January 20, 2025
Showing Up
I showed up like this eight years ago, and I’m not sorry I did, but there was a whole lot I still had yet to understand about the moment I was trying to meet. Which I really did think was just a moment, one grand obstacle to be overcome, I was so utterly convinced of my righteousness, and it felt like a grand performance, utterly infused with ego: LOOK AT ME ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY. And I wasn’t wrong about that, necessarily, but my grasp of the shape of history definitely left something to be desired. I kept thinking, “LOOK, HOW THERE ARE MORE OF US THAN YOU!” but I have come to doubt if this is a particularly good argument, especially when a convoy of people who definitely don’t share my principles tried a similar tactic in 2022, albeit with violence, implicit and otherwise. Which made me think that maybe it’s a slippery slope in which I do not want to participate, and wonder what better ways there might be to rise up in opposition.
Anand Giridharadas writes: “The first Trump presidency was a time of great and often smug certitude. He was so wrong that the contrast made us right. He was so against democracy and justice and freedom that anything we did was self-evidently heavenly. But self-righteousness corrodes the soul and the mind. And the long posture of resistance and fury and perma-vigilance has turned many of us into certitude bots instead of people of curiosity. Democracy is all about curiosity, it depends on curiosity, because it is about you and I figuring each other out and then choosing the future together, instead of the king doing it for us. But the moral clarity triggered by Trump’s vacuous viciousness lulled many of us into a dogmatic slumber. Now I see and hear around me people who are getting into a posture of real rethinking, who are returning to curiosity, who are willing to ask real and hard questions about what many of us missed and didn’t see and may not see still. Their posture is not outward but inward.”
Today, I don’t have any answers. I don’t even have a placard, but what I do have is a conversation with Heather Marshall about her 2022 bestselling novel LOOKING FOR JANE, which keeps on showing up on the bestseller list after all this time, its themes of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy continuing to resonate. The conversation is for paid subscribers on my Substack page, but the preview is available for everybody is and it’s worth checking out. Listen here!
January 7, 2025
12 Essential Lessons for Writers from Bookspo Season 2
Bookspo Season 2 was a triumph in all kinds of ways, not least of which was that, in terms of listeners, it grew exponentially over the first season, hitting 4000 downloads by the season finale. Even more importantly, it featured a fantastic group of excellent books published in the second half of 2024 with a terrific range of genres and approaches, with authors celebrating the pleasures and joys of reading and creative inspiration. There is some amazing guidance for writers here, which you can scroll down to get a taste of.
Episode 1: Corinna Chong, Bad Land
The key to a slow-burn plot is building TENSION!
Episode 2: Ayelet Tsabari, Songs for the Brokenhearted
To dare to rewrite old and familiar stories is to be part of a long tradition.
Episode 3: Alice Zorn, Colours in Her Hands
Learn to trust your imagination.
Episode 4: Marissa Stapley, The Lightning Bottles
When you’re basing a character on a real person, it’s only when you let go of their reality in the world that they become truly real in your fiction.
Episode 5: Suzy Krause, I Think We’ve Been Here Before
It’s refreshing to reminded—both in writing and in life—that most people are fundamentally good and trying really hard.
Episode 6: Jennifer Whiteford, Make Me a Mixtape
Give yourself a kind of punk rock permission to create your own vision.
Episode 7: Anne Hawk, The Pages of the Sea
To sit down to write a novel is to be chasing something magical (which can take a long time!)
Episode 8: Kirti Bhadresa, An Astonishment of Stars
Just get started. One can build an entire work of fiction from a list poem! (Who knew??)
Episode 9: Richard Van Camp, Beast
Incredible things can happen when you raise the stakes for your characters.
Episode 10: Priya Ramsingh, The Elevator
A good book makes the reader really care about its characters.
Episode 11: Jenny Haysom, Keep
Fiction allows you to wear many hats and to take on different perspectives.
Episode 12, Andrew Forbes, The Diapause
When you’re writing, it’s useful to keep the books that inspire you close at hand.
October 16, 2024
BOOKSPO Season Two
7/10 episodes of the BOOKSPO podcast are up now (with more to come on the next three Wednesdays). I’m also so pleased to report that the podcast is now available on Spotify, along with Apple Podcasts, Substack, and (pretty much) everywhere else you get your podcasts.
Guests so far are Corinna Chong, author of the Giller-longlisted BAD LAND; Ayelet Tsbari, author of SONGS FOR THE BROKENHEARTED; Alice Zorn, author of COLORS IN HER HANDS; Marissa Stapley, author of THE LIGHTNING BOTTLES; Suzy Krause, author of I THINK WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE; Jennifer Whiteford, author of MAKE ME A MIXTAPE; and Anne Hawk, author of THE PAGES OF THE SEA. More to come!
June 3, 2024
12 Essential Lessons for Writers from BOOKSPO
Bookspo Season 1 is complete, and I’m now at work on Season 2, coming this fall, but in the meantime, I want to sum up some of the wisdom shared by writers in this first round of interviews, lots of great tips and insight from writers across a ride range of genres. This is writing advice worth listening again for!
