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Ever since writing this article on collecting teapots, for my friend Tony Martins, I’ve been thinking about my great uncle Sir Arthur Church. I had no idea he was such a wheel in collecting circles, back at the turn of the 20th century. All I knew was that he’d discovered a colour. A bright red, water-soluble pigment called Turacin (found in the feathers of West African birds known as Turacos),

had a rock named after him (a mineral actually, called Churchite), and wrote some books on food

Turns out he was among the first to apply science to the practice of collecting - subjecting materials to measurements that verified things like age and molecular structure. He was also an expert on paint chemistry and conservation. Even dabbled in landscapes himself.

Some say he was responsible for transforming collecting from just a hobby “a mere acquisitiveness,” into a rigorous scientific discipline, by applying chemical analysis to the preservation and authentication of art. As a collector himself, of all sorts of things (from ceramics to botanical drawings, precious stones to Japanese sword-handles) he believed that those of us who practice are public benefactors responsible for preserving our property for the benefit of others - artists and archaeologists and historians for example.

He’s credited with being a pioneer in preventative conservation practices, advising the Ashmolean Museum early on in 1896 to moderate light, temperature, and humidity in its galleries in order to protect its paintings. His book The Chemistry of Paints and Painting (1890) became an essential guide for identifying stable pigments versus those prone to fading - this fundamentally changed how collections were managed and maintained. Restoration Expertise? He was called upon to restore the Maclise frescoes at the Palace of Westminster, during which he proved that airborne sulphuric acid from smoke was the primary cause of their decay. Technical Curatorship? While honorary curator at the Corinium Museum he conducted detailed chemical analyses of Roman wall pigments.

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In short, what he was, was one of those quite common indefatigable Victorian hyper achiever-types who put everyone else (including ancestors) to shame with the amount of work they did. Then again, he didn’t have any kids - that I’m aware of.

Regardless, I’m proud to be related to him, even if I had nothing to do with it. Despite the fact that everything chemistry makes me nauseous (high-school hangover), it’s pretty clear that I inherited a collecting gene from him.

Which brings us to the first question I asked bookseller Dan Morgan during a recent conversation I had with him in Prague: could this kind of inheritance have played a role in his life?

Dan and I sat down (for the second time) in his cool, quiet, secluded bookshop last month to discuss his transformation from modernist book design collector to bookseller.

It’s one collector interview in a series I hope to expand over the coming months (for some already in the can, try Mark Samuels Lasner and Mark Andrews).

Collecting, and studying what you’ve collected, adds a great deal not only to the understanding of one’s own life, but also, I’d say, to one’s heritage. It’s patriotic! Collectors can help their fellow citizens to learn about communal history. Collectors do the job that Librarians and Archivists should be doing but can’t, in many cases, due to lack of funds. Given this, cultivating and celebrating collectors is the least governments and libraries should do. I’ll see what I can do to get Canada’s chief librarian (and the U.S.’s and U.K.’s) to address this with me ahead of the new National Library and Archive building opening scheduled for later this year. Please stay tuned.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy listening to Dan’s story - his love affairs with an extraordinary Czech woman, collecting, and Czech Modernist book design.

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Judging from Stephen Miller’s Twitter feed, a ton of immigrants living in the United States are dangerous criminals who need to be incarcerated, exterminated or, at the very least, deported. His is a spigot of malice that drops toilet bowls full of racist hatred over the heads of “foreigners;” Miller’s tweets are pulling the same carts that Nazi-owned newspapers did years ago in Germany, during the 20s and 30s, spreading the manure of anti-Semitism. This comparison came to me a month ago or so when I was in Dresden perusing the local flea market

scene.

In reality, of course, the vast majority of immigrants in the U.S. are exemplary, law-abiding, citizens (more so than the general population) who contribute a great deal to the country’s well-being. Misrepresenting them as enemies of the state -dehumanizing them, smearing them - is exactly what the Nazis did with the Jews, leading up to the gas chambers. In fact it comes straight from the National Socialist playbook. Where’s proof of this demonizing and scapegoating? In Nazi newspapers, which is exactly what, given my electric fascination for print culture, I figured I should go after while I was in Dresden. Nothing at the flea markets unfortunately (I did however score this:

a week or two later in Vienna. Not Nazi propaganda obviously. The opposite in fact. The year is 1933. The paper was shut down in 1934) but I did get lucky at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies, spending a good morning there in the basement scouring

the library.

As it happens, researchers at the Institute, notably Christoph Hanzig, have been digitizing and analysing Der Freiheitskampf, a Dresden-based Nazi daily, for the better part of a decade. Christoph is a ‘font’ of knowledge when it comes to Nazis manipulating the news.

I spoke with him about Miller, and Nazi print propaganda techniques, a couple of weeks ago via Zoom.

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The first time out we talked about the miracles he worked at Waterstones. Then we looked at his early plans for Barnes & Noble. Now James Daunt and I discuss the future: where his bookstore chains are headed, when B&N is going public, how employee pay scales have changed, why entrepreneurship enlivens everything, when he plans to retire and what he’s going to do with himself.

Plus we get even more personal: how does a busy guy like James combat loneliness, why are so many billionaires pedophiles, what are the secrets to long a marriage, and happiness; what constitutes a life well lived, what matters most?

Tune in for some profundity.

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Bloomsbury Publishing has been in business for almost forty years. Last year it earned £361.0 million. Over the past five years it’s taken in more than £1.4 Billion. It’s one of, if not the most successful publishing ventures of the past century. How does this work? I asked Founder and Chief Executive Nigel Newton.

Here we talk about, among other things, Frank Newton — Nigel’s prospecting, race car-driving grandfather; about Peter, his wine-making father; about book publishing and stock picking; the acquisition A&C Black; The Garrick Club; ‘romantasy’ and Sarah J. Maas; Liz Calder; floatation in 1994; aspiring to be mid-sized; Christopher Little; J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter being a fluke; Amazon observing territorial copyright; AI licensing agreements as unforeseen backlist windfalls; suing AI companies; ideal publishing companies; surviving medically; Emotional Intelligence; The History of Bloomsbury Publishing coming out in April, 2027 to celebrate 40th years in business; Anthony Blonde’s book - not The Truth about Publishing. It’s either The Publishing Game (1971) or The Book Book (1983) (for sure I own at least one of these, and I’m going to say, almost 100%,it’s signed); foreign rights; and how to lead a happy, fulfilling life.

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Publishing books in Canada is a punishing, risky business. Even if your little enterprise makes it through, surviving years of ups and downs, in the end nobody will buy it. Not even the Americans (who have bought everything else in Canada it seems), because viability is tied to Canadian government-approved domestic list-specific grants. Pretty bleak the whole thing.

Not to say that being a publisher in Canada isn’t a damned good time, as Scott McIntyre’s lively new memoir A Precarious Endeavour ( not the be confused with The Perilous Trade - published fittingly or not by PRH) proves. It’s just that you don’t get rich, at least financially.

I spoke with him about it.

It’s a fun, far from dismal, albeit slightly honeyed romp through the past 50 years of the book business in Canada featuring the life and times of West coast publishing house Douglas & McIntyre, one that McIntyre co-founded in 1970 with Jim Douglas. A parade of colourful Canadian literary and political characters boogies through the book

I enjoyed talking with Scott about them, and about, among other things, animals being used as publisher logos, glaring contradictions; publishing being the art of the possible; Canada’s West Coast vibe; Alfred Knopf; the Barbarian Press; Scott’s love of West Coast indigenous art; his house; his struggles with fellow publisher Anna Porter to sign broadcaster Jack Webster and journalist Allan Fotheringham’s books; about the influence, skill-set and anger of Jack McClelland - arguably Canada’s greatest book publisher; about best-selling author/historian Peter C. Newman and sailing; about the superb quality of many of D&M’s books andnot going to Scott’s house to see them; about Frankfurt; and about the atrocity of McClelland and Stewart’s backlist - one of Canadian culture’s undisputed treasures - falling into foreign hands (Penguin Random House’s) under dubious circumstances; about the recently deceased Elaine Dewar getting it wrong (according to Scott) in her fascinating bookThe Handoveron the topic ( I interviewed her at the time. Listen here. I’m not so sure she got it wrong. Nor is Marc Côté) and finally, about English Canadians generally, and bureaucrats, specifically, not giving a s**t about their own culture.

On that note, I hope you’ll take as much pleasure listening to Scott as I did.

Please stay tuned. Coming up very shortly (assuming it gets through the censors) my Biblio File podcast conversation with Nigel Newton the great British-American publisher who discovered J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter.

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Interesting mix of shyness and confidence is Ken Whyte. You’ll hear both assert themselves during this conversation. Together they explain his hugely successful career as an editor in Canada over the past 40 years, if you ask me.

Ken started editing at Alberta Report magazine during the eighties, then got the job, in 1994, as editor of Saturday Night magazine, one of the oldest and most venerated in the country. In 1998 he was appointed E

ditor in Chief of Conrad Black’s start-up newspaper The National Post and in 2005 took over as Editor and Publisher of Maclean’s, Canada’s all-time most interesting magazine. In 2017 he launched Sutherland House Books. In the Spring of 2025 it acquired Fitzhenry and Whiteside. And last month Ken made it onto The Biblio File.

We talk briefly about the acquisition, take a look at storytelling, descend into despair, talk our way back from the void, and then finally dig into the meat: tearing away at the differences between editing a magazine and editing a book.

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Ira Wells' new book, On Book Banning: Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy, was officially released in the U.S. today, June 3, 2025, by Biblioasis. It’s a succinct, well-written, beautifully aphoristic examination of a rising trend to censor books in North America.

Wells is a rising assistant professor of literature at the University of Toronto. On Book Banning is a reaction, specifically, to books being attacked not just by fundamentalists in Florida and but also by out-of-control woke activists in Ontario, and how both extremes are using the same weak excuse to get books out of school libraries: claiming that ‘our innocent children are being harmed!’ The book critiques what Wells identifies as a growing "censorship consensus" among conservatives and progressives, under which both sides conceive of literature as a battleground where ideological agendas are at war, rather than what it should be: a refuge for open inquiry and artistic expression. Wells traces the impulse to censor literature from ancient Rome, through Milton and Mill, to modern-day class-rooms where parents are currently fighting to suppress both LGBTQ+ and racially inclusive content, and material that’s deemed “obscene.”

Drawing on personal experience participating in an audit at his children’s school library, Wells reflects on how such practices thwart learning, and push ignorance over dialogue. He contends that the censorship trend is undermining democratic values such as free expression and intellectual growth.

We talk about all of this, and Clive James’s Cultural Amnesia to boot. (I left in a couple of minutes at the end where Ira flips the switch/holds the mic, and asks a few questions about what I’ve been up to).

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Roberto Banchik-Rothschild, to use his full, official Mexican name, is the CEO of Penguin Random House ( PRH) Grupo Editorial in Mexico. He also leads the company’s publishing activities in Central America, and is responsible for the Hispanic market in the U.S.

He is a charming man, a book-lover who believes that publishing has the power to change society, and people’s lives, for the better; in its noble capacities. He’s also a company man, who, here, ably parries the piñata-full of criticisms I crack open above PRH during the course of this conversation.

I interviewed Roberto in a sound-studio at his offices in Mexico City.

For some reason I had the high-profile 2022 anti-trust case involving Penguin Random House (PRH) and Simon & Schuster on my mind when I walked in. It might have had something to do with the fact that I’d just read these two damning articles, one by Elle Griffin, the other by Ken Whyte.

I voice some of the concerns they raise about today’s publishing climate, and the Big 5, during my conversation with Roberto, among them: lack of competition; collusion, greed, wokeness, greatness, private interest and public service, monopsony, diversity. We also talk about the b*s of good, alienated mid-range straight, white male authors; watered-down backlists; identity politics, sour grapes, meat-lovers, the freedom to publish, and the freedom to read.

As Roberto has it, Mexican publishing floats far above most of the mess painted by Griffin and Whyte.

Not surprisingly, I suppose, given how everything, not just publishing, seems to be going pear-shaped in the land of liberty these days.

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B. Traven's novels and stories have sold more than 30 million copies over the past century in more than 30 languages worldwide. He was Einstein's favourite novelist. Der Spiegel ranks his The Death Ship as the third greatest German novel ever written (okay in the past 100 years), after Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, and Kafka's The Castle; and yet, despite this, few today, in the English speaking world at least, have heard of him. It's only thanks to the movie, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, based on one of his stories, that he's known here at all. Why is this? Perhaps because no-one knows with absolute certainty who Traven was. No-one is 100% sure of his true identity. Timothy Heyman (CBE) is 99% sure. We talk here about his hypothesis, plus the tasks he's set himself to re-establish Traven's reputation and re-gain an audience for his works. Heyman, a considerable person in his own right, is co-manager (recently promoted to managing director) of the B. Traven Estate along with his wife (who is proprietor), Malú Montes de Oca de Heyman, Traven's stepdaughter. I met Tim up in the couple's beautiful apartment overlooking Mexico City to talk about what he's achieved to date with Traven's literary archive, and, again, who he thinks Traven really was. We were surrounded by a library of books written by the mystery man, accompanied by a glorious panoramic view of the city. After our conversation we went upstairs to a special room which holds the archive - the place where Tim occupies himself with the business of legacy building.

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Some years ago I interviewed David McKnight about a collection of Canadian “little magazines” he’d hunted down and later donated to the University of Alberta’s Bruce Peel Library. It was very easy to get caught up in David’s enthusiasm, and I was really impressed by the catalogue he’d produced. Shortly after our conversation I learned that he didn’t just collect Canadian poetry, he was also a serious Beatles collector.

We stayed in touch. I drove down to Philadelphia where David hosted me at his home for a weekend. We got a lot done. Took the train into New York for the opening of a film about a bookseller; went on a tour of the rare book and manuscript library at the University of Pennsylvania where David worked at the time as director; attended the Allentown Paper Fair where I picked up some old Fortune and New York Times magazines. It was great. A non-stop exchanging of excited thoughts about books, collecting, and cool periodicals.

I’ve been wanting to interview David about The Fab Four ever since I learned of his passion. He’s a real expert on the band. I was particularly keen to find out about his personal relationship to the music, and of course, about his experience collecting and documenting its impact on print culture, internationally, high and low. Finally, after years of talking about it, we got down to business. The albums, the books - from limited editions to paperbacks - the magazines, the fan zines, the ephemera, the scrap-books, the puzzles. Liverpool. It’s all here.

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Michael Erdman is Head of Middle East and Central Asian Collections at The British Library with overall responsibility for all manuscript holdings in Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Chagatai, Coptic, Hebrew, Kurdish, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Syriac.

I talked with him about my recent magazine hunting exploits in Istanbul, and how what we found fits into the overall history of magazine publishing in Turkey. Esoteric, I know, but hey, this is where passion takes you.

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I first came across Andrés Mario Zervigón’s (Cuban) name while researching a magazine that filled me with awe the first time I saw it.

AIZ, the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (Workers Illustrated Magazine) is an illustrated, mass circulation German periodical that was published in Berlin during the 1920s and 1930s (in Prague after 1933). It contains some of the most emotionally charged imagery I’ve ever seen. The best work was by John Heartfield.

Zervigón is professor of the history of photography at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He obtained his PhD from Harvard University in 2000 and concentrates his scholarship “on the interaction between photographs, film, and fine art." His first book, John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, and the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage (University of Chicago Press, 2012), proposes that “photography’s sudden ubiquity in illustrated magazines, postcards, and posters produced an unsettling transformation of visual culture that artists felt compelled to address.”

Zervigón’s work, says the Rutger’s website, “generally focuses upon moments in history when these media [film, photography, fine art] prove inadequate to their presumed task of representing the visual.”

We start our conversation by unpacking this passage, and then move on to a short history of illustrated, mass circulation magazines, (including VU magazine), then to the life of John Heartfield, and finally to AIZ.

Background here

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Tony Fekete is a book collector who for years specialized in collecting erotica. He's best known for the catalogue he produced for a Christie’s auction that took place in 2014 that featured highlights from his collection. More than 200 books, manuscripts, lithographs and erotic photographs went up for sale, including a first edition of My Secret Life (1888), an eleven-volume memoir that describes in detail the sex life of an anonymous Victorian "Gentleman," of which only twenty-five copies were printed. The auction netted Fekete more than a million pounds. Tony is a mobile bibliophile who travels frequently, primarily by train, in pursuit of books. Born in London in 1954 of Hungarian descent, he worked for Citibank in Eastern Europe during the mid-1980s where he cultivated both his love of books and an appreciation for the region. Today he shares these passions on Instagram and Facebook, posting photographs of his journeysthroughout Eastern Europe, that feature old bars and restaurants that he favours and, of course, highlights from his still significant (and stimulating) erotica collection. I spoke with him via Zoom.

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Siegfried Lokatis is a retired professor of book history, and former head of the University of Leipzig's Institute for Communication and Media Studies. He is the author of Book Covers of the GDR and is currently working on a history of the S....

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Siegfried Lokatis is a retired professor of book history, and former head of the University of Leipzig's Institute for Communication and Media Studies. He is the author of Book Covers of the GDR and is currently working on a history of the S. Fischer publishing house, due out in 2026. We met in Leipzig recently where Siegfried treated me to a tour of the Bibliotop's splendid Insel Bucherei book collection. Founded in 1912, the series now contains some 2,000 titles (and still counting according to Jonathan Landgrebe, head of Suhrkamp Verlag, the company that today produces the books). The series is iconic in Germany and in many ways its publishing history reflects the history of the country. The books are known for their beauty and the care with which they're produced. Qualities include: individual typographical design, exquisite illustration (notably from the thirties - stay tuned) and photography, and printing on wood-free, age-resistant paper, plus they're thread-stitched and bound in decorative cover paper. They served as the model for Allen Lane's King Penguin series. The Insel Bucherie series includes both well-known and little known texts from world literature as well as art history, non-fiction, poetry, and fairy tales, plus gift anthologies from Germany and around the globe. Subjects covered in my conversation with Siegfried include Rilke and copyright, the decision to publish established, versus contemporary works; Stephan Zweig and the Nazis, poisonous mushrooms, the rarest volume, the Allied bombing of Leipzig, censorship, the separation of East and West Germany, wartime profits, collecting, pornography and more.

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I first came across Andrés Mario Zervigón’s (Cuban) name while researching a

magazine that filled me with awe the first time I looked at it. AIZ, the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (Workers Illustrated Magazine) is an illustrated, mass circulation German periodical that was published in Berlin during the 1920s and 1930s (in Prague after 1933).

It contains some of the most emotionally charged imagery I’ve ever seen. The best images were created by John Heartfield.

Some 260 full-page photomontages of his appeared in AIZ during the 1930s. Their power, I think, attests to the artist’s ability to leverage not only a personal sense of outrage over injustices that were perpetrated against him in his youth (both his parents abandoned him when he was eight) but also a broader, more universally felt anger, into affecting visual commentary about the atrocities that were being committed in Germany by Hitler and his followers at the time. Many of Heartfield’s best photomontages unveil a timeless ‘truth’: that the rich don’t give a s**t about the poor and innocent. Rather, they systematically, savagely, heartlessly exploit and exterminate them for selfish reasons. It’s a Marxist message, told using a Marxist approach to history: retelling, or massaging, existing news coverage (‘evidence’) in order to tell the ‘real’ truth. Only, in Heartfield’s case, with images, instead of words.

Heartfield’s art electrifies. It shocks the viewer with a “bracing” jolt by boldly depicting and unmasking putatively respectable politicians, for example, as the thugs, crooks and murderers they really are. Heartfield’s truth-telling photomontages activate a sort of moral consciousness it seems; they aggravate the conscience. They’re a blatant accusation of crime. A kind of scream for justice. Looking at them triggers a deep muscle memory filled with generations of pent up anger. There’s great emotional power in them. They’re designed to produce a strong reaction, and to jar the viewer into an awareness of the impact that photography is having on them. It’s hard to explain exactly why Heartfield’s work retains its power, partly due no doubt to how brilliantly it exposes hypocrisy and interprets the cultural/political zeitgeist. For sure it's partly due to technique, juxtaposition and stark imagery, but also to how smart Heartfield and his brother Wieland Herzfelde were. They worked together on many projects, including a run of brilliant dust jackets for the successful book publishing company they built together called Malik Verlag. These, along with the AIZ photomontages, are among the first and best works of persuasive ‘pictorial’ art ever designed, intentionally focusing, as they do, on telling emotional stories. As such, they’ve had a huge impact on 20th century visual culture, and on the look of magazines specifically, which is why we’re talking about them.

Andrés Mario Zervigón is professor of the history of photography at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He obtained his PhD from Harvard University in 2000 and concentrates his scholarship “on the interaction between photographs, film, and fine art. His first book, John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, and the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage (University of Chicago Press, 2012), proposes that “photography’s sudden ubiquity in illustrated magazines, postcards, and posters produced an unsettling transformation of visual culture that artists felt compelled to address.”

Stay tuned for the Backstory, and lots of photos of items from my Heartfield/AIZ collection.

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Richard Charkin has held senior posts at many major, and some minor, publishing houses in the U.K. over the past 50 years, including: Harrap, OUP, Pergamon Press, Reed Elsevier, Macmillan, Bloomsbury, and Mensch Publishing. He is former President of The Book Society, the International Publishers Association and the UK Publishers Association.

His book My Back Pages, An Undeniably Personal History of Publishing 1972-2022 came out in 2023. The book has sold more than 3,000 copies, and is being translated into four languages. It took me a year to figure out what questions to ask him.

Just so you know, Richard has been very good to The Biblio File podcast over the years. Thanks to him I've landed all sorts of great publishing guests. And John Banville! I’m grateful to him for this, and for his being so generous with his time and knowledge, sharing them as he has with me on multiple occasions during episodes that have dealt with, among other things, great publishers, the challenges facing the book business, and how to set up a small publishing house.

I wrote this about him a while back:

Richard does what all great publishers do. He pays attention to what's going on both in the world, and in the world of books. He pays attention to what people are doing and reaches out to them to learn more. He takes an interest. It’s pretty simple. And pretty important. He also lets people know what he's up to. I got to know him through his blog. It gave me a wonderful glimpse into the daily life of a high-powered publisher - the workings of business, but also the workings of his mind, and occasionally his emotions…

His writing invited and welcomed a human response.

I'm happy to have been able to re-connect with Richard again recently, this time via Zoom, to talk about the changes he’s seen, and lessons he's learned, over more than 50 years in the book publishing business, something, more than incidentally, that he's been rewarded for recently in the form of an OBE.

It’s good to see that his exemplary work in, and on behalf of, the publishing business - his “service to literature,” has been recognized.

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The last time I ran into renowned book scholar Jonathan Rose () he mentioned that he was doing some work on Playboy magazine. ‘Way more women readers than you’d expect!’ he told me. Rose is an accomplished author. His...

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Karen Etingin is the proprietor of L'Affichiste, a vintage poster shop in Montreal. Here's the scoop: "Working with private, corporate and institutional clients, L'Affichiste deals in vintage posters on a global level. The gallery provides evaluations of private, corporate and museum collections of posters, and is a member of the internationally recognized International Vintage Poster Dealer Association." Karen is the author of Beyond Poster Art in Vienna: The Life and Art of Julius Klinger We met recently via Zoom to talk about her love and passion for posters, and her experience collecting and selling them.

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Siegfried Lokatis is a retired professor of book history and former head of the University of Leipzig's Institute for Communication and Media Studies. Books he has authored include The Ashkenazi Book. Printed Hebraica 1512-1955 and Book Covers of the GDR. He is currently working on a history of the S. Fischer publishing house, due out in 2026.

We met in Leipzig recently where Siegfried treated me to a tour of the Bibliotop's splendid Insel Bucherei book collection.

Founded in 1912, the series now contains some 2,000 titles ( and still counting according to Jonathan Landgrebe, head of Suhrkamp Verlag, the company that today produces the books). The series is iconic in Germany and in many ways its publishing history reflects the history of the country. The books are known for their beauty and the care with which they're produced: qualities include individual typographical design, exquisite illustration (notably

from the thirties - stay tuned) and photography, and printing on wood-free, age-resistant paper, plus they're thread-stitched and bound in decorative cover paper. They served as the model for Allen Lane's King Penguins.

The series includes both well-known and little known texts from world literature as well as art history, non-fiction, poetry, fairy tales, and gift anthologies from Germany and around the globe.

Subjects covered in my conversation with Siegfried include Rilke and copyright, the decision to publish established versus contemporary works, Stephan Zweig and the Nazis, poisonous mushrooms, the rarest number, the Allied bombing of Leipzig, censorship, the separation of East and West Germany, wartime profits, collecting, pornography and more.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

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Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, essayist and poet who lives in Toronto. I’ve followed his career now for some fifteen years. He’s written true crime for the better part of a decade. His story “The Sting” is being adapted by Adam Perlman, Robert Downey Jr., and Team Downey, into a television series for Apple TV+.

We talk here about Michael’s recent book of true crime stories, The Human Scale; about Truman Capote and the non-fiction novel; about listening and details; being honest when talking with people who’ve experienced crises, and how tawdry it is to ask for exclusivity; about examining systems, and how tardy the delivery of justice can sometimes be; about how the story resides in the telling, and how Shakespeare stuck his landings; about in extremis and understanding who we really are; fact-checked fairy tales; competing against YouTube and Netflix; and much more.

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Richard Charkin has held senior posts at many major, and some minor, publishing houses in the U.K. over the past 50 years, including: Harrap, OUP, Pergamon Press, Reed Elsevier, Macmillan, Bloomsbury, and his very own Mensch Publishing. He is former President of The Book Society, the International Publishers Association and the UK Publishers Association.

His book My Back Pages, An Undeniably Personal History of Publishing 1972-2022came out in 2023. The book has sold more than 3,000 copies, and is being translated into four languages. It took me a year to figure out what questions to ask him.

I wrote this about him a while back:

His writing invited and welcomed a human response.

It’s good to see that his exemplary work in, and on behalf of, the publishing business - his “service to literature,” has been recognized.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe

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A few years ago I interviewed Larry Grobel about his interviewing technique and some of the great interviews he’s conducted over the years, including the one he did for Playboy magazine with Marlon Brando.

Ever since our conversation I’ve casually kept an eye out for issues that contain his interviews.

In line with the colossal amount of real estate magazines have recently colonized in my brain, I’ve been looking extra hard for opportunities to buy cool, smart, beautifully designed, interesting examples of same. Playboy fits the bill. Many have unfairly slagged it as merely a degenerate girlie magazine. It’s not. Content and container are tops. For example, a lot of the interviews are deep, revealing and informative, plus there’s loads of quality writing to read, from the likes of Ian Fleming, Vladimir Nabokov, Joyce Carol Oates, Germaine Greer, Norman Mailer, Ray Bradbury…many of the cartoons are actually funny, and most importantly, the design, thanks to art director Art Paul (he was there from the start, left in 1982) is groundbreaking and terrific.

A couple of months ago I scored a big whack of Playboys in lazy little Belleville Ontario, Canada.

Close to 400 I’m guessing. None from the fifties unfortunately, but plenty from the sixties through the naughties. Incidentally, I shouldn’t go around belittling Belleville. In addition to the Playboys, I also found, in Belleville, a nice collection of Fred Woodward-art directed 1990s Rolling Stone magazines, plus I attended a great performance of a very funny play called Hilda’s Yard at the local theatre.

The same troupe is just off a completely sold-out run of The Sound of Music (my friend Dave Henderson played Captain Von Trapp.

We left town before the curtain went up, but caught a dress rehearsal. It was wonderful. Some beautiful voices, some moving performances [notably from Kiersten Hanly as Maria and Willow Foley as Liesl Von Trapp], contagious enthusiasm from the entire staff, and an admirable performance from Dave!

Lots going on beneath the surface in Belleville. And, Avril Lavigne was born there.

Obviously I was interested in knowing more about the Playboys I’d acquired, which reminded me, the last time I ran into renowned book scholar Jonathan Rose ( at a SHARP conference) he’d mentioned that he was

doing some work on the magazine. ‘Way more women readers than you’d expect!’ he’d told me.

I emailed him. He directed me to a paper he’d delivered last year at SHARP entitled Readers, Magazines, Playboy, Market Research: The Daniel Starch Reports as Tools for Reading Research, I read it and teed up this conversation on Zoom. Subjects covered include Daniel Starch and his Starch Reports, Soviet readership reports, Stephen Hawking, Woody Allen, free speech, Skyhorse Publishing, gay rights, Hugh Hefner, art director Art Paul, missionaries, free enterprise, Cosmopolitan Magazine, airbrushing, pornography, conventional wisdom, myths, George Orwell and populism

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A year and a half ago or so I spent the weekend in Old Montreal with my friend Tony Martins. Here’s the view from our hotel window

(that development up at the top is called Habitat. It was designed by Moshe Safdie for Expo 67. My friends the poet Eric Ormsby and his wife librarian Irena Murray, used to own a unit in the place).

One evening Tony and I went to dinner at this Polish restaurant.

On the walk back to the hotel we passed this shop

L’Affichiste before stopping in at this bar

What a wonderful idea (the shop) I thought. How often does a guy see vintage posters on the street!? Intrigued, I decided to return the next day. The owner, Karen Etingin

happened to be in and we had a good chat about, among other things, Steven Heller, New York, Cassandre, and the business of selling posters. Turns out Karen is the author of a book on this great Austrian poster designer:

(in fact, Julius Klinger is recognized as one of the leading graphic designers of his age).

Fast forward a year, and I was back in the store again, this time for what amounted to a personal tour through 20th century posters,

thanks to Lea. It was great! Apparently, however, I'm not special. Anyone can get the same treatment if they visit the shop. Anyhow, Lea’s tour sealed it. I had to interview Karen. Several weeks ago we taped a show.

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Boris Wertz joined AbeBooks.com "the world’s largest Internet marketplace for books" in July 2002 after JustBooks, a similar company he'd co-founded in Germany, was acquired by the ABE. This interview took place in 2006.

After five years as COO of AbeBooks.com Wertz transitioned out of his day-to-day operational role, in 2007, to start a Vancouver-based venture capital business with Burda Digital Ventures. ABE was bought by Amazon in December, 2008.

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Ian Birch is "former editorial director of Hearst UK and Emap. He began his magazine career in the late 1970s as a reporter for Melody Maker before moving to Smash Hits where he was assistant editor for three years. His first launch and editorship came in the late 1980s with Sky Magazine. At Hearst UK he was publisher of Company, Esquire and Harper's Bazaar. Prior to working at Hearst, Birch was chief content officer at TV Guide in New York for four years; and before this he was editorial director at Emap for more than 10 years, where he helped to launch Red, Closer, [and] Grazia."

His book Uncovered: Revolutionary Magazine Covers: The inside stories told by the people who made them kicks off with covers from the late 1950s, about as far back as you can go [ if you want to interview the people who both created the covers and are still alive to talk about it], and brings us up to 2017; you know, when big-run print magazines died.

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When you think of it, content aside, there’s actually quite a bit more to love in a magazine than there is in a book. Take photographs. The January 7, 1966 issue of Life magazine that I recently picked up, features a story on Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. It’s plastered

with a slew of great shots

by Richard Avedon.

Then there’s the stuff that illustrates the articles, in this case, an image of the news story that Capote happened upon, detailing the murder of H.W. Clutter, and his wife and two sons; their “savage, inexplicable slaying in Holcomb, Kansas. As the article puts it, Capote sped West on a hunch that the murders, if examined in enough detail, might lead to a special kind of book, what he called, a “non-fiction novel.” Kansas and Capote took to each other, with surprising “quickness and warmth,” says the article.

Friend and confidant of both killers and police, Capote, the article continues, amassed an “encyclopedic knowledge” of almost everyone touched by the crime. His mission was to “dig to the roots” of every aspect of the crime in order to truly comprehend the viewpoints of the victims, criminals and mourners. To do this he had to apply the craft of listening, something at which he was a master. What interests me, he’s quoted as saying, are not the little nuances of my own life, but of the lives of people around me. Too many writers, he says, are mesmerized by their own navels.

What mattered to him was to get to know the people he interviewed as well as he knew himself. In short, become their friends. Both of the murderers, for example, ended up asking him to be a witness. Perry wrote him a hundred page farewell letter. Both their graves were marked with gravestones paid for by Capote.

Interestingly, he never took notes when he interviewed people - felt it made them feel self-conscious and inhibited. “It makes them say what they think you expect them to say,” he said. So he taught himself to be his own tape recorder, typically going to motels shortly after his conversations to type out what was in his head.

I’ve covered crime fiction on The Biblio File over the years, interviewing the likes of Denise Mina, Bill Deverell, and others. Now it’s time for true crime.

Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, essayist and poet who lives in Toronto. I’ve followed his career for some fifteen years now. He’s written true crime for the better part of a decade. His story “The Sting” is being adapted by Adam Perlman, Robert Downey Jr., and Team Downey into a television series for Apple TV+.

We talk here about Capote and listening and details, about being honest when talking with people who’ve experienced crises, and how tawdry it is to ask for exclusivity; about examining systems, and how tardy justice can sometimes be; about how the story resides in the telling, and how Shakespeare stuck his landings; about understanding who we really are; fact-checked fairy tales; competing against YouTube and Netflix; and much more.

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Paul Wells is a leading Canadian political journalist and author. We met at his offices in Ottawa to talk about his impressive career, and his craft writing about politics for newspapers, magazines, books, and now Substack. Topics covered include: observing and interviewing politicians; reading and remembering history; putting events into context; pre-revolutionary Paris; pedagogical magazine writing; helping people; recited formulas, thrown slogans, and knowing you’re being lied to; the difficulty politicians experience making a difference; discussing issues in their full complexities; “the wall of words,” “the significant trifle,” including yourself and analysis in your narratives; paying for Substack subscriptions because you want to comment; filling the ‘weekend supplement’ niche; understanding each other as neighbours; and the secret to a successful marriage.

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I'm happy to report that my out-of-control recent

/older

/"vintage"

magazine acquisition campaign continues to rage unabated. Facebook Marketplace, ebay, Maxx Sold, library bookstores, book warehouses, thrift stores, yard sales...I'm easy. Really not picky about which pub I drink at.

What I hoist is based mostly on gut reaction to arresting

cover

and spread

designs, re-sell potential (namely, is there a sexy celebrity kisser

on the cover); and intelligence about "great" art directors gathered from a few beautiful books

picked up over the past year or so, among them: Magazine Design by Owens, Surprise Me ( riffing/ripping off famed art director Alexey Brodovitch's exhortation to "Astonish me!") by Horst Moser, and Uncovered: Revolutionary Magazine Covers: The inside stories told by the people who made them, by Ian Birch.

I found Ian's book at Budget Books, an English-language bookshop in Prague, and loved it immediately; full of exactly the kind of informative detail about ground-breaking art directors that I’m after. Flipping around the credits I noticed that Hannah Knowles

was one of its editors. I'd interviewed her back when she was senior commissioning editor at Canongate (she's now in charge of editorial at Faber), listen here. So I sent her an email asking for Ian's contact details and away we went. I had him on the show.

Ian is "former editorial director of Hearst UK and Emap. He began his magazine career in the late 1970s as a reporter for Melody Maker before moving to Smash Hits where he was assistant editor for three years. His first launch and editorship came in the late 1980s with Sky magazine. At Hearst UK he was publisher of Company, Esquire and Harper's Bazaar. Prior to working at Hearst, Birch was chief content officer at TV Guide in New York for four years; and before this he was editorial director at Emap for more than 10 years, where he helped to launch Red, Closer, Grazia."

Uncovered kicks off with covers from the late 1950s, about as far back as you can go if you want to interview the people who both created them and are still alive, and brings us up to 2017; you know, when big-run print magazines died.

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I originally planned to elucidate the history of pamphleteering for you here and explain, with the help of Paul Wells, how I think it resembles Substacking. The fact, for example, that pamphlets were among the first things that came off the printing press in the 1450s; that Martin Luther was an early, big-time pamphleteer; that flippant, lively pamphlet writing effectively satirized the flagrantly decadent moral behavior practiced at the French Court during the 18th century, and that Blaise Pascal raised the art of the pamphlet to the level of literature; that pamphlets were wielded as lethal weapons in17th Century England, and that political parties employed the likes of Addison, Steele and Swift to thrust their messages out; that Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense caused the American “Revvie;” and that the Federalist Papers were cribbed from pamphlets written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, these Federalist Papers in fact mark the end of the era of the political pamphlet. From there on in, ‘political dialogue was largely carried on in newspapers, periodicals and books.’ And this, not unfortunately at the start of the pamphleteering craze, is where Paul Wells takes over.

Paul is a political journalist and author. We met at his offices in Ottawa, Canada to talk about his impressive career writing about politics for newspapers, magazines, books, and now Substack.

The pamphleteering paraphernalia will just have to wait. Perhaps it’ll come up during a conversation with Margaret Atwood, scheduled for later this Fall, when we’ll talk about her new book Paper Boat; she is, after all, really good on history, and other ancient material.

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“Lucian Bernhard (1883-1972) was one of the great founders of modern graphic design. In a career spanning nearly five decades in Berlin and New York, Bernhard laid the foundation for a new language of form and communication. His brilliant posters, advertisements, book designs and typefaces created the very look of the twentieth century and beyond. In this lavishly illustrated book, noted design historian Christopher Long traces Bernhard's life and career, uncovering new truths and demolishing old myths.”

Long studied at the universities of Graz, Munich and Vienna, and received his doctoral degree at the University of Texas at Austin in 1993. Trained as a cultural historian, his dissertation was a study of the Viennese architect and designer Joseph Frank. He has since written extensively on various aspects of Central European Modernism and has published monographs on a number of notable central European emigre architects and designers in the United States.

We talk about his latest, Lucian Bernhard. I learned about it from Steven Heller’s essential Daily Heller, and was thrilled to see that it was published by Kant Books, based in Prague. All I had to do was to walk about ten minutes from my apartment doorstep to my favourite bookstore, Kavka Books, to pick up a copy.

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I interviewed Nick Anthony a year or so ago about his experience writing a first novel and getting parts of it work-shopped. Today I catch up with him to find out what he’s been doing and where he’s at now on the road to getting his first book published.

We talk about, among other things, how AI has helped him in the writing process; subjective and objective readers; the difference between screen writing and novel writing; Noam Chomsky on plagiarism; Elon Musk on Harry Potter; chess; photography; Joyce’s Ulysses; Marcel Proust writing about me going to the corner store to buy a bag of milk; and more.

The “Josh” I reference towards the end of the conversation is Josh Dolezal, who was a recent guest on The Biblio File podcast. He talked about, among other things, the experience of trying to find a literary agent.

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John Sargent was too young to fight in WW ll but he spent years battling Amazon and Google in the trenches on behalf of publishers and authors, protecting copyright and defending book prices.

John grew up on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. Over forty years he worked at six publishing companies, including Simon & Schuster where he was the publisher of the Children’s Division, and Dorling Kindersley where he was CEO. For the last half of his career he was the CEO of Macmillan. He’s the author of three children’s books and is currently chairman of The Ocean Conservancy.

We met via Zoom to talk about some of the fights he’s had over the years and other stories presented in his new memoir entitled Turning Pages, The Adventures and Misadventures of a Publisher. We also talk about crying and bravery, McDonald’s, Monika Lewinsky, George Bush Sr., suicide, Donald Trump, fucking sea urchins, and more.

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Joshua Doležal is a writer and award-winning teacher with 20 years of experience in publishing and editing. His mentor was Ted Kooser, former Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize winner.

Josh's work has appeared in more than 30 magazines including The Kenyon Review and The Chronicle of Higher Education. His memoir Down from the Mountain Top: From Belief to Belonging was short-listed for the 2016 William Saroyan International Prize. He writes atThe Recovering Academic on Substack, AND...he's a “book coach”.

What’s a book coach? We met via Zoom to answer this question. Topics discussed include: the roles of a book coach and the qualifications you need to be one; writing tools that Josh recommends his clients use; the concept of defamiliarization; horror films and the element of surprise; three-step strategies for drafting manuscripts; Lisa Cron; James Paterson; turning points, resolutions and reckonings; tent poles and cairns; the importance of discovering things while you write; literary agents; advice for me on my podcast catalogue “book” project; Sting's backlist; pertinent questions to ask yourself if you want to write a book, such as: ‘why are you writing this book?’ and ‘why should readers care?’; plus, much more.

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James Daunt calls him "the best of the best in U.K. publishing, constantly challenging the industry to move on when it drags its feet." Listen to my conversation with Andrew Franklin to learn why.

Andrew is founder and, until recently, publisher of Profile Books, an award-winning British independent publishing house which launched in 1996. Best-selling authors on its list include Mary Beard, Margaret Macmillan, Simon Garfield (Just my Type), and Lynne Truss, whose Eats, Shoots, Leaves (2003) sold more than three million copies worldwide and won Book of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2004. Serpent’s Tail, founded by Pete Ayrton in 1986, became an imprint of Profile in 2007. It publishes distinctive, award-winning international fiction. Viper Books, a crime imprint, was added in 2019. I met with Andrew at Profile's offices in London. We talk about, among other things, how much he made off Eats, Shoots, Leaves; selling paperbacks at Hatchards; Tim Waterstone; my tee-shirt; admiration as a key component of successful publishing; conviction and effort, judgement and horse-racing; taste and fashion; tee-shirt designer briefs; "content before commerce;" risk; rom-com; Hilary Mantel; the importance of style versus substance; Goethe; marketing, distribution and sales; taking books seriously; getting the right books into the right hands; freedom of the press; Butler to the World; non-conformism; and Mary Beard's Emperor of Rome. You might want to pay special attention to how Andrew speaks about Mary Beard and her book. And Margaret Macmillan for that matter. The enthusiasm, vigour, conviction. Belief.

They're trademarks of all great publishers.

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Here’s how the Carcanet Press website describes him: Michael Schmidt FRSL, poet, scholar, critic and translator, was born in Mexico in 1947; he studied at Harvard and at Wadham College, Oxford, before settling in England. Among his many publications are several collections of poems and a novel, The Colonist (1981), about a boy’s childhood in Mexico. He is general editor of PN Review and founder as well as managing director of Carcanet Press."

Michael has been applying his judgement publishing poetry and fiction for more than fifty years “discovering” and rediscovering, along the way, many of the greatest writers of our age.

We met at the Carcanet offices in Manchester to talk about, among others things, what he does; Germans in Mexico; the love of poetry; The Harvard Advocate; magazines as good tools for book editors; the importance of the past; the difference between editing books and magazines; poets John Ashbery and Edgell Rickword; writers starting on the left; generous patrons: Baron Robert Gavron; prosody; syllabics; leaving room for the reader; overproduction being a straight path to bankruptcy; an education at Oxford; Milton; the Understanding Poetry anthology; writing letters; the centrality of politics; notions of balance and continuity; principles of permanence and change; the difference between taste and judgement; catalysts; the Yiddish saying: “One word is not enough, two is too many.” Changing literary culture; Wallace Stevens; enhancing, extending and revitalizing the language…all this in tandem with a chorus of Manchester trams piping in, in the background, throughout the conversation.

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Andrew Nash is Reader in Book History at the Institute of English Studies, University of London (a leading book history scholar in other words) and Director of the London Rare Books School.

We sat down in the stacks at the Mark Longman "Books about Books" Library at the University of Reading (well, actually the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading which is somehow connected to the University and its publishers' archives collections) to talk about a course Andrew teaches at the London Rare Book School on how to use/work with publishers' archives.

Though this topic may sound a tad niche, even for this podcast, it's not. Andrew makes the convincing case that publishers' archives are in fact of interest to many scholars, and have value precisely because they can be studied from many different economic, social, and cultural perspectives. Publishers' archives yield, among other things, fascinating, detailed information about how knowledge and "culture" is “made public” in society. They’re not just about author-publisher correspondences, though these in themselves are justly recognized and valued as essential documents of cultural heritage, no, they’re about providing scholars, and the world at large, with rich source documentation, from which all of us can better understand...yes, everything!

Archives referenced during our conversation include those of Allen & Unwin, Chatto and Windus, Longmans, John Murray, George Routledge, and The Hogarth Press.

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Sir Tim Waterstone revolutionized bookselling in Britain and changed the country's cultural landscape. He also wrote a memoir, called The Face Pressed Against a Window (Atlantic, 2019). We met at The Garrick Club in London to talk about the book, and about how he accomplished what he accomplished. Topics covered in our conversation include Tim's troubled relationship with his father, his eight children, the creative strategy behind growing the Waterstones empire (starting in 1982); an epiphany in Cambridge’s Heffers Bookshop; Waterstones' "happy" family; W.H. Smith, James Daunt, author support, a combative attitude; offering a huge range of titles for sale and staying open longer hours; Miss Santoro's bookshop in Crowborough; seeing a market and making accessible an unprecedented selection of literature; the brilliance of the John Sandoe Bookshop in Chelsea; the "perfect stock, perfect staff, perfect control" mantra, bookstores as literary festivals, and the importance of book sales per square foot.

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Sir Tim Waterstone revolutionized bookselling in Britain and changed the country's cultural landscape. He also wrote a memoir, called The Face Pressed Against a Window (Atlantic, 2019). We met at The Garrick Club in London to talk about the book, and about how he accomplished what he accomplished. Topics covered in our conversation include Tim's troubled relationship with his father, his eight children, the creative strategy behind growing the Waterstones empire (starting in 1982); an epiphany in Cambridge’s Heffers Bookshop; Waterstones' "happy" family; W.H. Smith, James Daunt, author support, a combative attitude; offering a huge range of titles for sale and staying open longer hours; Miss Santoro's bookshop in Crowborough; seeing a market and making accessible an unprecedented selection of literature; the brilliance of the John Sandoe Bookshop in Chelsea; the "perfect stock, perfect staff, perfect control" mantra, and the importance of book sales per square foot.

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When deciding who to interview for The Biblio File podcast I largely go with “best practitioners” who I admire. Steven Temple (1947-2023) was one of the antiquarian book dealers I admired the most. His appreciation and knowledge of the books that constitute Canadian literature and his dedication to documenting their unique characteristics was unparalleled.

He was one of the very first used/antiquarian booksellers I interviewed for podcast. This creaky old conversation deals specifically with what Steven did in his day-to-day work. We cover a range of activities, including identifying issue points, and how he went about discovering his “little secrets;” competition, and how he tended, quite reasonably, to withhold little-known details when listing books online; about the red and blue cloth boards on early editions of Who Has Seen the Wind, about Morley Callaghan, and Ernest Hemingway; fox-hunting books and the buying opportunity they present; William Morris; collecting with the heart; the joy of investigating the books you own...

Fast forward about ten years and I’m with Steven again this time at his home in Welland, Ontario. He’d moved his business down to the “rust belt” from his former haunt at the corner of Queen and Spadina in Toronto. Got a nice shot of him on his porch (above). Here we examine more closely his penchant for finding lost Canadian literature (mostly online by this time); the pleasure he took in researching, identifying and tracking down obscure Canadian literary titles; his enthusiasm for exploring new, different collecting paths; and the joy he experienced discovering, locating and making hitherto unknown Canadian books available to those smart enough to recognize their value.

We finish off by “un-leaning” a cocked book and bantering a bit about some of the titles I’d brought in for Steve to have a look at.

R.I.P..

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Chris Gribble moved to Norwich from Manchester (where, among other things, he’d worked with Michael Schmidt at Carcanet Press) in 2006 to join a regional literary arts organization. Here he had a vision and, after a time, helped turn the place into the UK's National Centre for Writing. Then he spearheaded a successful effort to get Norwich designated as England’s first UNESCO City of Literature.

These impressive book-related accomplishments were achieved largely through the discovery and telling of stories Chris told me. Over the years he excavated loads of little local literary stories and crafted them into one strong, persuasive narrative arc that features place, yes, but also, more broadly, the many social, economic and personal benefits that derive from the practice of writing.

We met in the soon to be 600-year old Dragon Hall, a space in Norwich that the NCW calls home, to talk about the power of story-telling - stories as machines that change the world; ways of building literary organizations through coalitions; Norwich's rich history of immigration and dissent and its impressive list of literary firsts, including its connection to the novel Black Beauty, one of the first-ever works of animal advocacy, a surprising example of potent, successful behavioral change-making propaganda at work; about writing and mental well-being, and about the broad positive impact that books and writing have on place and society.

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I was in Ireland recently to interview two of the best novelists on the face of the planet. John Banville, in Dublin, and David Mitchell, in Cork. As a cost-cutting measure I decided to ask them both the same questions:

What do you do?
How do you do it?
Why do you do it? And:
Why does it matter?

I got diametrically opposed answers.

So much for my cherished ambition of capturing definitive, unified explanations of what the best novelists (in this case) do, and how they do it at the dawn of the 21st century.

David Mitchell is compelled to make narrative. Better and better narrative. He are his novels, in order:

Ghostwritten (1999)
Number9Dream (2001)
Cloud Atlas (2004)
Black Swan Green (2006)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010)
The Bone Clocks (2014)
Slade House (2015)
Utopia Avenue (2020)

Ghostwritten takes place all over the world - ‘from Okinawa to Mongolia to New York City’ and is told in interconnecting stories by nine different narrators. It won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (best work of British literature written by an author under 35) and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. number9dream and Cloud Atlas were both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2003 David was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.’ In 2007 Time magazine included him among their 100 Most Influential People in The World. In 2018 he won the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, given in recognition of a writer's entire body of work.

In other words, David is a best practitioner.

He lives about an hour's drive from Cork. We met downtown for a taste of the city and a bite to eat. The better part of our afternoon was spent chatting about love and literature, and searching for a quiet place where we could clock our Biblio File best-practitioner conversation. Lovely, colourful city Cork. Tad noisy. We don’t talk much about specific books but we do attempt an "understanding" of the novel writing process in light of how David has gone about creating his wonderful Balzacian oeuvre.

Stay tuned for the Biblio File Back-story.

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What do you do?

How do you do it?

Why do you do it? And:

Why does it matter?

I got diametrically opposed answers. So much for my cherished ambition of capturing definitive explanations of what novelists (in this case), do and how they do it at the turn of the 21st century.

David M. is an award-winning, bestselling writer whose novels include Slade House, The Bone Clocks, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Black Swan Green, Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream, Ghostwritten and Utopia Avenue. He and his wife, Keiko Yoshida, also translated what ended up being called The Reason I Jump, One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism from the Japanese. It's a sort of memoir told through a series of questions that people with autism typically have to answer. In 2018, he won the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, given in recognition of a writer's entire body of work.

He lives about an hour's drive outside of Cork, where we met for lunch, followed on by an afternoon's searching for the least noisy place we could find to conduct a conversation that addressed my four profound questions.

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  *Early on in this conversation there's a dead patch. The mic didn't pick up the glorious seagull call that comes reverberating down the chimney into the room John Banville and I were sitting in.*

John Banville is an Irish novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter who hates his own work. He's won a ton of prizes ("hundreds") including the Booker in 2005 for The Sea. He's currently waiting on the Nobel. John published his first novel, Nightspawn, in 1971, and his first book, a collection of short-stories called Long Lankin, in 1970. In addition to the "literary" work he's also written a string of popular crime novels.

We met at his home in Howth; Howth, as you’ll know, is located near that meadow in Ulysses where James Joyce has Molly Bloom saying:

*"…the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountains yes so we are flowers all a woman’s body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes…"

"…I was a Flower of the mountains yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him and yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes."*

John mentions what a curse it is to have Joyce, and Yeats (who, as you’ll also know, wooed Maude Gonne on Howth Head), et al, writing like this, constantly looming in the rearview mirror; I follow on with the regular drill, asking John: what he does, how he does it, why he does it, and why it matters.

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Early on in this conversation there's a dead patch. The mic didn't pick up the glorious call of this gull that comes reverberating down the chimney right into the room John Banville and I are sitting in. That's all the added context you need in order to enjoy this discussion, although, should you not favour references to erections you might want to turn your listening device off five minutes or so before the end. John Banville is, among other things, an Irish novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter, who hates his own work. He's won a ton of prizes ( "hundreds") including the Booker in 2005 for The Sea. He's currently waiting on the Nobel. John published his first novel, Nightspawn, in 1971, and his first book, a collection of short-stories called Long Lankin, in 1970. He's also written a string of crime novels. We met at his home in Howth; you know, near the place where Molly Bloom says:"…the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountains yes so we are flowers all a woman’s body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes…""…I was a Flower of the mountains yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him and yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes."John mentions what a curse it is to have Joyce, and Yeats (who wooed Maude Gonne on Howth Head), et al, as countrymen grinning at you in the rearview mirror; plus I come through with the regular: what do you do, how do you do it, why do you do it, and why does it matter?

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Last year I interviewed Margaret Atwood about "the role" of the writer. No such thing she informed me. So we talked about the "non-role." Combatative she is. Just like Tim Parks. He talks with me here about the other end of the spectrum, the reader. How to be a better one. I want him to be prescriptive, he won’t be. But he does provide a lot of excellent insights, despite the resistence.

Tim is an author, essayist, and translator. He was born in Manchester in 1954, grew up in London, and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. Not sure where or if he graduated from anywhere, but no matter. He's written 19 novels including Europa, Destiny, and most recently Hotel Milano, plus numerous works of non-fiction, including Where I'm Reading From, which we reference during our conversation. He's a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books. Aside from his own writing he has translated works by Moravia, Pavese, Calvino, Machiavelli and Leopardi from Italian into English.

He's a very astute reader. A best practitioner I'd say, which makes him eligible to be a Biblio File podcast guest - given that our mission is to interview the best in the world of books. I invited him to talk about how "best" to go about reading a book. We talk about Borges's essays - notably one on James Joyce's perfect reader; an author's manner of addressing the reader, what the reader brings to the text, having an open attitude about what you read; Thomas Hardy; D.H. Lawrence as one of Hardy's best readers; Mortimer Adler; being argumentative, and more.

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Marta Sylvestrova is a curator and art critic, and has headed the graphic design department at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic, since 1986. She is a graduate of Masaryk University where she studied art history, and has, over the years, been involved in the organizing of many Brno Biennieles. They feature and evaluate graphic designs from around the world every two years, alternating for many years, between celebration of book jacket design and poster design. It closed, somewhat controversially, in 2018,

I went to Brno to talk to Marta about this controversy, but also, primarily, to talk about a big, beautiful four kilogram exhibition catalogue she edited 20 years ago entitled Czech Film Posters of the 20th Century, published in 2004 by the Moravian Gallery.

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Nic Bottomley is a bookseller, and co-owner with his wife Juliette of Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights, an independent bookshop based in Bath that has twice been named UK Independent Bookshop of the Year. Prior to setting up shop Nic was a capital markets lawyer. He currently serves as Executive Chair of the Booksellers Association of UK and Ireland. We spoke via Zoom about his innovative "Reading Spas," about approaching customers, and reading related to passions and careers; other topics discussed include: themed displays, arrogant book selection, whether or not the bookselling model is broken, the Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle, honeymoons, butchery novels, work-related reading lists, paying attention to detail, biblio-therapy, work ethics, a bookshop's personality, “the browse,” and way more.

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Nic Bottomley is a bookseller, and co-owner with his wife Juliette of Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights, an independent bookshop based in Bath that has twice been named UK Independent Bookshop of the Year. Prior to setting up shop Nic was a capital markets lawyer. He currently serves as Executive Chair of the Booksellers Association of UK and Ireland. We spoke via Zoom about his innovative "Reading Spas," about approaching customers, and reading related to passions and careers; other topics discussed include: themed displays, arrogant book selection, whether or not the bookselling model is broken, the Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle, honeymoons, butchery novels, work-related reading lists, paying attention to detail, biblio-therapy, work ethics, a bookshop's personality, “the browse,” and way more.

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The Umberto and Elisabetta Mauri Booksellers School was founded in 1983 by Luciano Mauri in memory of his father and his daughter, who died prematurely. "In the course of almost thirty years of teaching activity it has trained new generations of booksellers and has become a laboratory for experimentation and discussion on the possibilities of the book. The first example in Italy, second in Europe, after Frankfurt, the School promotes a discussion that does not remain limited to the organization and management of the point of sale, but which extends to all aspects involving the activity of the bookshop: distribution, marketing and promotion." I met with the head of the School, Nana Lohrengel, at her offices in Milan. We talk, among other things, about what's taught at the school, about Germany's bookseller apprentice program, and about the importance of curiosity in bookselling and keeping current; also, about exchanging knowledge with fellow booksellers, "handselling" books via Instagram and Facebook, about Libraccio's bookstores in Milan, and about bookstores and democracy.

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Ricky Cavallero was CEO of the Spanish-language publisher Random House Mondadori for eight years. In 1995 he joined Mondadori as Director of Marketing Books; two years later he was appointed General Manager of the Spanish subsidiary and launched the Alexandros trilogy by Valerio Massimo Manfredi which became a huge best-seller. In 1999 he inaugurated the Grijalbo Mondadori bookshop in Havana. In 2000 he returned to Italy as director of Books Edizioni Mondadori. The following year, the Random House Mondadori joint venture was established and Cavallero assumed the position of Chief Executive Officer initially based in New York and then, from 2004, in Barcelona.

In 2010 he was appointed General Manager of Libri Trade Mondadori and Chief Executive Officer of Einaudi, under which the Piemme, Sperling & Kupfer and Frassinelli houses operated. In 2016 he launched a new venture, founding his own house, called SEM Società Editrice Milanese. He sold it in the Spring of 2023.

We met in Milan to talk about his take on book publishing. Topics covered include Libya, the Hoepli bookstore in Milan, Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, nipples, different ways of looking at Latin America, atlases, nationalism, the fun of hitting the big one, Sonny Mehta, buying Fifty Shades of Grey, the impact of Covid, travel and understanding the world, meeting people, diversity, Africa, new writers, exiles and revolutions, bars, interesting people, getting 'out there;' listening, and asking questions, participating in life, partying, SEM, weekly dinners being a better investment than advertising, jazz music, Verso Bar and Bookshop in Milan, jamming with Ken Follett, offering stages for new voices, and giving birth.

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Matteo Columbo is Margaret Atwood's publicist and personal magician at the Ponte alle Grazie publishing house in Italy. We met in Milan to discuss, among other things, the relationship between magic and publicity, the things that Margaret's handlers insist must be present in her hotel rooms; banana tricks, surprises, examples of how to gain the attention of journalists, Ponte alle Grazie's eclectic backlist, Luigi Spagnol, books as unique entities, the impact of Margaret's in-person Italian appearances, comparisons between publicity and photography; trustworthiness, syntax, and more.

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I saw Dan Fridd in action promoting Edelweiss "the book industry's platform to market, sell, discover, and order new titles" at the RISE Bookselling Conference in Prague a few weeks ago and knew I had to have him on the show. Dan is Client "Success" Manager for Edelweiss. We talk about the company, his career in bookselling IT, and how "Above the Treeline" provides booksellers with the big picture; about book sales, inventory management, pie charts, Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, the John Sandoe Bookshop in London, Ann Arbor, Michigan, book conversations opening up your world, marina management software, yachts, coding, data splicing, browsing publisher sales catalogues, analytics, creating your own catalogues, the Book Bugs and Dragon Tales bookshop, Norwich, Mitch Kaplan, and gigs in the Cayman Islands. Sure this may all sound a bit stodgy to non-booksellers, but I'm telling you, Dan gives dynamite interview.

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Maria Hamrefors was appointed chairwoman of the Swedish Booksellers Association in 2019 after a long career in the book industry. Previous positions include CEO of Akademibokhandeln, CEO of Bokus, CEO of Norstedts Publishing Group, CEO of Thomson Corp in Sweden and director of Sweet & Maxwell Group in the UK. She is the treasurer of the European and International Booksellers Federation (EIBF) and a member of the EIBF executive committee. We met at the RISE Bookselling Conference in Prague last month to talk about, among other things, how to turn around a chain bookstore, difficult cost cutting decisions, showing books face out, active curation, customer clubs, loyalty, fourth generation family businesses, discovering "best" information, trust, conspiracy theories, critical thinking, shared love of books, and the best life advice ever.

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Putin is murdering Ukrainians. Xi is likely perpetrating a genocide on the Uyghurs. He's also threatening to murder Taiwanese, and he's crushing democracy in Hong Kong. Trump is ignoring the rule of law. Florida is censoring books.Why am I doing what I'm doing? Why have I interviewed more than 600 people about the book? Well, precisely to help contribute to a better understanding of how best to stop these types of things from happening; how best to come up with and fashion good, big complex, ideas and make them public, get them discussed, motivate people to act on them, get governments to make the world a better, safer place.These are dangerous times. Books and bookstores are more important for us than ever.Despite the country's relatively low literacy rate, relative to other countries in the EU that is, Italians do understand this, and their government has done something about it.I met Barbara Hoepli in Prague last month at the RISE Bookselling Conference. She'd just delivered a talk on the Italian bookselling business which referenced Italy's Levi (Fixed Price) Law. It limits the size of discounts that can be "levied" on books sold in the country. The law is designed to help grow and support the book sector, and literacy, and culture - tangible proof, it is, of the importance Italians assign to books and bookstores in their society.I figured it was worth talking with Barbara, not only because she has a beautiful voice and accent, but, primarily, because she's been in the book business all of her life directing both a major educational publishing house and a sizeable bookstore in Milan. We talk here about, among other things, market regulation, books being the cornerstone of our society, learning from the past, the name "Barbara," her family's 150 year history with books, and how books help us to grow and create.And yes, I left in the sound of her phone ringing (apologies, it's loud and startling). I figure it provides an extra peel of information - one that helps the listener better understand who she, Barbara, is as a person. Maybe not. You tell me.

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I met Barbara Hoepli in Prague last month at the RISE Bookselling Conference. She'd just delivered a talk on the Italian bookselling business that referenced Italy's Levi (Fixed Price) Law which limits the size of discounts that can be "levied" on books sold in the country. It's designed to help grow and support the book sector, and literacy, and culture. Tangible proof, it is, of the importance Italians assign to books and bookstores in their society. I figured it was worth talking with Barbara not only because she has a very nice voice, but primarily because she's been in the book business all of her life directing a major educational publishing house and a sizeable bookstore in Milan. We talk here about, among other things, market regulation, books being the cornerstone of our society, learning from the past, her first name, Switzerland, her family's 150 year history with books, and how books help us to grow and create. And yes, I left the sound of her phone ringing in (it's loud and startling) because I think it provides a nice little smidgen of extra information with which you can get to know her as a person just a tiny bit better. I dunno. You tell me.

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Jeff Deutsch is a devoted reader, browser and lifelong bookseller. He's the director of Chicago's iconic Seminary Co-op Bookstores, and has written a book entitled In Praise of Good Bookstores (Princeton, 2022) in which he calls for a re-imagining of the current bookselling model, one that incorporates more than just retail, that adequately values the important work done by booksellers for their communities and democracy, and that appreciates the incomparable experiences that bookstores offer their patrons.

We get into what "good" means, how a new model of bookselling might be funded; establishing new institutions and supporting the cause; about the ephemeral and the eternal, stars and blossoming fruit trees, William Blake, Robert Musil, mammon, Socrates learning to play the flute, the gift of finding something, or one, to love and knowing that this too shall pass; about the joys of "the browse," and thrift stores; capitalism, socialism, what people value, and civic-mindedness; Amazon, and underpaid work; James Daunt; Blundstones; old cowboy shirts, "slow time," Stendhal; bottling enthusiasm, Leon Forrest's Divine Days, Jaipur, and so much more.

THE BIBLIO FILE is a podcast about "the book," and an inquiry into the wider world of book culture. Hosted by Nigel Beale it features wide ranging, long-form conversations with best practitioners inside the book trade and out - from writer to reader. Why listen? The hope is that it will help you to read, write, publish, edit, design, and collect better, and improve how you communicate serious, big, necessary, new, good ideas and stories...

