Kobo in Conversation: Recent Episodes
Rakuten Kobo
From Rakuten Kobo, your friendly global digital bookseller, comes a series of conversations with authors about their latest books, how they write, and the books and authors that shaped and inspired them. Join host Michael Tamblyn, CEO of Rakuten Kobo, for wide-ranging and revealing discussions about the books and authors we love.
Nathan Maharaj spoke with musician and novelist David Baerwald, author of The Fire Agent. It's a story spanning the world wars of the 20th century viewed through the eyes of Ernst Baerwald, a bright and idealistic young man who finds himself at the frontiers of chemistry and war.
David Baerwald on feeling his way through history
In the spirit of "Christmas in July," we're presenting a special live episode of Kobo in Conversation from the Toronto International Festival of Authors' inaugural Ever After, the romance book festival. This was recorded back in November 2025, and though it deals with some extremely seasonal themes, we don't mind a little Christmas in July and we thought you might be into it as well.
For a session called "Snowflakes and Sparks," Michael Tamblyn spoke with authors Marissa Stapley and Karma Brown writing under their pen names Julia McKay and Kristine Winters, about what Christmas and Christmas Romance means to them, as well as their COVID-era collaborations as Maggie Knox.
LIVE from Ever After, with Julia McKay & Kristine Winters
Join the Kobo in Conversation reading challenge on StoryGraph
Michael Tamblyn spoke with Patrick Radden Keefe, who has been writing for the New Yorker since 2006 and is the author of nonfiction bestsellers including Empire of Pain and Say Nothing. His latest book is London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth. They were joined by an intimate studio audience.
Patrick Radden Keefe on London's dark descent
Nathan Maharaj spoke with the novelist and journalist Jowita Bydlowska about her new book Unshaming: A Memoir of Recovery, Relapse, and What Comes After. It's a frank, unflinching recounting of the years following the publication of her first book, the memoir Drunk Mom. And it's a thoughtful, fearless meditation on the concept of shame.
Jowita Bydlowska speaks about her accidental expertise in shame
For this special bonus episode of Kobo in Conversation, producer and co-host Nathan Maharaj was joined by one of Kobo's booksellers (and frequent Staff Picks contributor), Deandra Lalonde. They sort through the buzziest books to take along to the beach, the books landing in the next few weeks that you won't want to miss, and how best to bring a little Hollywood into your summer reading this year.
Books mentioned:
- Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
- Whistler by Ann Patchett
- Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune
- From 2023: Carley Fortune on summer love and second chances
- Heartstopper #6 by Alice Oseman
- Big Little Truths by Liane Moriarty
- The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson
- The Odyssey by Homer
- There's Only One Sin in Hollywood by Rasheed Newson
- On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle
And check out dozens more summer picks HERE.
Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Sharon Bala, author of the award-winning 2018 novel, The Boat People. Her new book is called Good Guys. It's about a nearly bankrupt international aid charity called Children of the World, and how their stumbling into the good graces of an A-list celebrity raises a lot of money, and a lot of questions about who the good guys really are.
You can watch their conversation too: https://youtu.be/6_YeVizUPr4
Sharon Bala on the absurdity of so-called Good Guys
This week we're bringing you a conversation Michael Tamblyn had in 2021 with Natalie Zina Walschots about her extremely fun novel called Hench. It's about a world where superheroes are out there saving the day in super ways, while villains, who are a lot like you and me, run organizations bent on taking over the world while also trying to keep scores up on Glassdoor.
Natalie's just released a sequel to Hench, and it's called Villain.
[From 2021:]
We learned about some of the fantastical worlds Natalie enjoyed exploring as a young reader "often for sheer escapism," as well as the writers she drew inspiration from while starting out as a writer herself, and as a lifelong student of supervillainy:
- Robert O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and Z for Zachariah
- High fantasy including J. R. R. Tolkien, but also Shannara, Dragonlance, and "anything with a wizard holding an orb on the cover" or "a skeleton holding a sword"
- Christian Bök, Karen Solie, bp Nichol, and other writers "doing super weird things with language and the structural materiality of language..."