Thanks to all the authors who generously donated their time to this project, and thank you also (and ESPECIALLY!) to everybody who was listening.
Episode 1: Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti, Bury the Lead
Your characters have to be vulnerable.
Episode 2: Charlene Carr, We Rip the World Apart
Trust your gut about your character’s journey, and don’t worry about what your reader will think.
Episode 3: Shawna Lemay, Apples on the Windowsill
Know the importance of being an ordinary human being looking at the world and sharing what you see.
Episode 4: Ashley Tate, Twenty-Seven Minutes
Don’t be afraid of pushing the limits of genre to write the book you want to write.
Episode 5: Waubgeshig Rice, Moon of the Turning Leaves
Enhance the literary world you’ve built by writing a character who sees it through a different lens than you do.
Episode 6: Emily Austin, Interesting Facts About Space
That not everyone is going to like your book is a a hit you have to take along with the gift of the readers who embrace it.
Episode 7: Leslie Shimotakahara, Sisters of the Spruce
Literary inspiration for fresh stories can be found in classic texts and family lore.
Episode 8: Robin Lefler, Not How I Pictured It
Writing outlines is really valuable (even IF you think you HATE THEM).
Episode 9: Adrienne Gruber, Monsters, Martyrs and Marionettes
It is possible to inhabit a liminal space between literary forms.
Episode 10: Michelle Hébert, Every Little Thing She Does is Magic
Compassion and curiosity are important when you’re writing a villain.
Episode 11: Deepa Rajagopalan, Peacocks of Instagram
Writing with constraints can be inspiring and useful.
Episode 12: Andrea Warner, The Time of My Life
Be honest and thoughtful about the culture that inspires you—nothing is above reproach.
May 21, 2024
BOOKSPO 12 (and Season Finale!)
We break ALL THE RULES (okay, there was only ever one rule, but still) with our season finale and the magnificent Andrea Warner’s appearance on the podcast this week. It’s one of my favourite writers talking about my favourite movie, and how it was foundational to Andrea’s own experience and inspired her compelling new homage/memoir/cultural-criticism hybrid, THE TIME OF MY LIFE: DIRTY DANCING, a book I adored.
Andrea talks about why Dirty Dancing is a project worth breaking the rules for, how Eleanor Bergstein was prescient in understanding the precarity of reproductive rights in America during the 1980s, her subversion in making an illegal abortion the centre of her screenplay, the film’s best lines (I carried a watermelon?), how it models community care in action, how fantastic is its demonstration of enthusiastic consent, why it’s important to be honest in critiquing the pop culture we love, and Andrea also has a VERY controversial take on the iconic pop song that gave her book its title, and SO MUCH MORE!
Listen at Substack or Apple Podcasts.
May 14, 2024
Bookspo Eleven
On the tail of the news of Alice Munro’s death at age 92, I’m even more pleased and glad to be able to share the latest Bookspo. Deepa Rajagopalan is the author of the short story collection PEACOCKS OF INSTAGRAM, a book that’s so great it’s got me accosting strangers in the street, and she came to our conversation with a very cool twist on the Bookspo format. Her Bookspo pick is Munro’s short story “Corrie” (which was included in her 2012 DEAR LIFE), which she used as inspiration for her own same-but-different story “Rahel,” published in her collection. Listen at Substack or at Apple Podcasts.
May 7, 2024
Bookspo 10
This episode of BOOKSPO is guaranteed to put a song in your head, as Michelle Hébert tells me all about how revisiting Emma Donoghue’s 1997 story collection KISSING THE WITCH helped her discover solutions to problems she was facing in developing the characters in EVERYTHING LITTLE THING SHE DOES IS MAGIC, her debut novel, which is out this week and pretty magic in its own right.
I’m really excited to share it with you, and hope it makes you curious enough to pick up both books (and you definitely should!). Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.
April 29, 2024
Bookspo Episodes 8 & 9
This is the point where I can definitively say that I figured out what I was doing in regards to my podcast. These latest two episodes are conversations about two of the best books of the Canadian literary season (two books which have very little in common than the fact that both are excellent) and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. Listen at Apple Podcasts or Substack, or wherever you get your podcasts.
April 12, 2024
BOOKSPO Episode 6!
What a delight to bring you this conversation with Emily Austin about her beautiful and hilarious new novel INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SPACE, how some interesting feedback on her first novel inspired her to deepen her own understanding of love, and how ideas from bell hooks’ ALL ABOUT LOVE found their way into her fiction. Listenhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bookspo/id1733542694 at Apple Podcasts or on Substack.
April 1, 2024
BOOKSPO Episode 5!
This week on BOOKSPO I’m talking with Waubgeshig Rice about his new novel MOON OF THE TURNING LEAVES—which came out in Canada last fall and was just published in the United States—and how he was inspired by Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 novel BLOOD MERIDIAN to craft a narrative in which the land guides the story. List at Apple Podcasts or on Substack.