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Jeff Deutsch is a devoted reader, browser and lifelong bookseller. He's the director of Chicago's iconic Seminary Co-op Bookstores, and has written a book entitled In Praise of Good Bookstores (Princeton, 2022) in which he calls for a re-imagining of the current bookselling model, one that incorporates more than just retail, that adequately values the important work done by booksellers for their communities and democracy, and that appreciates the incomparable experiences that bookstores offer their patrons. We get into what "good" means, how a new model of bookselling might be funded, establishing new institutions and supporting the cause; about the ephemeral and the eternal, stars and blossoming fruit trees, William Blake, Robert Musil, mammon, Socrates learning to play the flute, the gift of finding something, or one, to love and knowing that this too shall pass; about the joys of "the browse," and thrift stores; capitalism, socialism, what people value, and civic-mindedness; Amazon, and underpaid work; James Daunt; Blundstones; old cowboy shirts, "slow time," Stendhal; bottling enthusiasm, Leon Forrest's Divine Days, Jaipur, and so much more. Photo Credit: Sally Blood

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I've long been interested in rhetoric, the techniques of persuasive argument, propaganda; the use of passionate language. It's why I collect publishers' sales and bookseller catalogues, I'm sure! Ever since first laying hands on the bookseller catalogues that Jerry Kelly has, over the years, designed for the likes of Jonathan A. Hill and Glenn Horowitz, I've held the conviction that he is one of America's truly great book designers. It's hard to describe this conviction. His work just looks and feels right to me. "Read me." it says. "I'm worth looking at." It's worth looking at of course because it's a product of years of dedicated study, and passionate practice. These kind of deeply precious objects don't just appear out of nowhere. Take the type for example. Its selection, how it augments the arguments and value propositions put forward in these catalogues; how it adds to their credibility, their conviction, makes the words seem more important. Or the aptness of the paper choices, their relevant colours, the statements made by their weights and textures. The way the choice of ink pigments clarify and emphasize. It all burnishes the larger persuasive effect. But enough waxing. I recently decided that when I finally do come up with a manuscript, I want Jerry to turn it into a book. That "when" in fact, is now, while I'm here in Prague. I plan to write eight or nine profiles of a select set of people I've interviewed over the years. With this in mind I recently Zoomed Jerry, prior of course to having written a word. Our conversation focuses solely on how beautiful the end product might look if Jerry deigns to design it. We start with what he needs in order to get going: words and pictures, and specs. Then we look at the three publishing options that exist.

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About a month ago I watched a documentary entitled Capital in the 21st Century. It was pretty riveting, describing much of what, and how, I've been thinking over the past few years about the American take-over of Canada, and the belief that the country "developed" largely because the very rich were too lazy, risk-averse and unpatriotic to invest in their own country, preferring instead to let the more adventurous Americans do the heavy lifting in exchange for a commission - collected by bankers, accountants and lawyers - which was then sent offshore, where returns were better, and taxes lower or non-existent. The documentary, based on French economist Thomas Piketty's best-selling book of the same name (Harvard University Press, 2014) - a copy of which I've just bought for the second time - tells the story of how fights over capital resulted in two world wars, followed by a mid-century golden period during which the wild beast was tamed and the promise of a merit-based economic system, among other things, was briefly realized, until the animal was unleashed again thanks to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Today inequality is at the same frightful extremes experienced prior to the world wars. Will we repeat the same devastating mistakes, knowing what we now know? The film is a warning; and director Justin Pemberton delivers it with all the power of his medium. I talk with the New Zealander (!) about how he went about converting Piketty's startling 800-page narrative of capitalism's past, present and future, into a fast-paced, thrilling, persuasive, on-screen polemic.

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Scott R Ferris, is a researcher, writer and specialist in the art of Rockwell Kent (1882-1971). He has conducted many lectures on Kent and has served as curator for a lot of Kent exhibitions. Here's a thumbnail of Kent culled from what Zoë Samels has written on the U.S. National Gallery website: He attended the Horace Mann School in New York City where he excelled at mechanical drawing. After graduating he decided to study architecture at Columbia University. In 1905 he moved from New York to Monhegan Island in Maine home to a summer art colony where he found inspiration in the natural world. He found success exhibiting and selling his paintings in New York and in 1907 was given his first solo show at Claussen Galleries. The following year he married his first wife, Kathleen Whiting, with whom he had five children. For the next several decades he lived a peripatetic life, chilling in Connecticut, Maine, and New York. During this time he took extended voyages to remote, often ice-filled, corners of the globe: Newfoundland, Alaska, Tierra del Fuego, and Greenland, to which he made three separate trips. For Kent, exploration and artistic production were twinned endeavors. His travels to these rugged, rural locales provided inspiration for both his visual art and his writings. He developed a stark, realist landscape style that expressed both nature’s harshness and its sublimity. Kent’s human figures, which appear sparingly, often signify mythic themes, such as heroism, loneliness, and individualism. Important exhibitions of works from these travels include the Knoedler Gallery’s shows in 1919 and 1920. Kent wrote a number of illustrated memoirs about his adventures abroad, including Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska (1920) By 1920 he had taken up wood engraving and quickly established himself as one of the preeminent graphic artists of his time. His striking illustrations for two editions of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick— precise and abstract images that drew on his architect’s eye for spatial relations and his years of maritime adventures—proved extremely popular and remain some of his best-known work. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s his print output included advertisements, bookplates, and Christmas cards. His satirical drawings, created under the pseudonym “Hogarth Jr.,” were published in magazines such as Vanity Fair, Harper’s Weekly, and Life. By the onset of World War II, Kent was focusing energy on progressive political causes, including labor rights and preventing the spread of fascism in Europe. Though he never joined the communist party his support of leftist causes made him a target of the State Department which revoked his passport after his first visit to Moscow in 1950 (though Kent successfully sued to have it reinstated). As his reputation declined at home and his work fell out of favor, Kent found new popularity in the Soviet Union, where his works were exhibited frequently in the 1950s. I visited Scott at his book-filled home in Boonville, in upstate New York, to trace the arc of Kent's life through the lens of various items in Scott's extensive collection of Kentiana

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Is failure an inherent part of the writing "enterprise"? Yes, I'd say, this is undoubtedly true. If seen, however, solely as an "exercise" in itself, does this still hold true? I'm not quite so sure.

These are the axes along which I tread during my conversation with Stephen Marche about his valuable new book On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer, an essay published by Biblioasis.

We talk about, among other things, fulfillment, learning, self-knowledge, horse-feathers, attention, Jesus, Beckett, privacy, connection, writing and failure of course, intention, recognition, fame, meaning, communication, money, futility, perseverance, success, publishing, expletives, essays, Confucius, Socrates, Samuel Johnson, depression, mental health and illness, comfort, getting your balls cut off, fame, mock executions, resonance, rejection, and the cure for cosmic loneliness.

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Is failure an inherent part of the writing "enterprise"? Yes, I'd say, this is undoubtedly true. If seen, however, solely as an "exercise" in itself, does this still hold true? I'm not quite so sure. These are the axes along which I tread during my conversation with Stephen Marche about his valuable new book On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer, an essay published by Biblioasis. We talk about, among other things, fulfillment, learning, self-knowledge, horse-feathers, attention, Jesus, Beckett, privacy, connection, writing and failure of course, intention, recognition, fame, meaning, communication, money, futility, perseverance, success, publishing, expletives, essays, Confucius, Socrates, Samuel Johnson, depression, mental health and illness, comfort, getting your balls cut off, fame, mock executions, resonance, and the cure for cosmic loneliness.

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Sasha Tochilovsky is a graphic designer, typographer, curator, teacher and head of the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography at the Cooper Union in New York City. We talk here about one of the greatest creative teams in magazine history: author, editor, publisher and photo-journalist Ralph Ginzburg and graphic designer and typographer Herb Lubalin. We rustle around in the work these two produced together in Eros, Fact and Avant Garde magazines during the 1960s, discussing magazine design, sex, risk, censorship, advertising, typography and the shape of language, U&lc (Upper & Lower Case) Magazine, lettering, aesthetics, humour, Marilyn Monroe, Bert Stern, JFK, Grace Kelly, and the vindictiveness of Robert Kennedy.

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Andy Hughes is Senior Vice President of Production and Design at Knopf Doubleday, and I really wanted to know what he had to say.

During a recent conversation with Lizzie Gottlieb about her new documentary film Turn Every Page, listen here, she mentioned that she regretted not being able to include what Andy had had to say about producing Bob Caro's books. So, I contacted Andy and asked him to give me the goods. He kindly agreed to talk.

He's superb on what goes into the making of a good book. Going back 40+ years and returning to the present, he talks to me authoritatively about everything from hot metal and linotype machines, to mainframes and desktop computers; locked pages, repros and offset printing plates, to goldenrods, long galleys, and folded signatures; Smythe sewing and cloth cases to off-shore and laser printing, print on demand, paperless offices and remote proof-reading. Basically all the stages of book manufacturing, how they've evolved over the years that Caro has been writing books, and how the standards of production have and have not been maintained or replicated since that first edition of The Power Broker was published in 1974.

Among many other things we learn that Caro has chosen not make e-book versions of his work available to the public.

I love that.

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Last year when John Duffy, a Canadian political strategist and writer, died at the age of 58, I noticed an outpouring of genuine love, and sadness, on Twitter, along with frequent references to his book Fights of our Lives. It was called one the best ever written on Canadian politics. So I picked up a copy. It's filled with dozens of old photographs, and images of period posters, and flyers, buttons, correspondence, and other fascinating bits and pieces of ephemera and memorabilia: the 'confetti of history' as Walter Benjamin liked to put it, plus it features these great 'diagrams' of game plans, 'playbooks,' that John came up with to explain the strategies and tactics used in what he considered to be the five most consequential elections in Canadian history. It was visually captivating, and a fun informative read, so I decided to feature it on The Biblio File Book Club. But who to engage with? Several people suggested Justin Trudeau's close friend and advisor, Gerry Butts. After a bit of toing and froing, and my prematurely and, as it turns out, quite erroneously, dismissing him as a typical political bounder, it all came together. Gerry agreed to play ball. We met in person several days ago at the Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa. Gerry is currently Vice Chairman of The Eurasia Group, a risk management firm with offices around the world. We talk here about John Duffy's optimism, about whether or not elections matter; about cynicism, championship debating, Canada's business elite, the PBO's report on income inequality, the urban-rural divide, 1300 Dollarama stores, lifting children out of poverty, the King-Bing Affair, SNC Lavalin, the Manitoba School crisis, Wilfred Laurier and Justin Trudeau's 'Sunny Ways,' kicking the can down the road; Lament for a Nation, and Mel Hurtig. There's a James Joyce quote. Gerry tells a joke about Franz Kafka on the way out the door, and I recommend that he reads Nora Krug's illustrated edition of On Tyranny. Plus another thing: we're both convinced that John Duffy's Fights of our Lives (egregiously it's both out of print and published by an American multi-national) should be made into a TV Series as soon as possible.

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Of course, this scam earns the hotel money at my expense. A tiny expense, but, when combined with all of the other visitors' tiny expenses, not tiny. This scam is similar to the one operated by the oil companies when they insist that you punch in the amount you think you'll need to spend filling your tank at their pumps. It's your money and time they're stealing. Peanuts per person, big coconuts together.

Where's the government on this? The same place government is on poor banking services, the highest mobile phone rates in the world, and sky-high dairy prices. Nowhere. Canadian governments have abandoned Canadian consumers. Valets to the rich and big business they are; to an alarming degree.

Which brings us to copyright legislation.

Cravenly hidden in an omnibus Budget Bill (a tactic Trudeau swore he'd never use), Bill C-32 received royal assent on December 31, 2022. It extends copyright protection in Canada for writers and other creators from fifty to seventy years after they die. How does this benefit the public? It doesn't. Not at all. Does it provide added incentive for these authors to create and innovate? None. Does it help readers and researchers and teachers? No, it does the opposite.

Lobbyists convinced the Trudeau government to extend copyright with one pathetic argument: that it brings Canada into compliance with other jurisdictions. Greed won out in other words. Now, no new works will come into the public domain in Canada for another twenty years. How does this affect books and readers, writers and publishers? I ask Michael Geist. He's a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law and is a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. He has obtained a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Master of Laws (LL.M.) degrees from Cambridge University in the UK and Columbia Law School in New York, and a Doctorate in Law (J.S.D.) from Columbia Law School - so he should know.

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I booked a room at the Intercontinental Hotel in Montreal through Hotwire a couple of days ago. When I arrived at the hotel the receptionist asked me for a $250 deposit for incidentals. Next morning, without my permission (sure, okay, it's likely buried in the small print) they charged my card an additional $200. I subsequently learned that this was because I'd booked a couple of massages at their spa. When I checked out they charged me for the massages and told me that I should see the $450 back on my card in 2-3 business days. Of course, this scam earns the hotel money at my expense. A tiny expense, but, when combined with all of the other visitors' tiny expenses, not tiny. This scam is similar to the one operated by the oil companies when they insist that you punch in the amount you think you'll need to spend filling your tank at their pumps. It's your money and time they're stealing. Peanuts per person, big coconuts together. Where's the government on this? The same place government is on poor banking services, the highest mobile phone rates in the world, and sky-high dairy prices. Nowhere. Canadian governments have abandoned Canadian consumers. Valets to the rich and big business they are; to an alarming degree. Which brings us to copyright legislation. Cravenly hidden in an omnibus Budget Bill (a tactic Trudeau swore he'd never use), Bill C-32 received royal assent on December 31, 2022. It extends copyright protection in Canada for writers and other creators from fifty to seventy years after they die. How does this benefit the public? It doesn't. Not at all. Does it provide added incentive for these authors to create and innovate? None. Does it help readers and researchers and teachers? No, it does the opposite. Lobbyists convinced the Trudeau government to extend copyright with one pathetic argument: that it brings Canada into compliance with other jurisdictions. Greed won out in other words. Now, no new works will come into the public domain in Canada for another twenty years. How does this affect books and readers, writers and publishers? I ask Michael Geist. He's a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law and is a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. He has obtained a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Master of Laws (LL.M.) degrees from Cambridge University in the UK and Columbia Law School in New York, and a Doctorate in Law (J.S.D.) from Columbia Law School - so he should know.

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My GP took off on me last year. Landed some big gig in Geneva I think. He's a bright one. Not that I knew him very well. Only met him twice in six years. Anyhow, I went in for my tri-annual (once every three) check-up the other day. The nurse was pleasant. Told me he'd been working in the same clinic for 30 years. Adventurous, I thought. Then a student comes in. Also pleasant. Bit bland, but hey, I thought, it takes years to spice up character. Finally the resident/doctor arrives. Must've been in her mid-thirties. She was absolutely delightful. Smiling, smart, funny. What a difference she made. She lit up the room. Lit up the week.

Same can be said of Lizzie Gottlieb when she appeared on the screen. My screen that is, on Zoom. It was a delight to talk with her about Turn EveryPage her new documentary (released December 30th, 2022 by Sony Classics). It features the 50-year relationship between writer Bob Caro, 87, and his editor Bob Gottlieb, 91.

Turn Every Page has a delightful (yes, I know, I'm using it too much, but I figure if Caro can overuse a mot juste - "loom" in his case, according to Bob G. - so can I) soundtrack. It deftly conducts the viewer, and the two Bobs, through the film towards the pressing goal of completing Caro's biography of Lyndon B. Johnson. We see the two at work on the fifth and final volume of the book and in the process, learn about what they're both after: uncompromised (uncompromising?) excellence. The two are by nature industrious, and both have egos. Combine all of the above and you have the makings of both a classic book, and a very watchable documentary, one that gives you a feel for the magic in this unique relationship and a sense of the great joy that can be experienced between writer and editor as they make a book together. What you get with this film is a whimsical, entertaining glimpse at a very special kind of quiet alchemy.

I had such fun with this project: watching the film, twice, re-reading parts of Bob Gottlieb's memoir Avid Reader, conducting the interview, editing it, and then right afterwards, going out for a walk and listening to it. I hope your experience with the listening part is as "delightful" as mine was.

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My GP took off on me last year. Landed some big gig in Geneva, I think. He's a bright one. Not that I knew him very well. Only met him twice, in six years. Pretty dynamic. Anyhow, I went in for my tri-annual check up the other day. The nurse was pleasant. Told me he'd been working in the same clinic for 30 years. Adventurous, I thought. Then a student comes in. Also pleasant. Bit bland, but hey, I thought, it takes years to develop character. Finally the resident/doctor arrives. Must've been in her mid-thirties. She was absolutely delightful. Smily, smart, funny. What a difference she made. Impact player. The room popped alive. She lit up my day. Same can be said of Lizzie Gottlieb. It was a delight to talk with her about Turn Every Page her new documentary (released December 30th, 2022 by Sony Pictures) featuring the 50-year long relationship between writer Bob Caro, 87, and his editor Bob Gottlieb, 91. Turn Every Page has a delightful soundtrack (yes, I know, I'm using it too much, just as Caro uses "loom" too often according to Gottlieb). It deftly conducts the viewer, and the two Bobs, through the film towards the pressing goal of completing Caro's biography of Lyndon B. Johnson. We see the two at work on the fifth and final volume of the book and in the process, learn about what they're both after: uncompromised excellence. The two are by nature industrious, and both have egos. Combine all of this and you have the makings of both a classic book, and a very watchable documentary, one that gives you a feel for the magic in this unique relationship and a sense of the great joy that can be experienced between writer and editor while they make a book together. What you get with this film is a whimsical, entertainging glimpse at a very special quiet alchemy. I had such fun with this project: watching Turn Every Page, twice, re-reading parts of Bob Gottlieb's memoir Avid Reader, conducting the interview, editing it, and then right afterwards, going out for a walk and listening to it. I hope your experience is as "delightful" as mine was.

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A valued devotee of the podcast told me last week that he couldn't believe what an ignoramus I was. 'You think all photographers are losers?' (referring to something said here). No, I responded. Not losers, just unexceptional. Talented in many ways perhaps, but not great artists. These are hard to find, anywhere, in any field of art. 'So why did you choose to single out photographers?' Well, I averred, as Alexey Brodovitch Conde Nast's great art director once said 'when you intentionally irritate someone they often respond with their best work.' I like to try this on for size every now and again during my interviews. In fact, this happened last week, albeit unintentionally. I was interviewing Richard Charkin; suggesting that the fact that he and most of his clients were well off had to explain, at least in part, some of the success he's enjoyed recently with his new publishing experiment. Richard has achieved great heights during an illustrious career. As high as you can go in the (head of Holtzbrinck) publishing world. I'm sure he's experienced some wonderful things in his time. None more wonderful however, I'm guessing, than setting up and operating his own little publishing house, Mensch. I wanted to know how he was getting on after four years at the helm and if his special place in the publishing constellation had favoured him with any unfair advantages. We start with mission statements, I throw in some meaningless platitudes, then we talk about the criteria Richard uses for choosing which books to publish, about personality and commissioning books, what numbers of emails means, rejecting submissions, working with journalists, celebrities and non-celebrities; saving author proofs; backlists; publicists; print on demand; diversity; Rovers, Minis, and yes, fairness, plus much, much more.

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Here is Part ll of my conversation with Michael Torosian featuring his soon to be released memoir/bibliography Lumiere Press: Printer Savant and Other Stories (listen to Part l here). This episode gets to the essence of Michael's book writing/publishing practice: the interview. We discuss a list of guidelines Michael has developed based on his experience interviewing some of greatest photographers of the 20th century. It can be found in Savant in a chapter entitled 'Residual Landscapes, The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky.' Here's a summary: 1. I educate myself to the fullest extent about the artist's life and work. 2. I make up a question list of at least two or three pages...The I throw the list away. 3. I begin the interview with something plucked from the uniqueness of the day, the inception of our new experience. 4. I listen. It's imperative to maintain situational awareness and stay in the moment. 5. I avoid leading questions 6. I probe for greater detail. 7. I re-ask questions 8. In the editing process I splice answers together from various "takes." There is no improvisation or invention 9. I strive to be self-effacing.

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Michael Torosian has spent his life taking photographs, interviewing great photographers, and making fine press photography books. He's in the process of making another entitled Lumiere Press, Printer Savant and Other Stories to commemorate the establishment of the Lumiere Press Archive at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto. It's full of life lessons and back-stories illuminating each of the twenty-two books he's published over the past four decades. We sat down in his workshop, behind his house in Toronto, to talk about the book. Topics covered in this first installment of a two part conversation include: photography, bookmaking, relentless exploration, 'general aesthetics,' cultivating aptitudes, the blossoming of the photography market, Edward Weston, Aaron Siskind, decoding visual language, composition, respect, paying homage, the Ninth Street Show, Gordon Parks, learning as the key to existence, making every word count, the Paris Review's Writers at Work series, capturing the voice of the artist, the book as the medium of photography, and more.

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John Metcalf is angry that after working in Canada as a "storyteller, editor, novelist, essayist, and critic" for more than fifty years his books still only sell about 500 copies each. In spite of this, he has made a significant contribution to Canadian literature through his editing, teaching, critiquing, compiling of anthologies, publishing, and promotion generally of Canadian writers and the short story form. His work is known for its satire, and its coming-of-age themes. It often features intense emotion and imagery. In fact, his whole career can and has been said - John says it himself in Temerity and Gall, the book we discuss here today - to have been an extended conversation with Ezra Pound's Imagism.

In our conversation, chronology takes the lead. We examine John's life (he was born in 1938) starting with England and his relationship with his father, Thomas Metcalf, a clergyman; we talk about John's work with Oberon Press, ECW, Porqupine's Quill, and Biblioasis; about him teaching in the Montreal school system, about avoiding boredom, drinking with Mordecai Richler, and what a dick Michael Macklim was; about early catastrophes with Jack David and Robert Lecker, the lack of communication with Tim Inkster, and a love of Dan Wells's ambition. But it's not all just revealing gossip about publishers, we also discuss the serious ideas that underpin John's writing and editorial practice, about the success he's had over many decades of getting books published, and finally about his patient, respectful wife Myrna.

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In an email I received several months ago, the owners of the iconic Washington, D.C. based independent bookstore Politics & Prose wrote that Mark LaFramboise, their chief book buyer, had died. “Mark was the best book buyer any independent bookstore could hope for,” Brad Graham and Lissa Muscatine said in their note. "Not only did he know books; he knew P&P’s customers, who gravitated to him because his passion for literature was infectious. Mark also was greatly appreciated by local authors, whose careers he championed and whose works he celebrated. And he was widely respected throughout the publishing industry, having built relationships over many years with booksellers and buyers at other stores, regional reps, editors, and top brass at the major publishing houses.” Mark served as president of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) from 2014 to 2016, and as a judge for the 2019 National Book Awards. He was 60 years old. I wanted to learn more about him. Brad suggested I interview Anton Bogomazov. Anton is responsible for buying books for P&P's two branch stores and knew Mark well. Anton has an interesting background himself, having lived in New York, Toronto, a tiny town in rural Japan and a suburb of Moscow. He reads in, and across, many genres, including fiction of all kinds, queer lit/nonfiction, graphic novels and comics, essays, history, science, poetry and mythology (the original fiction). He tends to read four of five books at a time, and tries to be a good bookseller by having at least one not-yet-published book on his nightstand at all times. We talk about the role of the book buyer and how he and Mark approach(ed) the position.

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In many ways Tom Devlin's career mirrors the evolution of the graphic novel. As founder of Highwater Books, a publishing house he set up in the early 2000s, Devlin treated alternative comics audiences in North America to their first book-length exposure to well-known cartoonist/authors - including John Porcellino, Marc Bell, Ron Rege Jr., Brian Ralph - many of whom subsequently joined him at Drawn and Quarterly - the Montreal-based publishing house founded by Chris Oliveros - where Tom now works as executive editor (and co-owner) alongside his wife, publisher Peggy Burns. Tom's early work - its high production values, thoughtful design and 'bookshelf-ready' formats, plus experience earned as a comics retailer and distributor - one could say, presaged the explosion in popularity of graphic novels, an explosion that was amply fueled by much of the stuff he's done with artists at D&Q over the years. I talk with Tom about his love of comics, comic stores and the publishing business, about his life with graphic novels and D&Q, and the long struggle to be taken seriously. Drawn and Quarterly: Twenty Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels serves as our guide. We met underneath the well-walked wooden floors of La Petite Librairie D+Q, the company's children's retail bookstore outlet in the Mile End district of Montreal.

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Shannon DeVito is Barnes and Noble's 'Director of Books.' We met via Zoom to discuss the roles and duties associated with this intriguing-sounding position. I discovered that they include co-ordinating the relationship between national and local book-buying teams; 'assortment' work; creating initiatives - including prizes ( e.g. the Discover Prize; most recent winner: The Rabbit Hutch, a debut novel which I'll shortly be 'book-clubbing' [having bookclub-type discussion, so to say] with James Daunt), book clubs, monthly book picks, etc. - for the company's promotional book strategy; developing campaigns with the publishing industry for important releases; negotiating 'exclusive' opportunities. Creating buzz basically, plus adding value to the experience of visiting a physical bookstore while taking market share away from Amazon without caring what they're up to. We look at B&N's pro-active influencing of taste and the leveraging of its role as big-time book recommender; plus there's a tiny bit of politics - the ethics of selling and profiting off stuff that might adversely affect democracy (only a tiny bit) - AND we discuss the recent explosion of Manga.

As promised during our conversation, here are Shannon's top recommendations of the day:

FICTION The Marriage Portrait Lessons in Chemistry The Rabbit Hutch Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence NONFICTION Ice Cold Turkey and the Wolf: Flavor Trippin' in New Orleans Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us Revolutionary: Samuel Adams Prisoners of the Castle

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Where does editing leave off and ghostwriting begin? How cool is it to pass yourself off as the writer if you haven't done any of the writing? How much recognition do "collaborators" deserve? Should ghostwriters be completely anonymous? When should they refuse assignments? How does one work with a person whose views are opposed to yours? Where does craft end and art take over? What explains a successful collaboration? Is this whole business ethical? I ask these and other bumptious questions of seasoned, successful ghostwriter and novelist Dan Paiser, plus I pose a few from interested party David Mitchell whose first novel, Ghostwritten, embroils us in a cacophony of narrative voices. Dan also delivers some excellent stories about Ivanka and The Donald, and Whoopi, and others, and we spend a bit of time talking about creativity, and Dan's latest novel, Balloon Dog.

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Earlier this year a tiny Quebec-based children's publishing house, Monsieur Ed, won the prize for Best Children’s Publishers of the Year in North America at the Bologna Book Fair. It won, judges said, for being at the forefront of innovation in the creative nature of its editorial choices during the past year.

I thought this was a big deal so I contacted publisher and creative director Valérie Picard. She told me (well, actually, it's written on the website), that Monsieur Ed "favors stories set in peculiar worlds where reality and fantasy coincide. He feeds on compelling tales with the power to transcend the ordinary, arouse laughter or bring tears. Universal stories that can inspire introspection and contemplation. Although fiction is at the heart of his publications, Monsieur Ed is also interested in documentaries, graphic novels, and even your favorite kind of tea."

Monsieur Ed lives in Montreal, Quebec, and so does Valerie, and, for the time being, so do I. So I went over to her place to interview her, and her little dog Benjamin, about the creative choices she's made over the past year, indeed the past five, and to get at the reasons she thinks explain why she won at Bologna.

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Allan Fleming (1929 – 1977) was a Canadian graphic designer best known for having created the Canadian National Railway logo, for designing the 1967 book Canada: A Year of the Land and for "revolutionizing" the look of scholarly publishing in North America in the 1970s with his work at University of Toronto Press. In 1953 Allan moved to England to work as a graphic designer, and to learn about the practice from eminent English designers and design historians such as Stanley Morison, Oliver Simon, Herbert Simon, and Beatrice Warde. In 1955 he returned to Toronto where he landed a job as director of creative services at the typographic firm Cooper and Beatty Ltd. In 1962 he was appointed art director at Maclean's magazine. From 1963 to 1968 he was director of creative services at MacLaren Advertising and from 1968 to1976 he was chief book designer at the University of Toronto Press. Throughout his career, Allan designed or consulted on the creation of many iconic Canadian images for clients including Canada Post, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Liberal Party of Canada, the Hudson's Bay Company, Ontario Hydro, and the Canada Council. His daughter Martha Fleming, a museum professional and academic, wrote and edited two issues of The Devil's Artisan in 2008 which were devoted to Allan's life and work. We met via Zoom to discuss them and the many achievements of this extraordinary Canadian.

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I first became aware of the graphic edition of Timothy Snyder's book On Tyranny during a visit to the National Socialist Documentation Centre museum in Munich about a year ago (revel in the backstory here). I bought and read a copy of the original edition shortly thereafter. It's a powerful book, full of important, actionable lessons. This past Summer I picked up a copy of Nora Krug's illustrated version of the book. Reading it was revelatory. I simply had to interview her. So I contacted the person who knows every graphic designer in the world, Steven Heller. He'd just, of course, participated in a presentation with Nora. And yes, was happy to put us in touch. Listen here as Nora and I go about reviewing the serious thought she put into illustrating On Tyranny, starting with the cover. Topics touched on include: the importance of small talk; the influence of illustrators; shedding light on the human character; origami; painting with blood (okay, paint that looks like blood); little feet; fire and smoke and war; moral questions, smudges, and the traces of history; big dumb hands; depicting fear; snooping around flea markets; salvaging found objects, photo albums and scrapbooks; how illustrations bring books into different realms, adding new emphases and layers of meaning, contradictory and otherwise; empathy and history; the importance of personal narratives; emotional entry points into war; dissecting history; vigilance, and the responsibility that each of us has to fight against the rise of tyranny. Photo Credit: Nina Subin

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We talk about how she came up with her "Readalong" service, as well as word of mouth being gold-dust, measuring the impact of social media marketing on the bottom line, micro-influencers, Instagram story posts, book recommendations, optimum follower numbers, marketers as booksellers, top ten bestseller lists, shoe-string campaigns, Tik-Tok's backlist power, conveying enthusiasm, curating social media, scathing reviews, structuring public book conversations, engagement, non-fiction titles, proof of product and bespoke marketing packages for small presses.

Naomi mentioned that Tandem offers a free video interview service for small presses who want to pitch their catalogues on Instagram and Youtube. For details, email her at naomi@thetandemcollective.com

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Libri Prohibiti is a nonprofit, independent, archival research library located in Prague, Czech Republic that collects samizdat and exile literature. Founded by Jiří Gruntorád after the fall of the communist regime its holding include some 40,000 monographs, periodicals, reference resources, and audiovisual materials. In addition to dissident articles, many popular books were banned, and subsequently distributed as samizdats including George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, both of which are held in the library. In 2013, the Libri Prohibiti Collection of Czech and Slovak Samizdat periodicals from the years 1948–1989 was listed by UNESCO in its Memory of the World (MOW) Register. It is the largest collection of its kind in the world. According to the MOW Registry, "the completeness and uniqueness of this large number of documents attest to the fight against the communist totalitarian regime and its importance for the study of the history of the twentieth century." I met with Jiri Nenicka, a librarian at Libri Prohibiti, in Prague to talk about the collection. The novel/diary we refer to about 2/3 of the way in which beautifully describes the samizdat publishing experience is A Czech Dreambook by Ludvík Vaculík translated by Gerald Turner (Karolinum Press, Charles University, 2018)

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Naomi Bacon is a seasoned book marketer, and founder of The Tandem Collective. She has worked with JK Rowling’s agency, The Blair Partnership, as well as Pottermore, Pan Macmillan, Penguin and Hachette. Her ambition has always been "to be at the forefront of digital innovation, creating meaningful connections between publishing partners, content creators and brands to generate word of mouth around new book, film, theatre and TV releases." We talk about how she came up with her "Readalong" service, as well as word of mouth being gold-dust, measuring the impact of social media marketing on the bottom line, micro-influencers, Instagram story posts, book recommendations, optimum follower numbers, marketers as booksellers, top ten bestseller lists, shoe-string campaigns, Tik-Tok's backlist power, conveying enthusiasm, curating social media, scathing reviews, structuring public book conversations, engagement, non-fiction titles, proof of product and bespoke marketing packages for small presses. Naomi mentioned that Tandem offers a free video interview service for small presses who want to pitch their catalogues on Instagram and Youtube. For details, email her at naomi@thetandemcollective.com

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Michael Žantovský is a Czech diplomat, author and translator. He is a former Czech Ambassador to the United Kingdom, as well as to Israel and the United States. He has translated more than fifty works of fiction, drama and poetry, mostly by contemporary American and British writers including James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, E.L. Doctorow, and Tom Stoppard. Non-fiction translations include works by Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright. He is currently the Executive Director of the Václav Havel Library.

We met in his office at the Library in Prague to talk about, among other things, his book Havel: A Life, published in 2014; about writing the biography of a close friend; about dealing with death, grief and indebtedness; about the clinical attitude; writing as a process of selection; hagiography; coming across honestly; guilt about wealth; responsibility and trust; Václav Havel's play sticking our noses into misery; hope and hopelessness; outsiders; Woody Allen; and the inner need to say something.

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Michael Žantovský is a Czech diplomat, author and translator. He is a former Czech Ambassador to the United Kingdom, as well as to Israel and the United States. He has translated more than fifty works of fiction, drama and poetry, mostly by contemporary American and British writers including James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, E.L. Doctorow, and Tom Stoppard. Non-fiction translations include works by Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright. He is currently the Executive Director of the Václav Havel Library. We met in his office at the Library in Prague to talk about, among other things, his book Havel: A Life, published in 2014; about writing the biography of a close friend; about dealing with death, grief and indebtedness; about the clinical attitude; writing as a process of selection; hagiography; coming across honestly; guilt about wealth; responsibility and trust; Václav Havel's play sticking our noses into misery; hope and hopelessness; outsiders; Woody Allen; and the inner need to say something.

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John Owen is a bookseller who runs the events program at the English Bookshop at Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus in Berlin. That English Bookshop? Probably the best I've ever been in, in my life. We talk about, among other things: being blown away; bookshop lighting; window seating; how to display books; mixing things up and discovering new titles; bookshops as cultural institutions; Sally Rooney; sales of English language books in Germany; trying to reduce references to Margaret Atwood in this podcast; bookstores being like bakers; keeping your eyes open; aesthetic awareness; Rebecca Solnit's genre-bending books; Albanian political scientists; kooky, unusual best-sellers; elevator pitches; hating science fiction, and more.

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Elisabeth Ruge is a German editor, publisher and literary agent. She currently heads the Elisabeth Ruge Agency which she founded in 2014. In 1994 she established the Berlin Verlag publishing house together with her then husband Arnulf Conradi and Veit Heinichen. I met Elisabeth at her home on the outskirts of Berlin to discuss the roles she has played over her career, including the one she currently plays as Germany's leading literary agent. Among other things we talk about the importance of "attention" in the book editing and publishing processes: getting it, giving it, maintaining it; about letting go; about spin and elevator pitches; about James McBride's The Color of Water; about Jonathan Littell's The Kindly One; about how essential in-house editors are to the success of publishing houses; about serious book conversation; about authors being paid honorariums in Germany; about the importance of an author's credibility; about critics; explanatory brochures; Gallimard covers; the agent-publisher relationship, the complexity of the publishing business...and about Denmark.

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Jonathan Landgrebe is the publisher of Suhrkamp Verlag. We met at his offices in Berlin to talk about his role as head of one of Germany's most revered publishing houses, and to riff off Siegfried Unseld's book The Author and His Publisher.
Topics covered in our conversation include: important books that just don't sell; the publisher-author relationship; books that change both readers and the world; explaining and transferring feelings and enthusiasms to others; forcing values on the public; the war and recognizing Ukrainian literature; how to gain attention; authors towering above us; making Rachel Cusk known in Germany; Lutz Seiler's writing on the GDR; the growth in sales of English language books in Germany; publishing Hesse, Brecht and new voices; illness; the frozen sea within; the single reader counting most; enriching life; German publishers' sense of duty to society; Returning to Reims by Didier Eribon, and Sasha Marianna Salzmann's Beside Myself.

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Pamela Paul was books editor at the New York Times from 2013 to March 2022 when she became an opinion columnist for the newspaper. We talk mostly about the role that books editors play in the lifecycle of 'the book.' I also whine a fair amount about how I don't like the fact that she left her position plus we diverge into discussion about Pamela's recent opinion piece 'There's More Than One Way to Ban a Book.' Topics tackled also include self-censorship in the publishing business (being a terribly perceptive observer of the book world I boldly assert that there must also be self-censorship going on at The Times itself); the importance of enabling all voices to be heard in the grand public debate; identity; Pamela's confident, informed, smart, pleasant presence on The Review podcast each week; her early ambitions for the books section; how the job changed her; how books are chosen for review; the role of preview editors and publicists; Pamela's guilt and sense of responsibility; and my love of her voice.

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Why listen to James Marsh? Because he knows about love and encyclopedias. He grew up in The Junction district of Toronto surviving a difficult childhood, and began his career in publishing at Holt Rinehart and Winston where he was editor of a Centennial history of Canada entitled Unity and Diversity. He later became executive editor of McClelland and Stewart's Carleton Library Series, after which he was hired by Mel Hurtig as editor-in-chief of The Canadian Encyclopedia - the biggest printing/publishing endeavour in Canadian history. We talk about his memoir Know it All: Finding the Impossible Country andabout what he found; about encyclopedias striving for ideals; about historian Ramsey Cook and limited identities; selection by community; post-Centennial enthusiasm for Canada; economic nationalism; selling 250,000 sets of The Canadian Encyclopedia and then putting it on-line and making it "engaging;" the importance of conversation to democracy; Alberta premier Peter Lougheed; the woman with the two colour eyes; and the gift of friendship.

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Nick Anthony is a stand-up comic, a screen-writer, and a former magician. He's participating in this year's Prague Summer Program for Writers and his novel, tentatively entitled Two Hits of Acid in Cambodia, was just workshopped this past week.

We talk about the experience, but not before discussing magic, stand-up comedy writing; new material that kills; God complexes; screen-writing; Tarantino's Django Unchained; suspense and humour; intelligence and humour; doubt; and Dave Chappelle. We then talk about workshops as focus groups, plus the importance of hearing the perspectives of better writers.

In addition we also look at Nick's novel itself, and how it references diversity in publishing from the perspective of a young white male writer; losing your best friend "to" life; what men look like post #metoo; and the skewering of what our culture thinks of sex.

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Why listen to Alexandra Pringle? Because Richard Charkin told me that she's the best editor in the English speaking world, that's why. Alexandra was editor-in-chief at Bloomsbury Publishing for more than two decades. She was recently appointed Executive Publisher. She began her publishing career at the British magazine Art Monthly before joining the women's publisher Virago in 1978. She became Editorial Director in 1984, and moved to Hamish Hamilton in 1991 to undertake the same role. Through much of the 1990s she was a literary agent for, among others, Amanda Foreman, Geoff Dyer, Maggie O'Farrell and Ali Smith. She joined Bloomsbury in 1999 as head of the adult publishing division where her authors included Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sheila Hancock, Anne Michaels, Ann Patchett, George Saunders and Richard Ford. Among other things we talk about editing's "what if" conversations, about houseboats, socialism, building confidence, Harry Potter, tempering criticism, teasing, instinct, luck, and yes, arm-hair. Note to Listener: My apologies. The Zoom connection was poor on this one. But what Alexandra has to say is delightful and informative, so I hope you'll agree with me that it's worth putting up with. I plan to interview her again. In person. With a good microphone. On her houseboat.

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What's not to like here? Marius Kociejowski is charming, erudite and funny. Why should you listen to him? He's just written a memoir about the soul of the book trade. What happens in bookstores doesn't happen elsewhere he says. The multifariousness of human nature is more on show here than anywhere else, he says, and "I think it’s because of books, what they are, what they release in ourselves, and what they become when we make them magnets to our desires.” The memoir is called A Factotum in the Book Trade. We talk about it and the lives of the booksellers, collectors and characters Marius has lived with for close to five decades. He reveals secrets and describes feuds. He gives us a wonderful feel for the workings of the London Antiquarian book trade over the past fifty years. Bertram and Anthony Rota, Bernard and Martin Stone, Bill Hoffer, Peter Ellis, Raymond Danowski. They're all here. Have a listen. (speaking of which, listening that is, thank you so much to all of you who have so loyally listened to my podcast over the years. Your attention, feedback, and friendship, has meant a great deal to me. No, I'm not quitting. Just want to express my gratitude).

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Why listen to Richard Katrovas? He founded one of the world's leading creative writing programs, in Prague, and has led it for more than two decades, plus he knows karate. He's passionate and knowledgeable about both. We talk about listening and critiquing artfully, not fucking with style, the formalization of a sense of literary community, counter-culture, the literary conversation, literary communities in different epochs, communal writing, work-shopping, the genius of the English language incorporating other languages, publishing first books, validation, the importance of self-esteem and personal prestige, the desire for social relevance, Ernest Becker, 'who touches a book touches a man,' book fetishes, the weirdness of poetry and Prague, ripping off books, living in the Projects, and much more.

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Why did I interview Mark Andrews? Because he's a fellow Canadian, he's an exceptional book collector who brings an engineer's mind to the task, and he's just published a beautiful book featuring selections from his book collection, entitled The Science and Engineering of Water; An illustrated catalogue of books and manuscripts on Italian hydraulics, 1500 - 1800; it's exemplary. Exactly the kind of thing every book collector should think about doing - in some iteration - with his/her/their own collection. Mark's catalogue explores the development of science and engineering through the early modern period by presenting 367 printed books, manuscripts and maps in chronological order. They highlight the relationship between the evolution of ideas and the authors who documented these ideas. Drawing from Mark's larger collection of civil engineering titles, it's filled with illustrations and diagrams (nearly 1000), from books that were used as working tools by Italian scientists, engineers, and builders from the early 1500s to the end of the 1700s. Trust me. While books on Italian hydraulics may not sound exactly riveting, they are. At least, they are when Mark talks about them.

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Why am I interviewing Mark Samuels Lasner for a third time? Because he's a recognized and respected book collector who knows how to speak intelligently and amusingly about books. And though we've already talked about his impressive collections that cover late 19th century British literary culture, and The Bodley Head, I wanted to learn about what happens "after the dopamine" hits. What he's done with his collections - the cataloguing, the scholarship, the exhibitions, the research, the talks - how has he worked with his books to help share their collective lessons, to better understand the worlds and relationships they document? And how can you do the same with your collection?

That's why I interviewed him a third time.

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I came across Kat McKenna's name in an article written by Alison Flood in The Guardian last year. I'd googled Tik Tok's "Book-Tok" because I'd heard it was moving a lot of YA books and wanted to learn more. Kat was quoted in Alison's piece. It was clear she knew what made BookTok tick. I contacted her and now she's on the show. Kat has worked in UK publishing for almost 15 years specialising in children's and teen/YA marketing and brand strategy, and "delivers exciting and audience driven marketing campaigns to most of the major publishers as a freelancer, working on brands including World Book Day, Jacqueline Wilson, Supertato and more." She bills herself as an early innovator of digital and social media in publishing, and today she's still very much on top of what's going on. She sent me a list of links to various examples of how young people are using Book Tok these days, here: Books that made me cry: (@justmemyselfandi) Here They Both Die At the End moodboard (@emmyslibrary): here Convincing you to read We Were Liars (@alifeofliterature): here If you like this Harry Styles song, read this book (@sophiebooks): here Want to work in books? (@hotkeybooks - publisher account!) here Why do books smell like they do (@hotkeybooks) here Translations of my book by country (@Caseymcquiston - author) here Aesthetic of The Inheritance Games (@.bookobsessed) here A book Tiktok made me read that was not good (@emdobereading - based on a sound trend - we can talk more about those tomorrow!) here Convincing you to read books based on their first line (@jennajustreads) here Heartstopper - page to screen love (@rafept) here So, lots to talk about. Re: my question about who owns Tik Tok: results are pretty murky. Yes, the Chinese government has a stake in it. How much control it has over operations is open to question. Lots, is what its American competitors would like people to believe. Relatively little it seems if you're a Tik Tok spokesperson. The Guardian again, here.

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Stephen Enniss is director of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin. Previous posts include Head Librarian at the Folger Shakespeare Library and Director of Emory University's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library where he made a series of impressive acquisitions including the archives of Seamus Heaney, Salman Rushdie and Ted Hughes. Since taking over at the Ransom Center in 2013, Stephen has overseen the acquisition of the archives of Ian McEwan, J.M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Michael Ondaatje, among others.

We met via Zoom to discuss his role as director of a special collections library; where Martin Amis is, and Christopher Hitchens, Clive James and other members of their group. About fighting oblivion; about the value and challenges of email archives and negotiating or not negotiating with Andrew Wylie; about Texan "nationalism," and the goals of attracting books and people, and developing a "civilization;" about diversity, and hiring practices and collection development policies; about cataloguing, bureaucracies, acquisitions, books bridging political divides, the Gotham Book Mart, sweet little exhibition catalogues, and much more.

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Sarah Miniaci is a freelance book publicist with fifteen years of experience in the New York and Toronto markets. Ken Whyte's Sutherland House is one of her clients. Ken interviewed Sarah for a recent issue of Shush, his excellent Substack newsletter on the publishing business. Together they surveyed today's new publishing landscape. With the help of Michael Legat's An Author's Guide to Publishing, Sarah and I do the same here, only with our voices, tracing the evolution of book publicity from Legat's pre-2000 traditional publishing world, up to the present. We talk about the advent of the Internet and blogs, about gatekeepers and democratization, about how easy and boring life used to be for a publicist, about the shift to Social, about the importance of Goodreads, about producing trailers and Q & As for Youtube, about compiling lists, rocket science, passionate bloggers, influencers, the literary conversation, the continued relevance of the publishers' sales catalogue, geese, swans, "golden children," quality, and the imperative to make money, the Last Bookstore in L.A., and Toyota Corollas.

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Bob Rae is a Canadian diplomat, lawyer, former Premier of Ontario, and former interim Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. A Rhodes Scholar and graduate of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, he is currently Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations. He has been elected to federal and provincial parliaments 11 times (between 1978 and 2013), and reveres the English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic George Orwell. Because of this I invited him to engage in a conversation with me about Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language." Politicians have always abused language. Current political tensions have only ratcheted this up, here in Canada and around the world. It needs to be called-out, because, as Orwell reminds us, getting rid of bad habits in the use of language encourages clearer thinking, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration, something that we need big-time in 2022. During our conversation we discuss: stale imagery, lack of precision, meaningless words, quotes from Alan Sandison's book George Orwell: After 1984, the use of cliche, Orwell's contradictions, the word "totalitarian," ramifications of using the term "genocide," U.N.-speak, the definition of "recent," and much more, on this, the most recent installment of The Biblio File Book Club.

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Author/historian Stuart Kells has been chasing rare books and other bookish treasures since childhood. In the 1980s he went for classic sci-fi paperbacks from Ace and Dell, and authors such as Philip K. Dick and Robert Heinlein. When he moved to Melbourne in the summer of 1989 he was amazed by the city’s bookshops, especially secondhand shops - notably Alice’s and Sainsbury’s in Carlton. When he wasn’t looking for books here he was fossicking in the Co-op bookshop at Melbourne University, or hunting for them at markets and fetes. For the past 26 years he's been a regular at Camberwell Market where great books can be found, along with almost everything else. Vividly remembered finds include Iain Banks and Vikram Seth firsts; classic Australian crime pulps; rare maps; and advertising and ephemera of every kind. I connected with Stuart recently via Zoom to talk about Penguin and the Lane Brothers, his revealing, myth-busting book about the intimate partnership of Allen, Richard and John Lane – and how it explains the success of Penguin Books, the twentieth century’s "greatest publishing house." We talk about the spirit of daring and creative opposition that drove the brothers to publish so many quality books on such a massive scale at such affordable prices – and how together they achieved a revolution in modern book publishing.

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Over the past half-century, bookselling, like many retail sectors, has evolved from an business dominated by independent bookstores to one in which chain stores have significant market share. This transformation has often been a less-than-smooth process, especially so in bookselling, argues Laura J. Miller, because more than most other consumer goods, books are the focus of passionate debate. What drives this debate? And why do so many people believe that bookselling should be immune to questions of profit? Laura and I discuss some of the answers to these questions which were first raised back in 2006 when her book Reluctant Capitalists Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption was published. Laura is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Brandeis University where she arrived in 2002, having previously taught at the University of Western Ontario and Vassar College. She teaches courses in the sociology of culture, the mass media, food studies, and urban sociology. Her research is centered on understanding the interaction between cultural and economic processes.

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Jonathan Kay is a Canadian journalist. He was editor-in-chief of The Walrus magazine, and is a senior editor of Quillette. He was previously comment pages editor, columnist, and blogger for the Toronto-based Canadian daily newspaper National Post, and continues to contribute to the newspaper on a freelance basis. He's also a ghostwriter, best known in this capacity as the author of Justin Trudeau's memoir Common Ground. During our conversation we talk about Jon's ghostwriting practice - riffing off an article he wrote on the topic for Quillette entitled 'My Life as a Ghostwriter' ( https://quillette.com/2021/09/26/my-life-as-a-ghostwriter/ ) - about gaming influencing ghostwriting; storytelling, people hovering in the background, literary prostitution, humour checks, anonymity, Mitt Romney, eliciting details, the political messaging in Justin Trudeau's memoir, the best part about being a ghostwriter, lawyers wanting to know everything, well-rounded depictions, the truth, self-publishing; luck, alchemy and 50 Shades of Grey, The Making of the Bible by Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter, blurred stages and immersion, Tarantino, and kitchen design, among other things.

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Kathryn Schulz joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2015. In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and a National Magazine Award for “The Really Big One,” her story on seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest. Previously, she was the book critic for New York, the editor of the environmental magazine Grist, and a reporter and editor at the Santiago Times. She is the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.

We talk about Lost and Found, her just published memoir, about making the planet less lonely, dark places, a sense of the beautiful, math formulas, love, death, loss, discovery, commonplace experiences, the history of words, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, being proud of others, privacy, foggy grief, technicolour worlds, noticing details, surprises, essays and memoirs, bearing witness, and and.

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Larry Grobel is a journalist, author and teacher. He has written more than 25 books including Conversations with Capote (which received a PEN Special Achievement award) and The Art of the Interview (which has been used as a text in many journalism schools), most of his books however are short story collections. His latest is called The Narcissist. Over the years he's written for dozens of publications including the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Entertainment Weekly, but he's best known for his Playboy magazine interviews. Larry created the M.F.A. in Professional Writing for Antioch University and taught in the English Department at UCLA for ten years.

We met via Zoom to talk about how he conceives of, and writes, his short stories.

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James Wood is a literary critic, essayist and novelist.

He was The Guardian's chief literary critic between 1992 and 1995, and a senior editor at The New Republic between 1995 and 2007. Since roughly that time he's taught the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University and has been a staff writer and book critic at The New Yorker magazine. In 2009, he won the National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism. Books include How Fiction Works, the novel Upstate, and essay collections The Irresponsible Self, The Broken Estate and most recently Serious Noticing. We talk about James's role as a book critic - how and why he does it - about realism, the canon, 'lifeness', sameness, his intro to Serious Noticing, our shared love of the Russians, looking for great writing everywhere, Virginia Woolf, Joyce, Zadie Smith; Vasily Grossman's Stalingrad, what writers do when they walk into a room...plus, I quote Clifton Fadiman and Henry James at far too great a length.

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William Taylor Jr. is a cataloger with PBA Galleries, a San Francisco-based auction house for rare books and ephemera; he specializes in fine literature, counterculture and poetry. He's an avid reader, and a prolific writer. His first book of fiction is included in the curriculum at select universities across the United States. In 2013 he was the recipient of an Acker Award, a tribute named after groundbreaking writer Kathy Acker given to members of the avant-garde arts communities in both New York and San Francisco who have made outstanding contributions to their discipline. We talk here about PBA Galleries, about Bill's role as a cataloguer and auctioneer, about how to sell your rare books using PBA's services; about what those services are; about commissions, first editions of Huxley's Brave New World in very good plus dust jackets (actually the item in question was in NF/NF condition), printed catalogues, Bukowski, the Beats, reasons to sell via an auction house versus eBay, and much more

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Damon Galgut is a South African novelist and playwright. He was awarded the 2021 Booker Prize for his novel The Promise and shortlisted for the prize in 2003 and 2010 right about the time I first interviewed him at his apartment in Cape Town (listen here). Damon was head boy at Pretoria Boys High School, matriculating in 1981, and then studied drama at the University of Cape Town. He wrote his first novel, A Sinless Season (1982), when he was 17. We met via Zoom to talk about his life as a writer and how he writes novels. Among other things we discuss his Parker fountain pen, Chekhov's brilliant short story 'The Kiss' (hat tip to James Wood). We also riff together off John Gardner's classic On Becoming a Novelist. Good idea to read both if you want to get the most out of our conversation.

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Biblio.com started as a price comparison engine for new and used books in 2000. Later, this price comparison engine became SearchBiblio.com famous for several years as the Internet's fastest "metasearch" site for books. In the summer of 2003 Biblio.com launched as a used books marketplace, working off a 'triple bottom line' using these goals: achieving profit, serving people, and preserving the environment. Biblio's founder, Brendan Sherar has a life-long passion and appreciation for books. A former bookstore owner, he has been involved in the transformation of the book industry from the earliest days of the Internet. He has a B.A. in economics from University of North Carolina at Asheville and is a graduate student at Georgia Institute of Technology. In his spare time, he enjoys running, soccer, hiking, playing piano, gardening, and traveling extensively. I met with Brendan via Zoom to talk about the differences between Biblio and its larger competitors, about Biblio's first ever live virtual Antiquarian Book Fair scheduled for March 24-26, 2022, about how booksellers can best increase their online sales, tips for book buyers wanting to shop online, advice on book collecting, how Biblio is working to match collectors with buyers and sellers, and much more.

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Glenn Horowitz is an agent in the sale and placement of culturally significant archives to research institutions throughout the United States. Authors, artists, musicians, designers, and photographers represented include Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, James Salter, Eve Babitz, Deborah Eisenberg, David Foster Wallace, Vladimir Nabokov, and many more. We spoke recently via Zoom about his practice: what he does and how he does it. Topics covered include polyps; making bookseller websites accessible to the disabled; looking for and selling value; Sting and estates; the disappearance of printed bookseller catalogues; the human touch; Hemingway; unique copies; avoiding book fairs and bookseller associations; nostalgia; unorthodox archives; the Kitchen Sisters; unused video games; the fact that every bookseller is now an archives dealer; Against The Tide Commentaries On A Collection Of African Americana 1711-1987; Johnny Cochran; and much more.

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John Sargent is an American book publisher; until recently he was the CEO of Macmillan Publishers USA, and Executive Vice President of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group where he oversaw global trade operations; he was also responsible for Macmillan Learning, the company’s US-based higher education business. We talk via Zoom about his career in publishing, not about libraries; about being sales reps, and doing cold calls; Columbia Business School, complex balance sheets and P & Ls; his grandfather Effendi (F.N. Doubleday); publishing great saleable books; supporting Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham; agents; movies selling books; advances; intuition and good taste; managing and motivating people and having fun; honesty; embracing and appreciating authors; sharing your enthusiasm for what you do; getting out of your silo; the unreplicable experience of reading, and producing movies in your own head; Frederick Forsyth; autobiography; self-publishing and gate keepers; hyperbole and blurbs, noise and signals; Bill O'Reilly, and more.

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Jerry Kelly is a book designer, calligrapher and type designer. Before starting his own design business in 1998 he was Vice President of The Stinehour Press. Prior to this he worked as a designer at A. Colish. Jerry's work has been honored frequently; for example, his book designs have been selected more than thirty times for the AIGA “Fifty Books of the Year” Award. In 2015 he was presented with the 28th Goudy Award from RIT.

He has served as Chairman of the American Printing History Association and President of The Typophiles, and has worked on numerous committees at The Grolier Club. He has written several books on calligraphy and typography, including The Noblest Roman: The Centaur Types (co-authored with Misha Beletsky; winner of the 2016 Bibliographical Society of America Prize) andType Revivals. His best known book is probably A Century for the Century, a catalogue of the 100 most beautiful, finely printed books produced during the twentieth century, which we refer to in our conversation, along with referencing some of the most beautiful catalogue work Jerry has done for clients including booksellers Jonathan A. Hill and Glenn Horowitz, and The Grolier Club.

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Andrew Wylie is an American literary agent. He grew up in Sudbury, Massachusetts and attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He has a degree from Harvard University where he studied Romance Languages & Literatures. Wylie founded his eponymous literary agency in New York in 1980 and opened a second office in London in 1996. The firm now represents more than 1400 authors and literary estates. We met via Zoom to discuss what he does and how he does it. We talk about, among other things, his early experience building the business, authors getting ripped off, calculating and elucidating the true value of great literary works, bound daytime television, Danielle Steel, traveling the world, late mornings and the great British publishing tradition, Roger Straus and Fuck you very much, channeling Susan Sontag, the Zen of Andy Warhol, spider plants, hollow men, advances as guarantees of good service, discovering new literature, doing what you love until you die, and much more. Andrew also sings.

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Richard Charkin is a British publishing executive. He founded Mensch Publishing in 2018. Prior to this he was Executive Director of Bloomsbury (2007 to 2018). Over the years he has held executive positions at Pergamon Press, Oxford University Press, and Reed International/Reed Elsevier. He is the former Chief Executive of Macmillan Publishers Limited and Executive Director of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck. We met via Zoom to talk about what he's learned over the past several years running Mensch, his tiny publishing firm; specifically we discuss Frankfurt, understanding assets, and measuring various publishing activities in order to save time and money. * Apologies for the poor audio. Zoom connection was abnormally poor on this one.

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Warren Kinsella is a Canadian lawyer, author, musician, political consultant, commentator and sometime painter. He has written for most of Canada's major newspapers and is currently a columnist for the Toronto Sun. He is the founder of the Daisy Consulting Group, a Toronto-based firm that engages in paid political campaign strategy work, lobbying and communications crisis management. Prior to this he played various roles in the Liberal government, including special assistant to Jean Chrétien, former Prime Minister of Canada. He has written ten books, including non-fiction on terrorism, racism, and punk rock, and a novel entitled Party Favours. We met via Zoom to discuss the political book genre. Topics of conversation included Warren's father Douglas, the types of people who write political books, motivations for writing political books, Chretien's Straight from the Heart, books written pre and post power, books on Justin Trudeau, movies that make you feel shitty, the Canada Council, prime minister biographies and autobiographies, Dick Morris's The New Prince, Marions Antiques in Brighton, Ontario, The Kinsella Diaries, and much more

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Steven Heller is an eminent American graphic designer, art director, art critic and scholar. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 books which variously trace the history of typography, illustration and other subjects related to graphic design. I talk with Steve here about Alvin Lustig an American American book designer, graphic designer and typeface designer. Some of Lustig's most innovative work was for New Directions, the independent publishing firm. For example, he designed more than seventy iconic dust jackets for the New Classics literature and other series from the mid-40s until his death in 1955. His non-literal designs exuded a modern art sensibility and incorporated a fresh approach to typeface design that defined the New Directions look. Steve and I met via Zoom to discuss Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig a book he co-wrote with Elaine Lustig Cohen, Alvin's widow. Among other things we talk about magic shows and magicians, design as sleight of hand, illusions, tactility, Frank Lloyd Wright, hot metal, Constructivism, helicopters, furniture design, Ward Ritchie, New Directions, James Laughlin, expressionistic modernism, primitive art, catholic church propagandists, soldier's ribbon bars, being close to genius, Alvin's blindness, and Steve's forthcoming memoir Growing up Underground (Princeton Architectural Press, 2022).

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Terry O'Reilly is a Canadian broadcast producer and personality best known for hosting the CBC radio/podcast programs O'Reilly on Advertising, The Age of Persuasion, and Under the Influence, which together have been downloaded more than 40 million times. His programs examine the cultural and sociological impact of advertising and marketing on modern life. His books include The Age of Persuasion, This I Know, and most recently, My Best Mistakes: Epic Fails and Silver Linings. We met via Zoom to talk about how to market a book, about knowing the reader, ideas and passions, getting to audiences, finding your readers, all-terrain advertising, social media, podcasts and platforms, communities and fans, authors' marketing activities, trivia and tidbits, free first chapters, reaching out to interviewers, discoverability, bookmarks, visiting bookstores and signing books, speeches, word-of-mouth, interacting on social media, relationships and tone, kindness, dust jacket ideas, book spines, design as narrative, elevator pitches and much more.

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Margaret Atwood is a Canadian novelist, essayist, poet, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. She has written plenty of books, many of them prize-winners. For example, she's won "two Booker Prizes (latest in 2019, co-winner, for The Testaments), the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards." Several of her works, including The Handmaid's Tale, have been adapted for the screen, big and small. I think of her as a bird. In fact that's how I introduce her - as a cross between an osprey and a magpie. She's partial to phoenixes. We talk about her book Negotiating with the Dead (recently reissued as On Writers and Writing), and about the many reasons why writers write; about writer grants and Shakespeare; appealing to audiences; and geese, totalitarianism and not telling writers what to do; about Dante and bringing stories back from the past; about illuminating the darkness; spiders and witches, compromise, and interviewers hounding authors for interviews. Plus a fair amount more.

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Hermione Lee was President of Wolfson College from 2008 to 2017 and is Emeritus Professor of English Literature in the English Faculty at Oxford University. She is a biographer and critic whose work includes biographies of Virginia Woolf (1996), Edith Wharton (2006) and Penelope Fitzgerald (2013, winner of the 2014 James Tait Black Prize for Biography and one of the New York Times best 10 books of 2014). She has also written books on Elizabeth Bowen, Philip Roth and Willa Cather, and a collection of essays on life-writing, Body Parts. In 2003 she was made a CBE and in 2013 she was made a Dame for services to literary scholarship. We met via Zoom to talk about the what, how and why of biography, and the role of the biographer. During our conversation I reference a book that Hermione wrote in 2009 called Biography: A Very Short Introduction. Topics covered include the practice of autopsy and portraiture; truth and fiction; empathy; conversation; selection and shaping; gossip, privacy and intrusion; the multiplicity of selves and identities; 'definitive' lives; vivid details; anecdotes; obsessional commitment, and detachment; Freud and psychoanalysis; unknowns and gaps; objectivity; Richard Holmes's memoir Footsteps; and Virginia Woolf.

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"After working in computer systems analysis for a decade, John Burnside became a full-time writer in 1994. John has published 14 books of poetry, and has won the Geoffrey Faber Prize, the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Petrarca Preis and, most recently, the Forward and T.S. Eliot Prizes for his poetry. He has also published eight novels and a memoir. He is Professor of English at the University of St Andrews."

We met to talk about the what, how and why of poetry as described in his book of criticism The Music of Time. Topics discussed include poetry making nothing happen, poetry making lots happen, paying attention, listening, lightening rods, the sound of the earth, everyday life, elitism, the questions that dog humans, the human name not meaning shit to a tree, connections, LSD and the continuum, dams, killing lawyers, understanding systems and not understanding them, Facebook, the "n" word, compost heaps, Leopardi, Montale, and more...

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Jaleen Grove is a Canadian artist and art historian whose area of focus is the history of illustration in the US and Canada. She teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design, has written monographs on illustrators Oscar Cahén and Walter Haskell Hinton and has served as associate editor for the Journal of Illustration.

She is associate editor of the 592-page History of Illustration (Bloomsbury, 2018), and author of a chapter in it entitled 'Avant Garde Illustration 1900-1950'which is the topic of our conversation here, one that incorporates modernism, livres d'artiste, Cubism, Bauhaus; the importance of collecting, preserving and studying ephemera, and more.

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Daniel Mendelsohn "is an internationally bestselling author, critic, essayist, and translator. Born in New York City in 1960, he received degrees in Classics from the University of Virginia and Princeton. After completing his Ph.D. he moved to New York City, where he began freelance writing full time; since 1991 he has been a prolific contributor of essays, reviews, and articles to many publications, most frequently The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books."

We met via Zoom to discuss the role of the literary critic and how Daniel performs it. We talk about who he is {okay, just part of who he is), what he does, how he does it, and why it's important; about how the critic, by looking behind our reactions, helps us to better understand and appreciate the meaning and significance of a work of art; about critics expressing the intangible and ineffable; the distinction between criticism and opinion; criticism as a service industry; disagreeing with critics; criticism as metaphor; criticism as storytelling; communities of intelligent people; and how really mind-blowing it is that we're all kicking stones around here on a planet that's spinning at some incredible speed moving through a gigantic space that seems devoid of meaning, and we don't know why. Which is why, of course, narrative is so important. It stops us from being scared shitless all of the time. Criticism helps us to figure out how narrative does this. This, and much more.

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Fifteen years ago I interviewed Michael Cader at Book Expo in Toronto. The advice he had for publishers at the time remains remarkably fresh and valuable. Michael is the founder of Publisher's Lunch, the largest book publishing industry publication in the world. Each day it's e-mailed out to more than 45,000 people.

We talk about process, and transparency, extras, the role of a creative person, finding audiences while you're alive, the satisfaction of engaging with an audience, bringing work to the public, enabling public discussion, and more.

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William (Bill) Matthews has been dealing in old & rare books, manuscripts, maps and related material since 1976. He began working for a bookshop in Saskatoon, then opened his own in Vancouver in 1976, and subsequently moved to Toronto in 1980. He was in Ontario until 1996 when he moved to San Francisco / Berkeley and was part of Peter Howard's Serendipity Books for a few years. He's now the proud owner of The Haunted Bookshop, a bricks and mortar shop in Sydney, B.C. just north of Victoria. We met in the shop to talk about Bill's career in the used book business, about young collectors; Odean Long, previous long-time owner of The Haunted Bookshop; pseudonymously and anonymously authored books; scouting trips, Acres of Books in Cincinnati, little book fairs, book scouts Martin Stone and David Sachs, Driff's Guide to All the Second-hand and Antiquarian Bookshops in Britain, fantasy fiction, booksellers Peter Howard and Bill Hoffer, the great Winnipeg book sale, Maurice Sendak, and much more. After our conversation Bill and I chatted a bit about Saskatoon, where the two of us had grown up, discovering that we'd both gone to the same high school, at the same time - in the same grade. Bill later produced the yearbook to prove it. Apologies in advance for the poor audio quality (something about soft-spoken booksellers and the acoustics of used bookstores).