- Soon I Will Be Invincible "was the first book I read from the perspective of a supervillain."
- "Paradise Lost is really important to me ... the relationship between Satan the adversary to the world informs the way I write villains."
- Neil Gaiman's Sandman, where "a character who's a villain in one context becomes the protagonist in another."
- Vicious by V E Schwab
- Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus and various writings of Catherynne M. Valente for their "messed up fairy tale feel."
Nathan Maharaj spoke with physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, author of the 2021 book The Disordered Cosmos, a highly personal reflection on the human and inherently flawed practice of scientific inquiry and her career as a Black Jewish scientist. Her new book is The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie. In it she explains to readers, what's really going on with quantum cats? what does a light-swallowing black hole actually look like? what can we learn about quantum theory from the Afrofuturist jazz musician Sun Ra? —and a whole lot more.
Why Chanda Prescod-Weinstein sees hope in cosmic curiosity
Hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj dove deep on the controversy around the book Shy Girl, which was cancelled by its publisher who alleged it was largely AI-generated.
Links on Shy Girl:
- The video from January 2026 that seems to have led to Shy Girl's cancellation: i'm pretty sure this book is ai slop - YouTube
- Publishing news journalist Alexandra Alter on the controversy over the cancellation of Shy Girl: A.I. Is Writing Fiction. Publishers Are Unprepared. - The New York Times
- Publishing industry analyst Thad McIlroy on what NYT omitted from their piece: I Broke the Year's Biggest Literary Story. The New York Times Took the Credit | The Walrus
- Two very "inside baseball" overviews of what happened:
- The New Publishing Standard's deep dive on Shy Girl
- Publisher's Weekly industry analysis
- What might be the last extant page on any of Hachette's sites about the book: Shy Girl: Read the femgore revenge novel that EVERYONE is talking about! by Mia Ballard - Books - Hachette Australia
Other links from this episode:
- Why AI detection is hard People who frequently use ChatGPT for writing tasks are accurate and robust detectors of AI-generated text - ACL Anthology (mistakenly attributed to MIT in the episode)
- Past episodes of this show that touched on the use of AI in book publishing:
- Michael bets on "AI Sally Rooney" (from October 2024)
- Anna Gomez enlisted AI for research assistance when writing a romance road trip (November 2024)
- Sean Michaels wrote a book about AI and art by using AI for parts of it (November 2023)
More author interviews at kobo.com/conversation
Find past Booktalking episodes here
Michael Tamblyn spoke with novelist Heather Marshall. She is a writer of historical fiction, including her 2022 debut bestselling novel Looking for Jane and 2024's with The Secret History of Audrey James. Heather Marshall's new book is Liberty Street. It's the story of a young journalist's quest to expose the cruelty and corruption of the Mercer Women's Prison from the inside, the women she meets there, and a police detective trying to uncover a secret 30 years later.
How Heather Marshall brings readers into places of the past
Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Rainbow Rowell. She's the author of books including Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, as well as the novel Slow Dance, which she discussed on the show in 2024. Rainbow Rowell's new book is the novel Cherry Baby. It's about a woman named Cherish, who everybody calls Cherry, at a moment in her life when her marriage seems to have ended and she's figuring out what comes next.
Why Rainbow Rowell's Cherry Baby had to be her sexiest book yet
Nathan Maharaj spoke with Tara Gereaux, author of the novel Saltus and the novella Size of a Fist. Her new book is called Wild People Quiet. Set in 1946, it's the story of Florence, or Mrs. Banks as she's known down at Pratt's Insurance, the company where she's worked diligently for years. While out for lunch with her colleagues one day, Florence encounters a man whose mere presence threatens to upend the life she's made for herself in the town of Torduvalle, Saskatchewan.
Tara Gereaux on finding the words for an unspoken identity
Michael Tamblyn spoke with Eliana Ramage, author of To the Moon and Back. It's a novel about Steph, a young Cherokee woman who from the earliest age is obsessed with space and space travel, dreaming about one day becoming a NASA astronaut.
