1 hr 5 min
Bob Rae is senior counsel with the law firm Olthuis, Kleer Townshend and teaches public policy and governance at the University of Toronto. He was the Member of Parliament for Toronto Centre and was the interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada from 2011 to 2013. He was previously leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party and the 21st Premier of Ontario, from 1990 until 1995. Between 1978 and 2013, he was elected 11 times to federal and provincial parliaments. Mr. Rae is currently Canada's ...
Sep 29, 2019•1 hr 5 min
Ricardo Cayuela is a writer, essayist, and founding editor of Letras Libres (" The New Yorker of Mexico"). In 2013 he was appointed Director General of Publications by the Mexican government. Today he is the president of Random House-Mondadori-Alfaguara and Editorial Director of Penguin Random House México. We met at the Blue Met Literary Festival in Montreal to talk about, among other things, Mexico's efforts to promote reading and books; bookstores in Mexico City, fine press books; violence ag...
Sep 26, 2019•49 min
Jody Wilson-Raybould , also known by her initials JWR and by her Kwak’wala name Puglaas , is a Canadian politician and the Independent Member of Parliament for the riding of Vancouver Granville. She served as Minister of Justice and Attorney General in the cabinet of Justin Trudeau from 2015 until January 2019 and then as Minister of Veterans Affairs of Canada from January 14, 2019, until resigning on February 12, 2019. Before entering federal politics, she was a provincial Crown Prosecutor in V...
Sep 22, 2019•59 min