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Don Stewart is the proprietor of MacLeod’s Books at 455 West Pender Street in downtown Vancouver, a shop famed for its magnificent piles of books, wide selection and narrow aisles. Stewart bought MacLeod's Books in 1973 from Van Andruss who'd bought it from Don MacLeod a few years after it opened in 1964. He moved the business into larger premises in 1981 only to see the place burn down the next year - so he had to start again from scratch.
Ironically, for the past ten years he's had to contend with Vancouver Fire Department regulations in order just to keep his doors open. Instructed to reduce the number of books in his shop, his only options have been to stuff things in storage and sell as much as he can. Recent zealousness exhibited by the VFD may well be connected in part to the rapaciousness of area developers. Contrary to current rumours the shop will not be closing. I met with Don in the stacks of his shop to talk about his career in bookselling, about homelessness, British Columbia as rich terrain for all manner of book culture, legendary West Coast booksellers Stephen McIntyre and Bill Hoffer, socialism, and anarchy, among other things.

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Dr Falk Eisermann is head of the Incunabula Division at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and is considered a world expert in the field. He also heads the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (Union catalogue of incunabula), GW for short. Founded in 1904 it's objective is to list all 15th-century items printed from movable type. Today the job is reportedly about fifty percent complete. Lots of work remains.

I met with Falk in his green-carpeted office at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin to talk about his role as a rare books librarian, about incunabula, and about his quest to find and catalogue it all.

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Dan Morgan is the proprietor of an antiquarian bookstore in Prague 6 that replicates the feel and function of a living room. Back in the 1990s Dan was invited by his future wife to visit Prague. He never left. In 2008 he 'got into' books thanks to a woman who sold them in his neighbourhood and who introduced him to Czech modernism and Samizdat. Coming full circle, by good fortune he was able recently to buy the entire stock of her original bookstore. I met with Dan at his shop. We talk about the cultural evenings he hosts, about the unheard stories that people tell of Prague's past; the important role Cubism played in moving Czech book design from Art Nouveau to Modernism; book designers Josef Casek, Ladislav Sutnar and Jaroslav Svab; the huge influence of renaissance man Karel Teige ('Captain of the Avant-Garde') and his ABC book; Jindřich Toman's amazing monographs on Czech modernist book design, notably the one on photo montage; Toyen; visually striking books; a collector's intuition; and the quality, but inexpensive, books produced by state-run publishing house Dru stevní Práce.

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Library exhibition catalogues, just like Bookseller catalogues, constitute a damned fine collecting area if you ask me. Beautiful, informative, and cheap - especially when you consider how much money and time, care and attention goes into producing them - they're well worth acquiring, despite not being particularly rare. What better service can I provide the collector to get a grip on this under-appreciated field than to talk to someone who evaluates them if not exactly for a full-time living, then certainly for a good time? Emma Sarconi is a librarian and book historian who seeks "to facilitate conversations around the impact of special collections in our lives by providing quality reference services, instruction design, project management and event planning." She currently works as the Reference Professional for Special Collections in Firestone Library at Princeton University, and chairs the RBMS Leab Exhibition Awards Committee. The Leab Awards are given annually in recognition of excellence in the publication of catalogues and brochures that accompany exhibitions of library and archival materials. They are administered by the Exhibition Awards Committee of the ALA/ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS), whose operating expenses are covered by a generous endowment from Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab, editors of American Book Prices Current. I spoke with Emma via Zoom about the criteria used by the committee to judge the catalogues.

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Jordi Nadal was born in Barcelona in 1962 and holds a degree in Germanic Studies from the University of Barcelona. In 1998 he took the Stanford Professional Publishing Course and then began his career at Vicens Vives, later moving to Herder (Germany). He has been director of EDHASA, editorial and publications director of Círculo de Lectores, consultant at Random House in New York, general director of corporate development for Spain and America at Grupo Plaza & Janés and assistant director at Ediciones Paidós, as well as Deputy General Manager at Planeta Agostini Profesional and Formación. In 2007 he founded Plataforma Editorial. He is the co-author of Meditating Management… and Life (Plataforma Editorial, 2012) and author of, among other books, Libroterapia (Plataforma Editorial, 2017, 2020) and The Invention of the Bicycle (Plataforma Editorial, 2020). We met via Zoom to discuss his book Book Therapy: Reading Is Life (Mensch Publishing, 2021). Our conversation covers, among other things: how actions and inactions characterize reading; whether or not reading 'betters' a person; Camus and being kind to others in an unhappy world; why we're motivated to share treasures and enthusiasms with friends, and how reading and writing is so very human. It's a lively, colourful encounter with a passionate reader, writer, publisher and white-shirt enthusiast.

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For years Paul Delaney was professor of English at the University of Moncton; prior to this he taught at various institutions in London, England. During his lifetime he has had an ongoing interest in Acadian genealogy, a topic upon which he continues to publish and conduct research.

His biography of Charles de Sousy Ricketts (1866-1931), published in 1990, was the first major study of a man whose "spirited career encompassed many aspects of late Victorian and Edwardian culture," including fine press book design and production, stage design, typography, painting, sculpture, art criticism, and art collecting. Friends included W.B. Yeats, Thomas Moore, A. E.Housman, Oscar Wilde and many other luminaries of the period.

Drawing upon a wide range of material, much of it unpublished and/or newly discovered at the time, Delaney "reveals a man of strong opinions and artistic convictions"who despite a fierce opposition to Post Impressionism and Modernism, was noted for his love and deep knowledge of art, as well as his wit,conviviality, generosity and artisticversatility.Delaney's biography illuminates cultural and artistic life in England during the 1890s and early decades of the 20th century, and provides a detailed portrait of one of the period's great personalities.

Ricketts, during his lifetime, established a reputation as a great art connoisseur. In 1915he turned down an offer to become director of the National Gallery, a decision he later regretted. He did however serve"disastrously" as adviser to the National Gallery of Canada from 1924 until his death in 1931. He also wrote three books of art criticism, two volumes of short stories and a memoir of Oscar Wilde. Selections from his letters and diaries werepublished posthumously.

I met with Paul Delaney at his home in Moncton, New Brunswick, where we talked about, among other things, his nom de plume (J. G. P. Delaney), about Ricketts of course, and his adventurous mother; about Ricketts' long time companion artist Charles Shannon; about publisher and editor Rupert Hart Davis, and about Paul's experience writing the biography of artist Glyn Philpot.

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For years Paul Delaney was professor of English at the University of Moncton; prior to this he taught at various institutions in London, England. During his lifetime he has had an ongoing interest in Acadian genealogy, a topic upon which he continues to publish and conduct research. His biography of Charles de Sousy Ricketts (1866-1931), published in 1990, was the first major study of a man whose "spirited career encompassed many aspects of late Victorian and Edwardian culture," including fine press book design and production, stage design, typography, painting, sculpture, art criticism, and art collecting. Friends included W.B. Yeats, Thomas Moore, A. E. Housman, Oscar Wilde and many other luminaries of the period. Drawing upon a wide range of material, much of it unpublished and/or newly discovered at the time, Delaney "reveals a man of strong opinions and artistic convictions" who despite a fierce opposition to Post Impressionism and Modernism, was noted for his love and deep knowledge of art, as well as his wit, conviviality, generosity and artistic versatility. Delaney's biography illuminates cultural and artistic life in England during the 1890s and early decades of the 20th century, and provides a detailed portrait of one of the period's great personalities. Ricketts, during his lifetime, established a reputation as a great art connoisseur. In 1915 he turned down an offer to become director of the National Gallery, a decision he later regretted. He did however serve "disastrously" as adviser to the National Gallery of Canada from 1924 until his death in 1931. He also wrote three books of art criticism, two volumes of short stories and a memoir of Oscar Wilde. Selections from his letters and diaries were published posthumously. I met with Paul Delaney at his home in Moncton, New Brunswick, where we talked about, among other things, his nom de plume (J. G. P. Delaney), about Ricketts of course, and his adventurous mother; about Ricketts' long time companion artist Charles Shannon; about publisher and editor Rupert Hart Davis, and about Paul's experience writing the biography of artist Glyn Philpot.

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Andrew Coyne needs little introduction to Canadian audiences. He writes a weekly column for the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper and is a member of the At Issue panel on CBC TV's The National newscast. He has previously been national editor of Maclean's magazine and a columnist for the National Post newspaper.

James Elliott Coyne (1910-2012) was a scholar, lawyer, public servant, family man, and "practicing eccentric." A Rhodes scholar, and captain of the Oxford University hockey team, he practiced law with his father in Winnipeg during the 1930s before joining the Bank of Canada's research bureau in 1938. He became deputy governor in 1950, and governor in 1955, succeeding Graham Towers. During his tenure he was embroiled in a much publicized conflict with Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, known as the Coyne Affair, which led to his resignation and a clarification in the role required of the governor of the Bank of Canada.

I met with Andrew Coyne via Zoom to discuss his extraordinary father. Our conversation includes a response to my assertion that understanding James Coyne requires an appreciation of how deeply he felt about Canadian independence, and economic nationalism.

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Andrew Coyne needs little introduction to Canadian audiences. He writes a weekly column for the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper and is a member of the At Issue panel on CBC TV's The National newscast. He has previously been national editor of Maclean's magazine and a columnist for the National Post newspaper. James Elliott Coyne (1910-2012) was a scholar, lawyer, public servant, family man, and "practicing eccentric." A Rhodes scholar, and captain of the Oxford University hockey team, he practiced law with his father in Winnipeg during the 1930s before joining the Bank of Canada's research bureau in 1938. He became deputy governor in 1950, and governor in 1955, succeeding Graham Towers. During his tenure he was embroiled in a much publicized conflict with Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, known as the Coyne Affair, which led to his resignation and a clarification in the role required of the governor of the Bank of Canada. I met with Andrew Coyne via Zoom to discuss his extraordinary father. Our conversation includes a response to my assertion that understanding James Coyne requires an appreciation of how deeply he felt about Canadian independence, and economic nationalism.

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Canada has an impressive tradition of producing great printer/trade-publishers. Three of our best are Stan Bevington, Tim Inkster, and Andrew Steeves. Ancient interviews with all three can be found here on The Biblio File website.

The one with Andrew took place a dozen years ago, so I figured it was time to clock another. I drove down to Kentville, Nova Scotia last month, where Andrew lives and works, and sat down with him again, just inside the place where the wall cordoning off his office used to sit (it came down about a decade ago). Andrew bills himself as a writer, editor, typographer, letterpress printer and literary publisher. I know him as the co-founder (with Gary Dunfield) of Gaspereau Press. Over the past two decades he's won more than 50 citations for excellence in book design from Canada's Alcuin Society. His essay collection Smoke Proofs: Essays on Literary Publishing, Printing and Typography appeared in 2014.

We talk here mostly about the specifics of book design and how Andrew makes books that very beautifully and aptly express their contents; plus "best" title selection, pilcrows, and the importance in life of paying attention.

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Canada has an impressive tradition of producing great printer- publishers. Three of our best are Stan Bevington, Tim Inkster, and Andrew Steeves. Ancient interviews with all three can be found here on The Biblio File website. The one with Andrew took place a dozen years ago so I figured it was time to clock another. I drove down to Kentville, Nova Scotia last month, where Andrew lives and works, and sat down with him again right next to the place where the wall cordoning off his office used to sit (it came down about a decade ago), inches away from where our previous talk too place. Andrew bills himself as a writer, editor, typographer, letterpress printer and literary publisher. Over the past two decades he's won more than 50 citations for excellence in book design from Canada's Alcuin Society. His essay collection Smoke Proofs: Essays on Literary Publishing, Printing and Typography appeared in 2014. We talk here mostly about the specifics of book design and how Andrew makes books that very beautifully and aptly express their contents; we also discuss the challenge of selecting titles; the use pilcrows, the importance in life of paying attention, and much more.

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Michele K. Troy is professor of English at Hillyer College at the University of Hartford. She studies Anglo-American literary modernism in continental Europe and is the author of Strange Bird: The Albatross Press and the Third Reich, the first book to be written about the Albatross Press, a Penguin precursor, that entered into an uneasy relationship with the Nazi regime to keep Anglo-American literature alive under fascism. The press was, from its beginnings in 1932, a “strange bird”: a cultural outsider to the Third Reich but an economic insider. It was funded by British-Jewish interests. Its director was rumored to work for British intelligence. It distributed fiction in English by both mainstream and edgier modernist authors such as D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway to eager continental readers. Yet Albatross printed and sold its paperbacks from the heart of Hitler’s Reich.

Michele and I talk about how weird this is, among other things.

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Since 1972, Dr. Steven Lomazow has been building a collection of important American periodicals; it's now considered to be the most extensive in private hands.

"The Steven Lomazow Collection of American Periodicals has been curated for the purpose of demonstrating the role of magazines as a reflection of all aspects American popular culture from pre-revolutionary times to the present day."

Highlights of the collection were featured in an exhibition at The Grolier Club in New York this Spring called Magazines and the American Experience. A celebration of this vitally important American medium, the exhibition illustrated, among other things, how magazines fostered the development of distinct communities of Americans by creating networks of communication. The accompanying catalogue expands upon the exhibition with a series of essays by leading media historians. It's enhanced by more than four hundred illustrations.

Steven has been a consultant to the Newseum in Washington, D.C and is presently a member of the American Antiquarian Society. He is a board-certified neurologist with a practice in Belleville, New Jersey.

We met via Zoom to discuss why collecting magazines is so pleasurable, American magazines in particular. The discussion references Vogue, Life, Look, Harper's, Leslie's, Hearst's and many more iconic publications.

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On this episode of The Biblio File Book Club Heather O'Neill and I discuss one of her favourite novels, Agota Kristof's The Notebook.

This dark, fractured fairy tale of a story, told in simple, striking, visual language, describes the devastating impact of war on children and their families. Set in an unknown country during wartime it follows the lives of twin boys coping with life after they've been left by their mother to live with their dirty old grandmother. A dangerous weirdness ensues.

We met at Le Figaro, a popular restaurant located in the Plateau neighbourhood of Montreal to talk about this disturbing, memorable work.

Heather is a Canadian novelist, poet, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist, who published her debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, in 2006. It won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the 2007 Canada Reads Competition. Other novels include The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and The Lonely Hearts Hotel. Her latest, When We Lost Our Heads, will be available on Feb. 1, 2022.

Listen to the two of us as we compete for your attention with birds, trucks, screaming babies, and a tree full of cicadas.

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Aimee Peake has been active in the antiquarian book business in Winnipeg for more than 20 years. She got her start as an apprentice to Michael Park, proprietor Greenfield Books. In 2000 she took over as manager of the newly-opened Bison Books, assuming sole proprietorship in 2010. In 2018 she purchased Greenfield and amalgamated it with Bison.

You'll usually find Aimee in her bookshop on weekdays attending to customer needs and working on acquisitions, collections development and appraisals. Over the years she has exhibited books at fairs throughout North America, and in 2018 she participated in the ILAB Congress in Pasadena.

Aimee is President of the Winnipeg Association of Secondhand Bookstores, and a board member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of Canada.

In addition to her work with Bison Books she also manages Dominion Auctions, a long-established Winnipeg-based art and antique auction house

I visited her at her shop in downtown Winnipeg last month to find out what it was like to sell antiquarian books on the Prairies.

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Jack David launched the publishing house ECW in 1974 as the journal Essays on Canadian Writing - from which came the E, the C, and the W. For the next ten years the company focused on scholarly projects and occasionally dabbled in more accessible trade books and biographies. The breakthrough came when it decided in the early 90s to publish books about non-literary folk, the key title being a biography of country singer k.d. lang. The book broke out in the American market and illustrated to ECW that it could be successful publishing trade titles with universal appeal. ECW has followed this literary/commercial path ever since.
"I love to be surprised," says Jack, "and I love to find myself reading something that I would never pick up in a bookstore (if any remain). In fact, I enjoy reading unsolicited proposals; I live in hope. I sometimes find myself reading a line or a passage to anyone who happens to be within earshot. I do this spontaneously because I like to share what I’m enjoying; and then I observe myself and register the fact that I want others to take pleasure in what I’m reading. That’s the impetus for signing up a book." Ken Whyte knows magazine and newspaper publishing. He was editor-in-chief of Saturday Night Magazine, founding editor-in-chief of the National Post newspaper, editor-in-chief and publisher at Maclean's Magazine, and President of Rogers Publishing Company.

He's an accomplished author having written The Uncrowned King: the Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst, a Washington Post, LA Times, and Globe & Mail book of the year; a groundbreaking biography of Herbert Hoover; and most recently, The Sack of Detroit: General Motors and the End of American Enterprise, a book which is currently creating quite a stir across North America.

Additional interesting things about Ken: he's chairman of the board of the Donner Canada Foundation, one of Canada's leading philanthropic organizations. He sits on the board of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the National NewsMedia Council, the Digital Policy Forum, and the Frontier Institute. He is a member of the advisory committee of the Cundill Prize, the world's richest prize for historical non-fiction, and a governor of the Aurea Foundation, which funds public policy research in Canada.

Several years ago he launched Sutherland House Books, a publishing house based in Toronto, Canada which has world dominating aspirations, plus he writes Shush, a weekly newsletter on the publishing business. I invited these two gentlemen to join me for a Zoom conversation about Canadian book publishing and the lessons it might offer the world.

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Dr. Stephen Enniss is Director of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He has held previous appointments at the Folger Shakespeare Library and at Emory University’s Rare Book Library. His research interests are in 20th century poetry, and he has written on Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and Seamus Heaney, among others. He is the author of After the Titanic: A Life of Derek Mahon (Gill and Macmillan, 2014).

The Harry Ransom Center is one of the great rare book libraries of the world. Not only does it possess many of the greatest books and manuscripts ever written, it also has an outstanding record of promoting and exhibiting them, and making them available to researchers and the public.

I invited Stephen to participate with me, and a group of Canadian book collectors I've recently helped assemble (working title for the club: Bibliophiles North), in a discussion about how collectors can best go about establishing relationships with rare book libraries in hopes of selling or donating their collections

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Meghan Constantinou has been Head Librarian at The Grolier Club since 2011 and a Club member since 2013. Her research interests include the history of private collecting, women’s book ownership, and provenance studies. The Club Library collects, preserves, and makes accessible materials dedicated to the history and art of the book. Strengths of its collection include bibliographies, histories of printing and graphic processes, type specimens, fine and historic examples of printing, bookbinding, illustration, and, in particular, the literature of antiquarian book collecting and the book trade. I spoke with Meghan via Zoom about the Grolier's collection of private library catalogues, and asked her for advice, based on her lengthy study of the topic, on how collectors might best go about producing their own catalogues.

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One of the best ways to become a successful, fulfilled antiquarian bookseller is to establish close, long-lasting relationships with enthusiastic, committed, ideally well-heeled, collectors. Justin Schiller is a pioneer in the field of rare, collectible children's books. During his career he has developed extraordinary bonds with many passionate book lovers. His efforts over the years with several of them have resulted in some of the world's best known children's book collections. We talk about how he and these treasured customers scaled mountains together.

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Walter Lockhart Gordon (1906 – 1987) was a Canadian accountant, businessman, politician, and economic nationalist. Born in Toronto, he was educated at Upper Canada College and the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. Upon graduation he joined the family accounting firm of Clarkson, Gordon and Company. During World War II he served in the Bank of Canada and the federal Ministry of Finance. In 1946, he chaired the Royal Commission on Administrative Classifications in the Public Service. From 1955 to 1957 he chaired the Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects. The Commission's reports expressed concern about growing foreign ownership in the Canadian economy, particularly in the resource sector, and made recommendations to redress the problem. These were revisited by Gordon during his government career, notably in his poorly received budget of 1963. Gordon was Minister of Finance from 1963 to 1965 during Lester Pearson's first minority government. He quit in 1965, returned, and left for good in 1968. During his time in office he was responsible for the introduction of some of Canada's most important social programs. After leaving politics he returned to business but continued to argue, successfully, for economic nationalist causes. He published his political memoirs in 1977 and died in 1987. Stephen Azzi is one of the original core faculty members of the Clayton H. Riddell Graduate Program in Political Management at Carleton University. Prior to academia he worked as aide to four different members of Parliament. From 2005 to 2011 he was associate professor at Laurentian University where he taught US history and foreign policy. At Carleton he has taught in the Political Management program, the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, the School of Canadian Studies, and the Departments of History, and Political Science. His research specialties are prime ministerial leadership in Canada, Canada–US relations, and Canadian economic and cultural nationalism. We met via Zoom, to talk Gordon, and to riff off Steve's book Walter Gordon and the Rise of Canadian Nationalism (MQUP, 1999)

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Don Lindgren established Rabelais Books in 2006. The bookshop now operates out of Biddeford, Maine and specializes in Artists’ Books, Cocktails, Cookbooks, Farm and Garden, Gastronomy, History of Food, Rare Periodicals, and Wine.

We met years ago when I sought him out in Portland to talk about collecting cookbooks (Listen here). As we parted Don handed me a copy of his first Rabelais catalogue with the big salami on its cover. I've been intrigued with them (bookseller catalogues) ever since. Don has a sizeable collection, and whenever we get together we talk about them. Several months ago we decided to make it formal by devoting an episode of The Biblio File podcast to discussing the design and content of these great and various sales vehicles. I reached out to several booksellers, including Simon Beattie, Heather O'Donnell, Jonathan Hill, Glenn Horowitz, Mark Funke, Biblioctopus and Brian Cassidy, all of whom kindly send me examples of their outstanding work. Then Don and I got down to business.

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According to his website, "In 1995, Bruce Batchelor rocked the publishing industry when he invented print-on-demand (POD) publishing and triggered a landslide of new books from every country in the world."

Did he invent it? You'll have to listen to the podcast to find out.

Since 1995, more than 1,000,000 writers, says Bruce, "have seized the opportunity to be published through services such as Agio (his small publishing consultancy firm), Author Services, Kindle Direct Publishing and many other publishing houses."

Bruce was CEO of Trafford Publishing for11 years, and is now owner/publisher at Agio Publishing House in Victoria, BC, Canada. He's a "bestselling" author and management consultant, and speaks at various writer and academic conferences.

We talk here about the explosion in self-publishing that occurred during the 1990s, and the role that he and Trafford Publishing played in it.

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"Ursula Nordstrom (1910 - 1988) was publisher and editor-in-chief of juvenile books at Harper & Row from 1940 to 1973. She is credited with presiding over a transformation in children's literature in which morality tales written for adult approval gave way to works that instead appealed to children's imaginations and emotions." She authored the 1960 children's book The Secret Language, and a collection of her correspondence, edited by Leonard Marcus, entitled Dear Genius: the Letters of Ursula Nordstrom was published in 1998. Harper's received three Newbery Medals and two Caldecott Medals during Nordstom's tenure. She edited some of the milestones of children's literature, including E. B. White's Stuart Little (1945) and Charlotte's Web (1952), Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon (1947), Crockett Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955), and Syd Hoff's Danny and the Dinosaur (1958). Other authors she edited included Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ruth Krauss, and Charlotte Zolotow. I talk to Leonard Marcus about everything Ursula. Photo credit: Sonya Sones.

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Marion Sinclair has been Chief Executive of Publishing Scotland since 2008, with responsibility for program management, funding bids, policy, the International Publishing Fellowship program, publishing practice issues and reporting to Creative Scotland. She has worked in the book publishing sector for more than 30 years, at Polygon from 1988-97 (awarded Sunday Times UK Small Publisher of the Year in 1993) then as a university lecturer in publishing, before joining PS in 2003. Marion is also a board member of the Gaelic Books Council (ex-officio), of the book distributor BookSource, and Literature Alliance Scotland, she's also a committee member of the Sabhal Mor Ostaig Library Advisory Group, and Saltire Society Publisher of the Year panel. We met via Zoom to talk about what Publishing Scotland does to help Scottish publishers. Towards the end of our conversation I try to wheedle some advice out of Marion for Canada.

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Conrad Black - in full, Conrad Moffat Black, Lord Black of Crossharbour - was born in 1944, in Montreal. He is an author, columnist, historian, and businessman who built the third largest newspaper group in the world during the 1980s and 1990s. At its height the organization controlled nearly 250 newspapers including the London Daily Telegraph, the Fairfax Group in Australia, The Jerusalem Post, Southam Press in Canada, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Black studied history and political science at Carleton University in Ottawa, earned a law degree from Laval University in 1970, and a Masters degree in history from McGill University in 1973. For his thesis he wrote a biography of former Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis; published in 1977, it came to be considered a definitive work. He entered the newspaper business in 1967 as part owner of two small Quebec weeklies, on the way to establishing his media empire. He currently lives in Toronto with his wife Barbara Amiel. We met via Zoom to talk about his various book and model ship collections, Napoleon, Roosevelt, his collecting habits, and his long-term fulfilling relationship with books. First off however he vigorously defends himself against charges that were successfully levelled against him by U.S. federal prosecutors in the mid-2000s.

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John Brookshire Thompson is a British sociologist, a professor at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Jesus College. His work over the past two decades has focused particularly on the publishing industry. Books in the Digital Age: The Transformation of Academic and Higher Education Publishing in Britain and the United States (Polity, 2005) presents an analysis of higher education publishing from 1980 to 2005. Much of the analysis is based on industry interviews made on condition of anonymity. His Merchants of Culture (Polity, 2009) covers in a similar way, the entire publishing and bookselling industry from the 1960s to 2008. We talk here about his latest book Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing (Polity, 2021) which tells the story of book publishing's wild ride over the past decade - the surge of e-books, the self-publishing explosion and the growing popularity of audiobooks - plus successful and failed attempts to create new businesses in this space. It's a comprehensive, dense (in a good way) human read; and, if you love books as I do, an extremely entertaining way to spend 15 hours or so.

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Ruth Panofsky is Professor of English at Ryerson University in Toronto. She is a leading scholar of the history of publishing and authorship in Canada and Canadian Jewish literature, an award-winning poet and a Fellow of the Royal Society. We met via Zoom to discuss her most recent book Toronto Trailblazers: Women in Canadian Publishing (2019, U of T Press) which explores the influence of seven women who helped advance a modern literary culture in Canada.

"Publisher Irene Clarke, scholarly editors Eleanor Harman and Francess Halpenny, trade editors Sybil Hutchinson, Claire Pratt, and Anna Porter, and literary agent Bella Pomer made the most of their vocational prospects, first by securing their respective positions and then by refining their professional methods. Individually, each woman asserted her agency by adapting orthodox ways of working within Canadian publishing. Collectively, their overarching approach emerged as a feminist practice. Through their vision and method these trailblazing women disrupted the dominant masculine paradigm and helped transform publishing practice in Canada." We talk about writing these women back into the history of Canadian publishing, and end off with a look at the challenges that face Canada's current book publishing industry.

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Dwight Garner is an American journalist and a longtime writer and editor for the New York Times. In 2008, he was named a book critic for the newspaper. Garner's previous post at The New York Times was as senior editor of The New York Times Book Review, where he worked from 1999 to 2008. He was a founding editor of Salon.com where he worked from 1995 to 1998.

Garner now lives, or will shortly live, in New Orleans. He is married to Cree LeFavour, author of the memoir Lights On, Rats Out and several acclaimed cookbooks. His most recent book is called Garner's Quotations: A Modern Miscellany. We met via Zoom to talk about his book Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements.

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Mark Samuels Lasner is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Delaware Library, and one of the world's great book collectors.

The Mark Samuels Lasner Collection focuses on British literature and art from 1850 to 1900, with an emphasis on the Pre-Raphaelites and writers and illustrators of the 1890s. It comprises more than 9,500 books, letters, manuscripts, photographs, ephemera, and artworks, including many items signed by such figures as Oscar Wilde, George Eliot, Max Beerbohm, William Morris, Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Aubrey Beardsley.

In 2016 Mark donated his collection, worth more than $10 million, to the University of Delaware. It's the largest and most valuable gift in the Library’s history.

We connected via Zoom to talk about Mark's childhood and his incipient interest in England and the late Victorian period, his early book collecting - the how and why of it - the extraordinarily talented and well dressed essayist, caricaturist, and critic Max Beerbohm; fun, friendships, favourite booksellers, fashion and much more.

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David Frum is a Canadian-American political commentator and a senior editor at The Atlantic. He is the author of ten books, most recently TRUMPOCALYPSE: Restoring American Democracy (HarperCollins, 2020). His first book, Dead Right, won praise from William F. Buckley as “the most refreshing intellectual experience in a generation” and from Frank Rich in the New York Times as “the smartest book written from the inside about the American conservative movement.”

He is a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, and authored the first book about Bush's presidency written by a former member of the administration.

As a young man he was enamored with C.S. Forester's Hornblower stories. Together we examined two of them for The Biblio File Book Club. Listen as we talk about rice, morals, codes, lying, punishment, being true to yourself, normal lives, leadership, and the Mafia, among other things.

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Odette Drapeau is a leader, educator and innovator in the practice of fine bookbinding. She founded her bookbinding workshop The Headband in Montreal in 1979.

For more than 50 years she has refined her work though the innovative use of materials including fish leathers, high-tech fibres and LED lights. Through her creative use of stunning textures and colours she has achieved a level of excellence that has been widely heralded, including, most recently by The Alcuin Society which bestowed its Robert R. Reid Award for lifetime achievement in the book arts in Canada upon her. Odette is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art, and was head of the Association of Quebec Bookbinders between 1988-91. She has exhibited at solo and group shows more than fifty times at venues in Europe, Canada and the United States.

We talk here about her long, accomplished career, her thoughts about "the book," and her work philosophy.

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Only seventeen women have won the Nobel Prize for Literature since it started in 1901. That's 17 out of 119 winners. In order to rectify this imbalance, an important new prize has been established. The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction is "the first English-language literary award to celebrate creativity and excellence in fiction by women writers in the United States and Canada."

I wanted to learn more about Carol Shields, so I read Startle and Illuminate, Carol Shields on Writing and interviewed one of its editors, Anne Giardini, who also happens to be Carol's daughter in addition to being a writer, and Chancellor of Simon Fraser University.

Startle and Illuminate is culled from decades worth of Carol's correspondence, essays, notes, comments, criticism and lectures, and drawn together by Anne and her son Nicholas.

Anne and I talk here about, among other things, Carol's thoughts and advice on the craft of writing; redemption; Carol's voice on the page and in the air; the existence of ordinary, boring people; the invisibility of women's lives; group courage; rootedness; and candles matching housecoats.

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Dan Mozersky enjoyed a long and fruitful career in Canada's retail book industry. As a founding member of Indigo Books & Music's executive team he was instrumental in turning the company's vision into reality.

During the 1990s he served as manager of U.S. Operations for Classic Books in New York. Prior to this he founded and owned a chain of retail bookstores in Ottawa and Montreal.

Active in the Canadian Booksellers Association (CBA), he served as director, vice president, and chair of various industry committees. In 1985 he was recognized by the Canadian Book Publishers' Professional Association as bookseller of the year.

We talk here in Part ll of our conversation about Dan's work with the CBA, and how he helped establish Indigo Books, Canada's largest chain of big box bookstores.

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Bill Waiser is a western Canadian historian. He has published more than a dozen books– many of them prize-winning. A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905, for example, won the 2016 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction.

Bill has been appointed to the Order of Canada, awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, named a distinguished university professor, and granted a D.Litt. He was the 2018 recipient of the Royal Society of Canada J.B. Tyrrell medal, presented for “outstanding work” in Canadian history, as well as the 2018 Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media: The Pierre Berton Award.

We talk about his most recent book In Search of Almighty Voice,
Resistance and Reconciliation (Fifth House, 2020), about the life of Almighty Voice - a member of the One Arrow Willow Cree who died violently at the hands of Canada's North-West Mounted Police in 1897 - and how his violent death spawned a succession of conflicting stories — in newspapers, magazines, pulp fiction, plays and film; about how history is written and re-written, and why an 'accurate' depiction of the life and death of Almighty Voice matters.

Clarification: According to Statscan indigenous people make up 4.9% of Canada's population, 16.3% of Saskatchewan's population.

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Matt Dorfman is an internationally recognized designer and illustrator. He is the art director of the New York Times Book Review and former art director of the New York Times Op-Ed page. Additionally, he maintains a one-person office specializing in work for publishers, film, theater and various cultural institutions. I talked with Matt recently about his selection of the best book covers of 2020 for the New York Times Book Review - dissecting his decision-making process and judgement calls. Among other things we discuss the differences between designing the book review and op-ed sections, the delays between creating a jacket design and it appearing in public, dust jackets capturing zeitgeists, the tension between commerce and art, the power of jealousy, gateway drugs John Gall, David Pearson, and Roy Kuhlman, being haunted by Barbara de Wilde, Carin Goldberg, and Louise Fili, collecting dust jackets, how much our wives hate books, and visual literacy.

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Novelist, screenwriter and essayist Larry McMurtry is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 novel Lonesome Dove, a sweeping historical epic that follows ex-Texas Rangers as they drive cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana. (Update: Larry died yesterday, March 25, 2021).

He grew up on a ranch outside of Archer City, Texas, which is the model for his fictional town of Thalia. A book collector, McMurtry purchased a rare book store in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighbourhood in 1970 and named it Booked Up. In 1988 he opened a second Booked Up in Archer City, establishing the town as a "Book City." This store is arguably the largest single used bookstore in the United States, carrying somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000 titles.

McMurtry is well-known for the film adaptations of his work, especially Hud (from the novel Horseman, Pass By), The Last Picture Show; James L. Brooks’s Terms of Endearment, and Lonesome Dove, which became an enormously popular television mini-series. In 2006, he was co-winner (with Diana Ossana) of both the Best Screenplay Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Brokeback Mountain.

I interviewed him ( in 2008) as part of a project I was working on for the Canadian Booksellers Association. We talk about his latest, Books: A Memoir, his life as a book rancher, having the right books, junk, the fun of the hunt, book-scouting, catalogues, bookstores and cultural vitality, keeping stock fresh, burning out on fiction and movies, the declining number of used book stores, and optimism for the future.

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We met via Zoom (as I'm sure you'll be able to tell) to talk more about his article 'What is the Business of Literature?', about where publishing has been, technology and "the shock of the old," repurposing technology, essential reading, the influence of capitalism on publishing, copyright, great books not seeing the light of day, dance floors, reading, and the richness of book history.

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Will Schwalbe has spent most of his life in publishing: at William Morrow, and then at Hyperion, where he was Editor in Chief. In January 2008 he left Hyperion to found a startup called Cookstr.com and ran that for six years. It’s now part of Macmillan Publishers, where he has worked since 2014.

His books include Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do it Better with his friend David Shipley. The End of Your Life Book Club, about the books he read with his mother when she was dying. And Books For Living, about the role books can play in our lives and how they can show us how to live each day more fully and with more meaning. He lives in New York City with his husband David Cheng

In addition to Books for Living, we talk about Faber, Sonny Mehta, Rohinton Mistry, reasons for reading, adults reading to children - and their conversations, greater powers, book clubs, cook books, Christopher Isherwood, giving and sharing conversations about books for birthdays, tyranny, and my new venture, Literary Retreats.

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Since 2012, Jason Rovito has been working with institutional and private collectors to grow the documentary value of their collections "because the Cloud forgets." Subject strengths include: the avant-garde, design, the human sciences, and visual culture across the full spectrum of Special Collections formats: rare books, ephemera, manuscripts, photographs, prints, audio/visual materials, and archives.

Jason is a member of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of Canada (ABAC), and the Ephemera Society of America (ESA), and is committed to their codes of ethics. Based in Toronto, he regularly exhibits at fairs in New York, Toronto, and London.

Jason has been touted by many as one of the talented "new antiquarians" who are discerning value in all sorts of interesting and unusual places. We talk about this entrepreneurial tradition among successful bookseller down the ages; about Italy, and prisons, and virtual book fairs, and much more.

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Marc Côté is President of Cormorant Books, a literary publishing house noted for its discovery and development of Canadian writing talent and the publishing of Quebecois 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.

The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published by Scribner's in 1925. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island it depicts narrator Nick Carraway's relationship with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby, and Gatsby's obsessive desire to reunite with his former lover Daisy Buchanan.

The Biblio File Book Club is series of book discussions with smart people about books that they believe are important; books they would recommend to loved ones...books they consider to be essential reading.

Zoom wasn't behaving very well during our conversation, so apologies for the irritating distortions, etc.

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Richard Ovenden has been Bodley’s Librarian (the senior executive position of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford)
since 2014. He is a Fellow at the Society of Antiquaries and Royal Society of Arts; a member of the American Philosophical Society;
Treasurer, at the Consortium of European Research Libraries; and President of the Digital Preservation Coalition. He was awarded the OBE by The Queen in 2019. And almost as big a deal, he joined me recently on Zoom to talk about his new book, Burning the Books, a history of the deliberate destruction of knowledge; about the threats to libraries past and present; about fire, war, violence, obsolescence, complacency and underfunding. And about the fragility of libraries, and their fundamental importance to democracy, to truth and facts, to the rule of law, in short, to our treasured Western way of life.

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Dan Mozersky enjoyed a long and fruitful career in the retail book industry. As a founding member of Indigo Books & Music's executive team he was instrumental in turning the company's vision into reality ( we talk about this in Part ll of our conversation).

During the 1990s he served as manager of U.S. Operations for Classic Books in New York. Prior to this he founded and owned a chain of retail bookstores in Ottawa and Montreal.

Active in the Canadian Booksellers Association, he served as director, vice president, and chair of various industry committees. In 1985 he was recognized by the Canadian Book Publishers' Professional Association as bookseller of the year.

We talk here in Part l of our conversation about how Dan built his successful chain of bricks and mortar bookstores.

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Mary Newberry is a Toronto-based freelance editor, indexer, and teacher. Her early passion was dancing. The self-discipline she learned from it is today one of her greatest assets.

She works mostly with humanities-related texts: academic, government, literary, creative arts and general interest, and lately, in memoir. She has a long-term relationship with social justice and diversity, and enjoys working in these areas. Scholarly editing is one of her specialties. She enjoys complex materials, helping to bring clarity and concision to emerging ideas. She often works with scholars for whom English is an additional language, and teaches indexing in a course she developed for Ryerson University's Publishing Program. In 2016, she won the Ewart-Daveluy Award for excellence in indexing. We talk here about the history and practice of indexing, looking specifically at her notable work on Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, in addition to several of her award-winning books.

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The son of prominent book collector Kenneth E. Hill, Jonathan A. Hill grew up in a house filled with old books. After graduating from university in 1974 he served a classic apprenticeship, working for four leading antiquarian booksellers in San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. In 1978 he started his own company and has specialized in science, medicine, natural history, bibliography and the history of book collecting, and early printed books.

For the past 20 years he has, partnering with his wife Megumi, also sold antiquarian Japanese, Chinese, and Korean illustrated books, manuscripts, and scrolls.

During the past 43 years the company has issued more than 230 catalogues devoted to these various subjects.

It is thanks to them that I contacted Jonathan. We talk here about his (and Jerry Kelly's) impressive work, and about bookseller catalogues in general.

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Miriam Borden, a teacher of Yiddish and PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto, is winner of the 2020 Honey and Wax Book Collecting Prize for “Building a Nation of Little Readers: Twentieth-Century Yiddish Primers and Workbooks for Children.”

Borden collects twentieth-century Yiddish educational materials. Language primers form the core of her collection which also includes songbooks and workbooks, flash cards, and scripts from school plays. These artifacts testify to a once-thriving Yiddish school system across North America, a network that collapsed after World War II as Jewish immigrants assimilated and Hebrew emerged as the language of the State of Israel. As a teacher of Yiddish, Borden now uses these vintage materials to instruct adults hoping to reconnect with a lost part of their heritage.

This from her winning essay: “There was no heirloom china in the house where I grew up, no silver from grandmother’s chest to be taken out and polished for holidays and family celebrations. That china had all been shattered, the silver stolen. . .The heirlooms, and most of the family, were lost. But that does not mean I am bereft of inheritance. I was raised with an heirloom language, a treasure that could be taken out and polished and used on those rare moments when no word in English or Polish or Hebrew would fit the occasion. I was raised to speak the language of the dead. But never for a moment did it ever dawn on me that it was a dead language.” Miriam’s collection represents "an impressive effort of historical preservation and an inspiring example of how a collection that began as something personal becomes a collective resource," said the Prize judges. You can read her winning essay and bibliography here.

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Martin Latham has been a bookseller for thirty-five years. He has a PhD in Indian history, and taught at Hertfordshire University before turning to bookselling. He is proud to be responsible for the biggest petty-cash claim in Waterstones' history, when he paid for the excavation of a Roman bath-house floor under his bookshop. Martin's books include Kent's Strangest Tales, Londonopolis, and most recently The Bookseller's Tale which we talk about in this episode. It's really a book full of tales about books of course, and bookstores, libraries, chapbooks, marginalia, women readers and collectors - chock full of fascinating biblio adventures. I highly recommend it.

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The Bookshelf bookshop in Guelph, Ontario was established in 1973 by Barb and Doug Minett. In 1980 it became The Bookshelf Cafe - Canada's first bookstore cafe/restaurant. Shortly thereafter an ambitious plan was conceived to add a cinema and bar to what was then the roof of the building. During implementation, University of Guelph physics professor and longtime customer, Jim Hunt, trained a team of 10 cafe servers and booksellers in the art & science of 35mm projection. In 1988 The Bookshelf Cinema showed its first film. Over 20,000 shows and 1,000,000 cinema goers later, the cinema continues to offer 14-15 shows a week with its fancy digital projection and great sound system.

Shortly thereafter bookshelf.ca (Canada's first full-service online bookstore - sold to Indigo in the late 90s) was launched.

The Bookshelf team also embarked on "the great leap sideways" expanding all aspects of the emporium by re-building the building next door and adding a music venue: the eBar. Many great Canadian musical talents have graced the eBar stage. The bar serves up great craft beers and dj's and dancing every Saturday night. Over the years The Bookshelf has operated a number of food and beverage operations - originally with its own staff and later in collaboration with others. In 2015 The Bookshelf welcomed Miijidaa ("Let's Eat") as its restaurant collaborator.

My conversation with Doug Minett starts with him in Europe, with his future wife Barb, the year prior to their setting up shop, and ends with discussion of cibabooks.ca and Doug's role as acting Executive Director.

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It was on Twitter a couple of months ago that I noticed this tweet celebrating the work of one Bianca Gillam (@BinxGillam). 'You're the best special sales assistant ever', it said, or words to that effect. Hmm I thought. What, I wonder, does a special sales assistant do at a publishing house - I'd noticed that she worked at Simon & Schuster ( @simonschusterUK ). I wasn't sure. So I tweeted at Bianca, inviting her to appear on the podcast to explain just exactly what she does.

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Last year at about this time David Gilmour and I sat down together to talk about "Mojave" one of Truman Capote's greatest short stories. We enjoyed ourselves so much we decided to do it again, this time with "Shut a Final Door."

Capote wrote this story when he was only 23 years old. David contends that it strongly foreshadows how Truman's actual life would unfold - as a slow, messy descent into hell. Perfect fare for the holiday season.

Merry Christmas everyone. Thanks for listening!

Photo by Jack Mitchell

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Virago is a London-based British publishing company committed to publishing women's writing and books on "feminist" topics. Established by women in the 1970s in tandem with the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM), Virago has done much to address inequitable gender dynamics in the publishing world, and, unlike anti-capitalist publishing ventures, has branded itself a commercial alternative in a male dominated publishing industry, seeking to compete with mainstream international presses. Initially known as Spare Rib Books, Virago was founded by Carmen Callil in 1973 primarily to publish books by women writers. From the get-go the company sought two sorts of books: original works, and out-of-print books by neglected female writers. The latter were reissued under the "Modern Classics" label, which launched in 1978 In 1982, Virago became a wholly owned subsidiary Random House, USA, but in 1987 Callil, Lennie Goodings and others put together a management buy-out. After a downturn in the market, the board decided to sell Virago to Little, Brown, of which Virago became an imprint in 1996 (with Lennie as Publisher). In 2006, Virago became part of the Hachette publishing group with Lennie acting as editor and publisher. She is now Chair of Virago. Today the company's stated mission is to "champion women’s voices and bring them to the widest possible readership around the world. From fiction and politics to history and classic children’s stories, its writers continue to win acclaim, break new ground and enrich the lives of readers." I met Lennie via Zoom to talk about her life with Virago, as described in her new memoir A Bite of the Apple, published by OUP around the world, and by mighty Biblioasis in Canada.

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Martin Amis was born in Oxford in 1949 and is a British novelist, essayist, and memoirist - all of whom show up to contribute to his latest novel, Inside Story. As it happens I read Lolita in tandem with Inside Story, so the front-end of our conversation is laden with nasty Nabokovian-related questions. Since Vladimir, along with Saul Bellow, has heavily influenced Martin's writing over the years, I decided this was fair game. Amis is best known for his novels Money (1984) and London Fields (1989). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir Experience and has been nominated for the Booker Prize twice (shortlist for Time's Arrow and longlist for Yellow Dog). He served as Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester until 2011, and is considered one of the most influential novelists of our times. We met via Zoom to talk about everything he throws into this novel, plus the way he frames it. Nabokov looms large, as I say, as does Christopher Hitchens, and, towards the end, ketchup and relish. Like many of Amis's other works, Inside Story contains plenty of very good laughs - one pretty well every 3-4 pages (in between, I frequently caught myself wearing a wide smirk). There's a lot to be said for this, and for some genuinely beautiful writing in the novel, particularly about Israel; plus there's a fair amount of engaging literary criticism. In short, it's well worth spending time with this excellent hybrid; as, I hope you'll agree, it is with this interview... It starts mid-sentence, with the two of us talking about Chip Kidd's dust jacket design.

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Sly, sparkling, and endearingly gruff, David Mason is an engrossing conversationalist; a giant in the book trade whose infectious enthusiasm, human insight, commercial shrewdness, and deadpan humour are all on display here in part ll of our discussion about his memoir The Pope's Bookbinder.

Listen to Part l here

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"Martin Parr's celebrated photographs bridge the divide between art and documentary photography. His studies of the idiosyncrasies of mass culture and consumerism around the world, his innovative imagery, and his prolific output have placed him firmly at the forefront of contemporary art. He is an avid collector and maker of photobooks. His own photobooks include The Last Resort (1986), Common Sense (iggg) and Boring Postcards (Phaidon Press, 1999), and he is the subject of the monograph Martin Parr by Val Williams (Phaidon Press, 2002)."

Together with Gerry Badger he is the co-author of The Photobook: A History, a beautiful three-volume set of books that offer an engrossing, admittedly subjective survey of the "best" photography books ever published, beginning with early experiments in the medium in mid-19yh-century England and ending with "raucous Japanese photo-diaries of the 1990s."

I question Martin about his collection criteria - how he arrived at "best," and how various artistic and social movements influenced the look and content of photobooks over the decades.

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...in which I posit that raising funds is a primary motivator explaining why scientists write, and Lawrence disagrees; and the two of us argue over the similarities and differences between art and science...

The combatants tend to confuse human-made with nature-made art, and possibly don't even actually disagree, if we're talking big picture. Anyway, the conversation is lively, if nothing else. Throughout the episode we reference Lawrence's entertaining, readable book The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far. It "deals with the current scientific understanding of the creation of the Universe and gives a history of how scientists have formulated the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

Lawrence Krauss is a writer and an American-Canadian theoretical physicist and cosmologist who has over the years taught at Arizona State University, Yale University, and Case Western Reserve University. He founded ASU's Origins Project, now called ASU Interplanetary Initiative, to investigate fundamental questions about the universe, and served as it's director. He retired in May 2019 and is currently President of The Origins Project Foundation and host of The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss.

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Patrick McGahern has been operating an antiquarian bookshop in Ottawa, Canada's capital, since 1969. Today it continues to thrive under the management of Patrick's son Liam. The store specializes in Used and Rare Books, Canadiana, Americana, Arctic, Antarctic, Travel, Natural History & Voyages, Illustrated & Plate Books, Rare Books, Irish and Scottish History and Literature.

I met Patrick via Zoom to celebrate his 51 years in business, to try to learn some of what he's learned over the years, and to talk about some of the more colourful bookseller colleagues in the trade, including Grant Woolmer, Jerry Sherlock and Bernard Amtmann

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Roger Chartier was born in 1945 in Lyon, France. He is a giant in the field of book history and the study of publishing and reading. He teaches at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Collège de France, and the University of Pennsylvania.

I interviewed Roger via Zoom in hopes of determining exactly why he's a giant, who's shoulders he stands on, and what he has contributed to the study of book history. Among other things we talk about Roger's book of essays The Author's Hand and the Printer's Mind; Shakespeare and Cervantes; the importance of material texts to history; forms of reading; the codex; translation; intermediaries between the reader and the writer; the commonplace technique; Roland Barthes; reader appropriation; author intention; Marshall McLuhan; D.F. McKenzie's Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts; Robert Darnton; The History of the Book in France; IMEC; maps in fiction; "Sprezzatura;" and literature and the consecration of the life and manuscripts of the writer.

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Toby Faber grew up with Faber & Faber - its books and stories have played an important role in his life. He was the company's managing director for four years and remains a non-executive director and chairman of sister company Faber Music. He has written two celebrated works of non-fiction, Stradivarius and Fabergé 's Eggs. His first novel, Close to the Edge, was published by Muswell Press in 2019. He lives in London with his wife and two daughters. We met via Zoom to talk about his book Faber & Faber: The Untold Story. Toby tells the story in the words of those who founded and worked for the company during the 20th century. One of founder Geoffrey Faber (Toby's grandfather)'s great strengths, he says, was recruitment. Toby provides me with verbal sketches of many of those recruited to the firm, including T.S. Eliot, Morley Kennerley, Frank Morley, Richard de la Mare, Charles Monteith, Robert McCrum and others. In addition to tracing the history of Faber we look at some of the reasons why it continues to thrive as an independent company, including the fact that, years ago, it chose to maintain control of publishing its own paperback editions of backlist titles.

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Powell's Books is a chain of bookstores located in and around Portland, Oregon. It claims to be the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world. Powell's 'City of Books' store is located on the edge of downtown and occupies a full city block. It covers some 68,000 square feet or 1.6 acres of retail floor space. Emily Powell is a third generation owner of the bookstore. She made headlines this past August for dumping Amazon as a sales partner. To mark "Independent Bookstore Day" she announced that "we will no longer sell our books on Amazon’s marketplace. For too long, we have watched the detrimental impact of Amazon’s business on our communities and the independent bookselling world." "The vitality of our neighbors and neighborhoods depends on the ability of local businesses to thrive," she continued. "We will not participate in undermining that vitality."

I talked to her recently, via Zoom, about her stand against Amazon, her storied bookstore and the reasons for its successes and longevity.

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Tiphaine Guillermou is an editor with Graphéine, a design agency with offices in Paris and Lyon.

While researching 20th century French book design - so that I'd have some books to hunt down while visiting bookstores in France - I came across a terrific article Tiphaine had written for Graphéine's blog, here. It was exactly what I was looking for - filled with all sorts of great book collecting leads. I was so impressed with the article I decided to interview Tiphaine about it. Listen as we talk about Pierre Faucheux, Robert Massin, Gallimard, Stock, Whites and Yellows, Scorpion, the French Book Club, Le Livre de Poche, Folio, Monsieur Toussaint Louverture, Cent Pages editions,David Pearson, Zulma and much more.

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Andy Hunter is the founder and CEO of Bookshop.org He's also the publisher at Catapult, at Counterpoint and at Softskull, and, as if this isn't enough, publisher and co-creator at LitHub, and co-founder and chairman at Electric Literature. Despite all of these responsibilities, Andy took the time to talk via Zoom about his latest venture and how to use it to help support indie bookstores, and, at the same time, stick it to Amazon. Bookshop.org is "an online book marketplace designed to support independent bookstores." Among other things the two of us discuss how authors, publishers, reviewers, bloggers and others in the book publishing ecosystem can sign up as Bookshop.org affiliates and make 10% of the price of books sold on their sites (as opposed to 4.5% from Amazon); about Bookshop.org's huge selection of books shipping directly from the wholesaler and being delivered in 2-3 days; about physically touching paper pages and petting cats in brick and mortar bookshops; about the smells and sounds and conversations and coffee that can be had in real bookstores; about revitalizing downtowns; about the magic of reading; and about helping to ensure that all of this continues to be a thing. According to Andy, Bookshop.org will be launching in Canada in the Spring of 2021.

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Benoit Forgeot is one of France's leading antiquarian book dealers. We met in his office, in the Odeon district of Paris to talk about what differentiates French collectors from American; French book binders; secrets; coffee; the manuscript market ( good time to buy); Paul Bonet, coffee again; business in Paris versus the provinces; the crucial knowledge that American curators impart, and much more, (includes Parisian street sounds).

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Anne-Solange Noble has been International Rights Manager at Gallimard since 1992. She was born and raised in Montreal, Canada and graduated from McGill University in Hispanic Literature. After spending two years in Mexico she went to Paris where she studied International Relations at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris. In 1985 she landed a job in rights negotiations with Flammarion. Seven years later she moved to Gallimard to do the same thing, and has been there ever since. Recently her focus has been on licensing English-language rights for Gallimard fiction and non-fiction to American and British publishers. We met at her offices in the Rive Gauche district of Paris to talk about her role, and the obstacles she's faced selling into these English markets over the past three decades.

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Lifted from Bill Samuel's website:

Itinerant one-time chartered accountant who has lived in Denmark, East Africa, the Gulf (Arabian/Persian, not Texan) and the Caribbean with shorter stints in Eastern Europe and various rather nice small islands. Born in England into a family with an international outlook, an interest in people and a feeling for the cultural side of life. William Foyle, one of the greatest booksellers, and book collectors, of the twentieth century was his grandfather. Bill inherited a passion for books and his life has largely been shaped by those he read as a child, which gave him a desire to see as much of this wonderful world of ours as he could. As for what he's done: more or less chronologically: auditing in London and Copenhagen, tourism stuff in Kenya, house building in Portugal, financial consultancy in the UK and the Gulf, Executive Director of an investment bank in Bahrain, Director of Tourism and Superintendent of Offshore Finance in the Turks and Caicos Islands, commercial advisor to the government of St. Helena and Vice Chairman of his family business, Foyles bookshop, which he wrote about in An Accidental Bookseller, A Personal Memoir of Foyles, and which we talk about in this episode of The Biblio File podcast. We met in the garden of a villa near the town of Condom, in southern France. The weather was perfect.

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John Freeman is an American writer and a literary critic. He was the editor of Granta from 2009 to 2013, and is a former president of the National Book Critics Circle. His writing has appeared in more than 200 English-language publications around the world and he currently edits a series of anthologies of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry entitled Freeman's, published in partnership with Grove/Atlantic and The New School. Reason enough, I figured, to want to talk to him about the role of the editor. His second book, a collection of his interviews with major contemporary writers titled How to Read a Novelist, was published in the U.S. in 2013 by FSG and features profiles of Margaret Atwood, John Updike, Geoff Dyer, Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, and others. It's the reason I wanted to talk to him about interviewing authors (plus the fact that I've watched him skillfully question authors on stage - well on Youtube - many times). During his time with the National Book Critics Circle, John launched a campaign to raise awareness of the cutbacks in book coverage by the U.S. national print media and to save book review sections. We talk about how this effort resulted in the establishment of Literary Hub.

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Kenneth White is the founder of Sutherland House Books. He is the former editor-in-chief of Saturday Night Magazine, the founding editor of The National Post, and the former editor and publisher of Maclean’s magazine. He was president of Rogers Publishing, Canada’s largest magazine company, and the founding president of Next Issue Canada (now Texture), in partnership with Conde Nast, Meredith, Hearst, and Time Inc. Mr. Whyte is the author of The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (2008, Random House), In 2017, he published Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times (Knopf), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Last month he launched a suicidal assault on libraries in a 3500-word article in The Globe and Mail newspaper. In it he posits, among other things, that: there are three times as many books borrowed as bought in the United States every year, and four times as many in Canada; that libraries don't passively lend books, they compete with booksellers by advertising how much people can save by borrowing rather than buying books, and they compete among themselves to lend the most books possible; and that most public library lending is of books read for entertainment, not edification, by people who can afford to pay for books.

We talked about his article via Zoom.

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Jael Richardson is the author of The Stone Thrower: A Daughter’s Lesson, a Father’s Life, a memoir exploring her relationship with her father, CFL quarterback Chuck Ealey. It was adapted into a children’s book in 2016. Richardson is a book columnist and guest host on CBC’s q. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and lives in Brampton, Ontario where she founded and serves as the Artistic Director for the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD). Her debut novel, Gutter Child, is coming out in January 2021 with HarperCollins Canada.

Jael's recent tweet about Canadian children's book publishers being racist caught my attention, and we agreed to talk about it via Zoom. During the second half of our conversation I present some of the feedback I received from Canadian publishers about the Tweet. During the first Jael talks about her memoir, life with her father, being black in Canada and the feeling of being lost. Among her key points: diversified hiring practices are good for business, it's important for young black students to meet black authors, and publishers should pay attention to who's making the money off the stories they choose to publish.

(Please accept my apologies for the annoying keyboard tapping sounds that occur at times during the course of the conversation. No idea why they're there. Perhaps it's the Russians trying to wreak havoc with the show, who knows).

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Pierre Assouline is a French writer and journalist. He was born in Casablanca, Morocco and has published several novels. He has written biographies of, among others, the legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson; Hergé, the creator of The Adventures of Tintin; Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the art dealer, and Georges Simenon, the detective novelist and creator of Inspector Maigret. As a journalist, Assouline has worked for some of France's leading publications, including Lire and Le Nouvel Observateur. He also publishes a popular blog, “La république des livres.” A number of his biographies have been translated into English including the one we talk about here, Gaston Gallimard, A Half Century of French Publishing (Harcourt Brace, 1988).

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After graduating from university in 2005 Maylis Besserie began teaching documentary production at the Institute of Communications and Media in Paris, and joined France Culture as a radio producer and host.

In February 2020 she published her first novel, Le Tiers Temps (Gallimard). It evokes the last days of Samuel Beckett in a Parisian retirement home. The protagonist, while describing his responses to daily life in the home, also experiences a dream-like reality as he tries to recall the people and places that marked his life. On May 11, 2020 it won the Goncourt Prize for first novel.

We met at what we thought would be a quiet cafe in Paris to talk about the journey Maylis has been on with her new novel.

This is the second time I've interviewed her. First time round, several years ago, we met to discuss the art of the author interview.

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'Barnet Lee "Barney" Rosset, Jr. (1922 – 2012) was owner of the Grove Press publishing house and publisher and editor-in-chief at the Evergreen Review. He led a successful legal battle to publish the uncensored version of D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, and later was the American publisher of Henry Miller's controversial novel Tropic of Cancer. The right to publish and distribute Miller's novel in the United States was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1964, in a landmark ruling for free speech and the First Amendment.' Under Rosset Grove introduced American readers to European avant-garde literature and theatre, publishing, among others, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean Genet, and Eugène Ionesco. Most importantly, in 1954, Grove started publishing Samuel Beckett

John Oakes is the co-founder and 50% owner of OR Books, and publisher of the Evergreen Review, an online revival of the venerable counter-cultural literary magazine originally published by Grove Press under Barney Rosset whose memoir Rosset: My Life in Publishing and How I Fought Censorship OR Books published in 2017.

I talked with John about Rosset via Zoom.

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Jacques Shore is a partner in Gowling WLG's Ottawa office, a member of the firm's Advocacy Group, and past leader of the firm's Government Affairs Group. He has acted as lead negotiator on many business and government-related initiatives and has worked actively on behalf of the federal government of Canada and provincial governments on a broad range of legal and public policy matters, including cultural policy. Actively involved in the community, Jacques is a past chair of Carleton University's board of governors and its executive committee and served as a board governor for thirteen years. In addition he served as chair of the Distinguished Council of Advisors of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. Jacques is currently the Chair of the Library Archives Canada (LAC) Foundation (April 2019 to present). He is also counsel to Amazon, providing legal, government relations, and strategic advice to the company, something I stupidly failed to ask him about. I did however hit him with quite a few questions about the need, purpose, mission, and plans of the new Library and Archives Canada Foundation and the people involved.

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Richard Nash is a coach, strategist, and serial entrepreneur. He led partnerships and content at the culture discovery start-up Small Demons and the new media app Byliner. Previously he ran independent publishers Soft Skull (not Skill) Press and Red Lemonade where he published Maggie Nelson, Lynne Tillman, Vanessa Veselka’s Zazen, Alain Mabanckou, and many others, for which work he was awarded the Association of American Publishers’ Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing in 2005. In 2010 the Utne Reader named him one of 50 Visionaries Changing Your World and in 2013 the Frankfurt Book Fair picked him as one of the Five Most Inspiring People in Digital Publishing. In 2017 he founded Cursor Marketing Services, a shared US publishing office for the world’s leading English-language independent publishers.

As a coach, building on decades of mentorship and consulting, he now works directly with artists, writers, and entrepreneurs, helping them navigate personal and professional transitions.

We met via Zoom to talk about his influential article 'What is the Business of Literature?'

(My cat Boo Bou insisted on voicing her concerns during the first several minutes of the conversation. Apologies for the distraction).

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David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic.

From 2014 through 2017, he served as chairman of the board of trustees of the leading UK center-right think tank, Policy Exchange. In 2001-2002, he served as speechwriter and special assistant to President George W. Bush; in 2007-2008, as senior adviser to the Rudy Giuliani presidential campaigns.

Frum is the author of ten books, most recently Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (the putative topic of our conversation). The memoir of his service in the George W. Bush administration, The Right Man, was a New York Times bestseller, as was his 2018 book, Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic.

He and his wife Danielle Crittenden Frum live in Washington DC and Wellington, Ontario, where we met lake-side, at The Drake Devonshire, buffeted by the breeze, serenaded by the surf. We talk, among other things, about Trumpocalypse (HarperCollins, 2020); Shakespeare and Byron; crocodiles and alligators; Trump, of course; marriage; how Twitter affects the writing of a book; adolescence and childhood; Chomsky and George Washington; America the Good versus America the Bad; American exceptionalism; finding the right person; and the choice between changing the world and changing yourself.

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Peter Florence is a British festival director, notable for founding the Hay Festival with his parents, Norman and Rhoda Florence. FYI the first festival was financed with winnings from a poker game.

Peter was educated at Ipswich School, Jesus College, Cambridge, and the University of Paris and has an MA in Modern and Medieval Literatures. He holds honorary doctorates from four universities.

He has replicated the success of Hay in numerous cities around the world, launching similar festivals in Mantua, Segovia, the Alhambra Palace, Cartagena, Nairobi, Zacatecas, Thiruvananthapuram, Dhaka, Xalapa, Belfast and Paraty.

He is the co-editor of the Oxtales and Oxtravels anthologies with Mark Ellingham of Profile Books, in partnership with Oxfam and has written for the Index on Censorship, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Spectator and numerous other publications.

"Florence chaired the jury of the 2019 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and controversially defied the foundation’s 1993-established rules to award the prize to two authors. Bernardine Evaristo - the first black woman to be awarded the prize - shared the prize with Margaret Atwood." ( unfortunately, I failed to ask him about this).

He and his wife Becky Shaw have four sons. They live in Herefordshire. Peter was awarded an MBE in 2005 for services to Arts and Culture and a CBE in 2018 for services to Literature and Charity. We met via Zoom to talk, among other things, about Hay's recent on-line, Covid-driven 2020 event and how Peter plans to capitalize on its enormous success, about what special ingredients are required to put on good festivals and interesting sessions, about the English language, party animals, translation, what makes Peter happy, and the titles of his favourite recent reads.

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Mark Bourrie is a Canadian lawyer, blogger, journalist, author, historian, and lecturer. His work has appeared in many Canadian magazines and newspapers. In 2020, his book Bushrunner: The Adventures of Pierre Radisson, won the final RBC Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction. Known widely as the namesake of ships and hotel chains, Pierre-Esprit Radisson is perhaps best described, writes Mark, as “an eager hustler with no known scruples.” "Kidnapped by Mohawk warriors at the age of fifteen, Radisson assimilated and was adopted by a powerful family, only to escape to New York City after less than a year. After being recaptured, he defected from a raiding party to the Dutch and crossed the Atlantic to Holland—thus beginning a lifetime of seized opportunities and frustrated ambitions.
His venture as an Arctic fur trader led to the founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which operates today, 350 years later, as North America’s oldest corporation".