How Eliana Ramage set her sights on the stars for her debut novel
Nathan spoke with George Newman, psychologist and associate professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. His new book is How Great Ideas Happen: The Hidden Steps Behind Breakthrough Success. It's a guide to generating ideas, hopefully great ideas, and learning about mental habits that often get in the way, and how creativity is a skill you can train and exercise.
George Newman on getting good at bad ideas—so great ideas can happen | Kobo Books Blog
Joined by a live audience in Kobo's intimate event space, Michael Tamblyn spoke with novelist Leanne Toshiko Simpson, author of Never Been Better and winner of the 2025 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. Never Been Better is the story of a group of three friends who met in a psych ward, but time has passed and now two of whom are about to get married while the third tries to figure out whether to swallow her feelings or let it all out.
Leanne Toshiko Simpson on self-care and writing a prize-winning rom-com
Hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj caught up on the latest private equity-fueled mergers & acquisitions, what we're not talking about when we're talking about the money made from books, plus a whole lot more.
This episode covers:
- Rosetta Books acquired by Open Road Media
- Why private equity is (still) interested in the book business, most recently in German companies Bookwire and Zebralution
- Independent Publishing Group's move to add more direct-to-consumer services for their publisher clients (and why becoming a bookseller is harder than it looks)
- The "dark matter"* that's not being reported when we talk about the health of the book business
- Publishers and librarians duking it out over digital book pricing
- Sidebar on Heated Rivalry and the NYPL
- And a remembrance of Porter Anderson
Beloved backlist books cited in this episode include Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis, The Rise and Fall fo the Third Reich by William L. Shirer, the works of Octavia E. Butler and William Styron.
More author interviews at kobo.com/conversation
Find past Booktalking episodes here
*Nathan said "grey matter" in the episode because his was failing him at the time.
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with Dan Rubinstein, author of Water Borne: A 1,200-Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage. In it he tells the story of his journey via stand-up paddleboard through waterways around Montreal, New York City, Toronto, and his home in Ottawa. But it's also the story of all of us, and how we benefit from spending time near bodies of water.
Dan Rubinstein on finding community on waterfronts
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with poet and novelist Souvankham Thammavongsa. Her first poetry collection Small Arguments was published in 2003, and in 2020 her first short story collection How to Pronounce Knife won Canada's Giller Prize. Her latest book is a novel called Pick a Colour. It's a story set in a nail salon run by a retired boxer, and it won the Giller Prize in 2025.
Souvankham Thammavongsa on writing a woman at the centre of her own story
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with sports broadcaster Eric Smith and writer Andrew Bricker, who together are the authors of We the Raptors: 30 Players – 30 Stories – 30 Years. It is a snackable feast of a book about Canada's only NBA team, the Toronto Raptors, who celebrate their 30th anniversary this season.
Eric Smith and Andrew Bricker on 30 years of the Toronto Raptors
Following our last episode all about the best books we read in 2025, host and producer Nathan Maharaj connected over Zoom with even more Kobo staffers—as well as Kobo in Conversation co-host Michael Tamblyn—to talk about the books that have stuck with them over the past 12 months.
So welcome back once more, to our year in books.
The best books we read in 2025
We'll be back in your feed soon with more amazing author interviews.
It's no spoiler to say that Kobo is full of avid readers. So every year we get together to share the best books we read in the past year. Some of the books are new. Some are very old. All were beloved to a Kobo staffer.
So across 2 whole episodes (follow to make sure you don't miss the second one!), join us as we hear from the staff of Kobo about the best books they read in 2025.
The best books we read in 2025
Michael Tamblyn spoke with Miriam Toews, author of many novels including A Complicated Kindness, All My Puny Sorrows, and Women Talking, to name just a few. Her latest book is a memoir called, A Truce That Is Not Peace. Spurred by the question "why do you write?", posed by a distressingly persistent literary festival organizer, it's a work of nonfiction that delves into the author's feelings around the deaths by suicide of both her father and her sister.