I talked with Mark over the phone about the genesis of his book, and about Radisson and his life with capitalism, the Mohawk, the British and the French.

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Ian Wilson was chief Librarian and Archivist of Canada from 2004 to 2009. Prior to this as National Archivist, with Roch Carrier the then National Librarian, he developed and led the process to merge the National Archives and National Library into a unified institution. "His distinguished career has included archival and information management, university teaching and government service." In addition, he has published extensively on history, archives, heritage, and information management and has lectured both in Canada and abroad. "Born in Montreal, Quebec, he attended the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean and obtained a master's degree from Queen's University in 1974. He began his career at Queen's University Archives, later becoming Saskatchewan's Provincial Archivist and Chairman of the Saskatchewan Heritage Advisory Board. He was appointed Archivist of Ontario in 1986, a position he held until 1999." He chaired the Consultative Group on Canadian Archives on behalf of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The Group's report, Canadian Archives - generally known as the "Wilson Report" - published in 1980 - has been described as "a milestone in the history of archival development in Canada." He is currently a consultant. I met with Ian at his home in Ottawa to talk about how the merger between Library and Archives is going, about Canada's great Dominion Archivist Arthur Doughty and Canada and its Provinces his monumental, under-appreciated nation-building publishing project, and about the essential role Library and Archives Canada plays, or doesn't play, in cultivating a distinctive national Canadian identity.

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Larry Grobel is the author of more than 25 books - including Conversations with Capote (which received a PEN Special Achievement award), and Talking with Michener. He has been a freelance writer for more than 40 years, having written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and Movieline and many other publications. He is also a renowned interviewer, having conducted and written numerous iconic Playboy magazine interviews over the years. The magazine called him “the interviewer’s interviewer” after his interview with Marlon Brando for its 25th anniversary issue.

We met via Zoom to talk about his superb book The Art of the Interview (2004) and its companion volume Endangered Species: Writers Talk about their Craft, their Visions, their Lives. Its foreword calls Larry "prepared, adaptable, and graced with the intelligence needed to shoot the breeze and elicit intriguing responses, gossip and wisdom.

Joyce Carol Oates has called him “the Mozart of interviewers” and J.P. Donleavy has called him “the most intelligent interviewer in the United States.” He currently teaches seminars on The Art of the Interview at UCLA.

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Jonathan Rose is the William R. Kenan Professor of History at Drew University. His fields of study are British history, intellectual history and the history of the book. He was the founding president of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, and has served as the president of the Northeast Victorian Studies Association. His book, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, won the Jacques Barzun Prize , the Longman History Book of the Year Prize and the British Council Prize. Other books include The Literary Churchill, A Companion to the History of the Book, and British Literary Publishing Houses 1820-1965. His most recent work is as co-editor with Mary Hammond, of the four volume Edinburgh History of Reading.

Jonathan is co-editor of Book History, which won the Council of Editors of Learned Journals award for the Best New Journal of 1999.

We met via Zoom to talk about his book Reader's Liberation, a fascinating narrative history of independent skeptical reading, from antiquity to present. Topics covered include defending the humanities, free expression and leaky censorship, the importance of reader reception, reading and revolution, making the Bible accessible in everyday English, the First Amendment, Great Books programs and common conversation, the disaster of 'Common Core,' Louise Rosenblatt, Clifton Fadiman and The Book of the Month Club. the positive influence of Oprah Winfrey, the drive toward literacy in Black America, Hugh Hefner and the Playboy interviews, objective versus partisan media, "native" advertising and credibility, docile students and cancel culture.

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Reni Eddo-Lodge, is a London based, award winning author and journalist. Her writing focuses on feminism and exposing structural racism. She's the author of the Jhalak Prize winning, bestselling Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, published by Bloomsbury, and host of a podcast series called About Race. Why I'm no Longer Talking topped a public poll of twenty books shortlisted in 2018 by the UK Booksellers Association as the most influential book written by a woman

We met at the Blue Met Literary Festival in Montreal (she was here to accept the Words to Change Prize, awarded to "the writer of a literary work that upholds the values of intercultural understanding and social inclusion", to talk about her book, about white people talking about racism, and about the prevalence and effects of systematic, structural racism in England and around the world.

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Leslie Weir was the University Librarian at the University of Ottawa from 2003 to 2018. She became Librarian and Archivist of Canada in August, 2019. Ms. Weir is the first woman to hold this position since the National Library of Canada and the National Archives of Canada were merged to form Library and Archives Canada in 2004.

She was born and raised in Montreal, earned a Bachelor of Arts in Canadian History from Concordia University in 1976 and a Masters in Library Science from McGill University in 1979. She joined the University of Ottawa in 1992. During her tenure as University Librarian, she founded the School of Information Studies in the Faculty of Arts where she was also a Professor. She was a member of the Board of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN), from its inception until 2009 and again from 2011 to 2015. She served as President of Canadiana.org between 2012 and 2016 where she oversaw the introduction of the Heritage Project to digitize and make openly accessible some 60 million heritage archival images. Ms. Weir was also president of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries from 2007 to 2009 and president of the Ontario Library Association in 2017. We met in her high-ceilinged offices at 395 Wellington Street in Ottawa to talk about, among other things, the merging of Library and Archives, the mandate of LAC, federal government departmental libraries, the Library of Parliament, budgets, acquisitions, fundraising and the new LAC Foundation, author archives, Michael Ondaatje, exhibitions, the new LAC building, partnerships, Access to Information requests, the white diamond building, legal deposit, the Internet, Dominion Archivist Arthur Doughty, gold claims, book collecting culture, Pierre Berton, Kay Lamb, and Winston Churchill.

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Of course Dublin is where the biggest Bloomsday Festival takes place each on June 16th, with celebrations set in many of the "original sites" sited in James Joyce's novel Ulysses. But did you know that the second biggest celebration in the world takes place every year in Montreal? It's grown quickly over the past four or five years, and is now a five-day affair.

Dave Schurman is the president of the Festival Bloomsday Montreal. Along with his wife Judith and a team of enthusiastic volunteers, they've created "a celebration of the words and wit of Joyce, and other Irish literary lions," that features not only writers, but also musicians and actors and academics. It's quite an event.

I talk with Dave about his experience establishing Bloomsday in Montreal, and pick his brain for advice about setting up similar events around the world.

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Paul Litt is a historian of public life in late twentieth-century Canada. His research explores the cultural workings of modern Canadian mass democracy focusing on the media, the politics of image, tourism, the politicization of identities, and nationalism. He is currently a Professor at Carleton University in Ottawa.

We met in his office to talk about 20th century Canadian government book publishing policy, specifically about Canadian cultural identity and nationalism, literature, copyright, new versus old media, documentary film, broadcasting, the Massey Commission, high versus mass culture, university funding, text books, the National Library, the Canada Council, Ryerson Press, national unity, and cultural industry policy.

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Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post Book World and the author of the memoir “An Open Book” and of four collections of essays: “Readings,” “Bound to Please,” “Book by Book” and “Classics for Pleasure.” Dirda was born in Lorain, Ohio, graduated with highest honors in English from Oberlin College, and received a Ph.D. in comparative literature (medieval studies and European romanticism) from Cornell University.

We met in Washington D.C., pre-Covid, to discuss specifically Michael's book Readings, and more generally the books he thinks are worth reading and collecting.

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Miami native Mitchell Kaplan is the owner/founder of Books & Books, one of the premier independent bookstore groups in the United States, and a respected leader in the book business. Along with Eduardo J. Padrón, president of Miami-Dade College (MDC), he co-founded The Miami Book Fair (MBF), the largest event of its kind in the United States, in 1984. He hosts the Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan podcast and is a partner in the book-to-film optioning business The Mazur/Kaplan Company (greatest claim to fame? The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society).

I met with Mitch in the open-air restaurant at his flagship Mediterranean-styled bookstore in Coral Gables to discuss his career and success in book-selling and sundry other related enterprises. Among other things we talk about Miami, Colorado, The Beats, Red Rocks, the Tulagi Bar in Boulder, 18th century London bookseller James Lackington, 'third places,' community, bookstore restaurants, remainders, the Books & Books Press, and movies.

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This is one of the very earliest Biblio File interviews. Please excuse the audio.

(Listening to it - I'm embarrassed to learn that I wasn't able to read all of Certainty before conducting the interview - despite not having had much time to prepare [This would never happen today - well, except in the case of Eimear McBride's A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, but that's another story] ).

Madeleine Thien was born in Vancouver. She is the author of the story collection Simple Recipes (2001), and three novels, Certainty (2006); Dogs at the Perimeter (2011), shortlisted for Berlin’s International Literature Prize and winner of the Frankfurt Book Fair’s 2015 Liberaturpreis; and Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016), about musicians studying Western classical music at the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s, and about the legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. Her books and stories are published in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, and have been translated into 25 languages.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing won the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2016 Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and an Edward Stanford Prize; and was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and The Folio Prize 2017. The novel was named a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2016 and longlisted for a Carnegie Medal.

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Sydney Smith was born in rural Nova Scotia and started drawing at an early age. Since graduating from NSCAD University, he has illustrated numerous children’s books, including the highly acclaimed wordless picture book Sidewalk Flowers, conceived by Jon Arno Lawson. It won a Governor General’s Award, among many other honours, and was named a New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book. Sydney is also the illustrator of Town Is by the Sea by Joanne Schwartz, for which he was awarded the Kate Greenaway Medal, and which won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Prize.

Small in the City is the first picture book that Sydney has both written and illustrated. It is the winner of

The Ezra Jack Keats Award for Writer!
A New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Book of the Year
An ALA Notable Children’s Book
A Capitol Choices Noteworthy Title

and Canada's Governor General's Literary Award. I met Sydney in Ottawa after he'd received his award. We talk about a short poem by G.K. Chesterton; Randolf Caldecott, passing shadows, counterpoint, Maurice Sendak, the relationship between illustrator and author; Alligator Pie, Dennis Lee and Frank Newfeld; safe places to process complex emotions; Neal Porter; and sharing excitement.

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Blake Gopnik is an American/Canadian art critic who has lived in New York City since 2011 writing about art for Newsweek, the Daily Beast, The New York Times and others. From 2000 to 2010 he was chief art critic at The Washington Post, prior to which he was arts editor and critic for the Globe and Mail in Toronto. He has a doctorate in art history from Oxford University, and has written on aesthetic topics ranging from design to food, fashion to beer. He is the author of Warhol, a big new biography of the American Pop artist Andy Warhol ( Ecco, 2020), which is what we talk about, computer to computer, here. Topics covered include the practice of biography, Robert Caro, police violence and homosexuals, Warhol: genius and/or jerk? Window dressing, the Factory, shoes, silk-screening, commercial versus fine art, Pop Art, Robert Hughes and stupidity, film, the Empire State Building, banality, Tolstoy, sweeping polemics, controversy, playing dumb and much more.

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Don Gillmor is an award-winning Canadian novelist, journalist and children's book author. His new book To the River (2018) explores his brother’s suicide. It won the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction and was a CBC Best Books of 2019.

His novel Long Change (2015) examines the world of oil through the life and loves of one man. Mount Pleasant (2013) is a darkly comic meditation on privilege and debt set in contemporary Toronto, and his first novel, the critically acclaimed Kanata (2009), dealt with the whole sweep of Canadian history. He is also the author of a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People’s History, and three other books of non-fiction.

He has written nine books for children, and won 11 National Magazine Awards plus numerous other honours. He lives in Toronto.

We met in Ottawa to discuss To the River, and to share thoughts on what it's like to lose a brother to suicide.

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"Helene Atwan is the Director of Beacon Press, an independent non-profit book publisher founded in 1854. She began her publishing career in 1976 at Random House in New York as an assistant editor in their College Division, before moving to Alfred A. Knopf in 1977 as a publicity associate. She then joined The Viking Press in 1979 as the associate director of publicity. In 1981, she moved to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, where she began as the director of publicity. She also became a vice president of the house in 1987 and the associate publisher in 1991. In 1993, she joined the Pocket Books division of Simon & Schuster as a vice president and director of marketing. She was appointed director of Beacon Press by the board of trustees of the Unitarian Universalists Association in October of 1995."

We met at her offices in Boston to talk about Emerson and the history of the Beacon Press, plus its connection to the Unitarian Universalists; Helene's role with the press; social justice - slavery, reparations, inter-sectional issues, and the environment; about the price of paper, the function of design, and the process of editing books at Beacon; plus Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, and newly discovered Yes to Life, and much more.

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David Gilmour is a Canadian novelist and former television journalist and film critic.
Born in London, Ontario, Gilmour later moved to Toronto for schooling. He is a graduate of Upper Canada College and the University of Toronto. In 1980 he became managing editor of the Toronto International Film Festival, a post he held for four years. In 1986 he joined CBC Television as a film critic for The Journal, eventually becoming host of the program's Friday night arts and entertainment show. In 1990, he began hosting Gilmour on the Arts, an arts show series on CBC Newsworld.
In 1997 he left the CBC to concentrate full time on his writing. His 2005 novel A Perfect Night to Go to China won the 2005 Governor General's Award for English fiction. In 2007 he won two gold National Magazine Awards for his essay "My Life with Tolstoy" which appeared in The Walrus magazine. Today Gilmour is a Professor of Literary Studies at Victoria College at the U of T where he has taught Creative Writing and Literature since 2006. David recently mentioned to me that he was a fan of Truman Capote. I suggested we get together to discuss one of his short stories. We settled on 'Mojave'. Here's our conversation. Warning: it gets a tad raunchy at times.

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Paul Wright was Editor of the UMass Press from 1988 to 2006. He was Executive Editor of the Book Series, “Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book,” from 1994–2006. From 1985 to 1988 he was Assistant to the Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Boston. Prior to that he served as a Free-Lance Editor and Writer, from 1981–1985. Before that he worked as Acquisitions Editor for several Boston-based academic publishers. We met at his home in South Boston to discuss how he built UMass's line of Book History books, along with his own scholarly work in the field.

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Stephanie Burt is a literary critic and poet who is Professor of English at Harvard University and a transgender activist. The New York Times has called her "one of the most influential poetry critics of [her] generation".

Burt grew up near Washington, D.C. She has published four collections of poetry and many works of literary criticism. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Believer, and The Boston Review. Her book Randall Jarrell and His Age reevaluates Jarrell's importance as a poet. The book won the Warren Brooks Award in 2002. In 2017, she transitioned to female. She has since been active in LGBTQA+ rights and awareness campaigns

We met at her offices in Cambridge, MA to talk about this, and about her recent book Don't Read Poetry.

Among other things we discuss how to read poetry, or avoid it; the acceptance of music versus poetry; Seamus Heaney and James Joyce; Rupi Kaur and teenage girls, Lorine Niedecker, Robin Robertson, Terrance Hayes's 'American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin'. Reasons to read poetry: - giving voice to a state of mind, character - living the lives of others - verbal technique, challenge, wisdom - helping you to decide what to do - and underestimating the time it takes to walk places.

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Simon Beattie is a British antiquarian bookseller, literary translator and composer. He was the first British bookseller to be featured in Fine Books & Collections Magazine's series Bright Young Things.
Beattie was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School and the University of Exeter, where he took a double first in German and Russian (1997) and subsequently studied for an MA in Lexicography (1998), which he passed with Distinction. Whilst at Exeter, Beattie also held a choral scholarship at Exeter Cathedral. After a brief period freelancing in the publishing business Beattie joined the London antiquarian booksellers Bernard Quaritch Ltd in 1998.

In January 2010 he set up his own company specialising in European cross-cultural history. His printed catalogues, entitled Short Lists, have won numerous awards. He was a 2012 winner in the Smarta 100 Awards for 'the most resourceful, original, exciting and disruptive small businesses in the UK' and has taught at the York Antiquarian Book Seminar since its inception in 2014. It was Beattie who set in motion the worldwide strike by over 450 booksellers against AbeBooks' decision to withdraw from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, and South Korea in November 2018.

Beattie's translation of Gottfried Benn's shocking first poem 'Morgue' was published in 2018. His translation of the novel At the Edge of the Night by the German writer Friedo Lampe was published by Hesperus Press in 2019. Finally, Beattie also composes choral music. His setting of Advent Calendar, a poem by Rowan Williams, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as part of the 2008 Advent carol service from St John's College, Cambridge. I met Simon in Boston, prior to last year's Antiquarian Book Fair, to talk books, more specifically endpapers and Simon's phenomenally successful 'We love Endpapers' Facebook group. We also talk about speaking foreign languages, cultures being curious about one another, exploration, the reception of Oscar Wilde in Russia, translation and censorship, pleasant surprises, marbled paper, brocade paper, bookseller catalogues, and enjoying what you do.

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The Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books contains more than 80,000 items. The nucleus of the collection, which has a cut-off date of 1910, was donated to the Toronto Public Library in 1946 by a British librarian from Derbyshire, Edgar Osborne. Unable to get any English libraries to meet his conditions - to properly house his books, describe them and publish a catalogue - he settled on Toronto, largely because he was so impressed by its Children's librarian Lillian H. Smith who he'd met during a visit to the library with his wife in 1934.

I met with Librarian Jennifer Yan in late 2019. Listen as she explains why we literary tourists need to visit the Osborne Collection in Toronto.

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Robert Darnton is Harvard University's Carl H. Pforzheimer Professor, Emeritus and University Librarian, Emeritus

He was educated at Harvard and Oxford (where he was a Rhodes scholar). After a brief stint as a reporter for The New York Times, he became a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard. He taught at Princeton from 1968 until 2007 when he came to fill the roles mentioned above. Among his honors are a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, a National Book Critics Circle Award, election to the French Legion of Honor, the National Humanities Medal, and the Del Duca World Prize in the Humanities. He has written and edited many books, including *The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie* (1979, an early attempt to develop the history of books as a field of study), *The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History* (1984, his most popular work) and *The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France* (1995, a study of the underground book trade).  We met at his office in the Widener Library to talk, among other things, about why book history in so exciting; French police enforcing edicts on the book trade; *The Private Life of Louis XV*, sex, scandal and politics; David Hall; the fertile crescent of publishing houses around France in the 18th century; book pirating; the communications circuit; and Roger Chartier, and the fluidity of texts.

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Jessie Amaolo is a librarian at the Toronto Public Library responsible for their world-class Arthur Conan Doyle collection. Not surprisingly, much of the collection is devoted to Doyle's most famous character, Sherlock Holmes. But Conan Doyle wrote much more than just the Sherlock Holmes stories. He also wrote extensively on spiritualism, true crime, history, and current events. The collection is accessed through the Marilyn & Charles Baillie Special Collections Centre on the 5th floor of the Library, near Bloor and Yonge streets in Toronto, which is where we met to discuss why the literary tourist should visit here.

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George Andreou was appointed director of the Harvard University Press (HUP) in September, 2017 replacing William P. Sisler who had been in the position for some 27 years.

Born in New York, Andreou spent much of his early childhood in Greece. He graduated from Harvard College in 1987 with a degree in English literature and languages. Prior to coming to Harvard he was senior editor and vice president at Alfred A. Knopf where he founded Vintage Español, an imprint created to publish books in Spanish for the U.S. market. Over the years he edited the works of many impressive writers, including John Ashbery, Junot Díaz, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Sonia Sotomayor, and the Nobel laureates V.S. Naipaul and Orhan Pamuk.

I sat down with George recently at his HUP offices in Cambridge, MA, to discuss, among other things, the practice of reading; the role of the editor; the temporality of writing, "what to say, what not to say, and when;" reading books at the right time; editors becoming publishers, the differences between university and trade publishing; peer review; book design; and Thomas Piketty's new book Capital and Ideology.

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David Emblidge spent his childhood in Buffalo, New York and "on the sunny beaches of Ontario’s Lake Erie." After university he worked at the Associated Press as a reporter covering everything from the "disappearance of rural doctors to hog futures, and one murder."

Before entering the publishing trade as a second career he spent ten rewarding years as a professor following on degrees in English (Univ. of Virginia) and American Studies (Univ. of Minnesota).

He worked in publishing for nearly twenty-five years – as acquisitions editor, book packager, publishing consultant, editor in chief, and publisher. The houses: Harvard University Press, Cambridge University Press, Continuum, The Mountaineers Books. He founded Berkshire House Publishers (travel, regional literature and history, food), and eventually sold it to WW Norton. As a book packager, he produced multi-volume series on various subjects for major trade book publishers such as St. Martins, Watson-Guptil, and Stackpole.

He currently holds a tenured position at Emerson College, in Boston in the Dept. of Writing, Literature and Publishing. We met at his offices there to discuss the histories of four iconic American bookstores: Boston's Old Corner Bookstore, Manhattan's Scribner's Bookstore and Gotham Book Mart, and San Francisco's City Lights. Along the way we meet Ticknor & Fields, Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne; Frances Steloff and T.S. Eliot; and on the West Coast, Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg. Join us for the ride.

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Greg Gibson is the author of four books, including Gone Boy: A Walkabout about the murder of his eighteen-year-old son Galen. After receiving his BA from Swathmore College in 1967, Greg enlisted in the United States navy and worked as a shipfitter until 1971. After his discharge in 1971 he moved to Gloucester, Mass. and worked in a variety of manual jobs until 1976 when he opened Ten Pound Book Company and began his career as an antiquarian book dealer, specializing in nautical books.

This is what we met to discuss at The Boston Antiquarian Book Fair. We tackle Moby Dick, yachting, the growing popularity of ephemera and one of a kind materials, ship logs, letters, sailor's journals & letters, Joshua Slocum, prostitutes, venereal disease, scurvy and much more.

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"Heather O'Donnell grew up in the library stacks and bookstore aisles of suburban Delaware. In 1989, she moved to New York City, where she studied English at Columbia, and held down a series of bookish jobs on the side: working the cash register at the Strand, shelving photobooks in the Avery Library, sifting the slush pile at Grand Street. While writing her doctoral dissertation in the Yale English department, Heather worked as a curatorial assistant at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. In 2004 she left academia to pursue the rare book trade full-time. For seven years, she worked as a bookseller in the New York gallery of Bauman Rare Books. In the fall of 2011, she founded Honey & Wax Booksellers in Brooklyn. In 2017, she and Rebecca Romney established the annual Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize of $1000 for a young woman book collector."

We met at her office early one crisp October morning to talk about all of the above, plus Gertrude Stein, Henry James, completionists, bona fide collectors, publishers' bindings and women reading, the need for unusual distinctive inventory, the way core texts reach wider audiences, apprenticing, James Jaffe, and the valuable contribution collectors make to society.

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Matthew Budman lives in Manhattan with his wife, political theorist Cristina Beltrán, and all the books they can squeeze into their apartment. Budman is the author of Instant Expert: Collecting Books (House of Collectibles), which sold nearly 10,000 copies, and Book Collecting Now: The Value of Print in a Digital Age, published in 2019. It's an engaging guide to building a book collection and celebrates the young, diverse collectors revitalizing what he calls “the world’s greatest pastime.”

Among other things, the book examines fundamentals like: identifying first editions, how to get the best deals, understanding the value of autographs, care and repair of books, and the history of publishing and book collecting. We touch on much of this, and New York and white slavery and more, in our conversation, which took place in Matthew's book-lined apartment in Greenwich Village. The bathroom even has a decent selection to choose from!

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Founded in 1884, the Grolier Club is America’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles and enthusiasts in the graphic arts. Named after Jean Grolier (1489/90-1565), the collector renowned for sharing his library with friends, the Club’s objective is to promote “the study, collecting, and appreciation of books and works on paper.” Through the efforts more than eight hundred members the Club pursues this mission through its library, its public exhibitions and lectures, and its long and distinguished series of publications.

I met with Bruce Crawford, the club’s current president (and a collector of Charles Dickens and other 19th-century authors) in the Thomas Phillips room of the Club's headquarters in New York, along with Susan Flamm, who is in charge of P.R. We talk about the Club's history and mission, book collecting, Charles Darwin, minnows, and much more.

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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 on calligraphy and typography, including The Noblest Roman: The Centaur Types (co-authored with Misha Beletsky; winner of the 2016 Bibliographical Society of America Prize).

Kelly has taught typography at Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design, and has lectured on the subject for The Cooper Union and numerous other organizations.

Before starting his own design business in 1998, Kelly was Vice President of The Stinehour Press, preceded by a decade as designer at A. Colish.

We met at The Grolier Club in New York to discuss some of the great type and book designers Jerry writes about in A Century for a Century. The two other books of special interest to collectors mentioned during our conversation are The Best of Both Worlds: Finely Printed Livres d Artistes, 1910 2010, and The Art of the Book in the Twentieth Century

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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 of the way through our conversation we were jointed by Jeff Deutsch, Director of Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstore.

Among other things, our discussion covers chocolate bars, delegation, Sunday emails, rents & real estate, the procreation of bookstores, Sarah's stationery, aversion to irrational travel rules, reading not changing the world, smugness, Trevor Noah's book, mutual respect, civic missions, retail in Paris, mobs of tourists, visuals, the importance of cover designs, the retreat of criticism, Instagram, bugs, Bison Books, offices, seminary students, lines on the floor, browsing, tables and buying-energy, matcha and mouldy mugs.

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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 be split into two eras: before Kidd and after.

He went to work at Knopf in 1986. Today he is associate art director and freelances widely, designing in total, some 75 dust jackets a year.

We met in his offices at Knopf in New York to discuss his book Chip Kidd: Book 2.

In so doing we talk about Meryl Streep, Haruki Murakami Martin Amis, the Eisner Awards, French kissing Neil Gaiman and connecting with authors, Alfred and Blanche Knopf, Sonny Mehta, D.A. Dwiggins, Paul Bacon, Geek Love, die cuts, Glamorama, the Yale Review, Chip's late husband poet and Yale Review editor J. D. McClatchy, Chris Ware, the Factory record label, Peter Seville, New Order album covers, the importance of dust jackets and identities, ebooks, death, being paid for your ideas and much more.

This interview was recorded in October, 2019. Sonny Mehta died in December, 2019.

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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 directing collaborative publishing projects with others. In pursuit of my art, I am deeply committed to the crafts of typography, papermaking, printing, bookbinding and the design of books and I support these crafts as intensely as I can. A duality of commitment defines my art. I firmly stand on the side of the argument that there is no art without craft. Art without craft denies the difficult beauty of a thing well made, the elegant simplicity of an idea. Through craft and the precision of design, I seek to bring the rich civilization of the printed book with me to the forge of meaning."

We met in New York just prior to him presenting a talk on his craft to The Grolier Club, which, at the time was hosting a 45 year retrospective of his work.

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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 president and founder of the company. I caught up with her at Toronto Pursuits, an annual gathering where over 100 people from across Canada and the U.S. get together on the garden campus of the University of Toronto’s Victoria College to discuss great books.

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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 Required: An Illustrated History of the American Book Jacket 1920-1950, a book he co-wrote with Seymour Chwast in the 1990s. We start off discussing this eloquent description "At once seductive, informative, and ephemeral, a book jacket is designed to evoke - and promote - the contents of a book"; and then move on to Art Deco, futurism, Bauhaus, de Stijl, constructivism, typography, lettering and book collecting. Designers covered include Paul Rand, Alvin Lustig, E. Mcknight-Kauffer, W.A. Dwiggins and George Salter.

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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 most prestigious literary awards, including the Giller and Cundall Prizes; has five honorary doctorates and how won numerous awards, including the Pierre Berton Award for distinguished achievement in popularizing Canadian history.

We met at her home near the Governor General's grounds in Ottawa to riff off renowned LBJ biographer Robert Caro's latest book, Working. We talk about, among other things, Caro's practice, Pierre Berton, Charlotte's latest book Murdered Midas; A Millionaire, His Goldmine and a Strange Death on an Island Paradise, a biography of the Canadian mine owner Sir Harry Oakes, research methods, academics, adding voices to the mix, academics, the teaching of history, the removal of Sir John A. MacDonald's statue, local historians, and the current dearth of Canadian historical novels.

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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 book publishing industry, holding positions, many of them short lived, at, among other places, the Canadian Book Information Centre (marketing arm of the Association for Canadian Publishers), Books in Canada, the World’s Biggest Bookstore, the Ontario Arts Council, the Literary Press Group of Canada (a sales and distribution co-op for small presses), the Canada Council, Dundurn Press, and Stoddart Publishing.

We talk about all of these organizations. In so doing Marc provides a fascinating, provocative survey of Canadian book publishing, past and present.

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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 standards of excellence for our customers."

We met at his Montreal offices to talk about the book printing business, acquisitions and the growth of Marquis, the nature of the Quebec and Canadian markets, North American competition, the importance of good equipment and happy employees, working with publishers, and much more.

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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 translated more than 200 Quebec works into English, including novels by such noted authors as Michel Tremblay, Hubert Aquin, Anne Hébert, Marie-Claire Blais, Roch Carrier, Yves Beauchemin, and Kim Thúy. She has won many awards including the Governor General's Award for Translation, and the Molson Prize for the Arts.

We met at her home in Montreal to talk, among other things, about Quebec, her career and role as a translator, Mordecai Richler, the Plateau in Montreal, North Hatley, house parties, booze and poets, the language question, La Guerre, Yes Sir, the church and large families, separatism, names on front covers, obsessiveness, humility, Leonard Cohen, musicality, swear words and the vessels of the alter, capturing 'voice", pure laine and much more.

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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 introduced Thirty Years of Storytelling: Selected Short Fiction by Ethelwyn Wetherald.

We met at Carleton University to discuss the history and evolution of McClelland & Stewart's New Canadian Library (NCL) reprint series. Topics covered include the relationship between Jack McClelland and Malcolm Ross, selection criteria, the commerce of publishing a reprint series, teaching Canadian novels in Canadian universities, the ambivalent nature of introductions used to accompany some NCL titles, book designer Frank Newfeld, Canada's literary heritage, and the current status of the NCL.

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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 Alcuin Society of Canada and a renowned collector of Canadian fine press printing which is why he is on the Biblio File podcast. We met at his home just outside of Kingston, Ontario to talk, among other things, about how to evaluate fine press printing, Canadian book designer and typographer Glenn Goluska, Ryerson College printing and design teacher Denis Milton, the English private press tradition, the Grimsby Wayzgoose, Will Reuter, the Barbarian Press, the Heavenly Monkey Press, Jason Dewinetz, Margaret Lock, Robert Reid, Jim Rimmer, bibliographies, why we collect, and much more.

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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 Historical Writing, (general editor), 5 vols, (Oxford University Press, 2011–12) and most recently, A Concise History of History, (Cambridge University press, 2019).

Most important to our purposes, he's also a book collector, specializing in 15th-18th century histories. We met at his home near Kingston, Ontario, to talk about, among other things, the evolution of his collection, the poet Ben Johnson, wedding anniversaries, antiquarian books, tythes and local histories, book historian Jonathan Rose, 'things not kings', maps, abebooks and biblio.com, historiography and the history of history, Chronicles, Attic Books, the Schulich-Woolf Rare Book Collection, going cold turkey, and the domestic police.

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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 provincial politics in Ontario and federal politics in Ottawa since 2003.

He appears as a panelist on various Canadian TV public affairs programs and is the author of Trudeau: The Education of a Prime Minister (2019), a biography of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that focuses on his government's promise-filled first mandate. Ivison is married to Canadian diplomat Dana Cryderman, and has three children. Together they have taught him 'how to be content.'

I want to be content, so my initial questions deal with this topic. We then discuss John's moves back and forth between Scotland and Canada, shuffle on to the story of the book itself, and then on to Trudeau and the lessons he may or may not have learned during his tenure in office. I raise the topic of the Post's right wing board of directors, and throw in some of John's humour and political wisdom, and we close with an examination of truth, and whether or not Canadians can trust Justin Trudeau.

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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 such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and Poetry. She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, a Whiting Award, a Lannan fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, the May Sarton Poetry Prize, the Union League Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and a Front Page Award for her cultural criticism. She has taught at New York University, Princeton, and The New School, and is currently completing a book about chronic illness.

I met with Meghan in her new, bare-walled office in New Haven. It was her very first day on the job, working in the office that is. Among other things we talked about the history of The Yale Review, bridging disciplines, current events, criticism, the Paris Review in its heyday, magazines as spawning grounds for books, re-designs; private experiences with print and the pleasures of being immersed in reading; book designer Chip Kidd; Pentagram; book collecting, broadsides, and much more.

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Linda Morra is a Professor at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Quebec where she teaches Canadian, American, and Indigenous literatures.

She served as the 2016-2017 Craig Dobbin Chair of Canadian Studies at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland, and previously was awarded a Sproul Fellowship from Canadian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

She has won several notable research and teaching awards and has served as President of the Quebec Writers’ Federation. As if this isn't enough, she also sits on the advisory boards of Guernica Press, Canadian Literature, and Studies in Canadian Literature.

We met at her office at Bishop's to talk about Margaret Laurence and Jack McClelland, Letters, a book she edited with Laura K. Davis.

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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 fiction by Canadian women writers. We met a her home in Kingston, Ontario to talk about Both Hands, her biography of one of Canada's greatest publishers, Lorne Pierce (1890-1961) of Ryerson Press.

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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 of Ottawa's popular festivals. Over the years he has also been active in many national and international associations. He is currently Executive Director of the Canadian Garden Council. Michel holds a Festival Director Certificate from Perdue University and a Recreation Diploma from Algonquin College.

I met with him at his home, in his library, to discuss not festivals or tulips, but his other grand passion, photography books. Among other things we talk about nudes, limited editions, black and white contrast, his mother's photo albums, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Richard Avedon, Edward Steichen, Helmut Newton, The Beatles, Patti Smith and travelling the world visiting exotic bookshops, and connecting with booksellers and great photographers.

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"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 take up the story from here.

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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 the legendary nineteenth-century bibliomaniac Thomas Phillipps, whose vast collection of manuscripts and early printed books filled an English country house and required more than a century of public auctions and sales to disperse."

I met with curators Ray Clemens and Diane Ducharme to talk about Phillipps, his family, his temperament, his ambition, the scope of his collection, and of course, his obsessive, destructive collecting habit.

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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 them a biography of Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney published 1991.

In 1982, Sawatsky began teaching classes in investigative journalism and has been an adjunct professor of journalism at Carleton University's School of Journalism since 1991. Sawatsky also works as a consultant in the practice of interviewing and has taught interviewing techniques to television anchors, reporters and print journalists in many parts of the world, including Canada, Singapore, The United States, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

He currently teaches an interview-technique seminar for sports reporters at ESPN. The seminar focuses on remedying "the sloppy and ineffective interviewing techniques often employed by many of today's major television and cable news interviewers". In 2004, he was hired full-time by ESPN as senior director of talent development.

We met at his home in Connecticut where I tried to discover from him how best to interview an author. During our conversation we talk about the merits of having an opinion, the positives and negatives of disagreeing with your guests and/or letting them shine, micro and macro interviewing strategies, open and close ended questions, football play-books, Howard Stern, David Letterman, Jay Leno and Johnny Carson.

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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 Clearwater, Florida, Laura received her Ph.D. in British Romanticism and Literary Theory from the University of Maryland in 1986. She taught in the English departments at Converse and Wofford colleges in Spartanburg, SC, and was a tenured professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis until 1997.

Laura's biography of iconic publisher Blanche Knopf, The Lady with the Borzoi, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in April, 2016.

We met a her home in New York’s Hudson Valley to discuss Blanche's role as publisher, and wife to Alfred Knopf.

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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, was first published in 2010 by Penguin. Barbara recently updated it, so I took the opportunity to interview her at her home in the Hudson Valley (one that she shares with her famed husband, book binder Richard Minsky). Among other things we talk about Barbara's latest work, The Mueller Report Graphic Novel, about stick figures, personal creativity, artistic style, creating compelling characters; about page layout, writer's block, and breaking into the biz, plus loads of other useful advice on how to write/draw/create a successful graphic novel. And then there's a visit from Sparky the dog.

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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 & Noble in New York to talk about what's next for Barnes & Noble (The green room was occupied by Malcolm Gladwell who was delivering a talk at the store that evening).

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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 books: selling, editing, publishing, promoting. She began as a bookseller at Mel Hurtig’s store in Edmonton, eventually running her own – Fifth Business Books.

She has worked as an editor and in executive positions with several Canadian publishing companies. In 1988, with Gary Ross and John Macfarlane, she started Macfarlane, Walter & Ross, which became Canada’s premier publisher of quality non-fiction, publishing titles including Boom, Bust & Echo by David Foot, The Danger Tree by David Macfarlane, and On the Take by Stevie Cameron

Jan has been involved in publishing education at institutions across Canada, teaching at Simon Fraser and Ryerson Universities. She moved to Kingston, Ontario in 2004. A few years later, teaming with Merilyn Simonds, she helped professionalize the Kingston WritersFest.

I met with Leslie and Jan in Kingston to talk about Mel Hurtig and his legacy as bookseller, publisher and patriot.

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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 Osler during his lifetime, Fye has been a collector of prints and engravings relating to medicine and the portraits of physicians. In 2016, he donated many of his books to the Mayo Clinic.

We met in Montreal, during an American Olser Society meeting, to discuss book collecting and Bruce's life as a book collector.

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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 he taught from 1874 until 1884 before leaving to join the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and then to become one of the “Big Four” founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital and medical school in Baltimore...he finished his career as Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, where he was also able to devote time to his passion for book collecting."

Chris and I met at his offices in Montreal to talk about Osler the medical book collector.

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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 on the board of the Council for Canadian American Relations, Chicago Media Project, and the international advisory board of C2 Montreal. Vicki lives in Chicago where she and Bruce are co-founders of Uncharted LLC.

We met in Montreal to discuss their new book The Art of Diplomacy: Strengthening the Canada-U.S. Relationship in Times of Uncertainty.

Among other things we talk about marriages, Justin Trudeau, Donald Trump, the arts, beehives, political books, indigenous culture; who has friendlier waitresses - the U.S. or Canada?; the Keystone pipeline, Tim Bits, and Goldman Sachs.

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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 special envoy to Myanmar. He has written five books, the most recent of which, What's Happened to Politics? was published in 2015, just prior to that year's Canadian federal election.

We talked about the book and this year's election when we met at his offices on University Avenue in Toronto. Among other things we discuss lessons he's learned during his time in politics, how scripted and stage managed politicians are today, the undermining of parliamentary procedure, constant campaigning, partisan spin replacing meaningful policy, centralization of power in the PMO, broken promises, the rule of law, and the need for more political engagement on the part of the general public. The book serves as a blueprint for how the next Prime Minister should lead, and what policies he or she should consider introducing.

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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 against journalists; his book The Mexico that Hurts, Octavio Paz, and Malcolm Lowry.

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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 Vancouver, a Treaty Commissioner and Regional Chief of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations. Wilson-Raybould studied at the University of Victoria and later at the University of British Columbia. She lives with her husband Tim Raybould in Vancouver.

We met in Ottawa the day after her book From Where I Stand, Rebuilding Indigenous Nations for a Stronger Canada was launched and talked, among other things, about telling the truth in politics - the whole truth; about exactly what 'title' means; about launching a book in the middle of an election; about keeping promises, Justin Trudeau and SNC Lavalin, Alberto Manguel, Conrad Black, the Royal Proclamation of 1763, Confederation, assimilation, the Charter of Rights, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, reconciliation, indigenous self government, community development, revenue sharing, spousal travel, and creating a more 'just society'.

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Cory Doctorow is an activist, science fiction author and co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is also a special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He favours liberalising copyright laws and is a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books, the most recent of which is called Radicalizing, four SF novellas "connected by social, technological, and economic visions of today and what America could be in the near, near future."

I met with Cory in Ottawa after he'd appeared at the Ottawa International Writers Festival. We talk primarily about book publishing, the new EU copyright directive and the practice of writing Science Fiction.

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Claudia Piñeiro is an Argentine novelist and television scriptwriter best known for writing literary crime novels, most of which are best sellers in Latin America. She was born in Buenos Aires and has won numerous literary prizes including the German LiBeraturpreis for Elena Sabe and the Clarin Prize for fiction for Thursday Night Widows. Four of her novels have been translated into English by Bitter Lemon Press, all of which have been adapted into feature films.

We met at The Blue Met Literary Festival (Claudia was awarded the 2019 Premio Azul, Blue Met’s Spanish-language prize) in Montreal to talk about, among other things, Edgar Allan Poe, G.K. Chesterton and detective stories; literary prizes, and the difference between writing novels and television series screenplays.

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Born in Buenos Aires in 1948, Alberto Manguel grew up in Tel-Aviv, where his father served as the first Argentinian ambassador to Israel. At sixteen, while working at the Pygmalion bookshop in Buenos Aires, he was asked by the blind Jorge Luis Borges to read aloud to him at his home. Manguel left Argentina for Europe before the horrors of the 'disappeared' began, and just after the events of May 1968. During the 1970s he lived a peripatetic life in France, England, Italy, and Tahiti, reviewing, translating, editing, and always reading. In the 1980s he moved to Toronto where he lived and raised his three children. He became a Canadian citizen and continues to identify his nationality as first and foremost Canadian. In 2000, Manguel purchased with his partner and renovated a medieval presbytery in the Poitou-Charentes region of France to house his 30,000 books. They left France for New York in 2015.

He has received many prizes, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and honorary doctorates from the universities of Liège, in Belgium, Anglia Ruskin in Cambridge, UK, and York and Ottawa in Canada. He is a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France).

We met in Montreal at the Blue Met Literary Festival to talk about his latest book Packing My Library (published by Yale University Press). The conversation turns to Canadian politics and Jody Wilson Raybould at about the 42 minute mark and rages on and off from there to the finish. It's a passionate exchange about justice and honesty, and how literature informs real life.

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David Moscrop is a political theorist and SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Communication at the University of Ottawa. He studies democratic deliberation, political decision-making, and digital media, and is a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, and a writer for Maclean's Magazine He also provides regular political commentary for television and radio. His first book Too Dumb for Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones was published by Goose Lane Editions in March 2019.

We met at the University of Ottawa to discuss his book, just in time for Canada's 2019 Federal election. Among other things we talk about the story behind the book, making smart voting decisions, Twitter, literary agent Chris Bucci, CBC Ideas; good, rational, autonomous thinking; diverse, trusted news sources; emotional biases, negative political advertising, threats to democracy, partisanship, SNC Lavalin, Jody Wilson Raybould, the importance of investing time in order to understanding politics, bots, good citizenship, voting on principle versus strategically, party discipline, and adopting proportional representation.

And for you non-political types: it's a lot more interesting than this makes it sound.

Too Dumb for Democracy?: Why we make bad political decisions and how we can make better ones

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Although E.K. Brown, a highly admired literary critic, once called poet and bureaucrat Duncan Campbell Scott "one of the chief masters of Canadian literature," Scott's reputation today lies in tatters. Mark Abley in his fascinating biography Conversations with a Dead Man, The Legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott, explains why.

I met with him at his home in Point Claire near Montreal - where the ghost of Scott appeared. We talk, among others things, about boarding schools, Canada's residential school system, "genocide," the Department of Indian Affairs, Sir John A. MacDonald, forms of biography, assimilation, the "Indian Problem," and Scott's poetry, notably a sonnet to an “Onondaga Madonna.”

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Mordecai: The Life and Times has been called the ‘award-winningest’ book in Canadian literary history. I met with its author Charles Foran to talk about its subject Mordecai Richler. The guts, aggression, honesty and pride of the man - a man who did things, who wrote to stimulate conversation, and argument, who was socially engaged, who asked hard, uncomfortable questions. We also discuss Richler’s similarities to Pierre Trudeau. His taking on a whole movement over Quebec’s sign laws; his desire to write the best novel ever written, least one book that would last; about Montreal, its tensions, and his loyalty to it; and about Canadian culture, digitization and the loss of literary life.

This interview was conducted in June, 2012

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Kit Maude is a Spanish-to-English translator. He received a bachelor’s degree in Comparative American Studies from the University of Warwick. In 2009 he moved to Buenos Aires where he currently lives. His translations have been featured in Granta, the Literary Review, the Short Story Project, and other publications. We met at the Falena bookstore/wine bar in the Chacarita neighbourhood of Buenos Aires to talk literary tourism over a glass. Here's our conversation (the bookstore we reference that was once a performing arts theater, then a cinema, is called El Ateneo Grand Splendid).

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Jonathan Rose is the William R. Kenan Professor of History at Drew University in Madison, NJ. His fields of study are British history, intellectual history and the history of the book (in which he happens to be a giant). His books include The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes and The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor both of which won important prizes. He has held visiting appointments at the University of Cambridge and Princeton University and he reviews books for the The Times Literary Supplement and the Daily Telegraph. Most important viz our purposes: he was the founding president of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP), and for many years, co-editor of its journal 'Book History'.

I met with Jonathan at SHARP'S annual conference in Amherst, MA #Sharp19, to talk about his role in establishing the society. We also chat about SHARP'S history, purpose, future, and noticeable vibrancy, about the importance of history text books; Gone with the Wind; JFK, and Playboy magazine (okay, the last only in passing).

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Ana María Cabanellas began her career as a lawyer, after which she joined the family-owned publishing company Editorial Heliasta as a partner. In 1979, she became President of Editorial Claridad which specializes in legal dictionaries, as well as fiction, philosophy and history. In 2006, Ms Cabanellas founded UnaLuna, which publishes children’s books.

Over the years she has been extremely active in industry associations. For example, she is currently Vice- president of CADRA (Centro de Administración de Derechos Reprográficos Asociación Civil), Argentina’s RRO, and Chair of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee of IFRRO. Previously, she served as President of the Cámara Argentina del Libro for seven years, was Secretary and then President of GIE from 1991-2004, and President of the International Publishers Association from 2004-2008.

She speaks frequently at publishing events around the world. In 2012, the Buenos Aires Book Fair named her one of the “50 most influential people in publishing in the Spanish Language.”

We met at her offices in BA to talk about her career, her vision, publishing in Argentina, copyright, peace, education and children's books, among many other things.

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Series: Biblio File in Buenos Aires

Liliana Heker was born in 1943 in Buenos Aires. Her writing career began at age 17 thanks to a letter she wrote Abelardo Castillo requesting a job at a magazine he edited. During Argentina's so called Dirty War in the seventies and eighties, she defiantly wrote and edited several well known left-wing literary journals, subtly protesting her country's violent, repressive regime, while defending the practice of literature. She also famously engaged in correspondence with Julio Cortázar, arguing that resistance to tyranny is better staged at home where the people can read your work and take faith from it, rather than from abroad.

This from Biblioasis: "She is the author of two novels and numerous books of short stories and essays, in addition to being a founder of two important Argentine literary magazines. Her collected short stories were published in Spanish in 2004 and translated into Hebrew; her stories have been included in anthologies in many countries and languages. Her collection, The Stolen Party and Other Stories, is available in English. Her novel The End of the Story was not only a literary success, but a cultural event that provoked controversy and avid discussion of how best to remember the years of the Argentine dictatorship." I met Liliana at her home in Buenos Aires to talk about all of the above, and more. Her collection of short stories, Please Talk to Me, translated by Alberto Manguel and Miranda France, is available from Yale University Press

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Series: Biblio File in Buenos Aires

Guillermo Martínez is an Argentine novelist, detective fiction and short story writer. He earned a PhD in mathematical logic from the University of Buenos Aires, after which he worked for two years in a postdoctoral position at the Mathematical Institute, in Oxford. His most successful novel is Crímenes Imperceptibles known as The Oxford Murders, written in 2003. He was awarded the Planeta Prize for this novel, which was adapted into a film in 2008, directed by Alex de la Iglesia, and starring John Hurt and Elijah Wood.

We met in his apartment in Buenos Aires to discuss how mathematics and Borges have informed his novel and detective fiction writing.

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Tania Craan’s career as an art director and designer spans more than three decades. For the past 25 years, she has run her freelance graphic design studio. She started her career working as a designer at Penguin Books Canada and then went on to McClelland & Stewart where she became art director. In addition to books, she has designed stamps for Canada Post, three Ontario Provincial Government inquiry reports, and annual reports for a variety of corporate clients. She "blends the disciplines of publication design with an appreciation of how readers actually navigate pages and their content — into visually pleasing, highly readable communication pieces."

I met with Tania at her home near Kingston, Ontario. We talk in this interview about her career - notably her time with McClelland and Stewart - her transition from employee to freelancer, and a selection of the books she is most proud of having designed.

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Eimear McBride is an Irish novelist whose debut novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, won the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize in 2013 and the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. She wrote the book in six months, but it took nine years to get it published. Galley Beggar Press of Norwich finally picked it up in 2013. The novel is written in a stream of consciousness-like style and tells the story of a young woman's complex relationship with her family. McBride's second novel The Lesser Bohemians was published in September 2016. Set in Camden Town in the 1990s, it tells the story of the turbulent relationship between an eighteen year old drama student and a thirty-eight year old actor.

In 2017 McBride was awarded the inaugural Creative Fellowship of the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading.

We met in Montreal - where she was, at the invitation of the School of Irish Studies at Concordia University - to talk about her work, and her experience getting it published.

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David Robinson is executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers. He has been with CAUT since 1999, when he was first hired as director of communications. Prior to joining CAUT, Robinson was the senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Canada’s leading progressive think-tank. He has also been a lecturer at Simon Fraser University, and Carleton University in Ottawa. He is the author of numerous articles, reviews, and reports on higher education and research policy, vocational education and training, and international trade and investment agreements.

I met with him at his offices in Ottawa to talk about the Canadian government's current review of copyright policy.

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Ken Lopez is a renowned antiquarian bookseller who deals in rare books, specializing in modern literary first editions. He regularly issues catalogs of Modern Literature and less regularly issues catalogs of Native American Literature, the Literature of the Vietnam War and the 1960s, and Nature Writing. He also has an established record of placing authors' archives in institutional collections.

Ken is a former President of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America. He operates out of Hadley, Massachusetts, where I met him to talk about, among other things, collecting books about the Vietnam War, grunts, Tim O'Brien, Raymond Carver, Mario Puzo and sleeping with the fishes, Native American literature, climate fiction, nature writing, John Burroughs, wildlife photography, the social value of book collecting, asking the question of your collection 'is it something people/scholars can learn from?' author archives, the importance of association copies, Ken Kesey, the editor's copy of the proofs of The Lord of the Rings, Michael Ondaatje's archive at the Harry Ransom Center, and learning throughout life.

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In 1967 Barry Moser moved from Tennessee to New England to teach at The Williston Academy in Easthampton, Massachusetts. He was soon introduced to Leonard Baskin with whom he studied at Baskin's Gehenna Press.

In the spring of 1969 Moser was commissioned to illustrate a trade book, The Flowering Plants of Massachusetts (it wasn't published until 1979). He became fascinated with plants and plant lore and as a result named his press Pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium). It produced a small number of books over the next decade. In 1977 Moser met Andrew Hoyem, who asked if Moser would be interested in illustrating the Arion Press’s forthcoming Moby-Dick. He was, he did, and it was published to great fanfare.

I'll let Barry pick it up from here.

We met at his home in North Hatfield, Massachusetts, and talked, among other things, about the differences between a booksmith and a bookwright, print making and illustration. About drawing and sailing, short-lived religion and agnosticism; music as religion; opposites working together as a unit, woodcuts and Leonard Baskin; the Thomas Mosher Press; Harold McGrath; art's relationship to money; the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible, David Godine; collecting Barry's work: Frankenstein, Moby Dick, Pennyroyals and trade titles, the Jump books; the distinctiveness of Barry's work; The Andrew Hoyem/Arion Press Moby Dick controversy; and the unfinished Dante's Inferno.

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Carey Cranston took on the role of President of the American Writers Museum in September of 2016. Prior to that Carey served for 12 years as President of Fox College, a private career college in Chicago, and prior to that he was a Vice President at Hill & Knowlton, a global PR firm, where he led the digital and web services division

We met at the Museum, and talked about, among other things, the Museum's mission, Frederick Douglass, The Great Gatsby, writing as a concept writ large, the written word, Bob Dylan, song writing, Alan Light,identity, an American voice, immigrant stories, Tupac, deceased authors, promoting the present, the "book cloud," fun, Museum founder Malcolm O'Hagan, the Dublin Writers Museum, the Declaration of Independence, the importance of ideas, the On the Road scroll, the joys of digital, Amaze Design, dust jackets, school groups, typewriters, and inspiration.

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David McKnight is an accomplished librarian and book collector, "imbued with remarkable passion and resolve."

As Director of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML), at the University of Pennsylvania David is responsible for insuring stewardship, management, discovery, and preservation of the collection and for maintaining the visibility of RBML within and outside of the Penn community. At the Penn Libraries, he has also served as Curator of the Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image.

Before coming to Penn, he headed the Rare Books and Special Collections Division at McGill University Libraries and was the Principal Librarian at McGill's Humanities and Social Sciences Library.

He is the author of Experiment, Printing the Canadian Imagination: Highlights from the David McKnight Canadian Little Magazine and Small Press Collection.

McKnight invested 30 years in developing this collection, one that has "considerable potential for literary research in the areas of Canadian Modernist poetry, avant-garde literature, and the production of small magazines in Canada." He generously donated the collection to the University of Alberta Libraries in 2012, and this catalogue was published in 2018 to accompany an exhibition held at the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library.

David and I met in Montreal to talk about his experience amassing this essential collection. Among other things we discuss Ken Norris's Little Magazine in Canada 1925-80, Roy MacSkimming's The Perilous Trade, disappointment in Library and Archives Canada, New Wave Canada: The Coach House Press and the small press movement in English Canada in the 1960s, Carl Spadoni, Merrill Distad, wives of book collectors, fine presses, literary experiment, Adrian King-Edwards and The Word Bookstore in Montreal, bill bissett, bp nichol, Mac Jamieson, TISH, Bill Hoffer,j.w. curry, Nicky Drumbolis, Nelson Ball's catalogues, Wynne Francis's correspondence, Contact Press, Vehicule Press, Quebecois magazines, and The Gotham Bookmart exhibition.

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Levi Stahl is the marketing director of the University of Chicago Press and the editor of The Getaway Car: A Donald E. Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany.

We met in Chicago to discuss the role of the book marketer, getting books out into the world and bought, helping the sales department, Thoreau, content and numbers, advertising and the price point of books, print on demand and short runs, shelf and display space, disseminating scholarship, advances, authenticity, and advice for authors on how to use social media.

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Wayson Choy was born in Vancouver in 1939. He spent his childhood in the city's Chinatown and subsequently attended the University of British Columbia where he studied creative writing. He moved to Toronto in 1962, and taught at Humber College from 1967 to 2004. His novel The Jade Peony (1995) won the Trillium Book Award and the City of Vancouver Book Award. His novel All That Matters, was published in 2004.

I interviewed him about it some years later in Ottawa. Our conversation was among the first I recorded for the Biblio File. During it we talk about a range of topics, including the immigrant experience, conflicting cultural values, the language of the heart, tradition, butterflies, grandmothers, the colonial system, "the other," wisdom and storytelling, extended families, television, ancestors, elders and sons, obedience, ghosts, short leaders and actors, community, doing the right thing, luck, important things being invisible, internalized oppressions, banquet tables, and bananas.

Regrettably our conversation cuts off at about the 33 minute mark, but I nonetheless wanted to post it to mark Wayson's passing. He died today, April 29th, 2019 at the age of 80. RIP.

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James Pollock is the author of Sailing to Babylon, which was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award in Poetry, and You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada, a finalist for the ForeWord Review's Book of the Year Award for a collection of essays. He is also the editor of The Essential Daryl Hine, which made The Partisan's list of the best books of 2015. His poems have been published in The Paris Review, AGNI, Poetry Daily, the National Post,and other journals in the U.S. and Canada.

I met with James in his home in Madison, WI to talk about You are Here. Topics discussed include blindness to Canadian poetry, the importance of anthologies, bad poetry, meter, rhyme, Robert Frost, argument, philosophers, poet-critics, autobiography in poetry, myth, Adam Kirsch, authenticity versus technique, rhetoric, poetry in totalitarian regimes, Michael Lista, Carmine Starnino; constructive, honest reviews, Eric Ormsby, and the need for a great anthology of Canadian poetry.

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As the editor of Rain Taxi Review of Books, Eric Lorberer is responsible for the voice and style that has brought the magazine widespread acclaim. He is also the director of the Twin Cities Book Festival, has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, and speaks at conferences and literary festivals around the country as an advocate for independent publishing and literary culture.

We met at his home in Minneapolis to discuss Rain Taxi's history and the literary events it puts on, the Twin Cities Book Festival, championing printed books, the current fixation on screens and devices, best-sellers, small press publishers, literary presses in Minneapolis, sharing books, technology and literary experiences, the Twin Cities Literary Calendar, being useful, Independent Bookstore Day and France.

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Eric Ormsby is a poet, a writer, and a man of letters. He was a longtime resident of Montreal, where he was the Director of University Libraries and subsequently a professor of Islamic thought at McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies. Presently, he lives and writes in France and Prague.

Ormsby began writing poetry as a young man and began publishing in 1985. He has produced six poetry collections, among them Bavarian Shrine and Other Poems (1990), which won a Quebec prize for the best poetry of that year, Coastlines (1992), and Time's Covenant: Selected Poems (2006). His poems have been published in various journals and magazines such as The New Yorker and The Paris Review and anthologized in The Norton Anthology of Poetry. He has also authored a book of criticism called Fine Incisions, which we talked about when we got together in Montreal.

Among other things we discuss the art of book reviewing, his aesthetic criteria, honesty, negative reviews, W.B.Yeats, Shakespeare and Eric's grandmother, standards and touchstones, Montreal, Canadian book design, William Logan, the first and last lines of a review, justice, personal affiliations, Tolstoy, War and Peace, self-revelation, translation, and the poet Daryl Hine. To finish off, Eric reads several of his poems.

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Will Rueter is the proprietor of the Aliquando Press which was founded in 1962 "to enable its proprietor to learn the basics of printing and binding books by hand." To date the Press has produced 109 books. It is located in Dundas, Ontario.

Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson was a renowned British bookbinder, and passionate private printer. He was proprietor of the Doves Press, one of the most influential private presses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Its standards of quality have influenced commercial and fine presses for more than a century.

I met with Will at his workshop in Dundas to talk about his press, and Cobden-Sanderson. Among other things we discuss bookbinding, dinner with William Morris, the Doves Press, Emery Walker, Doves' type, Bessie Hooley, Majesty, Beauty and Order, red ink, Jim Rimmer, patterns and ornaments, Elbert Hubbard, Leonard Barr, Paul Dinsing, Rollin Milroy and his Heavenly Monkey Press, the Hogarth Press, the Nonesuch Press, polymer plates, Massey College, "The Seafarer", printing and emotion; responsibility, sincerity, and connection with the words and the author.

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Steven Temple is an antiquarian bookseller who, after operating shops on Queen Street in Toronto for forty years, moved to Welland, Ontario in 2014 where he now does business out of his home. He continues to specialize in literary books, especially Canadian literary books, general Canadiana, and select out-of-print and rare books in various fields.

We met at his home in Welland, where we discussed, among other things, his passion for finding "lost" Canadian literature, parasites on the Internet, the urgency to buy, poet Frank Prewett, rarity, utility bills, stories about books, examples of lost Canadian literature, Watters's Checklist of Canadian Literature, Steven's criteria for buying books, Robertson Davies, William Golding, Graham Greene, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, collecting the Governor General's Award for Fiction winners, G. Herbert Sallans's Little Man, artist Fred Varley, Canadian book design, being a pioneer, and patronizing Canada Post.

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James King is the author of six novels and nine biographies, including books on David Milne, Margaret Laurence, Jack McClelland, and Lawren Harris. His biography of Herbert Read, The Last Modern, was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award. A fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, James lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

And that's where I met him to discuss his biography of Jack McClelland, Jack, A Life with Writers. Among other things we talk of publicizing Canadian authors, happy childhoods, Patrick Crean, Esi Edugyan, magnetic personalities, P.T. Barnum, swearing, multi-national publishing houses, Canadian literature, Gabriel Roy, Margaret Laurence, Mordecai Richler, the New Canadian Library, editing, approbation, publishing poetry, Avie Bennett, the dangers of promoting Canadian culture, Alfred and Blanche Knopf, Bennett Cerf, James Laughlin, curiosity, Alice Munro, Michael Snow, Lauren Harris, The Handover, Dundurn Press, and naming Canada's national library after Jack McClelland.

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Darrel J. McLeod is Cree from treaty eight territory in Northern Alberta. Before deciding to pursue writing in his retirement, he was a chief negotiator of land claims for the federal government and executive director of education and international affairs with the Assembly of First Nations. His memoir Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age won the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction.

We met at the Canada Council's offices in Ottawa to discuss it, along with negotiating land claims and arguing for concessions; residential schools; catholic priests, sexual abuse and the fear of God. The United church, the Evangelical church, listening to birds; music; non-binary definitions of gender; traditional native foods, fish heads, red willow shoots, and moose thigh bones. Death. Unconditional love. Alcohol and weakness. And stand-up comedy.

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Marvin Post is the owner of Attic Books in London, Ontario - one of the largest, most successful used/antiquarian bookstores in Canada.

I met with Marvin to discuss the reasons behind his success. Among other things we talk about buying lots of books, religious books, double downsizing, millennial debt-load, fresh stock, on-line versus in-store stock, buying buildings, skulls on shirts, shows, areas to collect in, medical books, books as investments, books into movies, fake signatures, storage units, and enjoying your life. Marvin also provides commentary on a selection of used books that I brought into the store for trade.

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Sarah Henstra is a professor of English literature at Ryerson University in Toronto where she teaches courses in Gothic Horror, Fairy Tales & Fantasies, Psychoanalysis & Literature, and Creative Writing. She is the author of The Red Word, a novel that recently won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction.

We met in Ottawa to talk about The Red Word. Among other things we discuss The Scarlet Letter, shame, the double standard, Greek mythology, unspoken assumptions, #metoo, feminism, frats houses, university life, the 1990s, passive characters and withholding sex.

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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 today with her daughter. And it's there that I met with her to discuss her 2017 CLC Kreisel Lecture published in 2018 by The University of Alberta Press as Wisdom in Nonsense - Invaluable Lessons From My Father.

Among other things we talk about hating and loving your life, happiness and wonder, relationships with your parents dead and alive, memoirs versus fiction, truth, abuse and #metoo and witnesses, the legal system and power, Concordia, lying to tell the truth, editing the real world, heads being eaten off by dragons, magical radical worlds, deception versus folly, pretending, class, ignoring fathers' advice, metaphors, loneliness, ugly babies, conventional versus internal beauty, clowns, collecting, stealing cheese, Montreal's Plateau neighbourhood, and roses.

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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." Here, as part of The Biblio File Book Club, we discuss Homer's Odyssey, and with it topics including revenge, Quentin Tarantino, home and family, identity, the slaughter of suitors, the craving for experience, the desire to learn, curiosity, intelligence, problem solving, Penelope, gifts, the practice of hospitality, sacred strangers, recklessness, repetition in texts, double standards, suspicion, character arcs, women as betrayers, and the "wine blue" sea.

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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 by important illustrators, photographers and graphic artists.

We met at her London studio and talked about dealing with beautiful things, starting a business, 'running' books, sniffing around and meeting people, having an international mindset, the best bookfairs, researching and cataloguing beautiful books and getting stories out of them, selling what you love, the Golden Cockerel Press, Doves Press, always buying the best copy, ephemera, trophy hunters, book collecting prizes, imperfections, the Ashendene Press, Cobden-Sanderson, books, harmony and the cosmos, the Kelmscott Press, the Nonesuch Press, limitations and rarity, the Folio Society, the Limited Editions Club, Gaylord Schanilec, Ron King at the Circle Press, and the Old School Press.

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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 College London to research his PhD on Samuel Johnson.

In 2016 Hitchings edited a collection of original essays about bookshops, entitled Browse: The World in Bookshops. Its contributors included Alaa Al Aswany, Stefano Benni, Michael Dirda, Daniel Kehlmann, Andrey Kurkov, Yiyun Li, Pankaj Mishra, Dorthe Nors, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Ian Sansom, Elif Shafak, Iain Sinclair, Ali Smith, Sasa Stanisic and Juan Gabriel Vasquez.

We met in London to talk about Browse, and our experiences in bookstores around the world.

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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 strategy fund, whether or not publishing is an artistic endeavour, literary non-fiction, Ken Whyte and Procupine's Quill, filling in profiles, project grants, core support and juries.

Please note that Guylaine Normandin is no longer with the Canada Council.

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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 about their competitors' releases; quasi-catalogues; the Blitz; libraries under pressure; Waterstones; Mr. B's, Toppings and high streets; Tim Waterstones's new memoir; Blackwell's; the leveling off of e-book sales and the production value of print books; subscription book clubs; and click and collect...plus we mull over some of the hotter topics that today face the book publishing and selling world.

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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 enthusiasm, shocking and fabulous bookshops, plastic flowers, bookseller personality, how to display books, book-selling being visual, recommending books (never more than three), Brexit, Amazon, screwing with algorithms, slippery squid, freedom to price, the perceived value of books, pre-orders, employee uniforms, changing chains, the purpose of chain bookshops, Indigo Books, introverted booksellers, poor writers, curating books, raising bookseller staff salaries, making Waterstones more like Daunt Books, returns as a measure of bad buying, dropping the apostrophe in Waterstones, demystifying Kindle, holding entertaining events, and being a fun place in the community.

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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-crafted books, millennials and the book as object, the Mainstreet Trading bookshop, starting the process of getting people to read a book, Milkman and the difference between originality and difficulty, "legacy" businesses, trust and relationships, providing value to writers, the 'ff' colophon and cultural value, CATS, risk and editorial impulse, Kazuo Ishiguro and honouring authors now, sales and realism, superlatives, copy and honesty, formats and creating energy, design briefs, Woody Allen, the vocation of publishing, the gift of social media, advertising, James Daunt, Waterstones, independents and Amazon, The Doves Press, and books as a life-blood of civilized humanity.

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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, Canongate, Granta, Querus, Profile, Atlantic, Short Books, & Icon), access to book buyers, Steig Larsen, must-have books, faith and trust, selling books abroad, being misquoted, brands, car-dealerships, Waterstones' golden era, Michael Joseph, grounding, classic sales people, enthusiasm, libraries, T.S. Eliot, catalogues, book wholesalers, Gardners Books, Amazon, Call me by Your Name, the Net Book Agreement, Harry Potter, best-sellers and over-publishing, big data, the law of threes, publishing popular people, social media, Rome by Matthew Neale and fluff.

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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 side, auctions, lizards and sex in Cold Skin, Rob Sears, libel, parody, the wallpaper in Canongate's London boardroom, editorial and acquisition meetings, florid style, the best literary agents, great works seeing the light of day, idealism, Tom Jones's Tired of London, Tired of Life, Gina Miller's Rise, people who live their lives for the good of others, advances (a slightly irritating and discursive diversion), I Go Quiet by David Ouimet, and the power of books to show us all that we have a place in the world.

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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 we talk birth control for books, gatekeepers, the exponential growth of scientific research papers, the continuing success of Harry Potter, hitting it big with best-sellers, the elephant and the codfish strategies, the erosion of copyright laws, salami slices, Brexit, the poverty of authors and demise of public libraries, more authors less money, why British and America editors, aubergines and eggplants, literary agents making work, legal monopolies, Penguin Random House, hardbacks versus paperbacks, Bloomsbury, China and cricket, managed economies and free enterprise, bringing Chinese books in English to the world, Mensch Publishing, Time to Go, Guy Kennaway, how to measure commercial success, publishing assets, and the attraction of combining commerce, culture and creativity.

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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 essayist and reporter.The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, her account of the cross-cultural conflicts between a Hmong family and the American medical system, won a National Book Critics Circle Award. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, is a book about books (buying them, writing in their margins, and arguing with her husband on how to shelve them). At Large and At Small is a collection of essays on Coleridge, postal history, and ice cream, among other topics; it was the source of an encrypted quotation in the New York Times Sunday Acrostic.

I met with Anne at the Brattleboro Literary Festival to talk, among other things, about opening sentences, erotic relationships with wine, male chauvinism, wine libraries, 900 bottles of wine, childhood poverty, Columbia University, leaving parents behind, Jewishness, Irving Wallace, cut roots, John Erskine, Great Books, The Lifetime Reading Plan and life lessons, prisoners, oaklings, Information Please, Harpo Marx, a patrician mid-Atlantic accent, translating Neitsche, retrieving wives, lovers that don't disappoint, Simon and Schuster, The New Yorker, multi-tasking, self-deprecation, counterfeits, mailing home toilet paper, hatred of television, open-mindedness and The New Lifetime Reading Plan, and the ability to take hedonistic pleasure in books and wine.

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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 anything, the shock of the Great Depression, 2008, immigration, the deterioration of democracy, the role of political books, Trumpocracy, discovery and threats to sue, Trump: The Novel, the Whitehouse Correspondence Dinner, humiliation as a theme, laughter, Bin Laden, moral development and dilemma, Nick Carraway, publishers' advances, David's novel Patriots, Generals Mattis and McMaster, lying, Tom Wolfe, Donald Trump, vanity, Obama, Karen Horney, negative economics, mobilized voters, the Saudis, Trump towers, tax avoidance, Wikileaks, Putin, Deutsche Bank, Stephen Greenblatt's Tyrant, Shakespeare, Presidents born to great wealth, and standing up for the right thing.

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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 honors include the 2016 Holberg Prize from the Norwegian Parliament, the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and the 2011 National Book Award for The Swerve.

Among his named lecture series are the Adorno Lectures in Frankfurt, the University Lectures at Princeton, and the Clarendon Lectures at Oxford. He has held visiting professorships at universities in Beijing, Kyoto, London, Paris, Florence, Torino, Trieste, and Bologna, as well as the Renaissance residency at the American Academy in Rome.

We met at the the Brattleboro Literary Festival in Vermont to talk about his most recent book Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics, in which Donald Trump's name isn't mentioned once. I, however, make a point of mentioning it frequently.

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"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, from Roxane Gay to Masha Gessen, Patti Smith to Zadie Smith, Karl Ove Knausgaard to J.K. Rowling, and Jonathan Franzen to Toni Morrison."

I met Beowulf at the Brattleboro Literary Festival, and there talked with him about author photographs, Helumt Newton, father's love, drawing characters in stories, storytelling, studying what you don't like, business experience, farting around in your twenties, ICP, leaping into what you love, celebrating your subjects' journeys, making novel pictures, Leslie Jamison's photograph, the sidewalks of New York City, the Donna Tartt opportunity, commercial viability, serious photographs, Vanessa Veselka's tattoo, close reading, Harper Collins, Anthony Bourdain, humility and mutual respect, Iman, and vulnerability.

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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 Bibliography of Canadiana, Heavenly Monkey, Barbarian Press, Pericles, Crispin and Jan Elsted, Simon Brett, Gus and Will Rueter, the Aliquando Press, Stan Bevington, Glenn Goluska, Margaret Atwood, Porcupine's Quill, Tim Inkster, Walter Bachinski and Shanty Bay Press, Circus, George Walker, The Book of Hours, the Church Street Press, Gapereau Press, Andrew Steeves, Michael Torosian, Lumiere Press, Hell Box Press, ordering the Death Greatly Exaggerated catalogue, book fairs, and bookplates by Wesley Bates.

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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 with Michael in his Toronto workshop. We talk here, among other things, about Edward Weston and his son Cole, simplicity, abstraction, the homage series, self-education, the octavo format, Mohawk letterpress paper, harmony, marketing, Aaron Siskind, modernist photography, idols, completionists, Walter Gretzky, The Complete Photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, composition, the photo album, the book as the medium of photography, Glenn Goluska, privates presses as the vision of individuals, Stan Bevington, antiquarian book dealers, Buffalo NY, instincts and good taste, Printing for Poetry, matching typefaces to the times, recording conversations, a 10-zillion-photograph-a-minute universe; ambition, research and Saul Leiter; Eduard Steichen, and the Lumiere Press archive at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

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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 Margaret Laurence Fellow at Trent University and a finalist for the Allan Slaight Prize for Journalism.

I met Michael at his home in Toronto to talk about his essays in Strike Anywhere (Porcupine's Quill, 2016) Canadian Poetry, Rupi Kaur, Al Purdy and Wordsworth, common speech and common sense, Carmine Starnino and The Lover's Quarrel, John Metcalf, Leonard Cohen and schmaltz, John Thompson, Dante, Scott Griffin, the Saudi arms deal, Margaret Atwood, MacBeth, long-form investigative journalism, crime reporting, self-interest, radical truth-telling and men crying.

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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 house in Toronto to talk about her latest book, "The Handover: How Bigwigs & Bureaucrats Transferred Canada's Best Publisher and the Best Part of Our Literary Heritage to a Foreign Multinational;" about the history of McClelland and Steward, Jack McClelland's love of Canada, Canadian authors and Canadian Literature, government funding of Canadian publishers, nationalist policy, Avi Bennett, the University of Toronto, Penguin RandomHouse, oligopsonies, deep throat, tax credits, improperly given grants, "Puts," $16 million worth of debts, cleverness, Robert Pritchard, diversity of thought, lies, money made re-issuing The Handmaid's Tale, Canada as the first post-national country, benefits of economic nationalism, bureaucrats, how Canada works, Canadian stories, and solutions.

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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 Directions's colophon design.

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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, catalogues and the importance of good photographs, thinking hard and writing about your collection, Amelia E. Barr, the joys of shopping on e-bay, Rochester NY, and the Barbara Slate Archive.

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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 series of novels chronicling life in the Plateau. Throughout his work he examines the difficulties and issues facing homosexuals.

Over 50 years he has produced some 36 novels, 26 plays, three musical comedies, three books of short stories, seven film scripts and 3000 characters. His plays have been produced all around the world and he has been awarded the title of Chevalier d'l'ordre des Arts et des lettres de France and the Prix David from Quebec for his body of work.

We met in Montreal and talked largely about his play Hosanna, but also about him being Quebec's Balzac, le petit peuple de Montreal, writing dialogue in Joual, the experimental 70s, hating the Quebecois movie Cain, swearing hockey players, the Sheila Fischman, Les Belles-Sœurs, Le Refus Global, incarnating yourself inside your characters, fantastical stories, women's critiques of society, Quebec's identity crisis, Rene Lesveque, Pierre Trudeau, Mordecai Richler, the importance of movies and Fellini's 8 1/2.

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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 of Patrick DeWitt conveys a dark and gentle touch."

I met with Patrick in Ottawa to discuss his award-winning novel. Listen as we talk, among other things, about mannered language, the Coen Brothers, Charles Portis, horses, psychopaths, masturbation, arts funding and being Canadian.

Update: The Sisters Brothers has recently been made into a movie directed by Jacques Audiard and starring John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix. Patrick's latest novel is French Exit.

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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 flamboyant Jack McClelland, she quickly found herself at the heart of Canadian publishing. In 1982, she founded Key Porter Books and published such national figures as Farley Mowat, Jean Chrétien, Conrad Black, and Allan Fotheringham. She went on to write both fiction and nonfiction works, including the award-winning Kasztner’s Train and The Ghosts of Europe, and has published four mystery novels."

We met at the Kingston Writers Festival to talk about her new book, In Other Words, In so doing we touched on blessed lives, absent fathers, grandfathers' stories, Transylvanian dragons, broad swords, New Zealand, education and intense boredom, Collier MacMillan, Robert Graves, communist engineers, Frank Newfeld, Jack McClelland, caring about writers, Canadian culture, colourful language, editors at sales conferences, gimmicks, publishing 100 books a year, mini-skirts and go-go boots, the Canadian establishment, meeting fascinating writers, The Temptation of Big Bear, typos, Bob Fulford, Al Purdy, Margaret Atwood, Conrad Black and Allan Fotheringham; collectible books, Persia, and Iran, Elements of Destiny.

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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, outside the town of Athens, New York, and this is where we met to talk about Literchoor is my Beat, (FSG, 2014) his biography of New Directions founder and publisher James Laughlin .

We also talk about steel, silver spoons, the Choate School, poetry, Gertrude Stein, Modernism, Ezra Pound, prodigious correspondence, the Gotham Book Mart, short stories, New Directions, Harvard, T.S. Eliot, loyalty, William Carlos Williams, office affairs, fine printing, anthologies, the New Classics Series, Delmore Schwartz, Prospectives USA magazine, translations, The Beats, Thomas Merton, Dylan Thomas, mental illness and the bi-polar curse, intuition and recognizing excellence, and childhoods in Suriname.

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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 organized bookstores, the aging bookseller population, Wescott Books and the student rush.

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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 Portrait (Vehicule Press, 2008) "fixes its gaze on writers as we seldom see them. These photographs, and the stories that accompany them, were captured where the writers live, work, or play. The result is a series of portraits that take us inside writers’ lives and inside the process of making portraits—all served with a touch of refined literary gossip."

Sounds like what we did when I met Terry at his home in Montreal to discuss the book. Among other things we talked about status, 'the thinker' gesture, authority and value, books and bricks, Susan Gillis, photographic crews from Toronto, the proliferation of imagery, the convergence of moving and still images, the diminishing role of the professional photographer, eyes, romanticizing crocks, impressions of presence, Roméo Dallaire, interest curiosity and light, postures, the Montreal Review of Books, Photoshop, negative ego, Annie Leibovitz, trust, Avedon in Texas and caring, achieving control over the world, noticing, Ishmael Reed, Robert Frank, contradiction and great art, sexual harassment at Concordia University, Stephen Fry, and selfies.

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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 in his office at Foyles on Charing Cross Road in London some years ago to talk about the history of his family's company.

Update: Foyles was bought by Waterstones on September 6, 2018

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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 unnecessarily identified with grief and death is, according to traditional views, to fail at mourning. To succeed - to maintain health- one must ‘move on;’ accept that the dead are gone; celebrate the fact that they are in heaven. All of this Uppal debunks.

After reading thousands of Canadian elegies she concludes that mourning, at least in late 20th century Canada, is not about forgetting, but about claiming identity. You are, she says, what you mourn. And we, apparently, mourn our parents in elegies to a much greater extent than do others in the U.S. and U.K., for example, who tend to mark the death of youth more frequently with this poetic form.

Many immigrants to Canada didn’t know their parents very well; didn’t know their countries of origin, didn’t learn much about their traditions. In order to take over the roles their parents played - to learn about themselves - many have used mourning as a way to create and recreate the past; as a means to carry on into the future. Art - the elegy - is used as a way to attached to the past, and to connect and incorporate it into the present. What you mourn - what it is you are upset about losing - will determine, according to Uppal, how you see history.

We talk about all of these topics, why and how the work of mourning has so drastically changed in Canada during the latter half of the twentieth century, why the contemporary English-Canadian elegy emphasizes connection rather than separation between the living and the dead.

Priscila died at age 43 on September 5, 2018

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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 agency in Montreal, the Robert Lecker Agency.

I met Robert in his office at McGill. Among other things we talked about the role of the literary agent, gatekeeping, stamps of approval, how writers should pitch their works to agents, the creative process and saleability, getting the reader to want to turn the first page, literary agents as sales people, art being a collaborative exercise, Matie Molinaro, Doris Hedges, Canada's best writers looking abroad for agents, the importance of the Canada Council, the authors' platform, the New Canadian Library, historically insufficient Canadian copyright laws, Canada's demographic and distribution disadvantages, subsidiary rights, and agents as "editors."

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Hugh McGuire has been building tools and communities to bring books onto the open web since about 2005. He's the founder of LibriVox.org (free public domain audiobooks, made by volunteers from around the world), Pressbooks (an open source book publishing platform built on WordPress). He's also Executive Director of the Rebus Foundation, a non-profit that is building the infrastructure to support books on the open web, by: building a new collaborative model for creating and publishing Open Educational Resources (OER), and building an open platform for scholarly reading. He lives and works in Montreal.

Hugh is the co-editor, with Brian O’Leary, of Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto — Essays from the bleeding edge of publishing (O’Reilly) and has talked about the future of publishing around the world, his work has appeared in various places in print, bits and audio, including: the New York Times, Forbes, the LA Times, BBC Radio, the New Yorker, CBC Radio, NPR, Techcrunch, Pando Daily and now, The Biblio File.

We talk here about LibriVox's free audio books representing the ideas of the early internet, collaborative communities, bringing the book onto the internet and doing more than just selling them, PressBooks open source software, open textbooks in higher ed, new models of publishing, the Rebus Foundation rebuilding a new open publishing ecosystem, web-based collaboration, open reading platforms, academic publishing, the cost of textbooks skyrocketing, open textbook publishing, the Internet Archive, Brewster Kale, making all the world's information available for free, the value of low-cost education, crappy current literary fiction, eliminating online distractions and replacing Facebook and Twitter.

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Series: Biblio File in France

Kickshaws is a private press founded in Paris in 1979 by John Crombie, and Sheila Bourne who often produces artwork for the books. Together they have hand-printed more than 150 small books. The design, typography and materials used to create Kickshaws publications are unusual. As a result it's difficult to define exactly what they are. Among other things, they display a wide range of type-faces and designs, letterpress printing in multiple colours, and unusual formats and bindings, including plastic comb-bindings that enable the pages of a book to be turned in different sequences. As for content, most of the books contain Crombie's poetry or fiction or his translations of French humorist/absurdist writers. These including Samuel Beckett, Alphonse Allais and Pierre Henri Cami. The artwork includes drawings, linocuts and images printed from a variety of different materials including string and wallpaper. Kickshaws publishes books in both French and English.

I met with John at his atelier in Charité-sur-Loire, south of Paris. Subjects covered include children's books, UNESCO, Edward Gorey, origins of the word 'Kickshaws', French humorists, Raymond Queneau, One Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, Bertram Rota, Charlene Garry and the Basilisk Press, enthusiasm, multi-choice stories, combining inks, using wallpaper, life intersecting with work, Montparnasse and the Marché de la Poésie in Paris

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Series: Biblio File in France

Maylis Besserie is a French radio broadcaster. She works for France Culture, the French national cultural radio station of the Radio France group, where she has produced documentaries and live programming about cultural issues since 2003. Over the years she has interviewed many artists and authors. She currently produces a summer program called la grande table d’été.

I met Maylis at her home in Paris. We talked, among other things, about the perfect author interview, pre-packaged answers, specific questions about the text, the writing process, life habits, finding out what moves a writer, how success changes authors, Michel Houellebecq, dead words, special connections, noticing details in the writing across different books, Oliver Twist, the ability of writers to see, immersing yourself in the authors's words and work, using your emotions, provoking; Irish writers, asking about other arts, dealing with who you are, using surprise; voice and emotion, writer problems, lists of key words, being alive and intense, avoiding personal questions, appearance, pregnancy, audience feedback, and the skill of putting into meaningful language things that readers can't.

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Series: Biblio File in France

Krista Halverson is director of the newly founded Shakespeare & Company publishing house and editor of the first-ever history of the bookstore, Shakespeare & Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart. Previously, she was the managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story, a magazine of fiction and art, published by Francis Coppola and headquartered in San Francisco.

I met with Krista at the bookstore to talk about the history of Shakespeare & Company; Sylvia Beach, French bookseller Adrienne Monnier and the spark between them; anglophone ex-pats in Paris, Hemingway, of course, George Whitman, great talent, James Joyce, Ulysses, and Windsor, Ontario; Shakespeare & Company's openness, the scrapbook effect, the book's designer Loran Stosskopf, the Shakespeare & Company cafe, Tumbleweeds, hopeful youth, and the bookstore's new publishing program.

1. The Little Review was founded by Margaret Anderson and published between 1914 to 1929. With the help of Jane Heap and Ezra Pound, Anderson published modernist and other early examples of experimental writing and art in the magazine. It is best known for running a serialization of James Joyce’s Ulysses and being sued in 1921 for doing so. Anderson and Heap went to trial over Ulysses's obscene content. Lawyer and patron of modernist art John Quinn defended them at the trial, and lost. The editors each had to pay a fifty-dollar fine.

Looks like Proust sealed off the windows in his cork-lined room

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Born in 1931, Jerome Rothenberg is an American poet, translator and anthologist, noted for his work in the fields of ethnopoetics and performance poetry.

This from Wikipedia:

Technicians of the Sacred (1968), which signalled the beginning of an approach to poetry that Rothenberg, in collaboration with George Quasha, named “ethnopoetics,” went beyond the standard collection of folk songs to include visual and sound poetry and the texts and scenarios for ritual events. Some 150 pages of commentaries gave context to the works included and placed them as well in relation to contemporary and experimental work in the industrial and postindustrial West. Over the next ten years, Rothenberg also founded and with Dennis Tedlock co-edited Alcheringa, the first magazine of ethnopoetics (1970–73, 1975ff.) and edited further anthologies, including:- Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas (1972, 2014); A Big Jewish Book: Poems & Other Visions of the Jews from Tribal Times to the Present (revised and republished as Exiled in the Word, 1977 and 1989); America a Prophecy: A New Reading of American Poetry from Pre-Columbian Times to the Present (1973, 2012), co-edited with George Quasha; and Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Toward An Ethnopoetics (1983), co-edited with Diane Rothenberg. Rothenberg’s approach throughout was to treat these large collections as deliberately constructed assemblages or collages, on the one hand, and as manifestos promulgating a complex and multiphasic view of poetry on the other. Speaking of their relation to his work as a whole, he later wrote of the anthology thus conceived as “an assemblage or pulling together of poems & people & ideas about poetry (& much else) in the words of others and in [my] own words. That imago – that representation of where we've been and what we've lived through – is something in fact that I would stand by – like any poem.”

...along with Nicholson Baker, Robert Graves and Laura Riding, pretty well summarizes what we talk about.

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Series: Biblio File in France

A recent fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Berlin) and visiting researcher at the Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherches Centre-Européennes (Sorbonne-Paris IV), Daniel Medin joined the faculty of The American University of Paris in January 2010. He has taught German, English and comparative literature at Stanford University, Washington University in St. Louis and the Free University Berlin.

He is associate director of the Center for Writers and Translators and one of the editors of its Cahiers series (published jointly with Sylph Editions in London). He is also co-editor of Music & Literature magazine, edits The White Review’s annual translation issue, and advises several journals and presses on contemporary international fiction. A judge for the Best Translated Book Award in 2014 and 2015, he served on the jury of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.

We met in his office in Paris to discuss, among other things, translation as it pertains to book publishing, judging international translation prizes - prioritizing literary quality ('best' title wins) vs prioritizing a book on the basis of what winning would do for it (its effect, whether economic, political or symbolic); discoveries, music living due to its interpreter, following Michael Orthofer's Complete Review, Chad Post's Three Percent and Veronica Esposito; Fitzcarraldo Editions, loyalty, commercial pressure, New Directions, Archipelago Books, Transit Books, Olga Tokarczuk's novel Flights, 800 page books, meaning versus style, old versus new generational translations, footnotes, stealth glosses, mystery and google, Haruki Murakami, László Krasznahorkai and Serhiy Zhadan's novel Mesopotamia.

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Stephen Weiner is an award winning writer about comics & graphic novels. He has been writing about comics since 1992, and is the most recognized librarian responsible for promoting graphic novel collections in public libraries & bookstores. He is the director of the Maynard Public Library in Maynard, Massachusetts.

His books include: 100 Graphic Novels for Public Libraries, The 101 Best Graphic Novels, Faster than a Speeding Bullet: the Rise of the Graphic Novel, The Will Eisner Companion, The 101 Best Graphic Novels, 2nd edition, The Hellboy Companion, and Faster than a Speeding Bullet: the Rise of the Graphic Novel, 2nd edition. He is also co-editor of the 7 volume series A Critical Survey of Graphic Novels, and author of the novel, Tom’s House.

I met with Stephen at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) in Montreal. Among other things we talk about the definition of the graphic novel, Art Spiegelman's Maus, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, outlaw status, boys and libraries, and the top 10 greatest graphic novels of all time.

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John Ralston Saul was elected President of International PEN in October 2009 (his term ended in 2015).

His award-winning essays and novels have had an impact on political and economic thought in many countries. Declared a “prophet” by TIME magazine, he is included in the prestigious Utne Reader’s list of the world’s 100 leading thinkers and visionaries. His works have been translated into 22 languages in 30 countries.

He has received many national and international awards for his writing, most recently South Korea's Manhae Grand Prize for Literature. He has published (at least) five novels, and is General Editor of the Penguin Extraordinary Canadians project, a series of 17 biographies that reinterprets important Canadian figures for a contemporary audience by pairing well-known Canadian writers with significant historical, political and artistic figures from 1850 onwards. Born in Ottawa, Saul studied at McGill University and King's College, University of London, where he obtained his PhD in 1972.

We met in Ottawa in a noisy now defunct bookstore to discuss his editing of the Extraordinary Canadians series, and his authoring of Lafontaine and Baldwin.

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Series: Biblio File in France

Economist Jean-Guy Boin is the former Director General of the International Bureau of French Publishing (www.bief.org), the international promotion organization of French books. He has held various positions in the book sector: teacher and trainer, researcher specializing in publishing economics, general administrator of a publishing house of literature and human sciences, head of the department "book economics" department at the Ministry of Culture and Communication. He is the author of two books on "small publishers" (La Documentation française) and has written numerous articles on the economics of publishing, the bookstore and the distribution of the book.

We met in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighbourhood of Paris, home to fames literary cafes including Les Deux Magots, Café de Flore, and le Procope, bookstores and publishing houses. We talk about, among other things, the French publishing experience, the Fixed Book Price, competition in service not price, books as an industry of supply, droit d'auteur and moral right, literary agents, translation, marketing as king in the U.S., Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens, Hachette, Editions Grasset, Emmanuel Carrere, the Gilbert and Companie bookstores, Amazon, and reading publishers' catalogues.

During our conversation Jean-Guy suggests that Richard Charkin thinks that getting rid of the Net Book Agreement in England was a mistake. I spoke with Richard about this. His response: "Bollocks. Absolutely no regrets. The French love regulations! Also, their international horizons are much more restricted than ours. How could we have retail price maintenance in the UK when there is no such thing in USA? US publishers would be flooding our market. Je ne regrette rien!"

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Héloïse d'Ormesson is a French publisher who founded a publishing house that bears her name. She studied comparative literature at Yale University in the United States, where she landed her first job in publishing, and then returned to France to work at Flammarion as director of foreign literature, and subsequently as an editor at Denoël, Laffont, and within the Gallimard group of companies.

In 2004, she founded Editions Héloïse d'Ormesson with her partner Gilles Cohen-Solal. She is the daughter of famed French writer Jean d'Ormesson

We met at her offices in Paris to discuss, among other things, why so many editors become publishers, a publishers' freedom and control, illustrated covers and French tradition, readers versus customers, the lack of good literary agents in France, Fixed Price and the importance of booksellers; publishing as a cultural industry, Amazon, Heloise's heart and soul, her father Jean, books in the house at an early age, bookshelves as walls and furniture; favourite bookstores, The Scarlet Letter, Mollat in Bordeaux, championing books, the Grand Prix Jean d'Ormesson award, overlooked masterpieces, Jacques Stephen Alexis's In the Flicker of an Eyelid, luck, every book being unique, the lack of a formula for success, and thrills.

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Pierre Astier and Laure Pecher are co-founders of their own eponymous literary and film agency. Pierre represents mainly French-speaking authors and publishers. After working in the art world for ten years, he created the quarterly short stories magazine Le Serpent à Plumes in 1988. In 1993, together with Claude Tarrène, he set up a publishing house of the same name focusing on contemporary fiction. Laure represents both authors and publishers. After having studied Byzantine philology, she worked for five years at Le Serpent à Plumes as rights manager. In 2002, she started publishing classics with Les Classiques du Monde at Editions Zoé (Geneva).

The three of us met in their garden in Le Perche, France where we talked about, among other things, the role of the literary agent, writers festivals and conferences, finding the best most passionate publishers, Archipelago Books and Ove Knausgaard, Elena Ferrante, African authors in France, paradise near Paris, commissioning books, writing workshops, espresso, differences between French and American agents, Eastern European markets, the invasion of American authors, lack of diversity, resistance by French publishers to agents, film rights, musical chairs, translation, author-agent relations, differences between pitching publishers and producers, Andrew Wylie's client list, Aslı Erdoğan, passion and luck, Patrice Nganang, and the most exciting part of the job.

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"Ashley Obscura is a Canadian-Mexican writer, publisher and editor. She is the author of the poetry collections Ambient Technology and I Am Here (Metatron, 2014) and four digital poetry projects: LIGHGHT, How to Be A Rainbow, Aura Halo and Oh, Inverted Universe. The founder and managing editor of Metatron Press, Obscura currently lives in Montreal, Quebec where she holds a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and Professional Writing."

We met at her new offices in Montreal and talked about, among other things, smart phones, Saskatoon and open skies, Montreal and multi-culturalism, Concordia University's Creative Writing Program, others' doubt as good ammunition, creating space, new forms of digital poetry, Alt Lit Gossip, how the Internet benefits upstart publishers and poets, Wild "This is happening whether you like it or not" literary readings, making poetry accessible, ambition among Millennials, "Follow your dreams" advice, Rupi Kaur, Instagram poetry, nostalgia, relationships with authors, sex in your twenties, menstruation, vulnerability, poetry and freedom, the importance of publishing poets at the start of their careers, teaching poetry, and mentors.

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Robert Weaver (1928–2008) was an influential, well-loved Canadian editor and broadcaster. He was born in Niagara Falls and educated at the University of Toronto, and worked at the CBC where he created a series of radio shows that featured then unknown Canadian writers such as Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler, Timothy Findley, Margaret Atwood, and Leonard Cohen. In 1956 Weaver founded The Tamarack Review, a long-standing Canadian literary magazine. Over the course of his career, Weaver edited more than a dozen anthologies. In 1979 he launched the annual CBC Literary Prize. Elaine Kalman Naves is an award-winning Quebec writer, journalist, editor and lecturer. She's the author of Robert Weaver, Godfather of Canadian Literature. In discussing it we talk about, among other things, Niagara Falls, Toronto, spinster aunts, the love of books and reading, bank jobs, the University of Toronto, Northrop Frye, abortion, CBC Radio, 'Canadian Short Stories,' editing Alice Munro, understatement, anthologies, The Tamarack Review, the popularity of the Anthology radio program, Margaret Atwood, pipe rituals, drinking, Robert Fulford, listening, editorial and critical standards, honesty, the CBC Literary Prize and William Notman.

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Glenn Horowitz is an agent in the sale and placement of culturally significant archives to research institutions nationwide. Among the many authors, artists, musicians, designers, and photographers he have represented are Norman Mailer, James Salter, Deborah Eisenberg, David Foster Wallace, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Grushkin, the Magnum Group, Nadine Gordimer, and Danny Fields, to name but a few.

I met Glenn in his Manhattan offices. We talked about, among other things, the imaginative "packaging of authors' archives, the maturing of research institutions, kaboosing like collections, natural sympathies, technology coming on line, letterpress printing as a nostalgic gasp, the shift to digital, Bob Dylan's archive, the Woodie Guthrie Center, the transformation of Tulsa, the Kaiser Foundation, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Watergate and the University of Texas, the importance of the creative process, New Criticism, identity politics, the melting of textual studies, the growing importance of ancillary material; Bernard Malamud, Bob Giroux, Strand Bookstore, envy, small versus major research institutes, Michael Ondaatje, Canada's lack of interest in its writers' papers, Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Conrad Black, FDR, and archives as a non-traditional market.

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Jonathan Galassi is the author of three collections of poetry and a novel, Muse (2015) set in the publishing world. He is also president and publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and an eminent translator of Italian poetry.

We met in his New York office (with the window open) to talk about, among other things, book publishing, Stanley Unwin; convincing, moving, artful voices; the capacity to hear; reading, aesthetic response and shrewdness; Tom Friedman; confidence, style, overpaying for books, reader loyalty, Faber & Faber, Bob Giroux, T.S. Eliot, Mitizi Angel, Elizabeth Bishop, the Random House system, the magical aura of FSG, Giacomo Leopardi, editors becoming publishers, Roger Straus, conglomerates, paperback rights, Hothouse, old maids and cocksmen, Bob Gotlieb, pertinent questions, Marilynne Robinson, fragmented culture and disturbing politics, Trump taking the air out of the publishing business, Rupi Kaur and Instagram poets, diverse cultures, the average age of The New Yorker reader, Amazon reviews, and the rewards of owning books.

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"Jonas Hassen Khemiri is one of the most important writers of his generation in Sweden. When his debut novel, One Eye Red (Ett öga rött) was published in 2003, Khemiri’s eccentric and imaginative prose made a huge splash and reached an audience far beyond traditional literary circles. The book was awarded the Borås Tidning Award for Best Literary Debut Novel and also became an enormous bestseller.

Khemiri’s equally original second novel, Montecore: The Silence of the Tiger (Montecore – en unik tiger), was awarded the prestigious P.O. Enquist Literary Prize, and won Swedish Radio’s Award for Best Novel. Upon its US publication by Alfred A Knopf, The New York Times Book Review dubbed the novel “wondrous.”

His latest best-selling novel Everything I Don’t Remember (Allt jag inte minns), was published in the fall of 2015 and translated from Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles the following year.

I met Jonas in Montreal at the Blue Met Literary Festival. We talk here about the latest novel, self-publishing, writing first novels, the comedy and tragedy scale, ambivalence, George Saunders, tenderness that doesn't fall into cliche, filtering favourite authors, voices, plays, truth, perspective, Nietzsche, disappearing, Stockholm, Nordic Noir, American accents, love and cliche, writing poorly really well, Karl Ove Knausgård, Proust, sleepwalking, memory, speed, language as power, writing, and uncertainty.

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"Daniel Mendelsohn is an internationally bestselling author, critic, essayist, and translator. Born in New York City in 1960, he received degrees in Classics from the University of Virginia and Princeton. After completing his PhD, he moved to New York City, where he began freelance writing full time; since 1991 he has been a prolific contributor of essays, reviews, and articles to many publications, particularly The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books."

His multi-award winning books include The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (2006); a memoir, The Elusive Embrace (1999); two collections of essays, How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken (2008) and Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays From the Classics to Pop Culture (2012); a scholarly study of Greek tragedy, Gender and the City in Euripides’ Political Plays (2002); a two-volume translation of the poetry of C. P. Cavafy (2009), which included the first English translation of the poet’s “Unfinished Poems.

Daniel was in Montreal attending the Blue Met Literary Festival when we met to talk about, among other things, his book, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic (2017); the Greek view of the universe; disasters; Odysseus being a jerk; readers and texts; Homer, The Odyssey and anthropology; the fluidity of human identity, and its multiplex, relational nature; time; bored Gods; death and meaning; fathers; New Criticism; autobiography in criticism; being intelligent and interesting versus being right; robots and objectivity; self-knowledge and literature; open heart surgery; stupid good reviews; why memoir is such a strong form; Oprah and shared emotion; Cavafy; preserving culture; crazy families; truth, tragedy and myths; the Titanic, the Kennedys and glamour.

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Adam Gopnik has been writing for The New Yorker since 1986. He is a three-time winner of the National Magazine Award for Essays and for Criticism and of the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting. In March 2013, Gopnik was awarded the medal of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Republic.

We met in Montreal at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival to discuss his book At the Strangers' Gate. Among other things we talk about bookshops, art in the 1980s, the art critic Robert Hughes, George Soros, ambition, Jeff Koons, morality versus mortality, value and money, public and privates selves, monstrous helium balloon personalities, blue rooms and big stores, our sons and daughters and their definition of success, the contradictory impulses of interesting art, the critical calling, Richard Avedon and charismatic mentors, wives, love and Mordecai Richler, Mr. Sensitivo and repertory cinema, married sex and The Civil War, fathers' advice, intellectuals, a benevolent universe, and the secret of writing.

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Matthew Zapruder is a poet, editor, translator, and professor. He earned a BA in Russian literature at Amherst College, an MA in Slavic languages and literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA in poetry at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Sun Bear (2014), Come On All You Ghosts (2010), The Pajamaist (2006), and American Linden (2002). His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the May Sarton Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

With Brian Henry, he co-founded Verse Press, which later became Wave Books. He is now an editor with the firm. He's also a guitarist in the rock band The Figments and an associate professor in the Saint Mary’s College of California MFA Program in Creative Writing.

His most recent book is Why Poetry (2017). We met in his office in Oakland, California to discuss it, and, among other things, Joseph Conrad, life expanding beyond the ordinary, the material of language, painters and paint, troubling representation, the absurdity of using inconsistency to critique a poem; surprise, truth and beauty; genre arguments; poetry being found in translation; strange worlds and words; clarity and the best of intentions; exploring things beyond the bounds of propriety; Terrance Hayes; Keats's 'To Autumn' and Tom Paulin's interpretation of it; sleepwalking and defamiliarization; revealing and making new meaning; Shakespeare; the scariness of silence; being heard and answered; the influence and talent of Frank O'Hara; poets as archivists of language; the vibration of words; the debatability of the colour green; literal reading; perfume advertisements; the death of those close to you; helping people to make their lives better; and making poems that are worth reading.

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Anita Engles is the Executive Director of the American Bookbinders Museum based in San Francisco, California. It's the only museum of its kind in North America celebrating and exploring the culture and tools of bookbinders and bookbinding from its earliest forms through the changes and innovations of the industrial revolution. In addition to the craft and artistry of binding, it focuses on the stories of the men, women, and children who worked in binderies.

We sat down in the bookstore at the museum after I had gotten a great tour of the place from docent Madeleine Robins. We talk, among other things, about the process and human experience of bookbinding, the book as IT, the industrial revolution, the tools and unique equipment housed at the museum, funding, the special collection of publisher's bindings, designers, temporary exhibits, founder Tim James, preserving and telling the story of the craft of bookbinding, keeping history alive, artist books, the book arts, and places the literary tourist should visit when in San Francisco.

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Andrew Hoyem is the creative spirit of the Arion Press. He's a published poet and exhibited artist who occasionally includes his own writings and drawings in Arion books. The concepts for all Arion publications originate with Hoyem, who chooses literary texts, commissions new work from writers and artists he admires, and designs the books, including their bindings and typography. In the Press's livre d'artiste series, he has worked closely with distinguished artists, many of whom come to the Press in San Francisco to work with him on projects.

We met at his offices in The Pracidio in San Francisco to talk about, among other things, Dave Hazelwood's Auerhahn Press, the Grabhorn Press, the importance of text pages, Bruce Rogers, Random House's Leaves of Grass (1931), Charles Olson, skunks, The Legion of Honor Museum, Livres d'artistes, artist Fred Martin, solving problems, Moby Dick (1979), ghost stories, perseverance, weekly tours, M&H Type, connecting with interesting people, Hart Crane's The Bridge (2017) and getting the basics right.

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Kris Arnett is the proprietor of Kona Bay Books which is located in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. She also owns Hilo Bay Books in, you guessed it, Hilo, which is located on the other side of the Big Island of Hawaii.

I met with Kris recently at the Kona location to discuss bookstores. Among other things we talk about books touching everything and everyone, barbers, the Upstart Crow bookshop in San Diego, Borders, driving across the Big Island, big box stores, suspense and romance, excitement about reading, the stereotype of book people being snobbish, treasure hunting, Hawaiian publishers, Pidgin to da Max, new age and military books, hiring criteria, Mark Twain: Literary Tourist, Gavan Daws' Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands*, the 'Powell's of the Pacific,' and going to the volcano.

Reportedly closing in 2018. Lease ends and the area will be redeveloped.

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David Bull is an ukiyo-e woodblock printer and carver who heads the Mokuhankan ukiyo-e studio in Asakusa, Tokyo. Born in Britain, Bull moved to Canada at age 5 and lived there until 1986 when he relocated with his family to Tokyo to pursue ukiyo-e. He first discovered Japanese woodblocks while browsing an art gallery in Toronto at age 29. Intrigued, he started making his own prints without formal training.

He is known for his work on the Ukiyo-e heroes kickstarter crowd-funding project together with Jed Henry, recreating modern video-game scenes in old-style woodblock prints. The Mokuhankan studio has a shop and offers 'print parties' for amateurs, where they can try the craft of printing.

I met Dave at his studio in Tokyo where we talked, among other things, about Toronto's Stuart Jackson gallery, the physical nature of woodblock prints (not the content!), moving to Japan, the "death" of traditional Japanese woodblock printing in the 20th century, ukiyo-e prints as 'low' culture, 'visual letterpress,' French salons, pop culture, cliff-hanger picture books, mixing illustration and text, Hokusai and Manga, Japanese Meiji era, the desirability of "mouth pictures," Video game characters, Washi paper, and the importance of the 18th century book One Hundred People, One Hundred Poems to modern Japanese culture.

Check out Dave's extensive library of videos on Japanese woodblock printing here.

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Born in Reykjavik in 1962, Sjón is a celebrated Icelandic novelist. He won the Nordic Council's Literary Prize for his novel 'The Blue Fox' (the Nordic countries' equivalent of the Man Booker Prize) and the novel 'From The Mouth Of The Whale' was shortlisted for both the IMPAC Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. His novel 'Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was' was awarded every Icelandic literature prize, among them the 2013 Icelandic Literary Prize. His latest published work is the definite edition of the trilogy CoDex 1962.

Also a poet, librettist and lyricist, Sjón has published nine poetry collections, written four opera librettos and lyrics for various artists.

We talk here about the influence of David Bowie; modernist poetry; self publishing and promotion; the Icelandic penchant for collaboration; the Surrealist metaphor; respect among practitioners of different art forms in Iceland; Guy Madden; magpies; Icelandic folklore and sagas; beginnings and creation stories; dream logic; story-telling and figuring out life; myths and metamorphosis, the Future Library Project; Reykjavik, city of literature; literary tourism; and his forthcoming book CoDex 62.

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Alice Notley is a poet whose work has influenced generations of poets; she is considered a pioneering voice on topics such as motherhood, feminism, disobedience and domestic life.

Notley has experimented widely with poetic form and has written a book of criticism, a play, and a biography. She has also edited three publications. Her collage art appeared in Rudy Burckhardt's film "Wayward Glimpses" and her illustrations have appeared on the cover of numerous books, including some of her own. With over forty books and chapbooks and several major awards to her credit, she is one of America's most prolific and lauded poets. She lives in Paris, France.

We met in Ottawa, Canada to talk about, among other things, the enjoyment, pleasure and necessity of poetry; language, communication, voice, and hearing versus reading; Shakespeare; the difficulty of being a female poet; Sylvia Plath; postpartum depression; John Keats; Homer; reading aloud; suffering, skepticism, fate, the death of those close to you and the world of the dead.

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Eli MacLaren is an Assistant Professor of English at McGill University in Montreal. Subjects taught include Canadian poetry and fiction; First Nations writers; bibliography and the history of the book. We met to discuss an article he wrote for Canadian Poetry entitled ‘Significant Little Offerings: The Origin of the Ryerson Poetry Chap-Books, 1925–26'. We talk, among other things, about the literary publishing environment in Canada during the 1920s, Lorne Pierce's idealistic nation building, risk, the desire for a national literature, restrictive copyright laws, Confederation poet Charles G.D. Roberts, Ryerson's Makers of Canadian Literature series, authors covering publishing costs, romantic versus modernist poetry, the arts and craft look of the chap-books, poetry's goal of moving the average reader and making sense of death, author's lives informing their poetry, shining light on neglected works, the origins of chap-books, and the birth of the small press movement in Canada.

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Jason Guriel is a poet and critic whose work has appeared in such publications as Poetry, Slate, Reader's Digest, The Walrus, Parnassus, Canadian Notes & Queries, The New Criterion, and PN Review. His poetry has been anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry in English, and in 2007, he was the first Canadian to receive the Frederick Bock Prize from Poetry magazine. He won Poetry's Editors Prize for Book Reviewing in 2009. His essays and reviews are collected in The Pigheaded Soul (The Porcupine's Quill, 2013). Guriel lives in Toronto, Ontario.

We met at the Toronto Public Library on College in rooms where the Osborne Collection is kept. The collection was donated in 1949 by the English librarian Edgar Osborne in recognition of the Library's outstanding service to children.

We talk among other things about The Pig Headed Soul, the key to being a good critic, poems not poetry, obsessing, 'The Case Against Reading Everything', Carmine Starnino, 'culture' writing, confessional criticism, pop culture essays, the adoration of poet Peter Van Toorn, 'world class' poet Robyn Sarah, the importance of pleasure, thoughts the culture wont allow itself to have, "I don't care about your Life', literary community, honesty in criticism, response to reviews, Chris Wiman, Clive James, Michael Hoffmann's Behind the Lines, William Logan, Jill Bialoski and plagiarism, the Griffin Prize, dirty money, and diapers.

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Gillian Clarke is a Welsh poet, playwright, editor, broadcaster, lecturer and translator. Born in Cardiff in 1937 she has written more than ten books of poetry. In 2008 she was appointed the third National Poet of Wales (Ifor ap Glyn took over in 2016). In 2010 she was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, only the second Welsh person to receive the honour. In 2011 she was made a member of the Gorsedd of Bards and in 2012 she received the Wilfred Owen Association Poetry award.

We met several years ago in Swansea, Wales at the Dylan Thomas Centre, where we talked about what is unique about Welsh poetry, the oldest living language in Europe, memorability, truth, Lear's Cordelia, Dylan Thomas's truth and exaggeration, the Welsh accent, Carol Ann Duffy, and the importance of imagination, creativity and music in education.

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I met with Professor Nick Mount at his University of Toronto offices in "Toronto" to discuss his book Arrival, The Story of CanLit.

We talk among other things about the pronunciation of Toronto, the non-Toronto-centricity of his book, Alistair MacLeod, the CanLit boom, early Canadian writers publishing first in the United States, novels that are so bad they're good, the 1960s, history turning into myth, academic versus commercial success, reviews of the book, Margaret Atwood's Survival, prosperity versus affluence, 1959 and 1974, economics and the arts, the Massey Report, the Canada Council, universities, Jack McClelland, the influence of Sheila Watson's The Double Hook, Arrival's sidebar star system, the erasure (or not) of Blackness, and Aboriginal works, from the CanLit canon, Austin Clarke, dotted points of light, #metoo and the Bahamas.

Photo by N. Maxwell Lander

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Zachariah Wells is the author of three collections of poetry (Unsettled, Track & Trace, and Sum), as well as a children’s book Anything But Hank, with Rachel Lebowitz), and a collection of critical essays . He is also the editor of Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets and The Essential Kenneth Leslie. His poems have been translated into Bosnian and Spanish and adapted into operatic songs by composer Erik Ross. He lives with his family in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

We talk, heartily, here about Career Limiting Moves (Biblioasis, 2013), about my perverse pleasure in reading criticism, Zach's threadbare bathrobe, Paul Muldoon's critical style, Zach's negative review of Jan Zwicky's negative review of negative reviewing, the impossibility of suppressing subjectivity, the anvil of the agon, Zach's snide attack on Andre Alexis. About Michael Lista and Scott Griffin, going easy on friends, Michael Harris's poem 'Concentrate,' Margaret Atwood's Survival, Peter van Toorn, the importance of cutting to the core poems, King Lear, John Clare, the slim, stellar oeuvre of Elizabeth Bishop, and Lisa Robertson's take on Wordsworth's The Prelude

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I met with famed Czech writer/novelist Ivan Klima at his home in Prague to talk about his memoir My Crazy Century. Topics covered include the criminal conspiracy of communism, the impact on his life of the Terazin concentration camp, the thrill of freedom, forests, poisonous mushrooms, communist stupidity and lack of common sense, Potemkin villages, political apathy, great literature describing complications in human relationships, fiction as invention not real life, socialism's lack of productivity, Philip Roth's understanding of persecution, the value of old maps, Samizdat literature, Kafka, and the novel Love and Garbage We're joined by Ivan's son, and grand-daughter, to help with translation, and by a squeaky chair, but I don't have to tell you that. Please keep in mind that Ivan is today a man in his late eighties.

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Guy Baxter has been University Archivist at University of Reading since 2008. His responsibilities include caring for the Archive of British Publishing and Printing, the archives of the Museum of English Rural Life, and the Beckett Collection. Guy has worked in museum archives for over 15 years and has advised on several major research projects including Staging Beckett (AHRC), Giving Voice to the Nation (AHRC) and the East London Theatre Archive/ CEDAR (JISC). He is a Trustee of the Beckett International Foundation.

I met him at the Museum to talk about the Printing and Publishing Archive, and the Ladybird books collection and permanent exhibition. Among other things we discussing the importance of correspondence to the publishing business, Mills and Boon, file sets, literary biography, reader reports, Tolkien, Stanley Unwin, chance and serendipity, the importance of a general pubic audience, Agatha Christie, police mechanics using the Ladybird experts series, the appeal of Ladybird books to adults, and their conservative nature, the civil rights movement, a whitewashed view of history, diasporic nature of archives, competition, Ted Hughes, the Harry Ranson Center, critical mass, personal relationships and Samuel Beckett and archives-led study.

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Historian John Cole started working at the Library of Congress as a young man in 1966. Most of his books since have dealt with this venerable institution.

We talk here about it's influence on American political and cultural life, about Thomas Jefferson as bibliophile, about books comprising a small part of the library's total collection; capturing, cataloging and digitizing the world's intellectual activity, serving the blind, teaching teachers how to use the collection on-line, subjective collecting, documenting thought and the Library's fine folk life collection.

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Stephan Delbos is a New England-born writer living in Prague, where he teaches at Anglo-American University and Charles University. His poetry, essays and translations have appeared internationally in journals such as Absinthe, Agni, Oxonian Review, PEN America, and Zoland Poetry. He is the editor of From a Terrace in Prague: A Prague Poetry Anthology (Litteraria Pragensia, 2011).

A collection of visual, music-inspired poems, “Bagatelles for Typewriter,” was exhibited at Prague’s ArtSpace Gallery in May 2012. His first full-length play, “Chetty’s Lullaby,” about the life of trumpet legend Chet Baker, has been produced in New York and San Francisco.

His co-translation of The Absolute Gravedigger, by Czech poet Vítězslav Nezval, was awarded the PEN/Heim Translation grant in 2015 and was published by Twisted Spoon Press. Deaf Empire, his play about Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, was produced by the Prague Shakespeare Company in 2017. He is the author of the poetry chapbook In Memory of Fire (Cape Cod Poetry Review, 2016), and a founding editor of the online literary magazine B O D Y.

I met Stephan at his home in Prague where we talked about why he moved to the city, American poetry during the cold war, the founding and flourishing of B.O.D.Y., the great poets in From a Terrace in Prague and its functioning as a literary guide to the city, prolific surrealist poet Czech Vítězslav Nezval, the definition of surrealist poetry, the importance of reading and translation to the Czechs and Europeans, the impetus behind writing poems, the poetic tools and real life experiences called upon to create ‘In Memory of Fire,’ and famed Czech composer Bedřich Smetana.

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Series: Biblio File in France

Better known for its wines, the perfection of its local spoken French, it's cathedral and chateau, the city of Tours France also has a surprisingly rich historical connection with printing and typography. I was in Tours recently and visited the Musee de la Typographie. It may be small, but it's full of all sorts of different kinds of old printing equipment and tools, typefaces, woodcuts and handmade paper. As one visitor put it:

"Muriel Méchin, the owner takes you on a personal discovery tour of his museum, including printing off some examples for you to take home on a press from the 1800s. I have been to many printing museums, but this is the first I have found that contains compositors tools such as the Moule à Arçon, a hand-held individual character casting device, that was the forerunner of the mechanical Monotype and Linotype machines hundreds of years later. You can actually handle many of the exhibits which most museums forbid. Muriel has published a very informative book which we were able to purchase; it is chock full of historical information and illustrated with photos and drawings explaining the history of a most interesting industry that goes back many hundreds of years. The museum is free."

Since Muriel doesn't speak English, I sat down with his colleague Jean Louis Maitre to talk about the museum and the fascinating printing history of the local region.

If you like English spoken with a thick French accent, you'll love listening to Jean Louis.

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I interviewed Lauren Elkin about her new book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London at her apartment in the Belleville neighbourhood of Paris. Stepping off a rather ordinary, noisy street through a large pair of solid French (!) doors, I encountered a lovely, quiet, tree-lined pathway/courtyard en route to "an airy, comfortable writer's home, filled with books, art, plants, and even a piano."

To start with, Elkin suggests that the flâneur is "the quintessentially masculine figure of privilege and leisure who strides the capitals of the world with abandon," and that the fl neuse is a “determined, resourceful individual keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city and the liberating possibilities of a good walk.” Virginia Woolf called it “street haunting”; Holly Golightly epitomized it in Breakfast at Tiffany’s; and Patti Smith did it in her own inimitable style in 1970s New York." Nonetheless since the flâneur has not, historically, been a very precisely drawn male character, we should be free, says Elkin, to define the flâneuse as we see fit, not as a female equivalent, but as an entity unto herself.

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Yes, the background voices are distracting, but what do you expect, we're in a Welsh pub for crying out loud! Well, actually we're upstairs at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea at a bar surrounded by revellers who have just attended a hilarious poetry vs burlesque mashup down the hallway in the Centre's theatre. So everyone is pretty frisky. The performance kicked off the annual Dylan Thomas Festival.

Dylan Thomas expert Jo Furber is Swansea Council Literature Officer and curator of the Dylan Thomas Exhibition. She also sits on the board of the prestigious New Welsh Review, the country's foremost literary magazine in English.

Listen as she fields every question I hurl at her with racing car driver reflexes and dexterity. Here, listeners, is everything you need to know about Thomas and how and why to visit Wales, if you happen to love his literature and poetry...even if you don't, you're sure to get caught up in the enthusiasm (be sure to listen for one of the revellers offering to buy me a drink about mid-way through the conversation).

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Wikipedia tells us that "Thomas Bewick (1753 – 1828) was an English engraver and author. Early in his career he took on all kinds of work such as engraving , making the wood blocks for advertisements, and illustrating children's books. He gradually turned to illustrating, writing and publishing his own books, gaining an adult audience for the fine illustrations in A History of Quadrupeds.

His career began when he was apprenticed to engraver Ralph Beilby in Newcastle upon Tyne. He became a partner in the business and eventually took it over.

Bewick is best known for his A History of British Birds, which is admired today mainly for its wood engravings, especially the small, sharply observed, and often humorous vignettes known as tail-pieces. The book was the forerunner of all modern field guides. He notably illustrated editions of Aesop's Fables throughout his life.

He is credited with popularising a technical innovation in the printing of illustrations using wood. He adopted metal-engraving tools to cut hard boxwood across the grain, producing printing blocks that could be integrated with metal type, but were much more durable than traditional woodcuts. The result was high-quality illustration at a low price."

In 1978 while working as an artist and printmaker (linoleum cuts, woodcuts and wood engravings), and painting landscapes in oils and watercolours David Esslemont established his own private press in his home town of Newcastle upon Tyne in the north of England. Here he published the first of several books with wood engravings by Thomas Bewick and his apprentices: Thomas Bewick: A Commemoration, John Bewick a Selection of Wood Engravings, Luke Clennell: Bewick Apprentice, and Thomas Bewick: Birds

These books were printed by hand on dampened paper on a Columbian press and published in limited editions.

Who better then to talk to about Bewick than Esslemont. I travelled out to David's farm in Iowa to discuss Thomas.

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Gaylord Schanilec is an American wood engraver, printer, designer and illustrator. He is the proprietor of Midnight Paper Sales press.

Schanilec has "set the standard for contemporary artist’s books over the last 30 years." His highly collected and unique fine press books explore his interests and experiences as well as his hometown Wisconsin landscape and community. From farming culture and the rivers of the Mississippi to an exhaustive inventory of the 24 species of trees surrounding his home and studio in Stockholm, Wisconsin, Schanilec’s wood engravings illustrate local landscapes, historical anecdotes and natural science investigations. He has also featured New York City in two books. Lac des Pleurs is a study of the 22-mile length of the upper Mississippi River known as Lake Pepin.

He is currently working on My Mighty Journey, a book inspired by the 12,000-year-long journey of Saint Anthony Falls, the only natural waterfall on the Mississippi River, from Saint Paul to Minneapolis — a distance of ten miles.

Schanilec is a frequent lecturer and leads workshops at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the University of Iowa. His works can be found in the collections of major academic institutions, libraries and museums.

I met with Gaylord at his workshop in St. Paul to talk about his life and work.

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David Esslemont is an artist, designer, printmaker and bookbinder. He makes books from scratch, most recently about food, and publishes under his Solmentes Press imprint. He was Artistic Director of the University of Wales Gregynog Press from 1985–97 and has won many book design awards including the Felice Feliciano International Award in 1991. Esslemont’s work can be found in both private and public collections worldwide. (His archive to 2005 is held at the University of Iowa.)

I braved the harsh winter weather to visit David at his farm in Decorah, Iowa. We met in his slightly coolish workshop to talk about the history of the Gregynog Press and highlights of its impressive output, his time there as 'controller,' and the establishment of his Solmentes Press and the prize-winning work he has produced since setting it up.

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In which I talk, in rather rushed fashion, to great Canadian author and "bad" feminist Margaret Atwood about literary tourism: 'place' and her novel MaddAddam, Harvard and The Handmaid's Tale, and the Kingston Penitentiary and Alias Grace, also the real and the imaginary, the unreliability of eye witnesses, following the research, Samuel Johnson, Ernest Hemingway, food and underclothing, bodies, space and smell, plus the importance of plumbing.

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November 30, 2017 marked the 350th anniversary of the birth of one the world's great satirists, Jonathan Swift. To honour the occasion I thought it would be fitting to interview an expert on humour, in this, the age of Trump. So I met recently with Maggie Hennefeld, Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis.

We discuss her article Laughter in the Age of Trump that appeared in Flow an online journal of television and media studies.

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Scott Griffin, (born 1938) is a Canadian businessman and philanthropist best known for founding the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2000, one of the world's most generous poetry awards, and 'Poetry In Voice', a bilingual recitation competition for Canadian high schools.

Griffin is chairman, director and majority shareholder since 2002 of House of Anansi Press/Groundwood Books, and Chancellor of Bishop's University.

In 2006, Griffin published a memoir entitled My Heart Is Africa that recounted his two-year aviation adventure starting in 1996, working for the Flying Doctors Service in Africa. All royalties from the sale of the book are donated to the AMREF Flying Doctors Service. The book was named to the Globe and Mail top 100 for 2006. We talk about his childhood and time in boarding school, clouds, flying, comparing horses to planes, overcoming fears and breaking away to do something different with your life for a time, calculated risk, the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), the humanity of Africa, the venture capital business, magnesium die-casting, sharing experiences and providing space.

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I met with publisher Simon Dardick at his home office in Montreal to talk about the history and collecting of his long-running literary publishing house Vehicule Press.

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Glenn Dixon has published two books. Pilgrim in the Palace of Words: A journey through the 6000 languages of Earth was published in 2009 to rave reviews. His second, Tripping the World Fantastic: A journey through the music of our planet came out in April of 2013. He has also published travel articles and cultural pieces in major publications such as National Geographic Magazine, the New York Post, the Walrus Magazine, the Globe and Mail and even Psychology Today.

Glenn has traveled through seventy countries and worked on documentary films in Egypt, Tibet, Russia, Peru, Ecuador, Turkey and many others. He has three degrees including a Masters degree in socio-linguistics. He lives and works in Calgary, Canada.

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Marcello Di Cintio is a Canadian writer. He won the 2012 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for his book Walls: Travels Along the Barricades. The award was handed out on March 6, 2013 at the Writers' Trust of Canada's annual Politics and the Pen in Ottawa. Marcello was born in Calgary, Alberta where he currently lives with his wife, Moonira, and son, Amedeo.

We met recently to discuss his literary pilgrimage to Iran, which he wrote about in his book, Poets and Pahlevans, a Journey into the Heart of Iran.

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Rae Armantrout is an American poet generally associated with Language Poets. Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California but grew up in San Diego. She has published more than 10 books of poetry and has also been featured in a number of major anthologies. Armantrout teaches at the University of California, San Diego, where she is Professor of Poetry and Poetics.

Armantrout was awarded the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for her collection of poetry Versed, published by the Wesleyan University Press. The book later earned the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Armantrout’s collection, Just Saying, was published in 2013. She is the recipient of numerous other awards for her poetry including an award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008.

We met in Ottawa to discuss her poetry, William Carlos Williams, place, and how to be a literary tourist in San Diego.

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The Press & Letterfoundry of Michael & Winifred Bixler is "devoted to the craft of fine letterpress printing and traditional book typography. Our extensive collection of English Monotype matrices allows us to cast from 8- to 72-point, classic book typefaces including Bembo, Dante, Walbaum, Van Dijck, Joanna, Perpetua, Garamond, Centaur & Arrighi, Ehrhardt, Fournier, Bell, Baskerville, Poliphilus, Plantin, Gill Sans, & Univers. Work is designed, set, printed, & bound in our shop. We use Vandercook & Heidelberg cylinder presses. Fonts are cast on commission & sold by the pound."

I met with Michael and Winifred at their shop in Skaneateles, NY to discuss letterpress printing, and all things Monotype.

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I met with David Mason in Kingston to talk about his memoir The Pope's Bookbinder. As the Biblioasis website wordsmiths have it:

"From his drug-hazy, book-happy years near the Beat Hotel in Paris and throughout his career as antiquarian book dealer, David Mason brings us a storied life. He discovers his love of literature in a bathtub at age eleven, thumbing through stacks of lurid Signet paperbacks. At fifteen he’s expelled from school. For the next decade and a half, he will work odd jobs, buck all authority, buy books more often than food, and float around Europe. He’ll help gild a volume in white morocco for Pope John XXIII. And then, at the age of 30, after returning home to Canada and apprenticing with Joseph Patrick Books, David Mason will find his calling."

"David Mason boldly campaigns for what he feels is the moral duty of the antiquarian trade: to preserve the history and traditions of all nations, and to assert without compromise that such histories have value. The Pope's Bookbinder is an engrossing memoir by a giant in the book trade—whose infectious enthusiasm, human insight, commercial shrewdness, and deadpan humour will delight bibliophiles for decades to come. "

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Matthew Tree (born December 30, 1958) is a writer in English and Catalan. He has lived in Barcelona since 1984. Apart from publishing both fiction and non-fiction, he is a contributor to various newspapers and magazines such as Catalonia Today,The Times Literary Supplement, Barcelona INK, Altaïr, El Punt Avui and L'Esguard. He has also appeared on various Catalan language radio and TV stations and is current a monthly guest on Catalunya Ràdio's chat show L'Oracle. In 2005 and 2006 he scripted and presented two series of the infotainment programme Passatgers for TV3 (Catalan Public Television).

His most recent book, a novel in English, is entitled Snug. It's about a small village in the Isle of Wight which finds itself under siege by Africans who have gone there for that very purpose.

I caught up with Matthew recently, on a blustery afternoon, to talk about cool literary things to do while in Barcelona.

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George Tremlett (born 1939) is an English author, bookshop owner, and former politician.

According to his own biography, after leaving King Edward VI School Stratford-upon-Avon, he worked for the Coventry Evening Telegraph from 1957 onward as a TV columnist and pop music reviewer. In 1961 he became a freelance rock journalist and in the 1970s wrote a series of paperbacks on pop stars, including The David Bowie Story, the first bio of the musician.

He is a biographer of Dylan Thomas and his wife Caitlin. He interviewed Caitlin at her home in Catalonia for the book Caitlin: Life with Dylan Thomas. He has argued that Thomas was "the first rock star." In 1997 he published a book with James Nashold, The Death of Dylan Thomas, which claimed that Thomas' death was not due to alcohol poisoning but to a mistake by Thomas' physician in prescribing cortisone, morphine and benzedrine when Thomas was actually in a diabetic coma.

Tremlett runs the Corran Bookshop in Laugharne, Wales "a shrine to the poet"; has since 1982. The shop offers tourist information...and it's where I met George to have this conversation.

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Wales celebrated the centenary of famed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in 2014. Annie Haden is an experienced tourist guide and a specialist in the life of Thomas. With over 20 years experience in the tourism sector, Anne uses an easy listening story-telling technique which keeps her tours both interesting and informative. I caught up with her at Morgans hotel in Swansea, Thomas's home town, to talk about poet and place.

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I met with Andre Alexis to discuss his novella, A (BookThug, 2013). During our conversation we hit, among other things, on literary criticism, book reviewing, 'Good' and 'Baddeley' literary critics, and David Gilmour and his GG Award winning novel A Perfect Night to go to China, and Alexis's contention that racism is contained in the chapter in this novel entitled “The Pigeon”.

Please note that, as a condition of making the recording of this conversation public, Alexis's essay entitled “Of a Smallness in the Soul” is being made readily available (as it is right here) to visitors to this web page...and that the point is being made, clearly, that this essay is Alexis's argument for (or demonstration of) the racism contained in ...David Gilmour’s chapter entitled “The Pigeon”, from his novel, The Perfect Order of Things."

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Alberto Manguel is an Argentine-born writer, translator, and editor, and the author of many books of both non-fiction, including A History of Reading (1996), The Library at Night (2007) and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography (2008); and fiction ( News From a Foreign Country Came , 1991). We met at the Kingston WritersFest; I asked him to recount some of his favourite experiences in bookstores and libraries around the world.

First he pointed out that libraries and bookstores, in spite of their being public places, are really private spaces that each reader makes his or her own home: a sort of autobiography, where the books that interest you contain words that mirror your own experience. We talk about a Tel Aviv bookstore he visited 60 years ago, bookshop stickers, the reconstructed library of Aby Warburg in Hamburg, and treasures found by chance in used bookstores on Avenida Corrientes in Buenos Aires. Manguel's novel A Return, sketches the character of one of the old booksellers on this street.