Miriam Toews on her new memoir, and the surprising truth of good comedy
Nathan Maharaj spoke with the novelist Charlotte McConaghy. Her latest book is Wild Dark Shore. It's the story of the Salt family, the stewards of a vast seed bank on a remote island that's in danger of being washed over by rising sea levels. As they're making the hard decisions about what can be saved in the course of their evacuation, a vicious storm tears across the island and leaves a woman washed up on the shore—and she's alive.
Charlotte McConaghy found fear on the Wild Dark Shore
Nathan Maharaj spoke with the Oscar-nominated filmmaker and journalist Julian Brave NoiseCat. He co-directed the 2024 documentary Sugarcane which investigated abuses at a residential school in western Canada. He is also the author of a new book called We Survived the Night: An Indigenous Reckoning. It's about his dad, and also his upbringing, and a mythical character named Coyote.
Julian Brave Noisecat set out to tell a story in the trickster tradition
Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Mona Awad. Her debut book, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl was a Giller Prize finalist. Its follow-up Bunny was set in an Ivy League creative writing program and blended horror and suspense with wicked satire. We Love You, Bunny is her fifth novel, and it's a return to that creative writing program, revisiting the story through the perspectives of characters who apparently want to set the record straight but end up pulling us even further down this dark and twisting rabbit hole.
Mona Awad on returning to the world of Bunny
Hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj caught up on a landmark legal decision about books and AI, the perils of bookstore merch, plus a whole lot more.
This episode covers:
- Anthropic AI v. Authors
- and Authors v. Apple
- How Powell's Books' new mugs got them into hot water
- Barnes & Noble buying Books Inc.
- C-suite changes at Simons & Schuster and Harper UK
- A novel approach to creative writing this November
Somehow, neither of them mentioned a specific book this time. They've been spoken to and have promised to do better in the future.
Find other Booktalking episodes here
And all our author interviews are at kobo.com/conversation
Michael Tamblyn spoke with journalist Brian Stewart, whose career spanned decades, covering the US-Iraq Gulf War, famine in Ethiopia, and countless other historical events for CBC and NBC. He tells us about all of it—including what was going on in his life off-camera—in a new book: On the Ground: My Life as a Foreign Correspondent.
Brian Stewart reports on the golden age of being a foreign correspondent
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with Antonio Michael Downing, author of the 2021 memoir Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming, as well as the illustrated children’s book Stars in My Crown. For just about a year now he’s also been the host of CBC’s The Next Chapter, where every week he talks to authors (and once in a while an opinionated bookseller) about books they want people to pay attention to. He joined us to talk about his first novel: Black Cherokee. It’s the story of Ophelia Blue Rivers, a girl growing up in South Carolina where her mixed ancestry leaves her struggling for acceptance amidst the Cherokee community where her grandmother raised her.
Antonio Michael Downing's literary journey into the South
Host Michael Tamblyn spoke with novelist Scott Alexander Howard, winner of the 2025 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and author of The Other Valley. It’s the story of Odile Ozanne, a young girl who lives in a small village in a valley. In the next valley over, in the west, there is an identical village where events from 20 years ago are taking place, and in the valley to the east there is another village where it’s 20 years in the future. Occasionally, and under the strictest controls and in a disguise rendering them unidentifiable, people will visit the other valleys, looking forward, or backward in time.
One day, visitors from the east—that is, from the future—are recognized by Odile, and she has to carry on pretending she hasn’t seen what she knows she saw.
Scott Alexander Howard on the border-crossings between present and past
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Rob Franklin. His debut novel Great Black Hope is about a young man, named Smith, who gets arrested for cocaine possession on his way home from a party at the end of an oppressively hot New York summer. Smith is Black, and he’s queer; he’s also a Stanford graduate and his family back in Atlanta is, as they say, not without means. As Smith’s court date looms and he enters treatment for addiction, he’s grieving the sudden and tragic death of a friend.
Rob Franklin's upwardly-mobile, downwardly-spiraling Great Black Hope
This past spring Kobo held an event for employees called KoboCon. It was an opportunity for the staff of Kobo to share interesting things they're working on and some big ideas they're grappling with. One of those big ideas was how the information ecosystem affects readers, writers, and individuals coming together at work, so we brought in expert explainer and debunker Timothy Caulfield to talk about it through the lens of his latest book The Certainty Illusion: What You Don’t Know and Why It Matters. While we take a little break for the summer, we're bringing you that on-stage conversation now.
Timothy Caulfield and The Certainty Illusion - Live at KoboCon 2025!
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Wally Lamb, the author of novels including She’s Come Undone, I Know This Much Is True, and The Hour I First Believed. His new novel, his first in nearly a decade, is The River is Waiting. It’s about Corbin Ledbetter, Corby to his friends, husband to Emily and father to twins Maisie and Niko. Corby’s at the precipice of mid-life when he makes a terrible, terrible mistake. It’s the kind of mistake most of us would struggle to imagine ever coming back from, but that’s what Corby has to figure out as he endures punishments from society, family, and the harshest judge of all, himself.
Wally Lamb on wading into autobiography for The River is Waiting
Host Michael Tamblyn spoke with Eliza Reid, author of the novel Death on the Island. It’s a mystery set on a remote island in Iceland where a dinner party of diplomats turns fatal for the deputy ambassador of Canada.
And it just so happens that the elements of this story—Iceland, diplomacy, and the perils of being a Canadian out in the world—these are all things that Ottawa-born Eliza Reid knows well from the 8 years she spent as the First Lady of Iceland.
Eliza Reid on paying homage to the difficult work of diplomacy
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with poet and novelist Aaron Kreuter. His new book is Lake Burntshore, which tells the story of the summer of 2013 at a Canadian Jewish summer camp that’s just fired a several camp counsellors after they're caught smoking (then-illegal) marijuana. The enterprising son of the camp's owner springs into action and comes up with a surprising solution to their sudden staffing needs: a group of charming and very young Israeli soldiers.
Aaron Kreuter finds new possibilities in summer camp
Host Michael Tamblyn spoke with Elyse Graham, author of Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War Two. It’s the true story of how the United States, as war raged in Europe, quickly built an organization staffed with intelligence officers recruited not from the military—but from the ranks of the bookworms—the academics, librarians, and archivists found in universities and libraries across the US. After being trained in the art of espionage (and mortal combat) they were sent off to faraway places as exceptionally well-read spies.
Elyse Graham tells the story of WWII's scholarly spies
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with Liann Zang, author of the new novel Julie Chan is Dead. In it, Julie Chan is in fact very much alive but her estranged twin sister Chloe, a wildly successful social media influencer, has suddenly died and it just so happens that Julie is for just a moment the only person in the world who knows Chloe is dead. So she decides to pick up and start living Chloe’s apparently fabulous life, letting the world believe it's Julie Chan's body being carried out of Chloe’s apartment on a stretcher.
Liann Zhang on satirizing social media influencers from the inside
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Jon Hickey, author of Big Chief.It’s takes place in an Anishinaabe reservation called Passage Rouge Nation during the last weekend before a Tribal Presidential election. Incumbent president Mack Beck is coasting to another term happily overseeing tribal governmental matters as well as the Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel when his rival, activist Gloria Hawkins begins gaining steam in the home stretch. Gloria’s campaign, by the way, is being run by Mack’s estranged sister Layla, while his own campaign is run by his childhood friend and local boy made good in law school Mitch Caddo, who by the way seems to have almost had a thing with Layla back when they were kids.
Jon Hickey on the politics of apocalypse
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with Claire Cameron, author of the novels The Bear and The Last Neanderthal. Her new book is How to Survive a Bear Attack. It’s a memoir of family, of illness, of love, and the author’s ongoing fascination with a 1991 bear attack that happened in a wilderness she knows so well.
Claire Cameron on what she's learned from studying monsters
Host Michael Tamblyn spoke with mystery novelist Nita Prose, author of the international bestseller The Maid. It’s the story of Molly Gray, a 20-something hotel maid whose job perfectly suits her need for order and predictable routine. As tends to happen in mystery novels set in hotels, Molly discovers a dead guest and finds herself a suspect in the ensuing murder investigation—an investigation which she undertakes in parallel, with the help of her friends.