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Herman Melville lived at Arrowhead (so named because of arrowheads found nearby during planting season) from 1850–1863, during which time he wrote some of his best known works: Moby-Dick, The Confidence-Man, and The Piazza Tales, a short story collection named after his porch, of which he wrote:

Now, for a house, so situated in such a country, to have no piazza for the convenience of those who might desire to feast upon the view, and take their time and ease about it, seemed as much of an omission as if a picture-gallery should have no bench; for what but picture-galleries are the marble halls of these same limestone hills?—galleries hung, month after month anew, with pictures ever fading into pictures ever fresh.

Built in the 1780s as a farmhouse, it was located adjacent to property owned by Melville's uncle Thomas, who Melville visited in his youth. He purchased the property in 1850 with borrowed money and spent the next twelve years farming and writing. Money problems forced him to sell the property to his brother, and return to New York City in 1863 whereupon he eventually found work as a customs inspector.

The house remained in private hands until 1975, when the Berkshire County Historical Society acquired it and some of the original 160-acre property. The Society restored most of the house to Melville's period and operates it as a house museum; it is open to the public during warmer months.

I visited Arrowhead recently to learn more about why Arrowhead should be on all Literary tourists' bucketlists. Here's my conversation with Executive Director Betsy Sherman

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The Mount is a historic site and a cultural center inspired by the passions and achievements of Edith Wharton. Designed and built by Wharton in 1902, the house embodies the principles outlined in her influential book, The Decoration of Houses (1897). The property includes three acres of formal gardens designed by Wharton, who was also an authority on European landscape design, surrounded by extensive woodlands. Programming at The Mount reflects Wharton’s core interests in the literary arts, interior design and decoration, garden and landscape design, and the art of living. Annual exhibits explore themes from Wharton’s life and work.

In the summer of 2010, The Mount launched Berkshire WordFest, a gathering of writers and readers staged in one of the most beautiful settings in the Berkshires.

I met with Kelsey Mullen, Education and Public Programs Coordinator at the Mount, to ask her why the Literary Tourist might want to venture into this neck of the woods.

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From 1959-1964, McClelland and Stewart published a run of poetry books written by Irving Layton, designed by Frank Newfeld, edited by Claire Pratt, and often illustrated with photographs by Sam Tata. They turned out to be among Layton’s most famous and influential titles ( A Red Carpet for the Sun [1959], The Swinging Flesh [1961], Balls for a One-Armed Juggler [1963], and The Laughing Rooster [1964]).

Cameron Anstee, proprietor of Apt 9 Press and a PhD student in the English Department at the University of Ottawa recently delivered a paper at a Canadian Literature Symposium. It examined the relationship between Layton, Newfeld, and Jack McClelland and positioned it as central to the formation both of a visible canon of Canadian Literature in the 1950s and 1960s, and of Layton’s particular public image. The paper looked at Layton’s complicated relationship with the Canadian reading public and emerging Canadian literary establishments through a close reading of the book objects. It also considered how Layton was ‘branded’, the role that Frank Newfeld played in this, and the poet's conflicted responses to Newfeld’s designs.

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This from the Yale University Library website: "William Reese '77 is an antiquarian bookseller living in New Haven, CT. His firm, William Reese Company, founded in 1975 when he was a sophomore, is one of the leading rare book dealers in the world, specializing in Americana, travels and voyages, and literature. He has been active with the Yale Library for many years, funding a number of fellowships in the Beinecke Library. Bill served on the committee to raise funds for the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library and contributed, with his family, the Jackson Family Rare Book Room there, named in honor of his grandfather, John Day Jackson, Class of 1890, who gave Yale its first music library.

Bill has also given Yale major collections of 20th-century writers such as Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, as well as books and manuscripts ranging from 18th-century Louisiana to the diary of an interned Japanese-American in World War II. He has also curated four major exhibitions in the Beinecke Library, including their Columbian Quincentenary exhibition in 1992, and the show honoring Paul Mellon's bequest to the Beinecke Library in 2002, both commemorated with published catalogs. He has also funded Beinecke publications such as the recently published Alfred Stieglitz–Georgia O’Keefe correspondence, funded cataloguing initiatives in the Map Collection, and underwritten Yale staff members attending the Rare Book School. Bill has also served on the committee to award the undergraduate book- collecting prize for thirty years. Bill has worked with many book libraries throughout the country on issues of collection development, security, and fund-raising. He serves on the Council of the American Antiquarian Society and the board of the Library of America."

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Shanty Bay Press was established in Shanty Bay, Ontario, in 1996 as a private press devoted to publishing livres d’artistes in which the texts and the illustrations accompanying them would have equal weight in the design of the books.

The press is a partnership: the type-setting, presswork and binding are the work of Janis Butler, the illustrations are by Walter Bachinski, and the editorial, design and publishing decisions are shared. The press’s equipment includes a Vandercook SP20, Vandercook Universal 1, double crown Washington hand press (1836),an etching press, and a growing collection of type.

I visited the Press to talk with its proprietors, starting with Walter Bachinski. We cover a lot of ground, including personal history, the history of the press, fine press book illustration, design and composition, love of books and book collecting.

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I attended the Kingston WritersFest and interviewed some great authors about 'place' and its relationship to their work. Here I talk with Thomas King about native myth, possibility in storytelling, his love of the Alberta Landscape - especially that which surrounds Lethbridge - and those novels of his which best capture the essence of this spectacular place.

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Jack Kerouac is an American icon thanks to his novel On the Road (1957). During the late 1950s, he and fellow members of the Beat generation captured something essential about the American psyche, defining a desire to break away from conformity in search of an alternative form of self-fulfillment. As William S. Burroughs once put it On the Road "sold a trillion Levis and a million espresso machines, and also sent countless kids on the road" (Charters, 1991, xxviii).

One of those kids was Ottawa native Rod Anstee who, at age 16, hitch-hiked across the continent, part of a life-long relationship he formed with Kerouac that involved collecting his books and letters, connecting with Beat authors, and writing a bibliography.

I met with Rod at his home to get the story; to trace the arc of his collecting experience; to understand as best I could, the core anatomy of a book collector.

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Alexander Monker is an Ottawa-based collector of Canadian poetry. I met recently with him to talk about his passion for these and other books, and to get some advise on the art of book collecting.

We also talk about, among other things, the kindness and knowledge of used/antiquarian booksellers, misspelled book titles online, the Contact, Gaspereau and Apt. 9 Presses, buying what you love, Anglo-Irish novelist Charles Lever, Walter Scott, buying duplicate copies of books for trade, learning all you can about your specialty areas, and sending books to poets for their signatures. Plus many other great book collecting tips.

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Abigail Rorer is a wood engraver, and the proprietor of The Lone Oak Press which publishes limited edition, fine press books using...letterpress & wood engraving.

One of Abigail's most delightful books is Mimpish Squinnies: Reginald Farrer’s Short Guide to Worthless Plants. "Reginald Farrer (1880–1920) was a British plantsman, plant explorer, & prolific writer who was one of the first to promote rock gardening and alpine plants. The text of Mimpish Squinnies consists of fourteen plant descriptions from Farrer’s The English Rock Garden and are of plants that he particularly disliked and described as only he could, with humor, wit, acerbity and anthropomorphism. The title of the book, Mimpish Squinnies, uses two of the many, almost nonsense, words that Farrer employs in some of his descriptions. Accompanying the text are fourteen full-color plant portraits using his descriptions as inspiration along with the structure of the actual plant plus a portrait of Farrer with a short biographical note."

Please listen to our conversation about what Abigail does, how she does it, and why she loves it.

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Founded in 1978, Shakespeare & Company aspires to create "a theatre rooted in the classical ideals of inquiry, balance and harmony; [and] a company that performs as the Elizabethans did — in love with poetry, physical prowess and the mysteries of the universe."

Home to more than 150 artists, the company performs Shakespeare in ways which encourage collaboration between actors, directors and designers of all races, nationalities and backgrounds. It also provides training, and develops and produces new plays of social and political significance. The hope is to "inspire a new generation of students and scholars to discover the resonance of Shakespeare’s truths in the everyday world, demonstrating the influence that classical theatre can have within a community".

Its mission is to establish a theatre company which, by its commitment to the creative impulse, is a revolutionary force in society, which connects the truths of the past to the challenges and possibilities of today, which finds its source in the performance of Shakespeare’s plays, and reaches the widest possible audience through training and education as well as performance.

I met with Elizabeth Aspenlieder Communications Director/Artistic Associate and Tony Simotes, Artistic Director to talk about why Literary Tourists should visit Shakespeare and Company, and how its programs and plays affect participants and the social and political environments in which they operate.

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When I met with Rebecca Romney she was the Rare Book Expert on Pawn Stars and Manager at the Las Vegas Gallery of Bauman Rare Books.

We talked about what she does, why Bauman's is in town, her blog, Aldine, Aldus the printer, William Pickering's Aldine poet's series, and collecting fine press books.

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The University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections Library houses unique, rare, and specialized research material that documents the history, culture and physical environment of the city of Las Vegas, the Southern Nevada region, the gaming industry, and the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

The collections include books, pamphlets, posters, serials and periodicals, scrapbooks, archives and manuscripts, maps, architectural drawings, photographs, video and audio tapes.

I visited the library recently to talk gambling with former director now Head of Exhibits Peter Michel, for it's here that you'll find "the world's greatest collection of material on gambling and related issues, including books, journals, company documents, and manuscript collections."

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This part was easy. I just clipped and pasted from here. "From ornate floral patterns to cityscapes, the boldest book designs of the Golden Age are gathered here. Readers accustomed to today’s more utilitarian bindings will find breathtaking images—gold leaf patterns intricate enough to replicate the shimmer of feathers, forests rendered in rich color and silver, and elegant allusions to Asian art. The diversity and ingenuity of these books will capture the imagination of book lovers and collectors—and anyone who enjoys design.

Selecting the most beautifully crafted and influential pieces from his two-volume, limited edition catalog, Minsky uncovers the world behind a lost art. Dividing these breathtaking designs into distinct categories, he discusses the use of silhouettes, pattern, Oriental influence and more. He also reveals key artists, their signature designs and flourishes, the designs they inspired, and the designs that inspired them. Richard Minsky founded the Center for Book Arts in 1974 and has worked for more than 35 years to draw attention to book art and encourage artists in the field. His work has been shown around the world and remains in public collections, including the National Gallery of Art and The Victoria and Albert Museum. He has received many fellowships, grants and awards of recognition, including several from the National Endowment for the Arts."

Then came the difficult part: getting Richard to talk about this great 'Art of American Book Covers 1875-1930' project (and if you believe that...).

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Barbara Slate is the author of more than 300 comic books and graphic novels. She created, wrote and drew Angel Love for DC Comics, and Yuppies from Hell and Sweet XVI for Marvel. Her first character , Ms Liz, has appeared on millions of greeting cards, in magazines, and on the Today Show; in addition, she wrote the Disney comic classics Beauty and the Beast and Pocahontas, plus more than 60 issues of Mattel’s Barbie (winner of the Parent’s Choice Award two years in a row), and more than 100 Betty and Veronica stories for Archie Comics.

She is the author of You Can Do a Graphic Novel, "a guide to creating graphic novels - presented in the form of a graphic novel - from a veteran in the field." Her new semi-autobiographical graphic novel, Getting Married and Other Mistakes (2012) has been called 'charming and empowering'. In it, a newly divorced narrator encounters many of the social challenges that modern women must face, while undertaking a complicated journey toward finding her inner voice.

I met with Slate at her home in the Hudson Valley recently to talk about all of this, and more.

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Poets House is a literary center and poetry archive - a collection and meeting place in New York that invites poets and the public to join the living tradition of poetry. Free and open to the public, Poets House’s 50,000-volume poetry library is among the most comprehensive, open-stacks collections of poetry in the United States. Hosting acclaimed poetry events and workshops, Poets House not only documents the wealth and diversity of modern poetry, it stimulates public dialogue on issues of poetry in culture.

I visited Poet's House to speak with Program Director Stephen Motika about why a literary tourist might want stop by here.

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The Greenwich Village Literary Pub Crawl has been leading tourists into bars rich in bookish history since 1998. Inside each bar, you take a drink and listen as your actor/tour guide tells of the history of the establishment and of the great authors who have hung out, gotten drunk and written there. You’ll get recitations from relevant texts and stops at "unique sites that are literary, historical, or alcoholic in nature." Tours start off every Saturday at 2pm, beginning at the White Horse Tavern, 567 Hudson Street and 11th Street, and last for three hours. (Take the 1 train to Christopher Street; Left on w. 10th to Hudson St.; Right/North on Hudson St. to West 11th Street). Tickets are $20, $15 for students/seniors. To make a reservation call (212) 613-5796.

I caught up with owner Eric Chase at the White Horse recently to learn more about the Crawl and why literary pilgrimage for many assumes such importance.

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Richard Minsky is a celebrated American book artist, bookbinder and scholar who at age 13 got his first printing press. In 1968, he graduated cum laude in economics from Brooklyn College, was then awarded a fellowship at Brown University, got his Master's degree in economics, and then pursued a Ph.D. at The New School for Social Research; two years later he chucked it all for bookbinding, art and music. He studied bookbinding under master bookbinder Daniel Gibson Knowlton

In 1974, Minsky founded the Center for Book Arts in New York, an organization dedicated to interpreting the book as an art object using traditional book arts practices. I met with Richard and his graphic novelist partner Barbara Slate at their house in the Hudson Valley for libation and conversation. My objective was to pry artists books apart from these traditional book arts moorings. Listen to how successful I was.

Image: Richard Minsky twirling The Philosophy of Umbrellas by Robert Louis Stevenson.

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Edward Rutherfurd was born in England, in the cathedral city of Salisbury. Educated locally, and at the universities of Cambridge, and Stanford, California, he subsequently worked in political research, bookselling and publishing. Abandoning this career in the book trade in 1983, he returned to his childhood home to write SARUM, a historical novel with a ten-thousand year storyline, set in the area around the ancient monument of Stonehenge. It was an instant international bestseller remaining 23 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. Since then he has written six more bestsellers: RUSSKA, a novel of Russia; LONDON; THE FOREST, set in England's New Forest which lies close by Sarum, and two novels which cover the story of Ireland from the time just before Saint Patrick to the twentieth century. In 2009 NEW YORK was published, and in 2013, PARIS.

Rutherfurd is the quintessential Literary Tourist. He 'walks' the cities he writes about, researches them, imagines them, and arrives at a personal understanding of them. We talk here about this process, about the importance of learning about the ordinary lives of people from the past, of writing short stories about the places you visit, and about history as reconnaissance and "finding out what happened to the last army that went there".

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Without question, Friedrich Nietzsche is the go-to guy for those who want to sound smart at a cocktail party. He's a philosophical superstar, ' the grandfather of postmodernism', an inspiration to thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Sarah Kofman, and Paul de Man.

Nietzsche’s popularity lies, according to PhD candidate Karl Laderoute, in his rebelliousness and bombastic style. His aphoristic writing - with its lack of fully articulated argument - spurs students to think critically, says Laderoute, to develop their own views, interpret actively, recognize implicit biases and consider how science, poetry, history, and philosophy operate and intersect.

Nietzsche's famous epistemological ‘perspectivism’ suggests that 'knowing' is simply interpretion from a limited point of view. As very finite beings, humans can only engage in a limited number of cognitive processes at once. This limitation means that we can only consider phenomena, broadly construed as anything happening in the world, in small doses and in particular ways. In other words, says Laderoute, we always examine a phenomenon from some particular perspective, in which some set of interests is at play.

Listen as we discuss the implications of Nietzche's powerful world view.

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George Saintsbury (23 October 1845 – 28 January 1933), though a prolific and influential British literary critic in the late 1800s, is today perhaps best known as the author of a book on wine called Notes on a Cellar-Book (1920). According to Prof. Nicholas Margaritis, Saintsbury deserves a larger modern audience. Why? Listen to his explanation.

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Lionel Trilling (1905 – 1975) is one of the best known U.S. critics of the twentieth century. A Professor of Literature and Criticism at Columbia University from 1931 - 1975, his teachings focused primarily on the relationships between literature, culture and politics. His first and best known collection of essays, The Liberal Imagination, was published in 1950.

I met with David Southward, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, in Gatineau, Quebec at the ACTC Annual Conference to discuss Trilling and his approach to literary criticism.

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"Longinus" is the name given to the unknown literary critic/author who wrote 'On the Sublime' an essay written around 100 CE that examines the work of more than 50 ancient authors. In the essay - of which only an extended fragment remains - Longinus talks of the sublime as a state that reaches "beyond the realm of the human condition into greater mystery." How do authors produce this state in themselves, in their work, in their readers? How do we know it when we see it? Longinus gives us his take on the topic.

Prof Edwin Conner presented a paper on Longinus at the Association for Core Texts and Courses (ACTC) Conference held recently in Ottawa. I talk to him here about Longinus's criteria for judging whether or not a work is sublime.

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Quantum Theatre was founded in Pittsburgh in 1990 by Karla Boos. Her goal was to create a company that incorporated world culture and international trends. Quantum has been a nurturing home for Boos' evolution as an artist and for the hundreds of collaborators that have created Quantum's work. These artists draw upon the resources of image, world languages, mixed media, and the power of non-traditional performance sites. Unique to the region, Quantum's productions are staged in places that aren't theatres. They have become a reflection of Pittsburgh itself, expressing the varying character of the city in places ranging from grand museums to the least likely abandoned industrial sites.

Boos often directs, acts and writes for the company. She played a lead role in a play I watched called Dream of Autumn by world renowned Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse. I met Boos after her intense performance to talk about Quantum, Fosse and the play.

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Emilio Gil is a graphic designer, and founder of Tau Design a firm that pioneered design services, institutional communications, and the creation and development of visual corporate identity programs in Spain. He trained at the SVA (School of Visual Arts) in New York under professors Milton Glaser, James McMullan and Ed Benguiat, and studied curating at Central St. Martins in London.

For his 1995 book ‘Un toro negro y enorme’ (An enormous black bull) Gil won the Laus de Oro award for Editorial Design, the Donside award, and the Certificate of Excellence from the Type Directors Club of New York.

He teaches in the Santillana Training Publishing Master’s program and is a professor at the University of Salamanca, the University Carlos III and at the University Europea, all in Madrid.

In addition to having curated several important exhibitions on the history of graphic design in Spain, he is author of Pioneers of Graphic Design in Spain (Index Book, 2007. Edition in the USA, Mark Batty Publisher), and co-author of The Beauty of Things (Gustavo Gili, 2007). He has been president since June 2009 of AEPD (Spanish Association of Design Professionals).

I met with Emilio in his offices in Madrid to discuss some of the great Spanish modern book designers, including Manolo Prieto and Daniel Gil.

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Strange Victories: Grove Press, 1951-1985 was a major exhibition about the Grove Press that ran at the Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library in Syracuse.

Grove was founded by Barney Rosset in 1951 and is one of the world's great twentieth-century avant-garde publishing houses. It's credited with having introduced many important international authors to American readers during the postwar period.

The exhibition traced the history of the Press from its involvement in national censorship trials, to publication of politically-engaged works such as The Wretched of the Earth, Red Star over China, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and the scandalous and very profitable, “Victorian Library.”

Grove not only challenged social mores, equality rights, and freedom of expression laws, it also "aggressively deployed savvy marketing strategies, became embroiled in labor union battles, floundered in its own success, and offended the sensibilities of not only “squares,” but feminists, Marxists, academics, and many others. Strange Victories tells the complicated story of Grove’s many literary and political achievements, whose profound influence on American culture endures today."

I met with co-curator Lucy Mulroney while the exhibit was taking place.

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Mark Tredinnick, winner of the Montreal Poetry Prize (2011) and the Cardiff Poetry Prize (2012), is the author of The Blue Plateau, Fire Diary, and nine other acclaimed works of poetry and prose. He lives in the highlands southwest of Sydney, Australia.

Tredinnick is “one of our great poets of place—not just of geographic place, but of the spiritual and moral landscapes as well,” according to Judith Beveridge. Of “Walking Underwater”, which won the Montreal Prize in 2011, Andrew Motion wrote: “This is a bold, big-thinking poem, in which ancient themes (especially the theme of our human relationship with landscape) are re-cast and re-kindled. It well deserves its eminence as a prize winner.”

I met with Mark in Ottawa after his appearance at Versefest to talk about, among other things, Japanese water-colours, light, falling water, geography, rain, longing, rhythm, speech, connection, sense making, the shadows that words cast, language as being, the weather, lipstick and pigs.

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Waiting for the Barbarians is a novel written by the South African-born Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee. Published in 1980 it won the James Tait Black Memorial and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prizes for fiction. The book's title comes from a poem by Greek-Egyptian poet Constantine P. Cavafy. American composer Philip Glass wrote an opera based on the book which premiered in 2005.

In August 2012, the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town presented Alexandre Marine's stage adaptation of the novel. The production ran in Montreal at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts early in 2013. I met with the play's Canadian-South African producer Maurice Podbrey at his home in Montreal to talk about the play, the novel, Coetzee, South Africa, Barbarians and the challenges of adapting books for the stage.

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I met with Canadian poet/critic Michael Lista several months ago to discuss the state of poetry reviewing in Canada, the need for honesty in criticism, and his take on poet/philosopher Jan Zwicky's essay “The Ethics of the Negative Review,” in which she defends her practice, while review editor in the 1990s of The Fiddlehead literary journal, of not publishing negative reviews.

Buckle up and enjoy the ride.

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Robert Fowler has had a distinguished career as a Canadian diplomat and public servant. From 1989 - 1995 he was deputy minister of National Defence; from 1995 - 2000, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, and, following that, ambassador to Italy from 2000-2006. Over the years he has served as foreign policy advisor to three Prime Ministers, and as Personal Representative for Africa.

On Dec. 15, 2008, when he was in Niger as special envoy to the United Nations responsible for reconciling rebel and government forces, Fowler and his assistant Louis Guay, were kidnapped and held captive for 130 days by regional members of al-Qaeda. He tells the story of this ordeal in his book A Season in Hell. We talk about it and, among other things, Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner', sanity, religious fanaticism, mental illness, the Newtown massacre, and the clear and present threat posed to Mali, and Africa, by al-Qaeda.

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Corey Redekop has been many things: "actor, waiter, disc jockey, cameraman, editor, lawyer (almost), and now the fabled trifecta of publicist/librarian/author. His debut novel, Shelf Monkey, is either a work of insane genius or an intolerable left-wing screed, depending on which review you read. Stunningly handsome, supremely talented, superbly gifted at hyperbole, Corey abides in Fredericton, New Brunswick."

We climb up on the autopsy table to dissect his latest novel Husk (" The Sopranos of zombie novels"), and in so doing talk about Sheldon, a zombie with a brain, and what happens to him after he wakes up on - yes - an autopsy table, with his heart and guts spilling out all over the floor.

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Laurie Lewis began her publishing career in New York City with Doubleday in the early 60s, acting as liaison between the book design and printing departments. In 1963 she moved to Toronto and joined the University of Toronto Press. When Allan Fleming came on board as Chief Designer in 1968 the new Design Unit was formed and Lewis became Fleming’s assistant. The department produced many important books, winning numerous awards both nationally and internationally.

For her outstanding service over they years to the design community, Lewis was made a Fellow of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada in 1975, proposed by Allan Fleming and Leslie Smart. She was vice-president of the Ontario Chapter from 1975 to 1977 and continued to support and contribute to the organization for many subsequent years and encouraged graphic design internationally through workshops in publication design in the third world, particularly in South East Asia and in South America, through volunteer assignments with the Canadian International Development Agency

Lewis introduced computers to the design office at University of Toronto in 1984, with the original Macintosh 512K. In 1991 she took early retirement in order to pursue interests in writing and small publishing. She is the founder and director of The Artful Codger Press, established to encourage the publication of memoirs and life writings.

After retirement from her international volunteer work Laurie began what she calls "another life." She became editor of Vista, the publication of the Seniors Association in Kingston, and began a new career as a writer. In 2011, at the age of 80, her first memoir, Little Comrades, was published by Porcupine’s Quill, and was selected by The Globe and Mail as one of the Top 100 Books of the Year 2011. As of this writing, her next book, Love, and all that jazz is scheduled for publication in 2013.

I caught up with Laurie Lewis at her home in Kingston, Ontario where we talked about her impressive career, her colleagues, and some of the more collectible books that she has had a hand in designing. Please listen here.

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According to his website, Ross King is "the bestselling author of six books on Italian, French and Canadian art and history. He has also published two historical novels, Domino (1995) and Ex-Libris (1998), and edited a collection of Leonardo da Vinci's fables, jokes and riddles. Translated into more than a dozen languages, his books have been nominated for a National Book Critics' Circle Award, the Charles Taylor Prize, and the National Award for Arts Writing. He has won both the Governor General's Award in Canada (for The Judgment of Paris) and the BookSense Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the United States (for Brunelleschi's Dome). His latest book, Leonardo and The Last Supper, has been described as 'gripping' (New York Times), 'fascinating' (Financial Times), 'engaging' (The Guardian), 'enthralling' (Daily Mail), 'absorbing' (Kirkus), 'engrossing' (Booklist), and 'extraordinary' (Irish Times)."

It too won a Governor General's Award, this one in 2012. We met in Ottawa to talk about the book and the prize.

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Julie Bruck is the author of three collections of poems from Brick Books, Monkey Ranch (2012)

The End of Travel (1999), and The Woman Downstairs (1993). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Ms, Ploughshares, The Walrus, The Malahat Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Maisonneuve, Literary Mama, and elsewhere.

Montreal-born and raised, Julie has taught at several colleges and universities in Canada, and has been a resident faculty member at The Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire. Since 2005, she has taught poetry workshops for The Writing Salon in San Francisco’s Mission district, and tutored students at The University of San Francisco.

Awards and fellowships include The A.M. Klein Award for Poetry, two Pushcart Prize nominations, two Gold Canadian National Magazine Awards and, for Monkey Ranch, Canada’s 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry, which we talk about here.

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Born in Topeka, Kansas, Linda Spalding (née Dickinson) is a Canadian writer and editor who has, over the years, worked as a professor of English and writing at numerous universities. She currently lives in Toronto, is an editor with Brick magazine, and is married to novelist Michael Ondaatje.

Spalding's novel The Purchase won the 2012 Governor-General’s Literary Award for English Fiction. We met in Ottawa to talk about it.

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Well known Canadian author/biographer Charlie Foran, playing the Literary Tourist, travelled to Wingham, Ontario and environs to spend a little time in Alice Munro country. I talked to him recently about his experience.

Photo credits: © James Lahey 2010

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I met with Stephanie Hlywak, Media Director at the Poetry Foundation, one hundred years after Poetry magazine was launched in Chicago to the month. We talk about the history, mandate, approach and architecture, not only of the magazine, but also of The Foundation and its impressive building, and, as if this weren't enough, the place and places of poetry itself in our world.

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Jason Webster is an Anglo-American crime novelist, travel writer and critic. Born in California he now lives in Valencia, Spain. Webster was educated in England, Egypt and Italy. In 1993 he graduated from Oxford University (St John's College) with a degree in Arabic and Islamic History. His books all involve Spain, and include Duende: A journey in search of Flamenco (2003), which recounts his move here, and his quest to learn flamenco guitar, (it was long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award); Andalus: Unlocking the secrets of Moorish Spain (2004) and Sacred Sierra: A year on a Spanish mountain (2009) which describes a year that Webster and his Spanish wife spent living on their mountain farm in eastern Spain working on the land and planting trees with the help of a 12th century Moorish gardening manual.

Or the Bull Kills You (2011) is a crime novel set in Valencia, and the world of bullfighting. It is the first in a series of detective stories featuring Chief Inspector Max Cámara of the Spanish National Police. It was long-listed for the Crime Writers' Association John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger. Death in Valencia (2012), is the second book in the series.

I caught up with Jason recently in Valencia. We met at a sidewalk cafe in the Cabanyal - the neighbourhood in which his fictional action takes place - to talk about how those who read and love his novels can get more out of them by visiting this great, colourful Spanish city.

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Shared Inquiry is a discussion method employed by the Great Books Foundation, which, according to its website provides " a teaching and learning environment, and a way for individuals to achieve a more thorough understanding of a text by discussing questions, responses, and insights with fellow readers.

Shared Inquiry combines a sound theoretical base with proven strategies to engage all readers in higher-order thinking and collaborative problem solving. In Shared Inquiry, participants come together to help each other explore the meaning of a work of literature. Each participant brings a unique perspective that influences how he or she understands the work. Sharing their interpretations, participants gain new insights and deepen or even change their initial understanding."

I caught up with Eric Timmreck, President of the Houston Great Books Council recently in Toronto at an annual event called Toronto Pursuits, to talk about his experience using the Shared Inquiry technique.

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While researching an article on Literary Tourism for an upcoming issue of Ontario magazine, I got to meet and greet some stellar Canadian authors at sites across the province that feature, variously, in their works. Here, it's Terry Fallis, and his novel The Best Laid Plans. I got together with Terry on Parliament Hill, right next to the newly refurbished parliamentary library to talk about how its 'hallowed hallways' informed the writing of his book; about how readers might gain insight into its characters and plot by visiting the 'Hill', and how these buildings play an important role in Canadian political life, stabilizing democracy and inspiring hope for a better future.

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Attention Literary Tourists! I met with Kristi Beer from Inprint Houston, a non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring readers and writers in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1983, Inprint fulfills its mission through the nationally renowned Margarett Root Brown Reading Series, the Cool Brains! Reading Series for Young People, literary and educational activities in the community that demonstrate the value and impact of creative writing, and support for the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. These programs and events play a vital role contributing to Houston's rich and diverse cultural life.

Who better then to question about how the Literary Tourist might best spend his or her time in Houston.

[Please note that this interview was conducted several years ago, so check the Inprint website for information on current and upcoming events etc.]

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Randall Speller was for 29 years a librarian in the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Combining his career in art librarianship with an interest in Canadian literature and book collecting, he has done extensive research into the history of Canadian book illustration and design, especially in the years following World War II. Randall is a contributing editor to the DA: a Journal of the Printing Arts, where he has written several influential articles on book illustration and design.

Randall is also an accomplished painter. His work focuses largely on Victoria County, part of his longstanding interest in representing an area of Ontario that his family has had connections to since the 1840s. As his website puts it: "Capturing the essential qualities of this landscape has engaged him for more than 30 years. His subjects are the constructed elements of landscape and buildings that are shaped by people, by weather, by light and by time."

Please listen here as we engage in a conversation about the history of Canadian book design, and the importance of book collecting to Canadian, and indeed all cultures.

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Houston's Museum of Printing History was founded in 1979 by Raoul Beasley, Vernon P. Hearn, Don Piercy, and J. V. Burnham, four printers with a passion for preserving their various printing-related collections and sharing them with the community. Chartered in 1981 the Museum had its official opening in 1982 with Dr. Hans Halaby, Director of the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany, cutting the ribbon. The mission of the Museum is to promote, preserve, and share the knowledge of printed communication and art as the greatest contributors to the development of the civilized world and the continuing advancement of freedom and literacy. It does this through an active, on-going exhibitions program, and a series of book arts workshops.

I met with Museum Curator Amanda Stevenson this past summer to talk about the collection. During our conversation she delivers a very informative thumb-nail sketch of how relief and intaglio printing techniques work.

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In 1927, Ben Bass opened Strand Book Store on Fourth Avenue, home of New York’s legendary Book Row. Named after the famous publishing street in London, the Strand was one of 48 bookstores on Book Row, which started in the 1890’s and ran from Union Square to Astor Place. Today, the Strand is the sole survivor.

("Ben’s son, Fred, was learning the family business by the age of 13. He too a lover of books quickly took to the book trade. After Fred completed a tour of duty in the Armed Forces, he came home to New York where he worked side-by-side with his father. By 1957, Fred moved the store just around the corner, to [its] current space at 12th Street and Broadway. Fred came to spend most of his time at the buying desk, cultivating relationships with regulars and scoping out the next great find…")

I recently asked current owner, and Fred's daughter, Nancy Bass Wyden, about The Strand's longevity.

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Project Bookmark Canada is a national charitable organization that marks places where real and imagined landscapes meet. It does this by installing poster sized ceramic plaques - called Bookmarks - in the exact physical locations where literary scenes are set.

Its mission is to develope a network of hundreds of Bookmarks in cities, towns and other areas across the country, allowing Canadians and visitors the chance to read their way across Canada. Its mandate is to promote Canadian writers and writing, to invite readers to Canadian spaces and to encourage reading and literacy through a permanent, prominent exhibit of stories and poems set in Canada.

I caught up with its founder Miranda Hill at what has developed into one the most exciting literary events in Canada: the Kingston Writers Festival.

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Adam Barrows is a Professor in the English Department at Carleton University in Ottawa. The focus of his research for the last eight years has been the relationship between time, literary modernism, and imperialism. His background is in the history of science and his theoretical approach to literature is largely historical materialist, drawing heavily on the Western Marxist tradition, from the Frankfurt School to Raymond Williams and Henri Lefebvre.

Growing out of his interest in twentieth-century British literature he led a seminar on the Hogarth Press, as he puts it "one of the most important venues for the production and dissemination of the experimental writings that would come to define the modernist literary canon. Their express purpose was to enable the publication of works that would otherwise never have found a home in the conventional publishing industry, including their own.

In addition to publishing such central works of literary modernism as T.S. Eliot’s Poems (1919) and The Waste Land (1923), Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room (1922) and Katherine Mansfield’s Prelude (1918), the Hogarth Press was also committed to the publication of radically dissident anti-imperialist works such as Leonard Woolf’s own Imperialism and Civilization (1928), Lord Oliver’s The Anatomy of African Misery (1928), Edward John Thompson’s The Other Side of the Medal (1925) and C.L.R. James’s The Case for West-Indian Self Government (1933)."

We met at his Carleton University office to talk about Virginia and Leonard Woolf, and the history and output of the Hogarth Press.

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Terry Cook received a Ph.D. in Canadian History from Queen's University, 1977. From 1975 to 1998, he worked at the then Public, later National, Archives of Canada, leaving as the senior manager responsible for directing the appraisal and records disposition program for all media. In his long and distinguished career there, he was responsible for the development of policies and methodologies which dramatically altered the national archival system.

In 1998, he founded Clio Consulting Inc., and since then has worked for national, municipal, and academic archives, as well as archival associations, around the world. He also took on the position of Associate Professor for the Archival Studies Program in the Department of History at the University of Manitoba.

He has authored over 80 articles which have been published in Archivaria (two of his contributions being awarded the W. Kay Lamb Prize) and other leading archival journals. He is the author of The Archival Appraisal of Records Containing Personal Information: A RAMP Study With Guidelines (1991) and co-editor of Imagining Archives: Essays and Reflections by Hugh A. Taylor (2003).

He has also contributed to the archival community greatly in his editing of scholarly journals and his participation in various professional associations.

We met in Ottawa to discuss the cuts to, and neglect of, Library and Archives Canada. Among other things we talk about the challenges facing all libraries and archives, conflicting mandates, the differences between born and made digital material, the importance of source documents, and the current absence of any 'real' exhibition programming at LAC.

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As weird as it might seem today, people from New York used to come up to Montreal for a good time. Gambling houses, drugs, clubs, fast women... Montreal was one of the coolest places to be in post-war North America. Fun, racy, naughty...for a few fleeting years Montreal had a real Noir vibe.

A handful of cheap, disposable novels captured this era in ways that more main stream novels never could. According to literary historian Brian Busby, their colour and detail provide an important historical record. These nine pulp fiction paperbacks documented the landscape and life of the period in an exciting, unusual way. They've since been largely ignored by historians and, in some cases, hidden by their authors. I met with Busby to talk about Sugarpuss on Dorchester Street, The Executioner and other such titles, and why this series of paperbacks is worthy of our attention.

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While there is no ‘great Houston Novel,’ a lot of good stories have come out of the city, many of which are told in David Theis’s Literary Houston, an anthology of writing on and about 'the Bayou city'. Stories, because Houston is a place where people come to DO things. ‘To fly to the moon, create empires, build fortresses against cancer, and temples to surrealism’ as Theis puts it.

I met him recently at a cafe just off Houston's busy Westheimer street. Seems like everwhere we moved something or someone very noisy decided to followed us. Still, we had an interesting conversation. Hope you enjoy it.

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Michele Rackham is a post doctoral fellow at Trent University. She is currently working on a digital catalogue raisonne of P.K. Irwin's (a.k.a P.K. Page) artwork that will accompany a print art book to be published by the Porcupine's Quill. Rackham recently completed a PhD at McGill University. The title of her thesis is "Between the Lines, Interartistic Modernism in Canada 1930-1960."

We met at Carleton University to talk about 20th Canadian book design, and the important work that artist Betty Sutherland did for Contact Press designing book covers during the 1950s.

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"Heinrich Heine’s writings, poetry, and ideology delighted and enlightened me. He became a personal, meaningful experience, in the same way I feel, that private printing is a personal experience, printing meaningful things. These feelings make up the “idealistic” birth of the Heinrich Heine press” says Peter Dorn in Reader, Lover of Books, Lover of Heaven (North York Public Library, 1978. Designed by Glenn Goluska).

Listen to my conversation with Peter about his Heinrich Heine Press, his immigration to Canada, his work at Eaton’s department store, Canadian book design in the 1950s and 1960s, the influence of Carl Dair and Frank Newfeld, his move to Kingston and his work at Queen’s University.

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I met recently with literary historian Brian Busby to talk about 'Literary Montreal', poet John Glassco, plaques and the Writers' Chapel of St James the Apostle Anglican Church.

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What William Toye apparently wanted most in the world after graduating from the University of Toronto in 1948, was a job in Canadian book publishing. This, Robert Fulford tells us in a recent National Post profile, was an outlandish career move since Canadian publishing barely existed. We had few publishers and they produced few books. They did little more than import American and British books, selling Bibles, dictionaries and schoolbooks to keep themselves afloat. But Toye was insistent. Says Fulford:

"When he applied for a job at the Canadian branch of Oxford University Press, he was told they had nothing for him but a place in the warehouse. He said that would be fine. Over the next six decades Canadian publishing steadily expanded and Toye found many ways to deploy the talents he developed. At age 84, still editing, he recently produced yet another in the long list of valuable books he’s given us, The Concise Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, Second Edition."

Quite apart from the outstanding work he has produced as editor, the multi-talented Toye has also written and designed some beautiful, memorable books of his own, and it is these we met to talk about last month. Please listen here:

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This from the Poetry Foundation: "An influential figure in contemporary poetics, Ron Silliman became associated with the West Coast literary movement known as “Language poetry” in the 1960s and ‘70s. He edited In the American Tree (1986), which remains the primary Language poetry anthology, as well as penned one of the movement’s defining critical texts, The New Sentence (1987). Silliman’s prolific publishing career includes over thirty books of poetry, critical work, collaborations and anthologies. He has long championed experimental or “post-avant” poetics, most recently through Silliman’s Blog, a weblog he started in 2002."

I met with Ron at the Ottawa International Airport to talk about Language poetry. Among other things we discuss the 'Bardic I"; diagnosis of the self; examining viewpoint; the concept of clarity in writing; literary effects; passion through form; Raid 'killing bugs dead'; manipulation of the reader; the artificiality of literary devices and pre-set responses. Louis Zukofsky; received rather than earned wisdom. Shakespeare as a great font of creative invention. Bing Crosby as the Jimi Hendricks of the microphone. Steve Roggenback. The 'God help us' response. Unquestioned ideology. Ambiguity. Self check-out lanes. Common denominators. Helen Vendler's irrelevancy. Poets' dishonest criticism. And the importance of reading series.

Photo credit: Jeff Hurwitz

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Unlike Britain, which opted to invest in public non-commercial broadcasting in the early ’60s, Canada chose a hybrid model that freed the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to augment its Parliamentary appropriation with advertising revenues.

Canada’s 1968 Broadcast Act prescribed a broadcasting system controlled by Canadians that ‘safeguards and strengthens our cultural, political, social and economic fabric, promotes unity and national identity, and provides challenging, entertaining, informative programming that caters to a wide range of audiences.’

This conflicted mandate parked the CBC at a particularly congested intersection, one that today invites more collisions than ever before, what with the significant funding cuts just announced and profits from the Hockey Night in Canada franchise in jeopardy.

In addition to the impossible task of simultaneously promoting a single, nebulous national identity and culture, and providing programming for a wide variety of tastes and audiences, the CBC is also under pressure to produce “popular” shows that Canadians will watch and advertisers will support.

One solution is to abandon the old commercial hybrid model and fund the CBC not through Parliament, but directly from licence fees levied on consumers. This way the CBC could, similar to TVOntario, carve out a more distinctive, unique role for itself by eliminating advertising (and much of the glib, manipulative, audience-spinning crap one finds on commercial television) from most of its schedule, and delivering ‘high’ quality Canadian alternative programming without regard for ‘lowest-common-denominator’ audience share. Replacing a chubby old confused mongrel, with a lean, alert purebred puppy dog.

Good idea. Perhaps that’s why it stands little chance of seeing daylight. Anything that resembles a new tax, or loosens the leash that government holds on public broacasting is unlikely to fly in Harperland, or for that matter in any other party-that’s-in-power land.

The alternative, one which Richard Stursberg championed as Vice President of English language programming at the CBC (2004-2010), is to focus on audience. ‘ What use are ‘good’ television shows if nobody watches them? Stursberg asks in his book The Tower of Babble: Sins, Secrets and Successes Inside the CBC which documents his tenure with the public broadcaster.

While ‘Little Mosque on the Prairie’ is no ‘Mad Men’, it is watched by lots of Canadians. And this is more than can be said of much CBC programming prior to Stursberg’s arrival. By pushing one component of a decidedly messed-up mandate he created much controversy during his time at the CBC, and, eventually, got himself fired. One hopes that his book, and his bold efforts will, if nothing else, encourage debate, and ultimately produce from government a clearer mandate for this important, troubled institution.

I met with Richard (not Peter) Stursberg in Ottawa to talk about his book.

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Allan Fleming was born in Toronto in 1929. At 16 he left studies at the Western Technical School to apprentice at various design firms in Toronto. He then went to England, where he soaked up lessons from some of the great British book designers.

Back in Canada in 1957 he joined the typographic firm Cooper and Beatty Ltd., and was working there when the opportunity to redesign Canadian National's logo came up in 1959. In 1962 he became art director at Maclean’s magazine. He was vice-president and director of creative services at MacLaren Advertising from 1963 to 1968, and chief designer at the University of Toronto Press until 1976, when he joined Burns and Cooper.

Suave, handsome, well-read, eloquent and confident, Fleming epitomized 'cool.' His design work won many awards in Canada, the United States and around the world. Though best remembered as the creator of CN’s corporate logo, Fleming was also a superb book designer, and this is what I talk about with Canadian literary journalist Robert Fulford who knew and was influenced by him.

Books referenced include:

Canada: A Year of the Land
The National Film Board of Canada, Lorraine Monk, Bruce Hutchinson, Allan Fleming
Published by Roger Duhamel Queen's Printer, Ottawa, 1967

Collected Works of Erasmus, University of Toronto Press

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Brian Trehearne is a professor of English at McGill University. His teaching and research areas focus on Canadian literature to 1970, chiefly poetry. Awards and Fellowships include SSHRC Standard Research Grants, the Louis Dudek Award for Excellence in Teaching (three times) and the Arts Undergraduate Society Award for Excellence in Teaching. Publications include Canadian Poetry 1920 to 1960; Editor (2010); The Complete Poems of A.J.M. Smith, Editor, (2007); The Montreal Forties: Modernist Poetry in Transition (1999) and Aestheticism and the Canadian Modernists: Aspects of a Poetic Influence (1989). He is currently working on a critical edition of The Complete Poems of John Glassco.

We met in Montreal to talk about the position of Irving Layton in the Canadian poetical canon, the influence of Montreal and parents on Layton's poetry and persona; about masculinity, the sun, freedom, attention-seeking, Nietzsche, the Apollonian and the Dionysian, misogyny, aging, the Holocaust, vulnerability, and the best dozen poems.

Photo Credit: Irving Layton.ca

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Tim Bowling's collections of poetry include Fathom, The Book Collector, and The Memory Orchard. He has written three novels, including The Bone Sharps and The Paperboy’s Winter. Twice shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, Tim has won the Canadian Authors’ Association Award for Poetry and two Alberta Book Awards. In 2008, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

Tim was in Ottawa for Versefest. We met to talk about his book In the Suicide's Library, an entertaining, fast-paced meditation (yes, unusual) on modern life, the responsibilities of marriage and parenting, middle-age and books and book collecting. Topics covered include yes, book collecting, coincidence, suicide, the spirit, passion and harmony of books, the use of hands, the line between bibliophiles and maniacs, and the importance of physical books to the culture; we also cover writing about one’s book collections; the sense of community among book collectors, the temptation of the material, possession, The Great Gatsby and green light, Las Vegas, the power of knowledge, the pros and cons of the Internet, Serendipity Books, ‘shattering the groove,’ mid-life, change, parenthood, and investing life with meaning.

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Bruce Taylor is a two-time winner of the A.M. Klein Award for Poetry. He has published four books of poetry: Getting On with the Era (1987), Cold Rubber Feet (1989), and Facts (1998). He has been a teacher, a puppeteer, and a freelance journalist. He lives in Wakefield, Quebec. We met recently to talk about his most recent collection No End in Strangeness: New and Selected Poems, (Cormorant Books, 2011) and sundry other topics relating to Canadian poets and poetry.

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Peter Cocking is a Vancouver-based graphic designer and design teacher. His wide ranging portfolio includes annual reports, airline tickets, snack-food boxes, CD packages, corporate identity programs, newspapers, and magazines.

Since 2002 his focus has been on book and typographic design as art director at Douglas & McIntyre Publishing. Peter is the recipient of more than 40 awards for his design work. Peter has lectured at the national conferences of the AIGA and the AAUP, and to the Type Directors Club in New York. In 2009 he became the first Canadian juror at the 'Best Books in the World' competition, held annually in Leipzig, Germany.

We met recently at his offices in Vancouver to talk about D&M and some of the notable books that it has published, and that he has designed.

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Born in Alberta in 1927, Robert R. Reid moved to Vancouver with his family at an early age. During his second year at the University of British Columbia he spotted a beautiful rubricated book on display in the library which inspired him to make something similar. Two years later, in 1949, he issued his first limited edition, a reprint of Alfred Waddington's The Fraser Mines Vindicated.

This book was well received, and encouraged him to set up his own commercial print shop in downtown Vancouver. Through the 1950s he designed and printed a lot of beautiful material, including the B.C. Library Quarterly magazine. During this time he also was typographic advisor to the editorial committee at the University of British Columbia.

During the sixties he printed three limited editions - The Journal of Norman Lee (1959), Kuthan's Menagerie of Interesting Zoo Animals (1960), and poet John Newlove's first collection, Grave Sirs (1962) - before moving to Montreal for a job as director of production and design at McGill University Press. Here he published his magnum opus, The Lande Bibliography of Canadiana. It remains one of Canada's most beautifully crafted books.

In the mid seventies Robert left for New York, where he spent the next 25 years packaging books for major publishers. He returned to Vancouver in 1998 where he continues to participate in the making of beautiful books with, among others, Heavenly Monkey Press, and the Alcuin Society. We met in Vancouver to talk about his impressive, life-long achievements.

Photo: Robert Reid (Left) with friend and fellow book designer Tak Tanabe

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Barbarian Press was established in 1977 in Kent, England where Jan and Crispin Elsted worked with Graham Williams at the Florin Press. With three flatbed hand presses and many cases of type, the couple returned home to Canada in 1978 to set up shop in Mission, British Columbia, about 50 miles east of Vancouver in the Fraser Valley.

The press’s publications range from new translations of poetry and prose, Victorian melodrama, and new poetry to bibliography, illustrated classics, typography, and books on wood engraving. This last has become a particular speciality since the publication in 1995 of Endgrain: Contemporary Wood Engraving in North America, which was greeted with considerable acclaim, and is now widely sought after.This has spawned an ongoing series of books called Endgrain Editions, each showing selected work of a single engraver, printed from the original blocks, with an introduction and a catalogue of major works.

I met with the Elsteds to talked to them, in their home, about, among other things, their literary backgrounds; gifts, hands and the discovery of artisanal skills; aspirations and influences; the continuity of human experience; books and students and work experiences; doing all of this together; retirement at age 30; hand presses, hand-made paper and hand setting type, Canadians in England studying Americans; publishing the canon; wood engravings; favourite children; wine and typeface connoisseurship; books as unique performances, and the evils of the digital age.

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“PRINTING, ILLUSTRATION, TYPE DESIGN, type-founding, type engraving, bookbinding, graphic design, stone cutting and digital type design are things that have occupied me for over seventy years, and do to this day. Excepting the bit of letter cutting in stone, these occupations have all put dinner on the table; but it has been my good fortune to have loved the work.”

This is how Jim Rimmer (1934-2010) starts off his Pie Tree Press, Memories from the Composing Room Floor (Gaspereau Press, 2008)

Rimmer was a mainstay of the letterpress/private press community in Vancouver for much of the past 50 years. Trained as a commercial compositor in the 1950s, his aesthetic taste, artistic talent and mechanical know-how combined to produce a long, significant career as a graphic artist, printer, type designer and caster. Despite the many fonts he designed, engraved and cast, despite his beautiful linocuts, and despite the fact that in 2004 he completed the first engraving and casting of Carl Dair's Cartier face in metal, Jim is remembered most of all for love.

The love of a business that he was passionate about; and the love that he instilled in so many, for books, the printed word, and the letterpress printing process.

An archive of material from the last decade of Jim's work is held by the Special Collections Library at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. I met there recently with Eric Swanick, Head of the Library, to talk about Jim Rimmer.

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The Alcuin Society’s Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada have been recognizing achievement since 1981.

As Marlene Chan put it in the preface to the 2009 winners’catalogue,

“The hallmark of the judging process in all of the Alcuin competitions is, and has always been, that each book is considered as a total entity. The discerning judges examine every aspect of each book, including the dust jacket, binding, endpapers, half-title page, copyright page, title page, page layout, typography, integration of illustrations, chapter openings, running heads, reproduction of illustrations, clarity of printing, choice of paper, footnotes and bibliographical references. The judges select books in eight categories to encourage the very best in Canadian design, only where they see exceptional merit.”

I met with Leah Gordon, Chair of the Book Design Committee, at her home in Vancouver to talk about the history and goals of the society – and, in particular, its Awards program; about some of the books the society has published over the years, and about how, in addition to the judging criteria cited above, appropriateness and usefulness also factor into the judges’ decision making process.

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Monsieur Wikipedia informs us that bill bissett was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, attended Dalhousie University (1956) and the University of British Columbia (1963–1965), and dropped out of both because of a desire 'to live as a free agent, writer and painter unencumbered by any academic constraints.' He moved to Vancouver in 1958 and five years later set up blew ointment magazine. He later launched blewointment press, which has published volumes by Cathy Ford, Maxine Gadd, bpNichol, Ken West, Lionel Kearns and D. A. Levy, and many others. bissett is currently based in Vancouver and Toronto.

Known for his 'unique orthography' , 4 incorporating visual elements into his printed poetry, and 4 performing "concrete sound" poetry using sound effects, chanting, and barefoot dancing, he is often associated with the Shamanistic in literature. He also paints, and produces audio recordings. His work 'often involves humour, a sense of wonder and sentimentality, and political commentary.'

In 2006, Harbour Publishing put out radiant danse uv being, a tribute to bissett with contributions from more than 80 writers, including Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Patrick Lane, Steve McCaffery, and P. K. Page; and Carl Peters has just published a book called textual vishyuns: image and text in the work of bill bissett that analyses the poet's work.

I met with bill in Ottawa to talk about all of the above, starting with the blurring of boundaries.

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Will Rueter is a private printer, hand binder, instructor and printmaker living in Dundas, Ontario. He founded The Aliquando Press late in 1962. It has, to date, produced more than 100 books, and plenty of broadsides too. Rueter's work has been shown throughout North America and Japan and is held in public and private collections in North America and Europe.

I met him recently at his home in Dundas to talk about, among other things, the origins of his Press, his love of printing, his Dutch printer ancestors, and his 30 years at the University of Toronto Press designing books. During the latter part of our conversation we talk about those volumes he is most proud of having produced, including Majesty, Order and Beauty an edition of the edited journals of renowned British bookbinder and private printer, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, a close friend of William Morris and a man who has had a profound impact on Rueter's life and work.

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According to her website, "Charlotte Gray is one of Canada’s best-known writers, and author of eight 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."

In 2008, Charlotte published Nellie McClung, a short biography of Canada’s leading women’s rights activist in the Penguin Series, Extraordinary Canadians.

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The Cary Collection is one of America’s premier libraries on graphic communication, its history and practices. Located in Rochester on the campus of the Rochester Institute of Technology, the original collection of 2,300 volumes was assembled by New York City businessman Melbert B. Cary, Jr. during the 1920s and 1930s. Cary was director of the Continental Type Founders Association (a type-importing agency), a former president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), and proprietor of the private Press of the Woolly Whale. His professional and personal interests in printing led him to collect printer's manuals and type specimens, as well as great books on the printer's art.

In 1969 his collection, together with funds to support its use and growth, was presented to RIT. Today the library houses some 40,000 volumes and a growing number of manuscript and correspondence collections.

While its original strengths continue to be an important focus, other aspects of graphic arts history have also been developed. For example, the Cary is committed to building comprehensive primary and secondary resources on the development of the alphabet and writing systems, early book formats and manuscripts, calligraphy, the development of typefaces and their manufacturing technologies, the history and practice of papermaking, typography and book design, printing and illustration processes, bookbinding, posters, and artists’ books.

Though many of the volumes in the library are rare, the Cary has maintained, from the beginning, a policy of liberal access for students , especially those enrolled in the RIT’s College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, and interested literary tourists.

The Cary Collection also manages some 36 Graphic Design archives documenting the work of important 20th-century Modernist graphic designers, and has been aggressively acquiring examples of avant-garde book typography. This great library is a must visit destination for all those who love books and the processes involved in making them.

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Last summer I met with Stan Bevington in Toronto to talk about the history of the Coach House Press and some of the more collectible books that it has published over the years. In this, Part ll of our conversation, we discuss, among many other things, the influence of the Stinehour Press; the adoption, adaptation, and in some cases invention of new printing; photographic and computer technologies, and the book designs of Glenn Goluska and Gordon Robertson.

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It didn't win any prizes; no awards; didn't make many, if any, long or short lists; but David Gilmour's The Perfect Order of Things is a great novel. The best I read last year. In fact, I think it's one of the best Canadian novels ever written. Deceptively easy to read, the book's 300-odd pages are not only crowded with elegantly crafted sentences, they collectively capture and convey levels of insight and depths of experience one typically finds only in great Russian novels. Perfect Order leaves you invigorated; filled with admiration for the life fully lived. It makes you want to get out there and show the world who's boss.

David Gilmour was in Ottawa recently to attend the Ottawa International Writers Festival.

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I met with Phil Hall, whose latest collection of poems, Killdeer, has just won the Canadian Governor General's Literary Award for English Poetry. It's a sensitive, engaging, revealing work that incorporates narrative essay, life philosophy and literary criticism into its stanzas.

In sharp contrast to the arrogant, impenetrable and solipsistic, Hall's poetry is humbly presented, accessible, beautiful, pastoral, reflective and at times profound. Listen here as we talk about brown speckled eggs and fiddle tunes, imbalance and literary prize juries, lying, distraction, pain, what's important, plus theatre and spectacle, truth and doubt.

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Joseph Malaby Dent (30 August 1849 – 9 May 1926) was the British book publisher who gave the world the Everyman's Library series.

After a short, unsuccessful career as an apprentice printer he took up bookbinding, and shortly thereafter founded J. M. Dent and Company, in 1888, publishing the works of Lamb, Goldsmith, Austen, Chaucer, and Tennyson among others. Printed in short runs on handmade paper, these books enjoyed some success, but it wasn't until the Temple Shakespeare series, launched in 1894, that Dent hit the big time.

Ten years later he began planning what became known as the Everyman's Library, a canon of one thousand classics, attractively, but practically, produced pocket-sized books sold for a shilling each. To meet demand, Dent built the Temple Press. Publication of the series began in 1906; 152 titles were issued in the first year. They were hugely popular.

'Small, lame, tight-fisted, and apt to weep under pressure,' Dent's ungovernable passion was, says critic Hugh Kenner, for bringing books to the people. He remembered when he'd longed to buy books he couldn't afford. Yes, you could make the world better. He even thought cheap books might prevent wars."

I met with renowned book historian Professor Johathan Rose to discuss J.M.Dent, and to find out why the Everyman's Library series was so successful.

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Glenn Gould was a world renowned classical pianist and an 'eccentric genius'— a 'solitary, headstrong, hypochondriac virtuoso.' Abandoning stage performances in 1964, he concentrated instead on mastering recordings, radio, television, and print. His sudden death at age fifty stunned the world, but his music and legacy continues.

Philosopher/critic Mark Kingwell sees Gould as a philosopher of music whose contradictory, mischievous, and deliberately provocative ideas ruled his life. Instead of a single narrative in his Extraordinary Canadians biography of Gould, Kingwell adopts a 'kaleidoscopic' approach. It took Gould twenty-one "takes" to record the opening aria in the famed 1955 Goldberg Variations, Kingwell does the same with Gould's life. Each take offers a slightly different, sensitive interpretation of this complex man, each plays with the notes, harmonies and dissonances that characterized his time on earth.

I met with Kingwell to talk about Gould, chutney, the problem of the biographical line, perfectionism, architectural beauty, tempo, pregnancy, absence becoming presence, recording and communications technology, and wonder.

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Douglas Gibson was, for more than 40 years, a noted Canadian editor and publisher whose skills both as writer and salesman put him at the pinnacle of his profession. Douglas Gibson Books, the first editorial imprint of its kind in Canada, has over the years published much of the best writing that has ever come out of this country.

Stories About Storytellers is Gibson's memoir. In a series of short profiles, he tells us tales about some of the authors he has worked with during an illustrious career. He himself is an impressive story teller. The book takes us on a coast to coast tour, through the lives and writings of, among others, Jack Hodgins, Harold Horwood, Alice Munro, James Houston, Mavis Gallant, Alistair McLeod, Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney. Gibson's journey through Canadian political and publishing history, eloquently documents the story of Canada.

We met in Ottawa. Please listen as we talk, among other things, about his careers and roles as editor and publisher, about the best Canadian fiction, luck and a system that encourages Canadian writing, Olympic gold, the difficulty of literary prizes, subjective judgement, and the most important paragraph in Canadian writing.

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Lester "Mike" Pearson was an extraordinary politician. He was also an extraordinary athlete, diplomat, leader, teacher, writer and student. And yet, despite all of this, and, the fact that during his lifetime he was the world's best known Canadian, many are today unaware of the important role he played in creating modern Canada with its enviable social programs and economic safeguards.

Andrew Cohen's biography of Pearson, part of Penguin's Extraordinary Canadians series, sets out to rectify this as it explores the various, successful lives this man led, and the contributions he made both to the building of Canada and world peace.

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A complicated, fascinating, largely unknown man who did a great deal for American literary publishing, Mitchell Kennerley was born in 1878 in Burslem, England. He arrived in the United States in 1896 to help set up publisher John Lane's U.S. offices. After an unhappy parting, Kennerley set off to publish various small literary magazines, and in 1906 launched his own imprint under which he published literary criticism, modern drama, fiction, and poetry, including Modern Love, first book off the press. He produced elegant books in small print runs and launched the careers of many important young authors of poetry particularly. American Bookman said that his imprint was "in itself guarantee of a book's worth.” Christopher Morley called Kennerley “unquestionably the first Modern publisher in this country.”

Kennerley's publishing career wound down during the First World War, and he subsequently took over operation of the Anderson Galleries where he orchestrated some of the 20th century's most amazing rare book auctions. The Huntington and Folger Libraries were largely built on these sales.

He opened the Lexington Avenue Book Shop in 1940 and operated it until his suicide in 1950. Women, an inability to focus, a failure to pay his bills and desire for a lifestyle beyond his means, have all be pointed to as explanation for his sad ending.

I met with Dan Boice, author of the 1996 bibliography of the Kennerley imprint, in Iowa to talk about Kennerley and the books he produced.

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Founded in Minnesota in 1980 by Emilie Buchwald and R.W. Scholes, Milkweed Editions is one of America's leading independent, nonprofit literary publishers, releasing between fifteen and twenty new books each year in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children's literature. Much of its nonfiction is addresses critical environmental issues and works to expand ecological consciousness. Milkweed’s authors come from Minnesota and around the world.

Today more than one million Milkweed books are in circulation. Collectively they have received more than 190 awards and special designations, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry, two American Book Awards, the Liberatur Prize for Fiction, seven New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year, and ten Minnesota Book Awards. Milkweed’s mission, which combines an emphasis on the literary arts with a concern for the fabric of society, leads it to be active in the Minneapolis community in ways that demonstrate the social relevance of literary writing.

I met with co-founder Emilie Buchwald to talk about the history of Milkweed, and how interested parties might go about collecting its books.

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Hard not to like Randy Bachman. He's smart, friendly, interested, passionate...and a collector. Why a collector? Because in 1976 his favourite guitar was stolen from a Toronto hotel room, and he wanted to get it back. What? A late-1950s orange Gretsch guitar, the Chet Atkins model.Bachman used it -- "my first real professional guitar" -- on the Guess Who hit Shakin' All Over, and later for Bachman-Turner Overdrive's Takin' Care of Business. He has yet to find it.

Not all was lost however. Thirty years of hunting, on and off line, through music stores, pawn shops, websites and garage sales resulted in the world's largest and finest collection of Gretsch electric guitars. This trove of roughly 380 instruments was sold to the Gretsch company several years ago for its museum in Savannah, Ga.

I met with Bachman in Ottawa - he was here to promote his new book Randy Bachman's Vinyl Tap Stories, a written telling of stories told on his popular CBC radio program of the same name. Please listen here as we discuss the madness and wonder that is guitar, vinyl and book collecting. Budding collectors: be sure to note the records he suggests you go after.

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Coffee House started out as the Toothpaste Press in Iowa in the early 1970s. Founded by Allan Kornblum after taking a University of Iowa typography course with the famed printer Harry Duncan, this small publishing house dedicated itself to producing poetry pamphlets and letterpress books. After 10 years, Kornblum closed the press, moved to Minneapolis, reopened it as a nonprofit organization, and began publishing trade books.

In the early 1990s, books such as Donald Duk by Frank Chin and Through the Arc of the Rainforest by Karen Tei Yamashita (a 1991 American Book Award winner) drew national attention and helped cement the press's reputation as a publisher of exceptional works by writers of color. According to Kornblum, Coffee House has actively published writers of color as writers, "as representatives of the best in contemporary literature, first and foremost—then, only secondly, as representatives of minority communities." This could well be the press's most important contribution to American literature.

In July 2011, after a two-year leadership transition process, Kornblum stepped down to become the press’s senior editor. Chis Fischbach, who began at the press as an intern in 1994, succeeded him as publisher. Coffee House has published more than 300 books, and releases 15-20 new titles each year. It is known for long-term commitment to the authors it chooses to publish, and is currently located in the historic Grain Belt Bottling House in Northeast Minneapolis, where I met with Kornblum to conduct this interview.

Please note: Allan Kornblum died in November, 2014

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In 1965, Stan Bevington, moved to Toronto from Edmonton, rented an old coach house, installed an antique Challenge Gordon platen press and set up Coach House Press. Over the years his small publishing house introduced the world to the early works of bpNichol, Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, George Bowering, Frank Davey, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Anne Michaels and many other important Canadian writers.

Known for its experimental production techniques and innovative designs, Coach House has published more than 500 titles of its own since 1965, and printed thousands more for other presses, libraries and art galleries. In addition to employing some of Canada's greatest type and book designers, Bevington also kept Coach House at the forefront of new printing and computer technology advancements, collaborating with artists, programmers and e–book designers.

He has lectured at York University and the Rochester Visual Studies Workshop, at the Banff Publishing workshop and Radcliffe at Harvard, and has received numerous grants, prizes, honourary degrees and life time achievement awards for his work in publishing and the Arts. We met in Toronto, outside the Coach House premises, to talk about the history of the Press, and, more specifically, about those books, among the many it has published, that might be of greatest interest to the collector.

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George Walker is a wood engraver, book artist, author, illustrator and educator who has taught courses at the Ontario College of Art & Design since 1985. For over twenty years he has exhibited his wood engravings and limited edition books internationally. Among many book projects, George has illustrated two hand-printed editions written by Neil Gaiman. He is the author of The Inverted Line (2000 Porcupine's Quill), Images From the Neocerebellum (Porcupine's Quill 2007), The Woodcut Artist's Handbook (Firefly Books 2005), and Graphic Witness (Firefly Books 2007). Elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Art in 2002, Walker belongs to The Loving Society of Letterpress Printers, The Binders of Infinite Love and the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild (CBBAG).