In Nita’s latest book, The Maid’s Secret, Molly is riding high: she’s been promoted to Head Maid & Special Events Manager, she’s engaged to the love of her life—the dashing Juan Manuel, and she’s just learned that she’s the owner of a piece of art that might be worth millions… If, that is, she can find out who stole it on the day it was supposed to be sold at auction.
Nita Prose on saying goodbye to Molly Gray
In our latest installment in this series, hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj caught up on a book whose author they're not going to get to interview.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Meta's problem with an ex-employee's tell-all memoir
- The cognitive perils of being a billionaire
- The publishing perils of nonfiction
- Moving fast and breaking things as sage wisdom from the elders of Silicon Valley
- LibGen and the fight in the courts over Faire Use in AI models
Books mentioned:
- Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism - A Memoir by Sarah Wynn-Williams
- Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with podcaster Nate DiMeo about his book The Memory Palace, based on the podcast by the same name. In The Memory Palace, history comes in vignettes, as short stories, as jewels carefully mined from a variety of sources. Nathan and Nate talked about history as story, how Nate realized the thing that made him the best guy to sit next to at the bar was a great idea for a podcast, and the making of The Memory Palace's star-studded audiobook.
Nate DiMeo on shaking up the past in The Memory Palace
Host Michael Tamblyn spoke with David A. Robertson, author of many books including the Governor General’s award-winning When We Were Alone, and On the Trapline, both illustrated by Julie Flett. He’s also the author of the ongoing series for young readers, The Misewa Saga. And he’s the author of the 2022 novel for adults, A Theory of Crows, as well as a memoir from 2020 called Black Water: Family, Legacy, and Blood Memory.
David and Michael spoke about his new book, All the Little Monsters: How I Learned to Live with Anxiety. In it, David tells the story of the mental health struggles he’s faced all his life.
David A. Robertson and his little monsters go to uncomfortable places
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with Christina Cooke, author of the novel Broughtupsy. It’s a book about a young woman who returns to Jamaica to reconnect with her sister and to spread the ashes of their little brother amidst the places that make up the history of their family.
Christina Cooke wrote the 90s story only she could tell
Following our last episode all about the best books we read in 2024, host and producer Nathan Maharaj connected over Zoom with even more Kobo staffers (including one that'll be very familiar Kobo in Conversation listeners) to talk about the books that have stuck with them over the past 12 months.
So welcome back once more, to our year in books.
The best books we read in 2024
We'll be back in your feed soon with more amazing author interviews.
Listen in as Kobo staffers share the best books they read in 2024. It's all here, from the buzziest new releases to bucket list classics.
The best books we read in 2024
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with Dr. Jonathan Stea, clinical psychologist and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Calgary, about avoiding the pitfalls of pseudoscience and what we can all learn from wellness grifters in his book Mind the Science: Saving Your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry.
Dr. Jonathan Stea on how to mind your mental health
Host Michael Tamblyn spoke with novelist Anne Fleming, author of Curiosities, which was a finalist for the 2024 Giller Prize. It’s the story of how five fictional 17th century manuscripts uncovered by an amateur historian named Anne paint a picture of a handful of unusual lives.
Anne Fleming on love stories and curiosity
Host Michael Tamblyn spoke with novelist Anna Gomez, author of Somewhere Along the Way. It’s the story of Charlotte, or Charlie to her friends, a woman thrown into turmoil with the death of her father. She is given a collection of letters that her mother had been sending since she left Charlie and her dad so long ago. Those letters set Charlie on a journey, and we all get to come along for the ride.
Anna Gomez on the things she's picked up to write about... somewhere along the way
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Richard Powers. Many readers will know him from his 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Overstory, or perhaps The Echo Maker, which won the 2006 National Book Award. His newest novel is Playground, a story about four characters joined in different ways—marriage, friendship, a kind of celebrity—but sharing nonetheless an interest in the French Polynesian island of Makatea, where much of the story takes place.
Joining Richard Powers on the Playground
In our second installment in this new series, hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj sat down to go over some of the latest goings-on since summer in the business of books.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Is AI a no-go for NaNoWriMo?
- Audible announces AI narration—as a side hustle for human narrators
- B&N needs more shovels (to deal with AI)
- Bestselling nonfiction author Steven Johnson on employing AI as research assistant on steriods - The Verge
- Odds on an AI writing a bestselling book
- Fewer booksellers at Apple Books
- A leaner, meaner penguin* in the Penguin Random House logo (or, the slimming power of a strong vertical line)?
- Gen Z's eReader moment
Books mentioned:
- By Stephen Johnson: The Ghost Map, Where Good Ideas Come From
- Naked Came the Stranger by Penelope Ashe (aka. Mike McGrady "and two dozen of his colleagues")
*This conversation contains a brief digression into off-label use of Ozempic. Please listen with care.
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with writer katherena vermette, author of the award-winning 2016 novel The Break, the graphic novel series A Girl Called Echo, as well as a number of poetry collections and books for children. Her latest novel is real ones. It’s the story of a pair of sisters, lyn and June, whose mother’s claims to Indigenous identity come under more scrutiny than they can bear.
katherena vermette on crafting a real story out of fakery
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with writer and filmmaker Jamaluddin Aram, winner of the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary fiction for his novel Nothing Good Happens in Wazirabad on Wednesday. It’s a tapestry of stories about different people—shopkeepers, tradespeople, doctors, children, and their parents—while in the background, often very deep in the background, a war is being fought.
Novelist Jamaluddin Aram on leaving space for the reader to work
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with Amanda Peters, author of the 2023 novel The Berry Pickers, a book about a 4-year-old girl who goes missing while her family is visiting Maine for the summer to pick blueberries. It’s a book that won both the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Crime Writers of Canada’s first novel award, among many other accolades. Her new book is a collection of short stories called Waiting for the Long Night Moon.
Amanda Peters on the art of thought-provoking storytelling
Michael Tamblyn spoke with Keziah Weir, winner of the 2024 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in the category of Mystery for her novel, The Mythmakers. It’s the story of Sal, a writer who’s hit a very rough patch in every aspect of her life. But then she discovers a short story written by an author she met some time ago—about her and her and that moment of meeting. She learns that the story is a part of a larger book and that the author is deceased. This sets her on a path of investigation into the author, his widow, and ultimately the heart of storytelling itself.
Keziah Weir's literary influences are no mystery to her
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with fiction and comics writer Rainbow Rowell, author of the novels Eleanor & Park and Fangirl, as well as the 2017 revival of Marvel’s Runaways comic book series, the current run of She-Hulk, and many other books and stories. Her newest book is Slow Dance, the story of a couple of grown-ups who’ve been friends since they were kids, but didn’t manage to stay friends through early adulthood. 14 years after they last spoke to one another, they set about trying to figure out what kind of relationship they have now, and whether they might not have been exactly right about what kind of relationship they had back then.
Rainbow Rowell wants to write about "messy" characters
At Toronto's Harbourfront Centre, Nathan interviewed Ian Hamilton, author of the Ava Lee series, and Steve Urszenyi, author of Perfect Shot. Ian's latest book The Fury of Beijing is (possibly) the last in the series, while Steve's book kicks off the Special Agent Alexandra Martel series.
Live at MOTIVE: Thrills from Start to Finish
Michael spoke with artist, illustrator, and fashion designer, Maurice Vellekoop. Over a career spanning four decades, Vellekoop's work has been published in magazines including The New Yorker, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Fashion, and Cosmopolitan, and he’s the author and illustrator of the books, The World of Gloria Badcock: A Comic for Adults, A Nut at the Opera, and Maurice Vellekoop’s Pin-ups, to name just a few.
His newest book is I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together. It’s a memoir of his childhood and early adulthood in a suburb of Toronto, the youngest of four siblings in a strictly religious household, and it’s about coming out as a gay man at a very particular time in the 1980s.
Spending time with Maurice Vellekoop
We're sweeping up the glitter after awarding the 10th annual Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize to a trio of brilliant authors just a few days ago (more on that to come). We'll be back in your feed with more author interviews soon.