I met with George and his partner/wife Michelle Hogan-Walker in Ottawa over breakfast. We talked about the various presses that the two of them have owned and operated, about his oeuvre, and his book collecting habit. Finally, we discuss Frans Masereel, Max Ernst , and Laurence Hyde, and the thread that traces Walker's work back to the early part of the last century.

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Johanna Skibsrud's debut novel The Sentimentalists won the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2009 Alcuin Award for best designed work of prose fiction, the first book ever to achieve this double win.

The Sentimentalists was first published by Gaspereau Press, a highly regarded small press based in Kentiville Nova Scotia, in a print run of 800 copies. The firm had difficulty filling demand for the book after it won the Giller. Chapters-Indigo, Canada's dominant bookstore chain, claimed not to have any of the books in stock anywhere in Canada during the week the Giller was announced. One result was a significant increase in ebook sales; the novel quickly became the top-selling title in the Kobo ebookstore. Within about two weeks Gaspereau announced that it had sold trade paperback rights to Douglas & McIntyre; at the same time it continued to print small runs of the novel in its original format.

As if this weren't enough, Giller juror Ali Smith, a British writer, spoke to literary agent and friend Tracy Bohan about the book before it was long-listed. Just days before the long-list was announced, Bohan secured a deal for the rights to distribute the book internationally. She subsequently sold the book to her boyfriend, Jason Arthur, a director of Random House UK imprint William Heinemann.

According to The National Post, Andrew Steeves, co-owner of Gaspereau Press, says he received an email from Skibsrud in which “She told me that Tracy Bohan had contacted her and that an author, Ali Smith, had recommended that Tracy read The Sentimentalists.” Before the long-list was revealed in September, “Tracy was very interested in making a deal with me that morning.” After the long-list was revealed, Steeves admitted, “it looked a little funny to me.”

I met with Skibsrud in Ottawa. We talked about all of the events surrounding publication of The Sentimentalists (surly already, despite its short life, one of the most storied books in Canadian publishing history) and about the book itself as object.

Skibsrud has also published two books of poetry, including Late Nights with Wild Cowboys in 2008. The Sentimentalists was written for her Master's thesis at Concordia University. She lives in Tuscon Arizona.

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Etgar Keret is an Israeli writer known for his short stories, graphic novels, and scriptwriting for film and television. His first work, a collection of short stories, was largely ignored when it was published in 1992. His second book, Missing Kissinger, a collection of fifty very short stories, was a hit. The story "Siren", which deals with paradoxes in modern Israeli society, is included in the curriculum for the Israeli matriculation exam in literature. Keret has co-authored several comic books, written a children's book (Dad Runs Away with the Circus) and served as a writer for the popular TV show The Cameri Quintet . He and his wife Shira directed the 2007 film Jellyfish, based on a story written by Shira. This is what we talked about when we met earlier this year in Ottawa. Please listen here:

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Whilst in Texas recently I did what all crazed literary tourists do, I checked around for listings of interesting conferences that were taking place at the time, in the area. The Popular Culture Association was holding one in San Antonio, and this is where I caught up with Cheryl Torsney, (at the time Dean of Hiram College, now Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the State University of New York at New Paltz), who was delivering a paper called Collecting as Pedagogy. We talk about it.

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James Keeline liked to take apart radios as a young boy. He was also interested in space technology and computers. While in school he worked for a used bookstore. He ended up managing the place and running its web site and computer network. He also started researching and writing about children's series books. His particular interest and expertise is the Stratemeyer Syndicate and its founder Edward Stratemeyer.

I met James recently in San Antonio to talk about collecting the Tom Swift series of books.

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Whilst in the Lone Star state, Texas, I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Kathy Doyle Thomas, Executive Vice President at Half Price Books' headquarters in Dallas. The company has been in business now for almost 50 years and has enjoyed considerable success, some say at the expense of independent used bookstores. I met with Doyle, who, incidentally serves as Chairman of the Retail Advertising Marketing Association (RAMA), a division of the National Retail Federation, to talk about this and other topics of interest to those who sell used and rare books.

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The Harry Ransom Center holds the Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. archive, which includes books published under the Borzoi imprint and books from Alfred A. and Blanche Knopf’s personal library. The Ransom Center’s Associate Director for Exhibitions and Fleur Cowles Executive Curator Cathy Henderson, and Associate Director and Hobby Foundation Librarian, Richard Oram, collaborated on The House of Knopf, a book that contains collected documents from the Knopf, Inc. archive and is part of the Dictionary of Literary Biography series. It goes for a paltry $547 on ebay...so, instead of buying the book, I decided to travel down to Austin, Texas to interview the authors.

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Charles Lohrmann is the editor of Texas Highways, the official travel magazine of Texas. It "encourages recreational travel within Texas and tells the Texas story to readers around the world. Renowned for its photography, statewide events coverage, top weekend excursions, off-the-beaten path discoveries, and scenic destinations, Texas Highways helps readers discover the treasures of the Lone Star State."

I met with Charles in Austin and asked him for his top ten literary destinations in Texas. Please listen here for his answer:

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This from the Loyalist Research Network website:

GEORGE L. PARKER was born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and schooled in Lunenburg and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. He attended Mount Allison University and Pennsylvania State University, and received his Ph. D. from the University of Toronto. He is Professor Emeritus of the Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario, where he taught from 1967 to 1997. He lives in Halifax. Professor Parker has contributed articles on Canadian authors and publishers to Canadian Literature, the Dalhousie Review, the Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, the Oxford Companion to Canadian History, The Canadian Encyclopedia, and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. He edited one volume and co-edited another in the four-volume anthology, THE EVOLUTION OF CANADIAN LITERATURE (1973) He is the author of THE BEGINNINGS OF THE BOOK TRADE IN CANADA (1985) and the editor of Thomas Chandler Haliburton’s THE CLOCKMAKER, SERIES ONE, TWO, AND THREE (1995). He contributed to all three volumes of the History of the Book in Canada (2004-2007), and has published several chapters of his history of Toronto publishing, 1900-1970, in English Studies in Canada and in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada.

I met with George Parker at his home in Halifax to talk about the history of the Methodist Book and Publishing House and its trade publishing division, Briggs, which later morphed into The Ryerson Press, "one of Canada’s most important book publishers during the twentieth century".

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Gaspereau Press was established in February 1997 as a registered partnership by Andrew Steeves and Gary Dunfield. That year the Press published the first issue of its literary quarterly, The Gaspereau Review, and three trade titles. In 2000, Gaspereau relocated to Kentville, Nova Scotia, where a printing press and bindery equipment were installed enabling the firm to produce its own books. By 2004 the Press had nine full-time employees and was publishing ten titles annually.

Gaspereau's core philosophy emphasizes a commitment to the importance of the book as a physical object, "reuniting publishing and the book arts". One of the few Canadian publishers that still prints and binds in-house, the firm's books usually sport letterpress-printed covers which feature original artwork, are printed on fine paper and are smyth-sewn. The result is "strong, flexible, attractive books" that are easy to read.

I met with Andrew Steeves to talk about his approach to printing and publishing, about his experience with Johanna Skibsrud's The Sentimentalists, and about what he hopes to achieve with his work and in his life.

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From his website: "Charlie Foran was born and raised in Toronto. He holds degrees from the University of Toronto and the University College, Dublin, and has taught in China, Hong Kong, and Canada. He has published ten books, including four novels [and a biography of Mordecai Richler Mordecai: The Life & Times], and writes regularly for magazines and newspapers in Canada and elsewhere...Charlie has also made radio documentaries for the CBC program Ideas and recently co-wrote the TV documentary Mordecai Richler: The Last of the Wild Jews. A former resident of Montreal, where he was a columnist for the Montreal Gazette and reported on Quebec for Saturday Night Magazine, Charlie currently resides in Peterborough, Ontario, with his family."

We talk here about his recent 'brief life' of Maurice Richard - part of Penguin Canada's Extraordinary Canadians series - of how 'The Rocket' was exploited both on and off the ice, and how his proud on-ice ferocity and contrasting silent, off-ice dignity, clashed and coincided with the transformation of Quebec during the second half of the 20th century.

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Alex Ross was born in 1968 and has been the music critic at The New Yorker magazine since 1996.

He graduated from Harvard University in English summa cum laude for a thesis on James Joyce, and was a DJ at college radio station, WHRB.

His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, a cultural history of music since 1900 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007) was a National Book Critics Circle Award winner, and made the New York Times list of top ten best books of 2007.

He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, three ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards for music writing, and a Holtzbrinck fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin. In 2011 he will receive the Belmont Prize for Contemporary Music at the Pèlerinages Art Festival in Weimar.

His second book, Listen to This, was released in 2010 again by FSG. We met in Ottawa to talk about his approach to criticism, why he writes about music, and the connections he makes between classical, modern, popular and new music.

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Professor, poet, editor and critic, Michael Gnarowski was born in Shanghai, China in 1934. He received his Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Ottawa in 1967. While an undergraduate at McGill, he contributed to, and co-edited, Yes (1956-1970) magazine. He also wrote for and/or edited Le Chien d'or/The Golden Dog (1970-1972), Delta, Golden Dog Press (1971-1985), and Tecumseh Press, and was series editor for McGraw-Hill Ryerson's Critical Views on Canadian Writers Series (1969-1977) and co-edited Canadian Poetry (1977- ) with David Bentley.

In 1970 Gnarowski wrote a brief history and checklist of the Contact Press. Here's his entry on Contact in the Canadian Encyclopedia: "Contact Press (1952-67) was founded as a poets' co-operative by Louis DUDEK, Raymond SOUSTER and Irving LAYTON, who were generally dissatisfied with the slight opportunities for publication available to Canadian poets. Contact went on, in the course of its 15-year history, to become the most important small press of its time. Launched at the mid-century, it published all the major Canadian poets of the period, and transformed literary life and small-press activity in Canada by its openness to a variety of poetic styles and its assertiveness of the poet's role in the production of his own work.

Beginning before subsidies and government aid to Canadian book publishing had become a mainstay of such activity, Contact was a self-financed act of faith on the part of its founders.While its main thrust was in publishing the new work of individual poets, it produced a milestone anthology, Canadian Poems 1850-1952, co-edited by Dudek and Layton in 1952, and an avant-garde manifesto of young poets published as New Wave Canada: The New Explosion in Canadian Poetry (1966). This was a successor to Souster's Poets 56, which had featured young poets in response to Dudek's query "Où sont les jeunes?"Essentially a "no-frills" press, Contact published handsome, workmanlike books with, on occasion, a mimeographed pamphlet. Its writers ranged from F.R. SCOTT, one of the early moderns, to the newest wave represented by Margaret Atwood, George Bowering. I met with Gnarowski at his home in Kemptville, Ontario to talk about the history, and collecting of Contact Press.

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Vincent Lam is a Canadian-born member of the expatriate Chinese community of Vietnam. He is an emergency physician in Toronto, and lectures at the University of Toronto. He has also worked in international air evacuation and expedition medicine in the Arctic and Antarctic.

His first book, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, won the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize. We met in Ottawa, during a federal election, to talk about his biography of Tommy Douglas, part of Penguin Canada's Extraordinary Canadians series.

Of many interesting observations made during our conversation: two government programs by which Canadians define themselves (old age pensions and universal health care) were introduced during periods of minority government, when the CCF/NDP held the balance of power, and Tommy Douglas's 'socialist' government in Saskatchewan produced balanced or surplus budgets in every one of the seventeen years it was in power.

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Locks' Press, according to the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild's Ottawa Chapter website, "was founded in 1979. Since then it has printed eleven books, fifteen pamphlets, and twenty-four broadsides. The editions are small, 30 to 80 copies. The press prints mainly illustrated editions of unusual but enduring texts, ranging from classical Greece to the early twentieth century.

Fred is the editor and has provided translations for about a third of the titles (from Greek, Latin, Middle English, Provençal, and German). Margaret does the woodcut illustrations, design, typesetting, printing and binding. The character of the press is conservative and scholarly. Most texts are presented in their original spelling and punctuation. Many of the texts have an underlying serious moral. The presentation is enlivened by the illustrations.

"Simple, strong, sometimes slightly comic, the woodcuts encourage the reader to reconsider the text, and remember its message." I spoke recently with Margaret about her press, its history, her approach to illustration, her work philosophy, and what she looks for in fine press books.

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Olivier Barrot has presented the literary program Un livre, Un Jour (A Book a Day) daily on channels France 3 and TV 5 Monde since 1991. In 2009, the year in which he celebrated his 4,000th program, he created Un Livre Toujours (Always a Book), a weekly program devoted to paperback books.

Along with Thierry Taittinger, Olivier is the co-founder of 'Senso'. He has been co-director of the magazine since 2001. He has worked as a journalist for Le Monde, where he has written the “Books” and “Travel” sections since 1986, for the Canal+ TV (“demain” (Tomorrow) then “La grande famille” (The Extended Family) from 1988 to 1992) and for Pariscope, as founder-manager of the Parispoche (Pocket-Paris) supplement.

Gaston Gallimard, the son of a family of wealthy art collectors, took over the Nouvelle Revue française from his friend André Gide more than 100 years ago, to establish a "publishing counter" and an enduring company which has remained independent and successful ever since. Most major writers – French and otherwise – have appeared in Gallimard’s impressive catalogs over the past century. Jacques Rivière, Jean Paulhan, André Malraux, Albert Camus and Philippe Sollers, all worked with Gallimard. The company publishes in all genres – from poems to detective novels – in either its famous white-covered paperbacks or its prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade collection.

I met with Olivier in Ottawa to talk about this Gallimard, and how one might best go about collecting its books.

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Tom Boss is the owner of Thomas G. Boss Fine Books in Salem, Mass. He has been in business in the Greater Boston area since 1974, specializing in Art Deco, Arts & Crafts, and Art Nouveau books, livres d'artiste, fine bindings, press and illustrated books, the eighteen-nineties, and the decorative arts, as well as in fine art, posters and graphics in these areas. He also stocks and publishes reference books relating to these fields.

We met recently at the Boston International Antiquarian Bookfair to talk about the history, and collecting, of Copeland & Day, Stone & Kimball and other similar small publishing firms active in the 1890s in America.

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ECW Press is a North American small press book publisher located in Toronto, Ontario. It was founded by Jack David and Robert Lecker in 1974 as a Canadian literary magazine called Essays on Canadian Writing. Its first books belonged primarily to two series - the Annotated Bibliography of Canada's Major Authors (ABCMA) and Canadian Writers and Their Works (CWTW).

Throughout the 1980s ECW published a wide range of Canadian literary reference titles, and - in order to stay alive - began to service third-party clients, creating promotional books for corporations. In the 1990s ECW returned to trade publishing; at the time Publishers Weekly recognized it as one of the fastest growing and most diversified independent publishers in North America.

ECW now publishes literary fiction, poetry, mysteries, and 'fan-based' pop-culture titles on topics that include professional wrestling, MMA, music, and television and film. Thanks to its transformation, ECW has come to stand for Entertainment. Culture. Writing...or, as Jack David tells us, anything you may wish ECW books have won the Governor General's Literary Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry, the Heritage Toronto Award, and the Independent Publisher Book Award.

The company has published close to 1,000 books which are distributed throughout the English-speaking world and have been translated into dozens of languages.

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Joseph Boyden (born 31 Oct 1966) is, Wikipedia tells us, a Canadian novelist and short story writer.

"He grew up in Willowdale, North York, Ontario and attended the Jesuit-run Brebeuf College School." His father Raymond Wilfrid Boyden, was a medical officer who was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and was the highest-decorated medical officer of World War II.

Of Irish, Scottish and Métis decent, Boyden writes about the First Nations heritage and culture. Three Day Road, is a novel about two Cree soldiers serving in the Canadian military during World War I. It was inspired by Ojibwa Francis Pegahmagabow, the legendary First World War sniper. Boyden's second novel, follows the story of Will, son of one of the characters in Through Black SpruceThree Day Road. It won the Giller Prize.

He studied creative writing at York University and the University of New Orleans, and subsequently taught in the Aboriginal Student Program at Northern College. He divides his time between Louisiana, where he and his wife, Amanda Boyden, are writers in residence, and Northern Ontario."

We met recently in Ottawa to talk about his contribution to Penguin's Extraordinary Canadians series, Louis Riel & Gabriel Dumont (apologies for all the background clammer. It recedes a bit after the first few minutes).

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Adrian Harrington is a noted antiquarian bookseller who specializes in first editions by Winston Churchill, Arthur Conan Doyle, Graham Greene, J.K.Rowling and, particularly, Ian Fleming. He is a Past President of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association(ABA), 2001–2003, and the immediate past President of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB). He has exhibited at major international book fairs around the world, and for the past decade has Chaired Britain's leading rare book event, the summer ABA Book Fair at Olympia, London.

We met late last year at the Toronto Antiquarian Bookfair to talk about the challenges that face the antiquarian book trade, notably an aging book collecting and bookseller population, and the closures of many bricks and mortar stores. I start off by asking Adrian what ILAB and others are doing to try to improve the situation.

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Richard Charkin began his career in 1972 as Science Editor of Harrap & Co. He has since held many senior positions in the publishing world with companies such as Pergamon Press, Oxford University Press, Reed International/Reed Elsevier, and Current Science Group. At Macmillan Publishers Limited he served as Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck. He was also Chairman of Macmillan India Ltd.

In 2007 he was appointed Executive Director of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. with responsibility for operations worldwide, spearheading growth through acquisitions, new publishing and international expansion. He's also a damned fine blogger, and a captivating raconteur.

I met Richard at his home in London. We talked in his garden - in competition with the occasional helicopter and airplane - about, among other things, what he considers to be the biggest challenges facing book publishing, and those publishers who he thinks have best met them.

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Born in the mind of John Randle at the age of 14 when he first entered his school's press room, the Whittington Press started life in a disused cottage.

Its first book, Richard Kennedy’s A Boy at the Hogarth Press, was printed on weekends during 1971-1972 on an 1848 Columbian.

Matrix - the Randles' revered annual publication on fine press printing - started out as a planned slim volume of some thirty two pages saddle stitched into stiff covers; the objective was for it to serve as “ a means of seeing in print a few short pieces which would not in themselves justify the production of individual titles, but which together might make a worthwhile publication.” Matrix 1 grew to seventy two pages, and had to be square backed.

With it the Randle’s created an environment in which “author, artist and printer, punch-cutter and type-caster “can work separately and together to both nurture and explore each others’ skills. The revered annual provides an important platform for typographical dialog among and between fine press aficionados on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. I met John Randle recently in his repurposed gardener’s cottage to talk about his Press, his calling, and his thoughts about the practice of fine press printing.

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W. Gordon Graham was born ninety some years ago in Scotland. He attended university in Glasgow and after graduation enlisted in the army; he was awarded the Military Cross and Bar for active service in Burma. He started his postwar career as a freelance newspaper correspondent in Bombay writing for, among other publications: Business Week, Chemical Engineering Record, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Glasgow Herald. In 1950 he started augmenting his journalist’s income with part-time work as a College and Trade Traveller for the McGraw-Hill Book Company. Six years later he was appointed their International Sales Manager, based in New York. He subsequently moved to London to run McGraw-Hill’s European and the Middle Eastern book business. In 1974 he left the company to become Chairman and Chief Executive of Butterworths, where he oversaw a tenfold increase in turn over.

He ‘retired’ in 1990, at which time he became the founder-editor of LOGOS, The Professional Journal of the Book World. I had the privilege of interviewing Gordon Graham at his home in England. Among other things we spoke about his legendary career, and those qualities he thinks best characterize great publishers.

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The Golden Cockerel Press is one of most important, productive English private presses in the history of fine printing. In 2002 Oak Knoll Press and the British Library co-published the first extensive study of the Golden Cockerel. Written by Roderick Cave, the book is based on interviews and the Press' widely-scattered archives. Responsible in large part for a revival in wood-engraving, Golden Cockerel Press books published between 1920-1960 contain the work of brilliant practitioners such as Robert Gibbings (who owned the Press throughout much of the 20s), Eric Gill, David Jones, Agnes Miller Parker, Eric Ravilious, and John Buckland-Wright. The Press' literary achievement was also significant; it published original manuscripts by writers such as H.E. Bates, A.E. Coppard and T.E. Lawrence.

I met with Roderick Cave at the British Library to discuss the works and history of The Golden Cockerel Press.

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Richard Greene's Boxing the Compass recently won the Governor General's Award for English Poetry.

Here's how the jury saw it:

"Richard Greene’s Boxing the Compass leaves us feeling unmoored, adrift across time and voice. The matchless long poem at its heart pulls us back to our always-moving selves, on an always-moving earth. We follow him in his offbeat but strangely familiar travels."

Here's my review of the book in the Globe and Mail

Originally from St. John’s, Newfoundland, now living in Cobourg, Ontario, Richard is not only a poet, he's also a biographer, critic and professor of English at the University of Toronto. He edited Graham Greene: A Life in Letters (2007) and has written a biography of British poet Edith Sitwell. Boxing the Compass is his third collection of poetry.

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"Dianne Warren is best known for her short stories and plays. One of her three published plays, Serpent in the Night Sky, was a GG finalist in 1992, and she has written several radio dramas for CBC. She has published three short story collections – one of which, Bad Luck Dog (1993), won three Saskatchewan Book Awards. Her stories can also be found in numerous anthologies, journals and magazines. A long-time resident of Saskatchewan, she brings to her writing an honest portrayal of people in rural communities, conveying their subtle complexities and deep attachments to family farmland. Dianne Warren was born in Ottawa, and is currently living in Regina."

So says the Canada Council. Here’s what Dianne has to say about her 2010 Governor General’s English Fiction Award winning novel Cool Water

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Iain Stevenson has worked with Longman, Macmillan, Pinter, Leicester University Press, Wiley, and The Stationery Office. In 1986 he founded the environmental publisher Belhaven Press. He created the award winning MA in Publishing Studies at City University London and was a Professor in the Department of Journalism and Publishing there between 1999 and 2006. He is active on the governing and advisory board of the Publishers Association.

Current research is centred upon the history of British publishing and the applications of new technology in publishing, especially e-books and alternatives to the printed monograph in academic and scholarly communication. We met at his offices (which occasionally sound as if they're under siege) to talk about his excellent new book, Book Makers: British Publishing in the Twentieth Century, published by British Library.

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Alexander MacLeod was born in Inverness, Cape Breton and raised in Windsor, Ontario. His award-winning stories have appeared in a variety of leading journals, some have been selected for The Journey Prize Anthology. He holds degrees from the University of Windsor, the University of Notre Dame, and McGill. He currently lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia and teaches at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. Light Lifting, his first book, a collection of short stories, has been shortlisted for Canada's Giller Prize.

We met to discuss the work, specifically 'Miracle Mile', the collection's first story. Our conversation touches on technique and themes, the search for significance and meaning, disciplines, how, why and what people care about, and the use of metaphor and pace.

Alexander MacLeod photo by Heather Crosby.

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Previously managing director of Faber and Faber, Toby Faber is now a non-executive director of the firm and Chairman of its sister company Faber Music. An author in his own right, Faber has written two books Fabergé's Eggs and Stradivari’s Genius: Five Violins, One Cello, and Three Centuries of Enduring Perfection, both successful, neither of them published by Faber. Born in Cambridge, England, in 1965, he lives in London with his wife and daughter.

We met to talk about his family's renowned publishing firm, its history and how interested parties might best go about collecting its publications. Our conversation took place at Faber HQ in London, specifically at the same table Toby's grandfather Geoffrey frequently sat at years ago with T.S. Eliot, Richard de la Mare and other iconic members of the Faber 'family.'

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Frank Newfeld is a Canadian book designer, illustrator, art director and educator.

He has designed over 650 books and won more than 170 Canadian and international awards, is a former Vice-President of Publishing at McClelland & Stewart and Head of the Illustration Program at Sheridan College, and Co-founder of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada

Newfeld has written and designed three children’s books, two of them published by Oxford University Press and one by Groundwood Books (Douglas & McIntyre). In 2008 his memoir Drawing on Type was published by Porcupine’s Quill.

We talk here about the origins of his career as a book designer and illustrator, about some of his innovations, about the books he considers his best, and about which of his titles the collector might fruitfully pursue.

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Robert Baldock started working at Yale University Press in London as a history editor in 1985. After serving as editorial director of the publisher’s humanities division, and deputy m.d., he was promoted to Managing Director in 2004. His authors on the biography, history, politics, music and religion lists have included Roy Porter, Richard Evans and Diarmuid MacCulloch. Prior to Yale he worked at Weidenfeld & Nicolson and the Harvester Press.

We talk here about his predecessor John Nicol, a brilliant editor and designer who developed Yale’s art and architecture list, Nicol’s triumph Life in the English Country House; about Yale’s partnerships with the world’s great galleries and museums, its hands-on approach to production, E.H.Gombrich’s A Little History of the World (400,000 copies sold, and counting), Strawberry Hill and the Lewis Walpole Library in Connecticut, the Yale series of Younger Poets, the Annals of Communism series, and architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner’s famous guides.

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Michael Winship is a bibliographer and historian of the book – with special expertise in pre-1940 American publishing and book trade history. He edited and completed the final three volumes of Bibliography of American Literature, for which he received the bibliography prize of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, and served as an editor of and contributor to the recently completed 5-volume A History of the Book in America. We talk here, on a windy day (hence the background static) in Haaavud Yaaaad about collecting books published by Ticknor and Fields, later Houghton Mifflin. The best book published by Ticknor and Fields: Life of William Hickling Prescott, by George Ticknor (1864)

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Carl Spadoni is the former Director of the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University Library. In 1999, he was awarded the Marie Tremaine Medal by the Bibliographical Society of Canada for outstanding service to Canadian bibliography and for distinguished publication. He is the author of seven books including the Bibliography of McClelland and Stewart Ltd. Imprints, 1909-1985 (with Judy Donnelly).

We met during the summer, in Hamilton, to talk about the history of M&S and which books and series from this venerable Canadian publishing house, might be worth collecting.

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Ruth Panofsky is Professor of English at Ryerson University in Toronto where she specializes in Canadian Literature and Culture, focusing on Canadian authorship and publishing history. She is the author of The Force of Vocation: The Literary Career of Adele Wiseman and is currently preparing a SSHRC-funded history of the Macmillan Company of Canada, 1905-1986. We met this past summer in Toronto to talk about Macmillan, its history and some of the more important books and authors it has published.

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Richard Virr was the Head and Curator of Manuscripts at the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of the McGill University Library. We met in Montreal to talk about book collecting, characteristic traits of the book collector, and different kinds of collections, including the Stone and Kimball collection that was purchased by McGill in 1972. It holds most of the books published by Stone & Kimball (1893-1897) of Cambridge, Chicago and New York, a publisher important primarily because of its focus on book quality and design.

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W. McAllister (Mac) Johnson is a retired professor of art history at the University of Toronto. Some years ago he donated his collection of close to 1000 scholarly, art historical titles to the Carleton University Library in Ottawa. The collection is unusual in that it was assembled not by titles, but by categories of art-historical scholarship, including works on provenance and association; technical and theoretical works; museum, exhibition, and auction catalogues; translations and re-editions; connoisseurship (attribution) and criticism; reference works and ephemera. Together the books offer insights into the intellectual, institutional, social, and commercial activity of the art world in France and other European countries in the period spanning the Renaissance to the 20th century.

Johnson, an American-born art historian of international repute, taught at the University of Toronto, where he trained two generations of Canadian scholars and curators, as a professor of Art History. The library he has donated to Carleton University represents the material evidence of his scholarly activities over the past four decades.

We met to talk about some of the practical approaches, philosophies and joys of collecting.

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Jack Rabinovitch is a philanthropist best known for founding the annual Scotia Bank Giller Prize (named after his late wife, Doris Giller, a former literary columnist and editor at the Toronto Star) for best Canadian novel. Rabinovitch, a reporter and speechwriter who later turned to business, making his fortune in food retailing and real estate, was an executive with Trizec Corporation where he helped develop close to six million square feet of hotel, commercial and retail space. He was Maclean’s magazine’s man of the year in 1999 and is a recipient of the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario.

This week his membership in the Order of Canada was upgraded to platinum…he is now an Officer of the Order. Part of the citation for this added honour reads:

"Jack Rabinovitch continues to lend extraordinary energy to the promotion of Canadian literature. Maintaining a very active leadership role in the administration of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, he has negotiated a partnership that has solidified the Giller as Canada’s most lucrative and illustrious literary award. Canadian authors and publishers alike have gained increased sales as a direct result of either a nomination or a win, while the awards have helped to raise the profile of new and lesser-known authors."

We met this morning to talk about the Giller, its contribution to the purchase, reading and discussion of Canadian novels, the various strengths and weaknesses of literary juries adjudicating merit, and his choice for ‘best’ Canadian novel of all time.

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Leslie Morris is Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts at Houghton Library, Harvard University in Cambridge MA and an expert on the New Directions publishing house. I met with her to talk about publisher James 'J' Laughlin

"New Directions was founded in 1936, when James Laughlin (1914–1997), then a twenty-two-year-old Harvard sophomore, issued the first of the New Directions anthologies. "I asked Ezra Pound for ‘career advice,’" James Laughlin recalled. "He had been seeing my poems for months and had ruled them hopeless. He urged me to finish Harvard and then do 'something' useful."

and the history of his venerable firm. Subjects covered include Ezra Pound, dust jacket designer Alvin Lustig, experimental poetry, works in translation - all of which are informed by an underlying desire to get at those books within this publisher’s output that might most appeal to the book collector and/or book lover.

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Publisher and book collector David R. Godine is the founder and president of a small, independent, eponymous publishing house, located in Boston, Massachusetts. It produces between twenty and thirty titles per year and maintains an active reprint program.

Bio: After receiving degrees from Roxbury Latin School, Dartmouth College, and Harvard University, Godine worked for Leonard Baskin, the renowned typographer and printmaker, and master printer Harold McGrath. Going solo in 1970, from the confines of a deserted barn, using his own presses, Godine printed his first books. Most were letterpress, limited editions, printed on high-quality paper. In 1980, the company initiated its children’s program. A number of these books have become classics. The company has also published two important series: Imago Mundi, a line of original books devoted to photography and the graphic arts; and Verba Mundi, featuring the most notable contemporary world literature in translation. In 2002, Godine bought most of Black Sparrow Books’s backlist.

2010 marked the fortieth anniversary of Godine’s multiple award-winning publishing enterprise. We met recently in his office to talk about those books he’s most proud of having published, about the books he is, as a collector, most proud to own, and about how best one might go about collecting the Godine imprint.

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Elke and Tim Inkster have made an important and enduring contribution to Canadian literature. In 1974 they founded The Porcupine’s Quill (PQL), a publishing house based in Erin, Ontario. Renowned for excellence in design and production, and for taking risks with new, unpublished authors, the firm has helped kick-start the careers of many of Canada’s best known writers . PQL publications have won numerous awards and serve as an example to the world of Canadian publishing excellence.

Its first title came off the press in 1975: Brian Johnson’s only book of poems, Marzipan Lies. Brian Johnson is currently the film critic for Maclean’s and "claims to have met Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, twice!" (almost certainly an in-joke here that I’m not privy to). Many of the early titles were slim volumes written by poets Tim Inkster had met as a student at the University of Toronto — amongst them Ed Carson who until recently was President of Penguin Canada, and Brian Henderson who is currently the publisher at Wilfred Laurier University Press.

I met the Inksters recently in the garden behind their Press House. It butts up against the West Credit River, where this little critter spent most of the morning chopping and hauling lumber from one bank to the other.

While he was doing this Tim and I made our way back into the press room to talk about the history of The Porcupine’s Quill and how to go about collecting its books. During this discussion we hit on how market forces often influence appearance: namely glossy versus matte finished covers. It was here that Tim got into describing the difficulties he’s encountered dealing with Chapters, Canada’s one and only big box bookstore.

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Collector, bibliographer, and typographer Mark Samuels Lasner is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Delaware Library and a recognized authority on the literature and art of the late Victorian period. A graduate of Connecticut College, he is the author or co-author of among other works, The Bookplates of Aubrey Beardsley (Rivendale Press, 2008), A Bibliography of Enoch Soames (Rivendale Press, 1999), The Yellow Book: A Checklist and Index (Eighteen Nineties Society, 1998), A Selective Checklist of the Published Work of Aubrey Beardsley (Thomas G. Boss Fine Books, 1995), and England in the 1890s: Literary Publishing at the Bodley Head ( Georgetown U Press, 1990).

His articles and notes have appeared in the Book Collector, Browning Institute Studies, Notes and Queries, and other journals. He has organized or co-curated exhibitions across the United States.

I met with Mark in St. Petersburg, Florida to discuss the history of The Bodley Head and how one might best go about collecting work produced by this publisher.

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Prof. David Staines is a Canadian literary critic, university professor (English at the University of Ottawa), writer, and editor. He specializes in three literatures: medieval, Victorian and Canadian. He is editor of the scholarly Journal of Canadian Poetry (since 1986) and general editor of McClelland and Stewart’s New Canadian Library series (since 1988). His essay collections, include The Canadian Imagination (1977), a book that introduced Canadian literature and literary criticism to an American audience, plus studies on Morley Callaghan and Stephen Leacock.

But it’s not for any of this (save a defense of Callaghan in the face of John Metcalf’s condemnations) that I sought Prof. Staines’ company. Rather it’s because he co-edited Northrop Frye on Canada (University of Toronto, 2001). Frye, Canada’s most celebrated literary theorist, a man many hold responsible for the dearth of evaluative analysis in Canadian criticism; a man whose thoughts and person Staines knows (and knew) very well; is the reason we met.

Please listen to a conversation that reveals the author of Fearful Symmetry and The Anatomy of Criticism as a surprisingly self contradictory critic; speaks to the remarkable talent of Alice Munro and Canada’s current stock of strong fiction writers; outlines criteria for acceptance into the New Canadian Library; and identifies some of the best Canadian novels.

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Oak Knoll Books – specialists in books on books – was founded in 1976 by Bob Fleck, a chemical engineer by training, who let his hobby get the best of him. Oak Knoll Press, the publishing arm of the business was established two years later. Today, the thriving company maintains an inventory of about 23,000 titles. Specialties include books about bibliography, book collecting, book design, book illustration, book selling, bookbinding, bookplates, children’s books, Delaware books, fine press books, forgery, graphic arts, libraries, literary criticism, marbling, paper making, printing, publishing, typography & type specimens, and writing & calligraphy – plus books about the histories of all of these fields.

I met with Bob to talk about the story of his company, about his love of books, of A. Edward Newton, of traveling the globe to meet fellow bibliophiles, and of visiting used bookstores.

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Richard Holloway is a Scottish writer/broadcaster and former Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church who was educated at Kelham Theological College and the Union Theological Seminary, New York City. Between 1959 and 1986 he was curate, vicar and rector at parishes in England, Scotland and the United States. He then became Bishop of Edinburgh, a position he resigned from in 2000.

Now an outspoken commentator on religious belief in the modern world, he is author of more than 20 books, well-known for his support of liberal causes, including human rights for gays and lesbians in and outside of the church. Holloway lives in Edinburgh with his American-born wife Jean. They have three adult children.

We talk here about Between the Monster and the Saint, as he puts it: ‘a gradual plea for self awareness and forgiveness, and through this, tolerance and compassion toward others.

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Poet, playwright and novelist Adam Thorpe was born in Paris in 1956 and grew up in India, Cameroon and England. After graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1979, he started a theatre company and toured villages and schools before moving to London where he taught Drama and English Literature. Thorpe lives in France with his wife and three children. His most recent books are a collection of short stories, Is This The Way You Said? (2006); a poetry collection, Birds with a Broken Wing (2007); and the novels The Standing Pool (2008) and Hodd (2009) in which he depicts Robin Hood as a glorified 13th century gangster surrounded by a group of psychopathic thugs, desperate men preying on the innocent.

We talked recently in Toronto at the IFOA, about the Robin Hood myth, and our apparent need to create heroes to address injustice, to express indignation, and right the wrongs of an unjust world. In the conversation we riff off William Flesch’s contention that fiction satisfies our desire to see the good vindicated and the wicked get their ‘comeuppance.’

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"Good reviewing," writes Carmine Starnino in the not-to-be-missed introduction to his A Lover’s Quarrel Essays and Reviews, "... reviewing that believes in literary failure – is invaluable because by calling one poem good and another less good, and adducing clear reasons for those claims, it offers one writerly interpretation of a particular achievement, and invites the reader to sympathetically tag along; his or her senses momentarily borrowing the reviewer’s responses."

We met in a somewhat echoey corner of the National Gallery in Ottawa to hold This Way Out up to scrutiny, naming names: which of his poems are good, which bad. In addition: who are the best and worst contemporary Canadian poets. Listen as we walk the walk of A Lover’s Quarrel.

Photo credit: Gaspereau Press

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"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 fields. The firm focuses mainly on books published from the middle of the 19th century to the present. Their stock of over 15,000 books is housed in a beautiful library in the Ahearns’ home, nestled in the woods at the base of scenic Sugarloaf Mountain in Maryland…"

…which is where we met to talk about ebooks and their impact on the future pricing of collectible books, about collecting what others don’t; first books; Larry McMurtry, best used book selling practices and much more.

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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 the future of the book, ebooks, the ipad, the Kindle, Brodart dust jacket covers, Daniel Dafoe, bloggers, the CIA, weapons scientists at the Library of Congress, letterpress printing and the pulling of books off shelves.

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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 (1990), a bleak collection of short stories, won several awards including the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award. Other short story collections include Now That You're Back (1994) and Original Bliss (1997), and her novels include: Looking for the Possible Dance (1993); So I Am Glad (1995), winner of the Encore Award, which focuses on child sexual abuse and its consequences in adulthood; and Everything You Need (1999), the story of a middle-aged writer living on a remote island and his attempt to build a relationship with his estranged daughter. We met at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto to talk about humour, the buzz of post-suicide attempts, living as if you are going to die, self esteem, making other worlds, changing reality, fictional rehearsals, Buster Keaton hats, the physicality of great comic actors, storytelling and investing in lies, Lolita, Nicola Six, Shakespeare, Hamlet, Yann Kott, Benny Hill, Blazing Saddles, freedom and child molestation.

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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 supporting a working nineteenth-century hand printing shop.

The holdings of books and manuscripts include material on the history of printing, papermaking, bookbinding, palaeography, calligraphy, type design, book collecting, and bibliography. The examples of book production range from the fifteenth century to the present, with a particular strength in nineteenth century colour printing and publishers' bookbindings represented in the Ruari McLean Collection. The collections also include the papers of Canadian graphic designer Carl Dair. In 1981, the Library was named for the Founding Master of the College, Robertson Davies, and contains editions and translations of his writings.

At the time of this interview Marie Korey was Librarian at The Robertson Davies Library, and a scholar of the history of the book. We met to talk about collecting books in this field. I assumed the role (difficult) of a rich book collector (easy) with a passion for books about books (very easy) who had retained Marie to help him acquire the best of the best possible books and materials related to the development of the book.

Here's a list of some of the 'essential' books mentioned by Marie:

Bury, Richard de (1287-1345) Bishop of Durham, wrote “Philibiblon” which survives in many manuscript copies as well as printed editions.

“Dialogue” on Calligraphy and Printing in the sixteenth century, attributed to Christopher Plantin; this contains one of the earliest descriptions of typefounding. There was a facsimile done, with an English translation by Ray Nash published in 1964 under the title: Calligraphy & Printing in the sixteenthe century. Dialogue attributed to Christopher Plantin.

Moxon, Joseph (1627-91), hydrographer, instrument maker, author and printer. He began publishing his “Mechanick Exercises” in monthly parts in 1677; the second volume, issued in 1683-84, was devoted to printing and type-founding. It is the first comprehensive manual on the subject in any language.

Bosse, Abraham. Traicté des manieres de graver en taille douce. Paris, 1645. Early manual on copperplate engraving.

Senefelder, Alois. A complete course of lithography. London: Printed for R. Ackerman, 1819.

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"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 him at his home in Toronto to talk about his long, distinguished career as a Canadian critic/journalist, and about evaluative criticism and what matters most in a book.

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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, 1780-1840 (Cambridge, 2005). His essays have appeared in such journals as Studies in Romanticism, ELH, and The Journal of British Studies, and in several essay collections. His research interests include Romantic literature, the politics of literary culture, the history of the periodical press and of print culture, and intersections between literary expression and public activism.

We talk at length about 18th century British essayist/critic William Hazlitt.

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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.

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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, the British Museum Library, and Literary London’ in Literary Cultures and the Material Book (2007), and articles in the History of the Book In Canada (2004-2007).

We met in his office to talk about his career, the role of a rare books librarian, the Encyclopédie, changes that have occurred in the market place, collecting as scholarship, Charles Darwin, Galileo, Copernicus, the future of the Thomas Fisher collection, ebooks, books about books, unpublished medieval texts and limitless collecting possibilities.

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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 last only as long as is necessary to ensure that works that would not have been created but for the incentive of copyright are created.’

The book at once demonstrates how copyright is a utilitarian government program – not a property or moral right - and deplores the manner in which debate has deteriorated into a battle between oversimplified metaphors; language which demonizes everyone involved – pirates and orphans alike. This has led to bad business and bad policy decisions. "Unless we recognize that the debates over copyright are debates over business models," says Patry, "we will never be able to make the correct business and policy decisions."

A former copyright counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, policy adviser to the Register of Copyright, law professor and author of the definitive 'Patry on Copyright', the man, currently copyright counsel to Google, is a centrist and advocate of balanced copyright laws, and, perhaps most significantly, the owner of a kickin’ pair of running shoes

Moral Panic concludes with a call not for strong or weak copyright laws but more effective ones, designed to maximize the creation of new works and learning, and minimize obstacles which prevent others from accessing and building upon them.

Listen here as Patry, speaking as a concerned, informed citizen not as a Google employee, works his way out from Macaulay’s lucidity, a sampling of which I cite to start off our conversation

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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 Urquhart, who has just written a biography of Lucy Maud as part of Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians series. We met at her house to talk about the vast disconnect between the work and the woman; depression, lesbianism and gaiety; about place, truth and memory, narrative and culture, confidence and role models.

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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 in the New York Times:

MY favorite thing about “Little Brother” is that every page is charged with an authentic sense of the personal and ethical need for a better relationship to information technology, a visceral sense that one’s continued dignity and independence depend on it: “My technology was working for me, serving me, protecting me. It wasn’t spying on me. This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy…Little Brother argues that unless you’re passably technically literate, you’re not fully in command of those constitutionally guaranteed freedoms — that in fact it’s your patriotic duty as an American to be a little more nerdy."

I’m clearly not nerdy enough… incarcerated I am, in fact, by technological illiteracy…incapacitated too…neither machine I used to record my conversation with Cory worked for the full duration of our encounter…they did however capture enough, thankfully, to provide his engaging take on the future of the book, the seeds of its destruction…and mention of a guy with a lemon up his nose.

(For discussion of copyright, please listen to a giant in the field, Bill Patry here).

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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 won Canada’s GG Literary Award for best English Fiction (to be awarded this evening).

She has lectured and taught at, among other institutions: the Battersea Arts Centre, the University of Reading, and Cambridge University, as well as in various prisons. She currently teaches Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University, Leicester.

The Mistress of Nothing (2009), takes its inspiration from the life of Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon, and is set in nineteenth-century Egypt. I met with Kate in Ottawa. Among other things we talk about what it’s like to win the GG, class structures, and the future of the book (check out her website here).

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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.

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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 done by hand on a Vandercook S-219AB proofing press. Books are also bound by hand. I met with Larry in his studio in Merrickville, Ontario (about a half hour drive south of Ottawa) to talk about what he does. Listen as he takes us through the letterpress printing process.

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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 James Beard award for Best Chef Northeast) and within walking distance of half a dozen other great restaurants, including Bresca, Duckfat and Fore Street, the store, in several short years, has become the go-to place for New England’s foodies. Hosting author readings, art exhibits, film showings/dinners and Slow Food meetings, the shop is a jointly owned by Samantha Hoyt Lindgren, a former photo editor and pastry chef, and her husband Don, an antiquarian book dealer. I met with Don at Hugo’s – we thought it would be quieter there than in the store – to talk food and books…listen for the names of titles you might want to start collecting.

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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, Explorations and Guardians of Time; Keith Laumer’s The Breaking Earth, Beyond the Imperium, and The House in November; Harry Harrison’s Planet of No Return and Planet of the Damned; Roger Zelazny and Fred Saberhagen’s Coils; and Steve Barnes and Larry Niven’s Belial

Honours during the early/mid eighties included The Prometheus Award for The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith (1982) and the Nebula Award for Best Novel for Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (1985).

In 1986 Doherty sold his company to St. Martin’s Press and TDA/Tor Books became a division of the larger company. Over time the portion of non-SF "mainstream" titles at Tor grew, to a point where, by 1993, they made up more than half the list. As a result a new imprint, Forge Books, was established in order to better market these titles.

Tom does a much better job of charting the history of his career and these companies than I have here. Listen and learn how and why he has enjoyed such success; you can just tell how much fun he’s had in the business.

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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 Award. He holds a Ph.D. in comparative medieval literature and lives in Pleasantville, New York with his wife Kathryn Cramer and their two children.

Each year, with Cramer, he edits two anthologies, Year’s Best SF and Year’s Best Fantasy. Both anthologies have consistently placed in the top 10 of the Locus annual reader poll. In 1988, Hartwell won the World Fantasy Award in the category Best Anthology for The Dark Descent. He has been nominated for Hugo Award on numerous occasions, and won in 2006, 2008 and 2009. Hartwell has also edited four best novel Nebula Award winners.

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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 flourished thanks to persistence, vision, and the ability to attract skilled passionate co-workers; due to the quality of its books, the company will long be remembered as one of America’s finest scholarly publishers.

I visited Rocky in the ‘Northeast Kingdom’.

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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 degree from Claremont Graduate School (1954), Van Vliet traveled in Europe, apprenticing herself for a time as a hand typesetter. During these travels she taught herself etching while working as a craft instructor at the United States European Headquarters in Germany. For the remainder of the ’50s and early 1960s she taught printmaking, typography and drawing at the Philadelphia Museum School (now The University of the Arts) and worked as a type compositor for John Anderson, first at The Lanston Monotype Company in Philadelphia, and then at his own Pickering Press in New Jersey. In 1965 to ‘66 she was hired by the Art Department of the University of Wisconsin, Madison as a Visiting Lecturer in Printmaking.

Primarily a publisher of first edition poetry (including the work of Seamus Heaney), Van Vliet pioneered the use of colored paper pulps for book illustration, and more recently has developed a variety of distinctive non-adhesive book structures. Museums that collect Van Vliet’s work include The National Gallery in Washington, DC; the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institute. In addition to her many honors, in 1993 the University of the Arts in Philadelphia named Van Vliet an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts. We met in her studio to talk about artist books and a long, outstanding career.

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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, Kinnell joined CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) as a field worker and spent much of the 1960s involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Social activism during this time found its way into his work – Body Rags (1968), and especially The Book of Nightmares (1971), a book-length poem concerned with the Vietnam War. Other books of poetry include Selected Poems (1980), for which he received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Imperfect Thirst (1996); When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone (1990) and A New Selected Poems (2000), a finalist for the National Book Award; He has also published translations of works by Yves Bonnefroy, Yvanne Goll, François Villon, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Rockefeller Grant, the 1974 Shelley Prize of the Poetry Society of America, and the 1975 Medal of Merit from National Institute of Arts and Letters. He has served as poet-in-residence at numerous colleges and universities, and as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007.

We met recently at his home in Vermont to talk about his work.

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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 the most widely reproduced portraits in the history of photography, ‘Churchill’ was also one of the first to carry the famous "Karsh of Ottawa" copyright.

I met recently with Jerry Fielder, Curator and Director of the Estate of Yousuf Karsh to talk about Karsh and the books that contain his works.

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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 letters, plus the artist’s own journals, and provides a picture of the British-born Wright as both cartoonist and human being. It follows his artistic development from earliest unpublished works through to the introduction of his most enduring comic strip, Nipper. First published in 1949, a full year before the debut of Peanuts, it memorably captured both the humorous and frustrating side of parenting. I spoke with Brad in Ottawa. We use Wright as a wedge to lever our way into the history of illustration, comics and graphic novels. Toward the end of our discussion Brad provides some tips for those interested in collecting comics and graphic novels.

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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, Ghostwritten (1999), nine narrators in nine locations across the globe tell interlocking stories. This novel won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.

His second novel, number9dream (2001), was shortlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize for fiction. It is set in modern day Tokyo and tells the story of Eiji Miyake’s search for his father.

In 2003 David Mitchell was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty ‘Best of Young British Novelists’. In his third novel, Cloud Atlas (2004), a young Pacific islander witnesses the nightfall of science and civilisation, while questions of history are explored in a series of seemingly disconnected narratives. Cloud Atlas was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

David Mitchell lives in Ireland. His latest novel is Black Swan Green (2006) We met in Toronto to talk about experimentation and realism, plot, character and all that good stuff, but also about the greatness of John Cheever, high brow and pulp fiction, good pot boilers, the cosmos, cosmi, connections, melding verbs, platitudinous profundities, critics as platypus taxidermists, poetry in prose, the originalities of happy blunders and cultural juxtapositions, Perec’s W, monkeying with structure, planning your funeral, evaluative criticism, and the delightful experience of reading Chekhov’s short stories.

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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 distributed to a national and international list of clients.” Joshua has lectured widely in the United States and Canada on the art of the book. He helped organize the Art of the Contemporary Book Conference at Ohio State University in 1991, and has: contributed articles on the Private Press Movement to journals such as Fine Print and Imprint; and curated exhibitions of South African botanical artist Elise Bodley, both for the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and the Audubon Society; he also proposed the first Washington Artists’ Book Fair – now a biennial event; and organized the first ever exhibition of fine modern bindings at the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington DC in 2003.

I met the Hellers at their home in Washington, D.C. recently.

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John Bidwell is Astor Curator of Printed Books and Bindings at thePierpont 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 encompass a large number of high points in the history of printing, often exemplified by a lone surviving copy or a copy that is perfect in every way. Areas of strength include incunables, early children’s books, fine bindings, and illustrated books.

The collection is founded upon acquisitions of Pierpont Morgan, who sought to establish in the United States a library worthy of the great European collections. Among the highlights are three Gutenberg Bibles, works by Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, John Ruskin, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and William Morris, and classic early children’s books. The Carter Burden Collection of American Literature, a major 1998 gift, strengthens the Morgan’s twentieth-century holdings with authors such as Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Vladimir Nabokov, Gertrude Stein, and Tennessee Williams.

I talk with John Bidwell about the collection, what it contains, how it was acquired.

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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. At the start of the play Lear is firmly established as king of a united Britain. This reflected James’s wish to be ruler of a fully united kingdom. In fact he approached Parliament, without success, in 1607 in hopes of securing a closer political union.

The names of the Dukes in King Lear are taken from real life. James had recently made his sons Henry and Charles the Dukes of Cornwall and Albany respectively. In the play Albany is an honest man who realises too late the evil doings of his relatives. Once aware, he works to restore natural order. At the end, hope for the monarchy rests with him, Albany from Scotland, who is free to reunite the fractured kingdom. In this he represents what James wanted to achieve with his succession.

Listen here as Prof. Joseph Khoury, of St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, and I discuss the themes of succession and the divine right of kings in Hamlet and King Lear.

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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, one of which, ‘Helena and the Babies’ from Fresh Blood 3 (1999), won the Crime Writers’ Association Macallan Short Story Dagger. Two short stories and a play, Hurtle (2003), have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her latest play is Ida Tamson. Her lastest novel is Still Midnight (2009). We met in Ottawa where Denise was the international guest of honour at Bloody Words, Canada’s national mystery conference. Our conversation cuts a wide swath across the socio-political (alcoholism, the accurate depiction of mental illness, the courage of the mentally ill) the psychoanalytic (detective stories as re-enactments of the primal act) and the technical (cozy endings, realistic puzzles)

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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, she currently lives in Stratford, Ontario.

We met in Ottawa to talk about her latest ‘farce noir’ comic mystery novel, Thought you were Dead, and, as a result about: cartoons, dead flies, Nabokov, Pnin’s zany, self-mocking speech and ways, fending off intimacy, how comedy sharpens your judgment, wordplay, names and book titles, the male-female divide, ambiguity, contained chapters, Philip Larkin, naked women on book covers, and The Monkeys’ Michael Nesmith’s mother who invented liquid paper.

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Karl Siegler is a founding member of the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia 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 dated, but I’m sure currently applicable stats from the Canada Council the average Canadian drama title sells 594 copies during its first two years in print, the average poetry title sells 405 copies.

Karl and I talk here first about the role of a literary publisher, then about how Talon has managed to stay in business for over forty years, and finally about constituencies and the title he is most proud of having published.

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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 the National Book Award for fiction as well as the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999. In 2004, he published War Trash, which also won the PEN/Faulkner Award. He lives in the Boston area and is a professor of English at Boston University. We met in Ottawa to talk about his first book of non-fiction The Writer as Migrant . Adapted from The Rice University Campbell Lecture he delivered in 2006, the book consists of three interconnected essays exploring the experience of the migrant, ‘exiled’ writers in relation to their ‘home’ countries and languages. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Lin Yutang, Homer, Joseph Conrad , Vladimir Nabokov and others all contribute to the conversation.

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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 of us—the technical production of form; the experience of psychological drive within the narrative; and the tangible-seeming, built-from-scratch, moral or immoral world our characters inhabit—are experienced by writers of fiction and memoir. Whatever we write, we may all have cause to wonder about the overt and the embedded evidence of our own experiences, even in works in which autobiographical material is scrupulously occluded. Perhaps, in opening the class to writers of non-fiction and fiction, there will be a fruitful exchange."

Donald Antrim is the author of three novels, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World: A Novel, The Hundred Brothers and The Verificationist: A Novel. His latest publication is The Afterlife (2006). He lives in Brooklyn, New York. We talk about workshops in general, and what happened in Montreal specifically.

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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 admire her smooth flowing, erudite prose and her reaching out to an audience wider than just those sitting in her classroom.

Rohan was in Ottawa recently for a ‘Learneds’ conference. I got to meet her in person and interview her, off the cuff , one on one, about the life and lessons found in Middlemarch.

Middlemarch (Collector's Library Classics - Pocket Size)

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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 typography which should

Invite the reader into the text
Reveal the tenor and meaning of the text
Clarify the structure and the order of the text
Link the text with other existing elements
Induce a state of energetic repose, which is the ideal condition for reading

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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 four collections of essays, Yehoshua has won the Brenner Prize, the Alterman Prize, the Bialik Prize, the Israel Prize for Literature, the National Jewish Book Award and many, many other international prizes.

His most recent novel, Friendly Fire, explores the nature of Israeli familial relationships, personal grief and bitterness. We met recently at the Blue Met Writers Festival in Montreal to talk about the book. Our conversation touches on the Jewish diaspora, hatred and minorities, a two state solution, gestures recognizing good, the metaphor of fire, domestic violence, Apartheid, South Africa, solutions, marriage, and marriages between Arabs and Jews.

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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 South Asian Review, later renamed The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad), and began writing stories and a novel. In 1989, with the publication of his first novel, The Gunny Sack, he was invited to spend a season at the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa. That year ended his active career in nuclear physics. Vassanji is the author of six novels and two collections of short stories. He has won the Giller Prize, twice; the Harbourfront Festival Prize; the Commonwealth First Book Prize (Africa); the Bressani Prize and the Order of Canada. We met at the Blue Met Writers Festival in Montreal to talk about his most brief biography of Mordecai Richler for Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians series.The discussion touches on Richler’s outsider status, his struggle with and acceptance of Jewishness, making one person’s story everyone’s story, cities, streets and communities, mothers and fathers, growing out of groups, humble origins, irony, great novels versus journalism, and honesty.

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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: Everything You Know (2000), a dark comedy about misanthropic writer Willy Miller, and Notes on a Scandal (2003) which tells the story of an affair between a high school teacher and her student through the eyes of the teacher’s supposed friend, Barbara Covett. It was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize for fiction, and was released as a feature film, starring Cate Blanchett and Dame Judi Dench."

We met in Ottawa to talk, ‘companionably’ about her latest novel The Believers.

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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 second Governor General’s Award.

Born in Leamington, Ontario, to parents from the Molise region of Italy, he completed studies at York University in Toronto, at Concordia University in Montreal, and at the University of Florence, and has taught both in Canada and abroad. We met recently at the Blue Met Writers Festival in Montreal to talk about his most recent work: a brief biography of Pierre Trudeau for Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians series.

Topics covered include the Italian Canadian attachment to Trudeau and the Liberals, immigration, gun slingers, alluring leadership qualities, fear of failure, media strategies, bilingualism’s mixed legacy, the Charter, budget deficits, the pride of being Canadian, and philosopher-kings.

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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, and most recently Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians: Stephen Leacock. Currently, MacMillan is the Warden of St. Anthony’s College, Oxford University. We met recently in Montreal at the Blue Met Writers Festival. I posed a simple question: Referencing the two most recent books you have authored: How do you write history? Please listen here to a comprehensive, enthusiastic answer that addresses research, records, racism, other potential worlds, being of your time, Iraq, lessons, dangers, inevitable biases, humour and Stephen Leacock’s legacy.

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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 include the Juliet Club Prize (Italy); The Chiavari (Italy); and The Brenner Prize of 2006—the highest Israeli literary recognition awarded for his novel, A Pigeon and a Boy, published in the US by Random House in 2007.

I met Meir at The Blue Met Writers Festival in Montreal. We talk here about, among other things, television, satire, The Daily Show, great sentences, labels, Gogol, gardening and farming.

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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. Catalogues filled with books from, among other countries, Namibia, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana and South Africa itself, go out to the likes of Yale University, the Smithsonian Institute, and the African Studies Centre in Holland, twice a year.

I spoke with owner Henrietta Dax who for more than thirty years has ventured forth annually to Mozambique, the US, the UK, and other more exotic locales buying, selling, bartering and stockpiling books she thinks will appeal to her customers.

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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: Fifteen Men, a collection of writing by South African prisoners, all of whom are serving very long sentences, with whom Margie spent a year leading a creative writing course. This book is the result. We talk about her experience.

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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 ostensibly to talk about his new Penguin biography of Mordecai Richler (please stay tuned for the audio); but before commencing, I asked him to respond to Metcalf’s attacks. Here’s what he had to say:

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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. He also runs Three Percent, an online blog and review site focused on international literature. Prior to starting Open Letter, he was the associate director at Dalkey Archive Press. In addition, he co-founded Reading the World, a unique collaboration between publishers and independent bookstores to promote world literature.’

We talk here among other things about the dominance of great non-English speaking novelists, Roberto Bolaño, Julio Cortazar (Hopscotch is one of Post’s favourite novels), Jose Saramago and the phenomenon of one-foreign-author-at-a-time, reasons for the success of 2666, why American authors have the inside track, how economics works against translation, and the opportunities that exist in publishing foreign authors.

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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 different men working in a deserted, rural hospital. It won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region) and was shortlisted for both the 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the 2005 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His latest novel is The Impostor (2008).

We talk here about national and personal trauma, corruption and realpolitik, the shadow of J.M. Coetzee, South African literature as boundaried by massive inequalities, childhood cancer, ambiguity, the new class system, real world maturity and the need for compromise.

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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), was made into a film starring Marlon Brando while An Instant in the Wind (1976), the story of a relationship between a white woman and a black man, and Rumours of Rain (1978) were both shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Devil’s Valley (1998) explores the life of a community locked away from the rest of the world, and The Other Side of Silence (2002), set in colonial Africa in the early twentieth century, won a Commonwealth Writers regional award for Best Book in 2003. He has also written a collection of essays on literature and politics, Reinventing a Continent (1996), prefaced by Nelson Mandela.

He is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Cape Town. His latest novels are Praying Mantis (2005) and The Blue Door (2007). His memoir, A Fork in the Road was published in 2009

I met Andre Brink at his home in Cape Town. (His lovely young wife Karina greeted me at the door and led me into his book-lined study).

Once seated we talked mostly about his life, about his father, about love and duty, justice, Apartheid, inter-racial sex, J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer; his love affair with poet Ingrid Jonker, her suicide, her poem ‘Plant me a Tree,’ English as his second language, Picasso, recommended wines and staying in South Africa despite his nephew having been shot dead by intruders at his home just north of Johannesburg.

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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 explanations for South Africa’s flourishing publishing sector, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Jacob Zuma’s shower-head, and plans Johnson has for the future of his company.

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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 by Canadian Notes and Queries and The New Quarterly magazines, personal slights, the problem of awarding the same prizes to authors of widely varying talents, and the importance to healthy literary culture of truth-telling critics.

(Lengthy sentence alert): There are predictable attacks on M.G. Vassanji, Ann Marie MacDonald, and Robertson Davies here, and there is praise too for many young Canadian short story writers, but perhaps the most evident feature of this discussion is Metcalf’s anger, precipitated, I’d say, primarily by a combative dedication to serving a cause larger than himself – excellence in literature – aggravated in small part both by the perceived inability of Canadians to recognize literary greatness, and personal rejection at the hands of this country’s ‘literary establishment’ – bolstered by a natural taste for confrontation and a glee in the fighting of a good fight.

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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 Franschhoek Literary Festival, now in its third year. The event has enjoyed success from its opening page. Last year the Commonweath Writer’s Prize chose Franschhoek as the place to announce its winner (Canadian Lawrence Hill). We talk here about how the Festival came about, and what it takes to make it happen.

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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, Richard Ford, classroom visits, and inspired students. For more information on this year’s Frye Festival please click here.

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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 and Paul Theroux; about Ernest Hemingway’s Cuban home, and the reviewing genius of John Updike.

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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. Metcalf is also a serious book collector.

Riffing off John Carter's Taste & Technique in Book Collecting, we talk here about, among other things: what defines the book collector, Richard Yates, and Eleven Kinds of Loneliness being one of the most 'stupendous books of short stories ever published in the United States,' dealers stock-piling the first editions of up and coming authors, Alice Munro's Dance of the Happy Shades and how little a signed First of it costs, connoisseurship and Sir Kenneth Clark, collecting what you love, and what the budding Canadian book collector should buy.

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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, trauma, trust, happiness, the struggle to survive, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and its deficiencies, asylum seekers are true heroes, engaging with the developing world, people in transition, life-changing events, sexual adventurousness, making sense of life retrospectively, inane reality TV shows and the need for refugees to tell their heroic stories convincingly.

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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, and the challenge confronting translatorsto be faithful to original work while at the same time appealing to audiences in the translated language. She is passionate about her work. You can tell by the charming enthusiasm in her voice. Just listen, especially when she tries to evade identifying the best translators.

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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 impressario. In that way she belongs on the same hearty category as Mike McGonigal: self-made, peripatetic, generous but with standards and boundaries. The other thing is that, like McGonigal, she gives off a slightly timeless vibe: a bit San Francisco 1950s, a bit Chianti in Greenwich Village, a bit rockabilly, a bit Christina’s World."

We met at her home in Chicago, and talked about, among other things, the origins of Bookslut, her under-employment at Planned Parenthood, ex-boyfriends, blog advertising, hiring writers, shrinking book review sections, writing for oneself, inexplicable successes, the name ‘Bookslut’ and thoughts of changing it, Somerset Maugham, favourite novels, and the future of blogs.

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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 Action Areas as guiding principles for directing the Association’s energies and resources: Diversity, Equity of Access, Education and Continuous Learning, Intellectual Freedom, and 21st Century Literacy. Subsequent strategic plans added to these: Advocacy for Libraries and the Profession, and Organizational Excellence.

Keith and I talk here about these principles, about the benefits of belonging to the ALA, simple actions librarians can take to improve their libraries, the future of the book, the future of libraries, video games, copyright, digitization, the recent Google settlement, library fines, libraries as social centers, amalgamation of libraries and archives, access to databases and dead links, the importance of libraries as purchasers of non best-selling books, and the bounce-back of literary reading.

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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 from current and/or former Chicagoans. For more information, you can e-mail him at levistahlATgmail.com)

We met in Chicago to talk about his role as publicity manager for the University of Chicago Press. Early on we talk about copy writing and appealing to as many different audiences as possible, about tours and dealing with the media, about differences between university and mainstream publishers, Modernism, Robert Graves, black and white comedy teams, and finally, about the role Levi played in getting the UCP to re-issue a series of Richard Stark (pen name of Donald Westlake, who, sadly, died the day before we conducted our interview) ‘Parker’ mystery novels, most notably The Hunter, which, though stained through with violent ‘thuggery’ is, according to Levi, very well written, and filled with insight into humanity.

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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, the magazine distributes 18,000 copies through 250 bookstores as well as to subscribers. The magazine is free on the newsstand. It is also available through paid subscription. Structurally, Rain Taxi is a 501(c)(3) non-profit. It sells advertising at below market rates, much of it to literary presses."

Rain Taxi’s website tells us that the publication is a winner of the Alternative Press Award for Best Arts & Literature Coverage that runs ‘reviews of literary fiction, poetry, and nonfiction with an emphasis on works that push the boundaries of language, narrative, and genre. Essays, interviews, and in-depth reviews reflect Rain Taxi’s commitment to innovative publishing.’

I dined and conversed with RainTaxi editor Eric Lorberer, indoors, recently in Minneapolis. We talk here about the state and nature of today’s book reviewing business. Please excuse the abrupt ending.

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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 for the two authors who are most in demand among book thieves.

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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 Carey puts it in the final chapter of his book What Good are the Arts?, enlarges your mind, and it gives you thoughts, words and rhthms that will last you for life.

With this in mind, I talked to Margaret Eaton, President of the ABC Canada Literacy Foundation about what is being done to help those who live with illiteracy to overcome this obstacle. In so doing we discuss the impact of the Internet on reading habits and the income of freelance writers, the future of the book, blogging, publishers’ business models, and bringing the U.K.’s successful Quick Reads program,which commissions authors (including Ruth Rendall, Joanna Trollope and Richard Branson), to write exciting, short, fast-paced books specifically for adult emergent readers, to Canada. Margaret is now looking for well know Canadian authors to write true crime, and how-to titles, both of which were very popular in England. I immediately suggest William Deverell, and a can’t miss how-to topic: Seven Steps to Phenomenal Sex.

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Robert Rulon-Miller is an antiquarian book dealer who lives, if not in a mansion, then at the very least in a great big house on Summit Avenue, one of the toniest in St. Paul, Minnesota. Not that toiling as a bookseller is anyway to get rich quick. He has worked hard for many years in the business, specializing in 'Rare, Fine & Interesting Books in Many Fields; 1st Editions, Americana; Literature; Fine & Early Printing; Travel; and the History of Language.' His most recent catalogue is titled Language and Learning. Robert is also the Director of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar scheduled for August 2nd-7th, 2009, at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, immediately following the Denver Antiquarian Book Fair.

We met at his home to talk books. Topics covered include de-accessioning, railway and mining tycoon James J. Hill, Robert's friendship with Elmer Anderson, book collector and Governor of Minnesota; Robert’s interest in words and language, his expertise in dictionaries and grammars, and lack of interest in Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, Better World Books’s business model, partnering to buy and sell expensive books, and advice for the novice bookseller.

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Rosemary Furtak was the librarian at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for more than 25 year. She was co-curator of ‘Text Messages’, an exhibit on artist’s books shown in 2009 at the Center. We talk here about her early championing of the artist book genre - her definition being: "a book that refuses to behave like a book ("like the 35,000 books that sit in the stacks"), the line between books and art, and words and art, and librarians and curators…and how to go about collecting artist books. We talk too about the challenges of cataloguing artist Ed Ruscha’s 26 Gasoline Stations, about the prolific and surprising Dieter Roth, inexpensive materials and Richard Tuttle, and Lawrence Weiner's Statements, and his art making process. The works of these four were highlighted in the exhibition.

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Biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist Victoria Glendinning was born in Sheffield, and educated at Somerville College, Oxford, where she read Modern Languages. She worked as a teacher and social worker before becoming an editorial assistant for the Times Literary Supplement in 1974.

President of English PEN, she was awarded a CBE in 1998. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Southampton, Ulster, Dublin and York. Her biographies include Elizabeth Bowen: Portrait of a Writer, 1977; Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions (1981), which won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for biography) and the Duff Cooper Prize; and Rebecca West: A Life (1987), and Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West (1983) and Trollope (1992) both of which won the Whitbread Biography Award.

We talk here ostensibly about her latest book, Love’s Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie: Letters and Diaries 1941- 1973 but in fact, mostly about the nature of biography, the difference between editing letters and writing lives, fabricating dialogue, compiling data, selecting facts; the importance of place, material and familial limitations, life over art, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Sissinghurst, and text versus context.

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Tanja Jacobs is a well known actress, director, teacher and coach. She has worked in the professional theatre since 1981, and performed at most major theatres in Canada. She has been nominated for ten Dora Mavor Moore Awards and has won twice. As a director, her credits include 1002 Nights, Johann’s Cabinet of Wonders, Goddess, and Mid-Life Crisis. On television, besides her role as federal employee SM3 Sexsmith on Power Play, Jacobs has guest starred on many Canadian shows including Ready or Not and Street Legal. Film credits include Trial by Jury and Loser.

She recently finished a run at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa as Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days directed by Leah Cherniak.

Happy Days, written in 1961, observes determined human optimism in the face of a universe without meaning. Winnie, Beckett’s "hopeful futilitarian" is buried up to her waist in the earth, woken and summoned to bed each day by the same disembodied bell. "Throughout the days she performs a series of carefully observed rituals all related to the contents of a worn old black purse. She combs her hair, applies lipstick, painstakingly examines a toothbrush, toys with a nail file, a tube of toothpaste and a revolver, all the while chattering at her inattentive companion, Willie. Hopeless yet hopeful, bleak yet funny, Happy Days is Beckett’s "testament to the resourcefulness of the human spirit"

Tanja and I talk here about playing Winnie, the difficulty of working at cliff’s edge without a narrative, talking, doing nothing, and the need for communication and attention, loneliness, mid-life marriages, revolvers, supportive fellow actors, the quality of attachment and mirroring, the imperative to carry on, suffering and the avoidance of and surrendering to pain in front of an audience, revisiting moments of terror and fright and aloneness and the agony of doing this as someone who has been abandoned; the unbearable parts of being human, and how the use of simple descriptives can generate profound distilled moments, poems of events.

To start off with I quote V.S. Pritchett on Beckett. Read the quote here.

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Born, raised and currently resident in Ottawa, Canada, Christian McPherson’s poetry has appeared in a variety of print and online journals. He has won the John Spenser Hill Award and the Ottawa Public Library Short story Award. We met recently to discuss his first published collection called Poems that Swim from my Brain like Rats leaving a Sinking Ship. Listen as we talk, among other things, about death, the misery of TV news, and a light hearted approach to life.

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Ross Raisin is a young British author born in Keighley, Yorkshire. He studied at the University of London, worked as a trainee wine bar manager and completed a postgraduate degree in creative writing at Goldsmith's College.

His debut novel Out Backward (God's Own Country in England) was published in 2008, and shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. It features Sam Marsdyke, a disturbed adolescent living in a harsh rural environment, and tracks his journey from an oddity to a malevolent, insane, psychopath. We talk about the novel here.

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Nadeem Aslam was born in Pakistan in 1966, moved to the UK as a teenager and now lives in London. He studied Biochemistry at the University of Manchester, but left to become a writer. His first novel, Season of the Rainbirds (1993) won a Betty Trask Award and the Authors’ Club First Novel Award, and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award. His second novel, Maps for Lost Lovers (2004), which took 11 years to write, won the 2005 Encore Award and the 2005 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize.

We met in Toronto at the IFOA, to talk about his novel The Wasted Vigil, about technique, self knowledge, writing 100 page biographies of his characters, the universal from the particular, Afghanistan, war, politics, love, the ignorance of history, Flaubert, Proust, isolation, engagement and Yorkshire.

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This is part three of a series of interviews conducted with three acclaimed short storywriters: Rebecca Rosenblum, Nam Le, and Anne Enright. In each case we riff off those qualities which Flannery O’Connor thought best constituted a good short story. I’ve listed some of them here.

Anne Enright was born in Dublin in 1962, studied English and Philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin, and went on to study for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She is a former RTE television producer. Her short story collection, The Portable Virgin was published in 1991, and won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Two collections of stories, Taking Pictures and Yesterday’s Weather were published in 2008. Her novels are The Wig My Father Wore (1995); What Are You Like? winner of the 2001 Encore Award; The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002); and The Gathering (2007) which won the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

We met at the IFOA in Toronto to talk about the short story, and, in so doing , about Beckett’s Happy Days, housewives with problems, ideology, awakenings, characters’ voices, self deception, just doing it, James Joyce and women writers.

Photo Credit Hpshaefer

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Joe Dunthorne is a graduate of the Creative Writing Masters program at UEA, where he was awarded the Curtis Brown Prize. His poetry has been published in Reactions 5, Magma, Smiths Knoll, and Tears in the Fence. His work has been featured on Channel 4, BBC Radio 3, 4 and in The Guardian and Vice magazine.

We met at the IFOA in Toronto to discuss his debut novel, Submarine, why the behavior of teenage boys is often seen as abominable, the importance of getting laid, ambiguous characters, depression, the brilliance of novelist W.G. Sebald, East Anglia University, how humour works, and dust jackets which both attract attention and complement content.

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Bruno Racine was President of the National Library of France from 2007- 2016. Prior to this he held a variety of senior positions within the French government including: Director General Cultural Affairs for the City of Paris (1988-1993), Director of l’Académie de France à Rome (1997-2002), and Chairman du Centre Pompidou (2002-2007).

He is also a writer. Non-fiction titles include his best-selling: Art of living in Rome and Art of living in Tuscany. His novel The Governor of Morée (Grasset) won France’s First Novel Prize in 1982.

We talk here about the role of a national library, about scanning and digitization, Google, the Lyon library (France’s second largest), Europeana, the value-added offered by Librarians, amalgamation of Canada's National Archives and Library and the unlikelihood that France will follow suit, public servant novelists, Stendhal, and failure and success in work and love.

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AMITAV GHOSH is one of India’s best-known writers. His books include The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, The Glass Palace, Incendiary Circumstances and The Hungry Tide. Born in Calcutta in 1956 Ghosh studied in Dehra Dun, New Delhi, Alexandria and Oxford. His first job was at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi. He earned a doctorate at Oxford before he wrote his first novel, which was published in 1986. He is married to the writer, Deborah Baker, and has two children, Lila and Nayan. He divides his time between Kolkata, Goa and Brooklyn.

We met recently at the IFOA in Toronto to talk about his most recent novel, Sea of Poppies, the first volume in a planned trilogy. Among other things we discuss how novels tell the stories of silenced, unheard voices, sailing, Mauritius, multi-racial crews, opium, the Caste system and the pleasures of research.

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Junot Díaz was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and is the author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao which won the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. He is the fiction editor at the Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

We met at the IFOA in Toronto, and talked about, among other things, genocide, storytelling as a way to give voice to lost life, unique characters, 9/11 and America’s dual response: Why don’t they like us? and We’re gonna bomb them into the stone age; gaps, how to inject humour and energy into a text, and the Dominican Republic as the egg from which the U.S. eagle sprang.

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Rivka Galchen was born in Toronto. She grew up in Norman, Oklahoma, where her father, Tzvi Gal-Chen, was a professor of meterology at the University of Oklahoma. Her novel Atmospheric Disturbances features a character with the same name, Tzvi Gal-Chen, a professor of meterology and a fellow of the (fictional) Royal Academy of Meterology.

Galchen attended Princeton University, where she was an English major, and applied in her sophomore year to an early-admissions program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She received her M.D. from Mount Sinai in 2003, with a focus in psychiatry. After completing medical school, she completed an MFA at Columbia University. Farcically, Atmospheric Disturbances was nominated for Canada’s Governor General’s Award for fiction (she left the country when she was four years old). No way she was going to win; still, on the flip side, provides nice exposure for both prize and author.

We talk here among other things about denial, death, fathers, unreliable narrators, James Wood, Walter Benjamin, science, consensus knowledge, and being stoned.

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Nam Le has won the £60,000 Dylan Thomas Prize. It recognizes the best young writer in the English-speaking world, with the goal of ensuring that the inspirational nature of Dylan’s writing lives on. I met with him in Toronto at the IFOA. This is part two of a series of interviews conducted with three acclaimed short storywriters: Rebecca Rosenblum, Nam Le, and Anne Enright. In each case we riff off those qualities which Flannery O’Connor thought best constituted a good short story.

Nam is author of The Boat, a collection of ’stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a fishing village in Australia to a floundering vessel in the South China Sea, in a masterful display of literary virtuosity and feeling.’

We talk, among other things, about never condescending to the reader, the prose having to be smarter than its author: tapping into things seen, but a just beyond their ken; gaps and allowing the reader to put their experiences into them; getting into the consciousness of characters; relinquishing ego; the difficulty of writing short stories — and the greatness of those who can do it well; spring-boarding detail and gearing it for expansion; and affecting paradoxical senses of recognition, wonder and redemption.

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Joseph Boyden won The 2008 Giller Prize for his novel Through Black Spruce. We talk here about the novel, and the psychic distance Joseph requires to write novels about Northern Ontario and the Cree; the similarities between North and South, James Bay and New Orleans; snowmobiling over vast amounts of snow-covered bush, isolation in the wilderness; bridges between communities, oral culture, First Nation humour, respect for myths and legends, and soapboxes. Please excuse the abrupt ending!

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Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library, founded in 1946, is a not-for-profit organization for people interested in books and libraries. Its purpose is to stimulate public interest in the library, purchase library materials, and support other cultural and educational programs in Tompkins County. Each year since inception the Friends have held a book sale in Ithaca New York.

It now ranks among the ten largest (250,000 to 300,000 books, CDs, records, etc. per year) in the United States

Beryl Barr was in charge of the Book Sale when we met. I asked her to give listeners her top ten tips on how best to run a used book sale.

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Listen to my interview with Aleksandar Hemon on his National Book Award nominated novel The Lazarus Project here, and at The Quarterly Conversation.

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David Carruthers, owner/proprietor of St. Armand Papers in Montreal takes us through the process of how he produces paper that is used in the letterpress printing of books. We talk about pure fibre rags, old jute coffee bags, cover stock, denim and blue paper, beaters, pulp, and vat-like structures for pulp, and machines that take 95% of the moisture out of the pulp and flatten it so that it can be stored in sheets that look and feel like blotting paper and then treated with substances such as potato starch, clay and/or chalk, depending upon the end use of the paper.

We also talk about opacity, smooth laid paper, end leafs, machine grain and bookmarks.

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I first heard about Michael Lista in a workshop conducted by Meeka Walsh, Editor of Border Crossings magazine. She raved about him: "Michael is a remarkably gifted young poet who lives in Montreal. He has a special interest in the points of intersection between science and poetics."

These points live dramatically in the person of Louis Slotin, a scientist from Winnipeg involved in the Manhattan project and development of the atomic bomb, and Lista’s desire to capture a day in his life. On May 21, 1946, Slotin conducted a dangerous experiment referred to by his fellow scientists as "tickling the dragon’s tail." Using a framework of existing poems, in the way that James Joyce used Homer’s Odyssey, Lista has borderline plagiarized them in a collection which documents this May day. The book will be entitled Bloom. Anansi will publish it.

"Out of admiration for the virtuosity of Slotin’s achievements - with the attendant hubris and arrogance necessary to take risks and make anything new - and taking on those qualities in his own work, Lista’s poems do glitter, but more lastingly than that word would suggest. Dazzle too has a showiness I don’t mean to imply but the wit is so apparent. At the same time the tone is held and is exactly what the subject requires in this poetic construction."

Revisiting my Salon des Refuses experience, I am reminded of how rarely one encounters great literary work, in poetry especially. Pablo Neruda, Ted Hughes, Robin Robertson…I knew immediately upon first reading their poems that something extraordinary was happening. Their words rubbed up against my experience and sensibilities in ways that satisfied like few others.

I felt something of this while reading the handful of poems Michael sent me in advance of our conversation. We talk here about the suicidal dangers of emulating Joyce’s Ulysses, and the book’s un-approachability; punning, the multiple meanings of 'bloom'; epiphanies, coincidences, translation, sex and physics, life and death.

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This is part one of a series of interviews conducted with three acclaimed short storywriters: Rebecca Rosenblum, Nam Le, and Anne Enright. In each case we riff off those qualities which Flannery O’Connor thought best constituted a good short story.

We start with Rebecca Rosenblum, author of Once, " a collection of sixteen stories portraying the constricted and confused lives of the rootless twenty-somethings — students, office techies, waitresses, warehouse labourers, street hustlers — who inhabit them. These are stories grounded in the all-too-real comedy and tragedy of jobs and friendships and romances, books and buses and bodies." This debut collection won The Metcalf Rooke Award.

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Patricia K. Macarthy is author of The Crimson Series, three books, to date, about vampires. We talk here about what makes Vampires so appealing to so many people, about their being symbolic of man’s desire for supremacy, women’s desire to be consumed, about the fringe elements of society, the attraction of eternal youth and immortality, confidence, the perfect villian whose weapon is seduction, alpha males, power, the lack of conscience, film, Halloween, the draw of fantasy, the defiance of death and the preciousness of time.

During our conversation reference is made to poems by Byron and Goethe. Both example early literary treatment of Vampires [see vampires (and vampire fiction)]. The Vampire Female: "The Bride of Corinth" (1797) by: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(1) Once a stranger youth to Corinth came,

Who in Athens lived, but hoped that he

From a certain townsman there might claim,

As his father’s friend, kind courtesy.

(2) Son and daughter, they

Had been wont to say

Should thereafter bride and bridegroom be.

But can he that boon so highly prized,

Save tis dearly bought, now hope to get?

They are Christians and have been baptized,

He and all of his are heathens yet.

(3) For a newborn creed,

Like some loathsome weed,

Love and truth to root out oft will threat.

Father, daughter, all had gone to rest,

And the mother only watches late;

She receives with courtesy the guest,

And conducts him to the room of state.

The Giaour by Lord Byron was first published in 1813 and the first in his Oriental romance series. It proved to be a great success, consolidating Byron’s reputation critically and commercially. Here’s how it starts:

No breath of air to break the wave

That rolls below the Athenian’s grave,

That tomb which, gleaming o’er the cliff,

First greets the homeward-veering skiff,

High o’er the land he saved in vain;

When shall such hero live again?

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Margaret Visser is a writer/broadcaster who lives in Toronto, Barcelona, and France. Her subject matter is the history, anthropology, and mythology of everyday life.

Born in South Africa, she attended school in Zambia, Zimbabwe, France (the Sorbonne) and Canada. She taught Greek and Latin at York University for 18 years.

Her books include Much Depends on Dinner, The Rituals of Dinner, The Way We Are, and The Geometry of Love; all have been best sellers. Many have won awards. Her most recent work is called The Gift of Thanks, published by HarperCollins. It asks: What do we really mean by Thank you? What are the implications of gratitude, and why are we so enraged when we meet its opposite?

In this conversation Visser tells us, among other things, that gratitude involves thinking, that gift giving takes the place of war, that apparently simple actions and behavior are in fact surprisingly complex, and that gratitude and gift giving is natural because humans beings are innate imitators. Oh yes. And we also talk about sexual gratification!

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This from Random House: "Miriam Toews…was born in 1964 in the small Mennonite town of Steinbach, Manitoba. She left at eighteen, living in Montreal and London and touring Europe before coming back to Manitoba, where she earned a B.A. in film studies at the University of Manitoba. Later she packed up with her children and partner and moved to Halifax to attend the University of King’s College, where she received a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Upon returning to Winnipeg with her family in 1991, she freelanced at the CBC, making radio documentaries. When her youngest daughter started nursery school, Toews decided it was time to try writing a novel."

She’s written four to date, including A Complicated Kindness which won the GG’s Award for Best Fiction in 2004. We talk here about her latest The Flying Troutmans, about her father’s struggle with depression and the stigma that still surrounds mental illness, about road trips and siblings, the definition of love, the film Little Miss Sunshine, writing novels with movie deals in mind, trust, abandonment and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

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Listen here to my conversation with Craig Poile, co-owner of Collected Works, an innovative independent bookstore based in Ottawa, Canada (now closed). We talk, among others things, about a rudimentary webcam-teleconferencing system dubbed ‘Great Talking Head,’ that Craig has set up to get big name authors, such as Julian Barnes and Peter Carey, and their fans, together in his bookstore; about bookseller-publisher relations, in-store writing workshops and print-on-demand.

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Distribution is a critical spoke in the publishing cycle, and yet it’s surprising the scant amount of thought many small publishers give to how their books will eventually be sold, and how much it will cost to get their titles into the stores. Most new titles issued by small/self publishers wont ever be stocked on the shelves of chain superstores, not even for a short tryout period. Only a tiny fraction of these titles are ever selected directly by discount merchandisers or supermarkets, despite these outlets accounting for a big percentage of overall book industry sales. Bookseller don’t have time to meet with hundreds of small publishers, hence the importance of the distributor.

I talk here with Les Petriw, Managing Director & International Sales Director of National Book Network, ’second or third largest in North America,’ about why publishers should consider using distribution firms such as his. In-stock status at a national distributor is essential to selling books in any quantity through retail outlets, but it isn’t cheap. From what I’ve been able to learn, distributors working with small publishers typically require a discount of from 50% to 75% off the cover price. In other words, they pay the publisher between 25% and 50% of the cover price on books they actually sell. So picking the right company is important. Here, according to Les, is what you should look for:

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Harlan Coben’s latest novel HOLD TIGHT debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list — and simultaneously debuted at #1 in the London Times.

Winner of the Edgar Award, Shamus Award and Anthony Award – the first author to win all three – international bestselling author Harlan Coben’s critically-acclaimed novels have been called "ingenious" (New York Times), "poignant and insightful" (Los Angeles Times), "consistently entertaining" (Houston Chronicle), "superb" (Chicago Tribune) and "must reading" (Philadelphia Inquirer). His most recent novels, THE WOODS, PROMISE ME, THE INNOCENT, JUST ONE LOOK, NO SECOND CHANCE, TELL NO ONE and GONE FOR GOOD have appeared on the top of all the major bestseller lists including the New York Times, London Times, Le Monde, Publishers Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and USA TODAY — and many others throughout the world. His books are published in thirty-seven languages around the globe and have been number one bestsellers in in nearly a dozen countries. Harlan was born in Newark, New Jersey. After graduating from Amherst College a political science major, Harlan worked in the travel industry. He now lives in New Jersey with his wife, Anne Armstrong-Coben MD, a pediatrician, and their four children.

I try to mix it up by warning that popularity should not be confused with greatness. Harlan brushes me off by following the good Dr.’s line of argument: "The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside. [Samuel Johnson: Pope (Lives of the Poets)].

We look at the author as brand, the feigned disinterest many authors hold for the business side of publishing books, Harlan’s New York Times Op-Ed pieces, his preference for the missing over the dead, suburban desperation, and 2.5 million books sold worldwide each year.

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Jaap Blonk is a self-taught composer, vocal performer and sound poet.

As a vocalist, Blonk has performed around the globe exciting audiences with his powerful stage presence and childlike improvisation. Live electronics have over the years extended the scope and range of his concerts. Besides working as a soloist, he has collaborated with many musicians and ensembles, including Maja Ratkje, Mats Gustafsson, Nicolas Collins, Joan La Barbara, The Ex, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble and the Ebony Band. He was the founder and leader of the long-standing bands Splinks (modern jazz, 1983-1999) and BRAAXTAAL (avant-rock, 1987-2005).

We talk here about the noises humans make that aren’t words, how important they are in communication, and the way sound poetry utilizes them; about meaning found in intonation and getting booed, the pleasure of inventing structures, Dadaism and the breaking of rules, Johnny Van Doorn and A Bridge too Far, the international phonetic alphabet, pitch, timber and the best English language sound poets. Listen, and brace yourself for the recital of a sonnet Jaap wrote in honour of Van Doorn.

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Lindsey Davis was born and raised in Birmingham, read English at Oxford, then joined the civil service, which she left in 1985.She started writing about Romans in The Course of Honour, the remarkable true love story of the Emperor Vespasian and his mistress Antonia Caenis. Her research into First Century Rome inspired The Silver Pigs, the first outing for Falco and Helena, which was published in 1989. Starting as a spoof using a Roman ‘informer’ as a classic, metropolitan private eye, the series has developed into a set of adventures in various styles which take place throughout the Roman world. The Silver Pigs won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel award in 1989; she has since won the Crimewriters’ Association Dagger in the Library and Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, while Falco has won the Sherlock Award for Best Comic Detective. She has been Chair of the UK Crimewriters’ Association and Honorary President of the Classical Association. Her Official Website is www.lindseydavis.co.uk.

We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talked, among other things, about the historical mystery genre, Ellis Peters, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, foreshadowing, the treatment of women, killing characters off, good men, favourite plots and authors, and lessons that can be learned from the Romans,

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Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of that country’s civil war. He immigrated to Canada in 1992. He is a writer, a visual artist, and a curator whose debut novel, De Niro’s Game (2006), was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2006 Governor General’s Award for English fiction. It won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. House of Anansi Press published Rawi’s eagerly anticipated second novel, Cockroach, in 2008. He lives in Montreal where I caught up with him at the Blue Met International Literary Festival.

We talk about living in war conditions, New York, the movie Deer Hunter and Russian roulette, art as memory, the absurdity of war, the dangers of organized religion, fundamentalism, politics and the writer, canoeing and moose, women’s clothing, Arabic poetry and the influence of fathers.

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Edward Pettit is a freelance book reviewer and writes the Bibliothecary blog. He also pursues graduate studies in literature at bucolic Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and teaches writing at La Salle University in Philadelphia. After having spent the first twenty-seven years of his life in the same Philadelphia neighborhood (Olney), he now resides just outside the "Athens of America" in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania with his lovely wife, five daughters and lottsa books. Oh, and one other thing, he's a fanatical fan ...if this isn't redundant...of Edgar Alan Poe...and hosts a blog dedicated to all things Edgar at Ed and Edgar.

He is busy writing a book about Poe's years in Philadelphia.

We met at the Philadelphia Book Festival. In this interview Ed treats us to a thumbnail biography of Poe, his childhood, where he lived, studied and worked, what he wrote, which relative he married, which street corner he collapsed on, who championed him and who wrote the best books about him.

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Derick Dreher has been the Director of the Rosenbach since 1998. He has an M.A. in the History of Art from Yale University,and is a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton. A Fulbright scholar, he was awarded a Kress International Research Fellowship, for research in Germany. A specialist in graphic arts of the Renaissance, he has published on a variety of subjects, including prints and drawings ranging from Dürer to Daumier, and has spoken internationally on drawings, rare books, libraries and the art of memory.

We met at the Museum on a rainy Philadelphia morning to talk about the life, loves and business practices of celebrated bookseller and collector 'Doctor' Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach, who got his PhD. in 1901, and subsequently went into business with his older ambitious Anglophilic brother Philip who sold fine and decorative arts. The Doctor was bent on selling books and manuscripts. We examine his ability to turn customers into collectors, to build libraries, to serve as an advisor not a dealer; his first great customer, street car magnate Harry Widener, who went down with the Titanic; what $100,000 bought in 1912, the Doctor's relationship with the Huntingtons and Folgers, his brilliant, ruthless book buying and selling practices, his skill at manipulating prices and the media, the manuscript of Alice in Wonderland, making private collections public, the Museum's 333,000 odd documents, the manuscript of James Joyce's Ulysses, bought at auction for the reserve price, Stoker's notes for Dracula, Conrad's manuscripts, tours as appetizers, the correspondence and physical library of Marianne Moore, and Maurice Sendak as a bridge to the museum's entire collection.

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Donald Antrim is the author of three novels and a memoir entitled, The Afterlife, which is about the strained relationship he had with his mother, Louanne, an artist, teacher and alcoholic. In addition to receiving some of America’s most prestigious fellowships, he is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, a magazine that includes him amongst their "twenty writers for the new century."

We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talk here about his mother’s death, Camus, writing on the edge, suffering and distraction, luxury beds, Donald Barthelme, anger, sarcasm, loss of humour, collecting books, and the appeal of first editions. Donald also treats us to a reading from The Afterlife, and as part of this, the dedication in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.

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Frank Wilson has been reviewing books professionally since October, 1964. For most of the last decade that he was Books Editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, he was given to retaining committed bloggers (e.g. Mark Sarvas, Scott Esposito, Ed Champion) to review books. About ten years ago he started blogging at Books Inq. It is one of the most successful blogs in the literary blogosphere.

I interviewed Frank at his home in Philadelphia. We talk about how he established his blog, about the potential and influence of this medium, about the benefits of interactivity and connection and roundtables; Maxine Clarke’s crime fiction reviews; the provision of filtering services, shared links and interests; kindred spirits; embedding poetry and essays, and loneliness; about the strange side effects of reading and how passive entertainment becomes unwatchable, how most traditional media eschew feedback; what he looks for in book reviewers; Tchaikovsky’s unknown correspondent; the book’s connection to life; the nature of discourse; Instapundit and ‘instalanches;’ and those blogs he goes to every morning.

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"Margot Livesey grew up in a boys’ private school in the Scottish Highlands where her father taught, and her mother, Eva, was the school nurse. After taking a B.A. in English and philosophy at the University of York in England she spent most of her twenties [in Toronto] working in shops and restaurants and learning to write. Her first book, a collection of stories called Learning By Heart, was published by Penguin Canada in 1986. Since then Margot has published six novels: Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona and The House on Fortune Street (May 2008)."

Margot has taught at numerous universities, and received many awards and fellowships. She is currently a distinguished writer in residence at Emerson College and the John F. and Dorothy H. Magee writer in residence at Bowdoin College. She lives with her husband, a painter, in Cambridge, MA.

We met at the Philadelphia Book Festival, and talk here mostly about Shakespeare, and how themes found in Hamlet wend their way through much of what she has written: trust, betrayal, how much you can push other people around, entering stories from different angles, exits as entrances; the Alexandria Quartet, cranberry sauce, pieces of stories, cubism, faulty fractured vision, authorial versus character-faithful metaphors, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Tolstoy's ability to inhabit a wide range of characters, apparitions, the tradition of ghosts being real, our relationship with the dead, stories within stories, the sin of irrelevancy, Keats's wish to be taller, and Margot's ambition to make her sentences ('ethical units') better.

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Anke Feuchtenberger was born in 1963 in East Berlin and is one of Germany’s leading comic illustrator/artists. Her award winning work has been published in numerous books, newspapers, magazines and anthologies, and includes paintings, drawings, comics, posters, prints, costumes and puppets.

Her illustrations and comics are rendered in highly recognizable style, often featuring naked, childlike creatures with huge heads, wandering through strange, dream-like landscapes. Her haunting stories are a mixture of nightmare and fairytale. She is currently a professor of arts at the Fachhochschule für Gestaltung in Hamburg.

We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal to talk about, among other things, babies and politics, how election posters gave her her first big break, utopia, the difference between East and West Germany, loneliness, vertical newspaper columns, her complicated comics, graphic novels, Edward Munch, Kafka, her success outside the borders of Germany, and Super Tear, her babushka superhero.

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Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia under Malcolm Bradbury. He is the author of seven novels. The first, Burning Your Own (1988), set in Northern Ireland in 1969, won a Betty Trask Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.

We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal to talk about reassessing the past, the development and urban topography of his home town Belfast, cities versus nations, Disney, Tolstoy’s theory of history, human complexity, his latest novel The Third Party, apathy, public houses, the minor impact of books, and how happy he is with his oeuvre.

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Egyptian writer Alaa al Aswany was born in 1957 and studied dentistry in Egypt and Chicago. In addition to fiction, he writes on literature, politics, and social issues. His second novel, The Yacoubian Building, an ironic take on modern Egyptian society, was a significant best seller in and outside of the Arabic world. Chicago, a novel set in the city of that name was published in January 2007. The English translation is due out in bookstores this Fall.

We met at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talk here about the contamination of literature by politics, compartmentalizing the two, achieving artistic value, Martin Amis and Islamism, the fallacy of Mark Steyn’s fear mongering, the novel as life on paper but more profound, significant, beautiful than the ‘real’ thing, the writer’s need to listen to the sound of the heart, the difference between writing and fabricating, and why his novels have enjoyed such world-wide success.

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Born in 1929 in New York, educated at Columbia, John Hollander is a poet and literary critic. He has written more than a dozen books of poetry, and seven books of criticism, including Rhyme's Reason of which Harold Bloom said: "[it is] on all questions of schemes, patterns, forms, meters, rhymes of poetry in English, the indispensible authority..." and why I was so keen to interview him. According to New York Times, Hollander stresses the importance of hearing poems out loud: "A good poem satisfies the ear. It creates a story or picture that grabs you, informs you and entertains you."

His honors include the Bollingen Prize, the Levinson Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets he is the current poet laureate of Connecticut, and has taught at many different universities, including Yale.

We met recently at the Philadelphia Book Festival. I spend most of this interview relentlessly and unsuccessfully trying to badger him into identifying, comparing and describing the differences between great and bad poems. To name names. We do get to some of the great (Rosanna Warren, Shakespeare, Browning, Swinburne, Rossetti, for example) but he will not go anywhere near the bad. Toward the end, clearly tired from the day's activities and my uncalled for bullying, he reads a beautifully funny and thoughtful poem, based on a quote taken from Boswell's Life of Johnson, found in his collection, A draft of Light.

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André Alexis was born in 1957 in Trinidad and Tobago. His parents left for Canada when he was a baby. The family reunited in Ottawa when Alexis was four years old. He still remembers the trauma of this separation; it has coloured much of his writing since. Themes of absence, displacement, belonging and home animate his work. His debut novel, Childhood (1997), won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and was a co-winner of the Trillium Award.

Photo credit: Sari Ginsberg

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Andrew O’Hagan’s most recent novel, Be Near Me, has just won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It is the story of an English priest who takes over a small Scottish parish in a post-industrial town by the sea; a story of art and politics, love and faith, and the way we live now, which pretty well summarizes the conversation we had this past weekend at The Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal.

More specifically we talked about tragedy, escape, the determination not to be determined, fathers, the blurred boundaries between fiction, memoir and journalism, the United States, the role of writer in society, Martin Amis and Islamism, parents, writing ones own life, and coloured doors in social housing projects.

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Find out why L.M. Montgomery was so skeptical about biography despite spending endless hours shaping and re-shaping her journals for public display, using them to incubate ideas for her novels. Find out too how biography can, according to Ms. Gammel, provide valuable cultural and historical context within which to interpret, understand and appreciate works of art. And, if this isn’t enough, listen to what makes Anne of Green Gables a classic: how it appeals to young and old; takes Emerson and gives him a heart tempered with satire, how it appeals to universals, answers yearnings with pagan fairy tales, subverts and transcends the formulaic, and traces the lives of characters who evolve from stereotypes to complex, contradictory human beings.

If this still doesn’t do it, or even if it does, buy the book, Looking for Anne, written by Irene Gammel who, in addition to owning a delightful Montgomeryesque style, shares many of the characteristics of the heroines she so admires.

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William Deverell, has been widely hailed as Canada’s greatest ‘literary mystery’ writer. This from his website:

"Deverell worked as a journalist for seven years, with Canadian Press Montreal, the Vancouver Sun and the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, where he was night city editor while at the University of Saskatchewan law school and editor of the student newspaper.

As a member of the British Columbia, Alberta and Yukon Bars, he was counsel in more than a thousand criminal cases, including thirty murder trials, either as defender or prosecutor. He is a founding director, former president, now honorary director of the B. C. Civil Liberties Association.

His first novel, Needles, won the $50,000 Seal Prize in l979 and the Book of the Year Award in l98l. His subsequent novels include High Crimes, Mecca,The Dance of Shiva, Platinum Blues, Mindfield, Kill All the Lawyers, Street Legal – the Betrayal, and he is author of the true crime book A Life on Trial – The Case of Robert Frisbee, based on a notorious murder trial which he defended…Trial of Passion won Canada’s 1997 Arthur Ellis prize in crime writing, and the Dashiell Hammett award for literary excellence in crime writing in North America. "

Our conversation explores Deverell’s oeuvre in light of the question: How to write a great crime novel? Humour, complex characters, contentious relationships and appropriate use of ‘the clock’ all feature prominently in Deverell’s work, and contribute to what makes it award winning.

Twenty odd years ago my wife and I rented a cottage perched at the edge of the Rideau River for a weekend getaway. I cracked Deverell’s Dance of the Shiva shortly after arriving. Couldn’t get away from it. Couldn’t put it down. After finishing it, couldn’t understand why Deverell wasn’t as popular as Turow, Cornwell, Ellroy or Rendell. Still can’t.

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In honour of Poetry Month, here is my interview with Canadian poet, critic and political writer, David Solway. We first discuss what constitutes a great poem in the context of ‘political’ and other agendas that some poets incorporate into their work. According to Solway, great poems consist of authentic, incontestable, memorable language, with vivid power, lapidary quality and prodigious rhetorical flow, which takes time, education, reflection and maturity to work itself into themes of human importance; synoptic views of the complexity of human life; a confluence of eloquent language and major subject which has something important to say and which will resonate with contemporary and future generations.

Great poems are like Switzerland, says Solway: candidates must pass through a stringent, careful, fine-meshed filter before they are granted citizenship.

It is posterity that decides what is great. Aphoristic memorability and the wish to keep the words alive in the mind determines greatness.

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Sally Cooper’s second novel, Tell Everything,delves into the darkest regions of the human soul, and lends credence to Kipling’s line: "The female of the species is deadlier than the male."

During our conversation about Tell Everything we discuss topics including: the media and murder, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo,

…body parts in ponds, Rapunsil and crime plays, three way sex, the blurred, complicated lines of consent, the fear of self revelation, and love, self protection, shame and acceptance, boxes and cameras, novel writing as catharsis, iguanas in snow drifts, crime scene photographs, facing moral issues, true crime magazines, Michael Redhill’s short story The Victim, and women being every bit as predatory as men.

Sally Cooper grew up in Inglewood, Ontario, population 400. She has an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Guelph, and has published in such places as Shift, Blood & Aphorisms, Carousel, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and eye weekly. Her first novel, Love Object, came out in 2002 to critical acclaim. She currently teaches creative writing at Humber College and lives and writes in Hamilton, Ontario.

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The Brattle Book Shop, founded in the Cornhill section of Boston in 1825, has been in the hands of the Gloss Family since 1949. Over the years George and his son Kenneth built this shop into one of the largest antiquarian book shops in the United States. Ken is the current proprietor of The Brattle Book Shop. He is a past President of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America’s New England Chapter. He also sits on the Associate Board of the Boston Public Library.

Ken appraises books and libraries for Harvard, Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern, Simmons, Suffolk, Tufts, Babson, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the FBI and others. He lectures on the antiquarian book field to library groups, historical societies and other book-interested groups throughout the New England area.

Appearing on numerous local and national television and radio programs, Ken is often featured talking about books and their values. He also has written many articles on appraising books, book collecting and selling.

We spoke in the basement of his venerable shop.

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Haslam’s Books, now Florida’s largest new & used book store, was established in St. Petersburg in 1933 by two avid readers, John and Mary Haslam. After World War II they were joined by the second generation, Charles and Elizabeth. The business began to expand. In response to customers’ requests, new technical books were added, then Bibles and religious books and finally a complete line of trade books and a large section for children. The business has moved four times to accommodate growth. Today the store covers 30,000 square feet and contains some 300,000 books.

To promote books and reading, Charles had a television program on WEDU, the local PBS station, called "The Wonderful World of Books," and reviewed books on WSUN radio. He also appeared as a regular guest on WTOG-TV. Elizabeth operated book fairs at local schools for 25 years and now conducts "field trips" of ‘Florida’s largest book store’ for elementary classes. Both have been active in the American Bookseller’s Association (Charles was president from 1978 - 1980). They have taught in Bookseller Schools and written chapters in "The Manual of Bookselling." Both are published authors.

In 1973, the third generation came into the business: daughter Suzanne (who also authored a chapter in the "Manual on Bookselling") and husband Ray Hinst a history, classics & military expert. Ray and I talk here about book re-printers, early Baedekers, not collecting your own inventory, the explosion in self-publishing and authors who want bookstores to carry their works and provide signing events, collecting what you like, and the error of passing up on buying opportunities.

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Ian Brookes is Editor-in-Chief of The Chambers Dictionary which was first published in 1901 and most recently updated in 2006. We talk here about lexicographers, Samuel Johnson, Scotland, the speed of language change getting quicker, Chambers’ unique focus on old, Scottish, literary, historical words with humorous, sardonic definitions, such as mallemaroking and pock pudding, use of the dictionary by crossword puzzle and word game enthusiasts, Wikipedia’s Hawaiian roots, the charm of browsing, the influence of rap, urban slang, multiculturalism, and instant messaging, cookery terms and the pain of being a teacher.

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Kathryn Court joined Penguin Books in 1977 and became Editorial Director two years later. In l984 she was named Editor in Chief of Viking Penguin and in 1992 Senior Vice-President, Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Penguin Books. She was named President of Penguin Books in August 2000. Authors she has worked with include: Reinaldo Arenas, Andrea Camilleri, J.M. Coetzee, Slavenka Drakulic, Mary Relinda Ellis, Robert Fagles, Josephine Humphreys, Garrison Keillor, Nora Okja Keller, Donna Leon, Mary McGarry Morris, John Mortimer, Richard Rodriguez, C.J. Samsom, Jim Trelease, and William Trevor.

We met at BookExpo in New York, and talk here about: the role of publisher, artist Chris Ware’s funky Candide cover, new ways of selling things you already own, showing the young that reading can be fun, finding new authors and having faith in them, Andrea Camilleri and the benefit of buying series, hard cover versus soft cover sales, 4000 title backlists that finance front lists, J.M. Coetzee’s greatness, sales and distain for interviewers, the need for confidence in young editors in order to convince others that their picks are as good as they say they are, advertising in book review sections and how it doesn’t work, how emotional novels and those with voices women can identify with sell best, the three million copy selling The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, the sales power of word of mouth, and the joyful intensity of working as part of an editorial team…as a happy few against the world.

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Patrick McGahern has been selling books in Ottawa, Canada since 1969. His store specializes in used and rare books: Canadiana, Americana, Arctic, Antarctic, Travel, Natural History & Voyages, Illustrated & Plate Books, Irish and Scottish History and Literature. More than 30,000 titles are stocked at the Glebe store. Thousands of rare, scarce and interesting books are offered through their Catalogues which are published six times a year. Almost 10,000 titles are featured in their online database through ILAB (International League of Antiquarian booksellers).

I talked with Patrick in his store about the book trade: how it was, how it is, how it will be. About idiosyncrasies, obsessions, buses and booksellers playing psychiatrist and priest; about ILAB and AbeBooks, and finally, about simply doing the work.

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Margie McMillan is co-owner of the award winning Granny Bates Children’s Bookstore in St. John’s Newfoundland. We talk here about longevity and research as a reason for success, the brilliance of Graham Oakley and The Church Mice, the difference between back lists and mid-lists, schools as bread and butter, booksellers as literary critics, driving through the Swiss alps, new products that are called books, movies and cereal.

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At the time of this interview, John Freeman was president of The National Book Critics Circle. Founded in 1974, the NBCC is a non-profit organization consisting of nearly 700 active book reviewers who honor quality writing and communicate with one another about common concerns.

We met at BookExpo in New York and talked, among other things, about the NBCC’s awards program, the blog called Critical Mass, and the Campaign to Save Book Reviews which addresses the alarming shrinkage of newspaper book review sections across North America.

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Bernard Margolis was President of the Boston Public Library (BPL) from 1997-2008. Founded in 1848, the BPL was the first large free municipal library in the United States. Mr. Margolis has served on the Governing Council of the 63,000-member American Library Association (ALA), and has won many awards including “Colorado Librarian of the Year", two John Cotton Dana library public relations awards, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ “Award of Excellence? for his library-sponsored “Imagination Celebration."

He’s also a master storyteller as you’ll find out. We talk here about libraries as a public good, a culture of words and books designed to help everyone improve their lives, French ventriloquist and originator of the concept of the modern library Alexandre Vattemare (1796-1864), the U.S. as a leader in realizing this concept, immigration and self learning, an informed citizenry as the best defense of liberty, democratic access to information, BPL as the first to have a newspaper room, branch libraries and a separate children’s room, the Red Sox and the Yankees, why the ebook hasn’t replaced the paperback, Brewster Kahle versus Google and the Internet archive, and the question of whether or not information will be ‘free for all’ to improve the world.

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John Wronoski is a rare book dealer who specializes in literature, and primary works in the history of ideas in English, German, French, Spanish, and Russian. His shop, Lame Duck Books, contains the most significant selection of 19th and 20th century Spanish language literature in the world, and important originals of 17th and 18th century English poetry. In addition to performing the traditional role of bookseller, John serves as agent in the institutional placement of archives for some of the 20th Century's most important authors.

It is in this capacity, as literary archives dealer, that we talk here about, among other things: the importance of recognizing value in the rare book trade, paper production in the lives of writers, evident spiritual input in the process of creation, the evaluation, cataloguing, packaging and marketing of manuscripts, the comparative value of long-hand versus typed documents, the compatibility of pen and paper with the flow of thought, the value of hand written/type-written correspondence versus email, rich book dealers getting richer, Frederic Tuten's Tin Tin in the World, loosing $1 million manuscripts and adoption agencies.

(Please note the interview was conducted before the British Library purchased the Pinter archive)

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Elias Khoury is author of eleven novels including Little Mountain and Gates of the City. He is currently professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University, and editor in chief of the literary supplement of Beirut’s daily newspaper, An-Nahar. We talk here, at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, about his latest novel in English Gate of the Sun, of how great literature speaks to what is human and how religion doesn’t; of how telling stories helps us to overcome death, and how knowledge helps to overcome power; of keys, loss, hatred and love; of how important the right to story, memory and language is to the existence of a people; of the double tragedy of Palestine in 1948, the real one and the fact that the telling of this catastrophe has not been permitted; of how reading literature helps us discover ourselves and of how literature attempts to give meaning to the meaninglessness of life.

www.nigelbeale.com

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Peter Behrens’ short stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Tin House, Saturday Night, and The National Post and have been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories and Best Canadian Essays. He was born in Montreal and lives on the coast of Maine with his wife and son.

We talk here, at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, among other things about voice and poetry in his debut novel The Law of Dreams, Winner of The 2006 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. It tells the story of a young man’s struggle to survive the Great Famine in Ireland of 1847. On his odyssey through Ireland and Britain, and across the Atlantic to Canada Fergus O’brien encounters death, violence, sexual heat, ‘boy soldiers, brigands, street toughs and charming, willful girls – all struggling for survival in the aftermath of natural catastrophe magnified by political callousness and brutal neglect. ‘ Think Dickens meets J.M. Coetzee.

The book has been hailed by many reputable media outlets including The New York Times and The New Yorker.

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Lydia Davis is a contemporary American author and translator of French. From 1974 to 1978 she was married to Paul Auster, with whom she has a son. She has published six collections of short stories, including The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories (1976) and Break It Down (1986). Her most recent collection is not Samuel Johnson Is Indignant, but rather Varieties of Disturbance, published by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.

Her stories are acclaimed for their brevity, poetry, philosophy and humour. Many are only one or two sentences long. We talk here, at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, about the role of the translator, her Swann’s Way, measuring rooms three inches at a time, becoming Proust as an actor might a character, dialogue being more of a translation challenge than description because speech is born of environment and times, and the goal of creating living language that’s timeless.

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C.S. Richardson is an accomplished book designer who has worked in publishing for over twenty years. He is a multiple time recipient of the Alcuin Award (Canada’s highest honour for excellence in book design) and a frequent lecturer on publishing, design and communications. A rare bird indeed, he recently published his first novel The End of the Alphabet, and is currently at work on his second.

We talk here about C.S. Lewis, the role of the book designer, the award winning Bedside Book of Birds, ‘thumbage,’ how the best book design is invisible, the best designers currently at work in Canada, the U.S. and Britain, and Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, (published by Chatto and Windus in England, and Knopf in the U.S.), which, according to Richardson, is one of the best designed books in recent memory.

The Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscellany

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel

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Barbara Clubb is City Librarian and CEO of the Ottawa Public Library, past president of the Canadian Library Association, a member of the International Relations Committee of the ALA/Public Library Association; a director for the Canadian Writers Foundation and Monthly Book Reviewer for CBC Ottawa Radio One.

In this fascinating, wide ranging conversation we talk about the role of a city librarian now, at the turn of the 21 century; about library as place…where loitering is okay; accessibility, prescriptive versus reflective provision of information; the move from education to recreation and culture; Harry Potter in plastic; downloading copyrighted books; the zero list; a contest between librarians and Google; leveraging Google; the book as client versus people as clients; nine million items going in and out; and the necessity for librarians to be the opposite of their anti-social stereotype.

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John Metcalf is a highly regarded author who happens to have edited many of Canada’s foremost short story writers, including Lisa Moore, Alice Munro, and Michael Winter. Born in Carlisle, England, and educated at the University of Bristol, he emigrated to Canada in 1962. In addition to his own writings (novels, stories and essays), he currently holds the un-salaried post of Senior Editor at the Porcupine’s Quill of Erin, Ontario and is the editor of Canadian Notes and Queries. He resides in Ottawa, Ontario with his wife, Myrna.

We talk here about the role of the editor, game playing, the placement of words and punctuation, manipulating emotions, unclogging channels between writers and readers, diplomacy, nouns, hammers, electric current, anti-Americanism, ignorant Canadian nationalists and inferiority complexes.

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Amanda Earl writes erotic fiction in Ottawa, Canada, as much for her own pleasure as anything else. Her stories have consistently been selected for publication in Carroll and Graf’s annual Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica. Amanda publishes and writes poetry, is managing editor of the Bywords Quarterly Journal, and hosts Bywords.ca, a website invaluable to Ottawans interested in local literary events.

We talk here about the definitions of erotica and pornography (a common joke: “Erotica is when you use a feather. Pornography is when you use the whole chicken), red wine versus white, connecting with and arousing readers, giving pleasure, the act, golden showers, being bad, the Erotica Readers and Writers Association, S&M, compelling characters and work as prostitution.

The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Volume 3: The Latest Annual Collection (Mammoth Books)

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Ronald Cohen is author of the Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill published in 2006: a ‘richly annotated work’ containing thousands of entries, with detailed descriptions of each work by Churchill, including information on content, typography,paper, illustrations, maps, facsimiles, bindings, dust jackets, publication and printing history, translations, and library/collection locations, plus circumstances of publication.

Cohen’s fascination with Churchill began during his time with The Economist in London, shortly after his graduation from Harvard University. He began collecting Churchilliana in 1969. The publication of this major work is the culmination of 25 years’ dedicated research. Cohen is the National Chair of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, a lawyer, founding Chairman of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, a Genie award-winning film producer, and President of the Friends of Library and Archives Canada.

We talk here generally about the art of bibliography, specifically about binding and centriod colour charts, altruism, accessibility, building road-maps, how many bibliographers start off as disgruntled collectors, experiencing the thrill and joy of collecting without having to lay out the dough, bibliography as storytelling, innovative periodical entry descriptions, errata, when to stop, how Cohen always got it wrong, surrendering, and uncharted works bolting from the undergrowth.

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David Franklin is former Chief Curator at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and editor of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and the Renaissance in Florence, a catalogue published by Yale University Press to accompany a major exhibition of the same name held at the Gallery from May 29, 2005 to September 5, 2005.

We talk here mostly about the exhibition catalogue as book: what differentiates it from typical works of scholarly non-fiction, the challenges of catering both to the research community and the general public. what is it? A tour guide? A souvenir? A text book? Offering words for works; the drawbacks of publishing to deadline; how, ideally, catalogues should be written after exhibitions take place...

But we don't ignore content: the pragmatism of Giorgio Vasari; his art collection; the primacy of drawing in Renaissance Florence; painting as a process of investigation; and the jolting juxtaposition of illuminating essays and academic catalogue entries...

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Christopher Pratt is one of Canada’s most ‘prominent’ painters. He is now also a published poet.

We talk here, in his home of St Mary’s Bay, Newfoundland on the Salmonier River, about his book A Painter’s Poems (Breakwater Books, 2005), about parallels between his writing and his art, emptiness, loneliness, cleanliness, juxtaposing real and imagined worlds, getting it right, abandonment, absence and how it draws in readers and viewers, leaving important things unsaid, seasons, a man drawing circles in the sand who, when asked why he does it, responds "Well, I’d be a damned fool if I didn’t," and about how creation involves sharing what is most intimate in order to communicate; in order to find out about and connect with the same in others.

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Barbara Reid’s plasticine artwork makes her books instantly recognizable. They have won acclaim around the world, and many awards. We talk here about what makes her so good, about great children’s book illustrators, the accurate conveyance of emotion, mice in subways, making room for the imagination, chiaroscuro, working in ice cream, wanting to show things to those you love, pony-tails, playing hooky, and war.

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Ramona Dearing lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and is the latest member of the longstanding (and increasingly famous) fiction collective The Burning Rock to publish a collection of short fiction. Dearing works for CBC Radio where she is currently busy putting together a nationally broadcast program featuring young Canadian artists. So Beautiful was published in 2004 by The Porcupine’s Quill Press.

We talk here about her stories, my favourites, and hers, bodies in bags, judging one’s own work, doing the right thing, frustration, Christian brothers at Mount Cashel, dogs, Kafka at the CBC, the importance of radio and the weather to Newfoundlanders, Brad Pitt and parallel plot lines.

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Here's Tim Parks on his novel Cleaver: "Cleaver comes out of my love of the South Tyrol and a growing awareness/ irritation/ anxiety about the invasive nature of the public voice, the spoken media, in our minds and lives. And of course Cleaver, this charismatic, chaotic, destructive, hatefully likeable man who seemed just right for bringing out all the tensions between the seductive fizz of public life, various family nightmares and the magnificent emptiness of the mountains."

We talk about the challenge of being left alone with oneself, being isolated in Italy removed from the buzz, getting above the noise line, the current proliferation of confession with its roots in Rousseau, not wanting to spend time with nice people who have nothing to say, predictable antagonisms in the news media, the awareness that celebrity is vacuous and yet still pursuing it, building reputation even after ceasing to believe there's any meaning in it, and how good novels open space for difficult topics to be discussed with pleasure.

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Lisa Moore’s fiction has been published widely in literary magazines and in anthologies. Her two collections of short stories, Degrees of Nakedness and Open have received praise for their ’supple sensuality and emotional authenticity.’ She lives in Newfoundland.

We talked there, and here about her recently published first novel, Alligator, about tea, pine martins, time, the exotic, Tasmania, Cezanne, St. John's as a bowl of oranges, Cubism, being in the present, survival, light, if it’s ever okay not to be good, cadence and wit in storytelling, and the colour blue…quite a few things really.

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Michael Crummey is a Newfoundland-born poet, short story writer and novelist. He is known for his historical fiction. His multi-award winning novel River Thieves depicts the relationship between European settlers and the last of the Beothuk indians in the early 19th Century. The Wreckage tells the story of a young Newfoundland soldier and his beloved during and after World War ll.

We talk about Michael's goal of taking the bare facts of historical events and making the people in those events feel real, maintaining a spine of fact, the impossibility of seeing inside what extinction felt like, conjecture, emotional authenticity, false assumptions, the honesty of fiction, and falsehood of factual 'truth,' respect for the reality of people's lives, fiction being best at capturing rich complex weave of lived experience, marketability; The Wreckage, evil, 9/11, boom times in Newfoundland during WWll, and finally, the mistaken expectation of getting facts from historical novels.

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James O. Born is a Special Agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and author of three best selling crime novels. We talk about his most recent, Escape Clause; about blurbs, putting humour and a human face on the real life experience of cops, how life followed art in this novel, Karma and good moral compasses, the goal of writing compelling prose with surprise endings, cheer leading competitions, smacking people who talk of movie options without deliverying, Jaws, the compulsion to write and the unsurpassibility of Elmore Leonard.

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Australian Tim Winton wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer (1982), at the age of 19. It won the Australian Vogel National Literary Award.

Born in Perth, in 1960, he is the author of Shallows (1986), a novel set in a whaling town, and Cloudstreet (1991), the story of two working-class families rebuilding their lives. Both won Miles Franklin Awards. The Riders (1995) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won a Commonwealth Writers Prize.

He is also the author of two collections of short stories, Scission and Other Stories (1987) and Minimum of Two (1987), and co-author of several travel books about Australia, including Land’s Edge (1993). His novel Dirt Music (2001), was shortlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize.

I spoke with him during the Toronto International Writers Festival about his latest book The Turning, a series of linked stories. He seemed tired, a bit bummed about having been away from home for so long. The bloody tape ran out right in the middle of a lovely story he was telling about his converting wood from an old weir into a set of bookshelves for his library.

Tim is an extremely likable, self effacing man with interesting ideas about the relationship between writing and music, as you will hear if you choose to listen…

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ANDREW MILLER was born in Bristol…in 1960 (induced, according to the family legend, by his mother eating a large supper of fish and chips). At age eleven, having convincingly failed his Eleven Plus, he went to boarding school in Wiltshire…Master of Arts in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of East Anglia in 1991…PhD from Lancaster University…In February 1996, after six years of writing, ‘Ingenious Pain’ his first novel, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Grinzane Cavour prize & the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Ingenious Pain & his second novel Casanova are being/have been adapted for Film. His novel, Oxygen, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2001. His third novel, Oxygen was shortlisted for the Booker. His books have been published in over twenty countries. He now lives in Brighton and believes that on clear days he can see the coast of France.

We talk about his novel is THE OPTIMISTS, prizes, Shakespeare, Hardy, Lawrence, stylism, and his looks and wish to be a fat woman. Andrew Miller is as articulate verbally as he is on the page. Listen…don’t just take my word for it…

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Wendy Duff is Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Information Studies. She received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh. Her primary research interests are user studies, archival description, and electronic records. We talk here about the differences between Librarians and Archivists, and other important ‘stuff’.

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Jim Roberts is the owner of Books End Bookstore in Syracuse, New York. We talk here among other things about salt, the AB Bookman's weekly magazine, the emergence and evolution of book-selling on the Internet from Interloc, to Alibris, to Abebooks; collecting General Custer, war books and the histories of American military divisions.

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Prizes are ridiculous. Winners are often poor writers. Short lists are political. The whole world kneels before a bunch of Swedish academics who only read books in translation...

So what does Tim Parks really think of book awards? Listen up. You'll also get his thoughts on Salman Rushdie and J.M. Coetzee.

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Dr. Don Nichol is an English Professor at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada. He has been researching copyright law and its role in the history of writing and publishing for more than a decade. He is the author of Pope’s Literary Legacy, published by the Oxford Bibliographical Society in 1992, and editor, more recently, of The New Foundling Hospital for Wit 1768-1773, a three-volume set containing enhanced facsimiles of some of the 18th-century’s most popular and salacious English satire.

Nothing too salacious in our conversation, unfortunately, but we do have a rollicking good talk about 18th Century booksellers and authors, the Copyright Act of 1710, copyright libraries, 14 year protection, perpetual monopoly, the famous Alexander Pope and his friend John Gay, Dr. Johnson, and his biographer James Boswell, less famous Andrew Miller, and my new hero, the independent Scottish bookseller/philanthropist Alexander Donaldson, a Warren Buffet of his age.

Periodically you’ll hear what sounds like an earthquake rumbling in the background…this is nothing more than a soft Atlantic cross-breeze wafting through Don’s corner (yes, he’s made it) office in the Arts building where the interview was conducted.

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Fran Durako is owner of the Kelmscott Bookshop in Baltimore, Maryland. We talk here about her love of William Morris, fine printing and Victorian book illustration, the transition from book collector to seller, and art as a ‘positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to.’

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Novelist and acclaimed critic David Gilmour was born in London, Ontario in 1949. His first novel, Back on Tuesday, was published in 1986, followed by How Boys See Girls in 1991 and An Affair with the Moon in 1993. Lost Between Houses, published in 1999, was nominated for the Trillium Book Award. Sparrow Nights, his fifth novel, was published by Random House to rave reviews. His latest novel, A Perfect Night to Go to China, won Canada’s 2005 Governor General’s Award for Fiction. I met with him in the foyer of the Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa the morning after he received his award from the Governor General at Rideau Hall.

We talk about winning it, sex, suicide, kids, the perfect woman, wearing spandex at discos and the fact that for him, conquering for women and affirmation are not the same thing. He is a candid, funny, sensitive man worth listening to. Hope the background Christmas carols, and what sounds like a flock of little tweety birds, aren’t too distracting…

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Martin Levin was the popular (particularly at Book Expo Canada where we met) Books Editor at the (Toronto) Globe and Mail newspaper. We talk here about namesakes in Tolstoy, guilt, tragedy, sorrow at not being able to review anywhere near all worthy books, blockbusters syphoning money away from deserving titles, getting boys to read books, graphic novels, Canadian literature as post-colonial/nationalist; Cynthia Ozick, post-modern levelling, discerning value, the benefits of competition, the decline of book talk in print, and Thunder Bay, Ontario.

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Canongate publisher Jamie Byng appreciates and understands that myth and The Bible lie at the core of creative imagination and the Western Canon. He marries this knowledge with a skill for presentation and promotion that few other publishers can match. I met with him at BookExpo in Washington D.C. We talk here, among other things, about how he does it, about ambiguity, about the responsibility we parents have to make the lives of our children interesting if not easy, and about living without fear.

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Interview with used antiquarian book dealer Peter Ellis at his shop on Cecil Court Road in London, England.

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Pulitzer Prize winning poet Paul Muldoon was in Ottawa for the Writers Festival. We talk here about poetry as pemmican; about initials, dashed expectations, the movie Ice Age, James Joyce’s secular epiphanies, the luck of Shakespeare and Mozart, what constitutes great poetry, judgement, pigs, the depth of Johnny Depp, and hot water bottles.

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Nobel Prize winning poet Derek Walcott read at the Blue Metropolis Writers Festival in Montreal several weeks ago. We talk here about England, parents, Ted Hughes, William Blake, combining painting and poetry, the sea, getting laid, and returning. Like many truly great men, Mr. Walcott is, in addition to being an articulate, moving communicator, humble and approachable.

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Gill Coleridge is a partner with Rogers, Coleridge & White, one of the top literary agencies in the world. I spoke with her at the 2006 London Bookfair about how discounting squeezes authors; about the role of the literary agent, the championing of her stable of writers, her pick of England's hottest new literary talents (Peter Hobbs, Adam Thirlwell, Phil Lamarshe, Louise Dean, Jim Younger), about cakes, and suicide.

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Neil Wilson is a former journalist/broadcaster, future publisher, current long-distance runner and Founding Director of the Ottawa International Writers Festival. We talk about his love of Irish literature and poetry, his founding of the Festival in 1997, what motivates him to do what he does, and this Spring’s impressive, Beckett-backed line-up which goes on stage April 17, 2006.

We met at my apartment in Ottawa.

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Here is my interview with Stephen Page (unparalleled name for a publisher) CEO and Publisher of Faber and former British Publishers Association President, conducted hurriedly at the 2006 London Book Fair. We talk briefly about the role and necessity of publishing houses, the impact of the Internet, discounting, supermarkets, ebooks and 3 for 2 band-aids.

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Rap as rebellion, slang as hipness, and jargon as obfuscatory exclusionary pretense. These are topics discussed during my interview with world-renowned slang lexicographer Jonathon Green last month at his home office in London, England. And bloody invigorating it was too.

We talk about why penises are funny and beat out vaginas, why slang is negative and misogynist and how it carries a kind of inventive cleverness seldom found in the harmless drudgery of every day language. We talk too about Samuel Johnson’s political bias, Eric Partridge’s connection to my relative Paul Beale, Jonathon’s insistence on austere objectivity, and the fact that he simply can’t afford to piss around having fun.

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The Rockcliffe Park Book Fair is one of the oldest, biggest, best used book sales in Ontario, if not Canada. Book dealers travel across the country every year to cash in on the great deals. More than 3500 volunteer hours go into the making of it annually (600 for all activities in one year is, apparently, considered impressive re: parental involvement in school activities). Twenty six thousand books were sold last year with the same number left over.

Book Fair is organized with precision and good humour. It takes place during the first week of November each year and always comes off in style. Too bad the people behind it (most of them are women) don’t run the country. Maggie Knaus, an exuberant book-lover, mother of two and professional photographer, was the ideal choice to chair the 2006 Fair.

We met at my apartment located in Ottawa's Rideau-Rockcliffe neighborhood where I spoke with her about the mammoth task.

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I’ve known Kensel Tracy for 20 years. We met in 1985 when he was in charge of marketing at the Ottawa-Carleton Tourism Commission and I was Membership Director at the Board of Trade.

I can’t think of anyone I’ve ever met who is as energetic and creative. Kensel is a true marketer. Over the years he has worked with Ottawa's Festival of Spring, Winterlude, Habitat for Humanity and many other good community causes. More recently he has been a business coach helping small companies to market their products and services.

About six months ago he decided to self-publish a book called The Ten Commitments to a Better Life. It contains his thoughts on achieving success. I spoke with him about the steps he took to turn his ideas into a smart looking publication.

The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale: Recent Episodes

Nigel Beale