In the meantime...
When Kobo in Conversation hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj aren't reading books and interviewing authors for this show, they're working in the business of selling eBooks, audiobooks, and eReaders. In this episode, Nathan sat Michael down to get his takes on a bunch of book biz news making headlines now.* It's kind of an experiment, and we'll do it again soon—but we'll keep changing it up until we can make it feel right. Thoughts? Questions? Stuff you'd like us to cover? Email Nathan at nmaharaj@kobo.com or drop a comment below if you're listening on YouTube.
Topics covered in this episode:
- What's a publisher, and why doesn't everybody self-publish now?
- Why does it seem like publishers buying each other all the time?
- Why are major players in high finance poking around in the book business so much lately?
- Why are big league publishing executives leaving to create new publishing companies—just to publish books by famous people?
- Costco's not going to sell books anymore: does it matter?
- Post-pandemic peril in Australian bookselling
- The "Spotify for audiobooks" before Spotify decided to be the Spotify for audiobooks
Books mentioned:
- The Trial: The DOJ's Suit to Block Penguin Random House's Acquisition of Simon & Schuster by Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch
- Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
- The works of Ernest Hemingway, published by Scribner
*Michael may have actually staged a one man studio sit-in, and Nathan rolled tape to get him to leave. Accounts differ.
Michael spoke with writer Stephen Maher, author of The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau. Informed by interviews with hundreds of people close to the events covered and conversations with Trudeau himself, it’s a portrait of a complex person leading through complex times.
Stephen Maher offers readers a glimpse of The Prince
Nathan spoke with Laura Tamblyn Watts, founder and chief executive of CanAge, Canada’s national seniors’ advocacy organization, and author of Let’s Talk About Aging Parents: A Real-Life Guide to Solving Problems with 27 Essential Conversations, a book about the many hard things facing adults who know their aging parents need to make some decisions—and probably some changes too—but they don’t know where to start.
Laura Tamblyn Watts on 27 essential, and uncomfortable, conversations
Nathan spoke with novelist Anna Julia Stainsby, author of The Afterpains. It’s the story of Rosy, whose grief over the loss of her infant daughter nearly twenty years ago has all but cut her off from her husband and teenage son. And it’s about Isaura, an immigrant from Honduras raising her daughter in Toronto and trying to keep her out of the grip of a centuries-long curse.
Anna Julia Stainsby on ugly truths, isolation, and The Afterpains
Nathan spoke with novelist Shilpi Somaya Gowda, author of the 2012 international bestseller Secret Daughter. Her new book is A Great Country. It’s about the Shah family, recently moved to the well-to-do neighbourhood of Pacific Hills. While Ashok and Priya catch up with friends at a dinner party one Saturday evening, their children are each, separately, experiencing things that will leave their family forever changed.
Shilpi Somaya Gowda, author of A Great Country
Michael spoke with journalist Michael Finkel, author of True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, and The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit as well as numerous articles about extreme places and unlikely people for Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, GQ, and the New York Times Magazine. His latest book The Art Thief is the story of Stéphane Breitwieser, a man whose theft of over 200 artworks from the sleepy museums of central Europe showed a singular obsession for possessing works of art that grab his attention—and the talent to bring them home.
Journalist Michael Finkel on seeing through the eyes of The Art Thief
Nathan spoke with novelist Kiley Reid, author of the 2020 novel, Such a Fun Age. Her new book, Come and Get It is set on the campus of the University of Arkansas, specifically at a dormitory called Belgrade, and it follows Millie Cousins, a 24-year-old Resident Advisor or RA to folks familiar with dorm life, who’s launching a second run at the final year of her degree after taking time off to look after her mother, while quietly inching towards buying a little house.
Kiley Reid on writing realistically about people and money
Nathan spoke with Dr Jen Gunter, OB/GYN and bestselling author of several books on health, anatomy, and medicine: The Vagina Bible, The Menopause Manifesto, and most recently a new book called Blood: The science, medicine, and mythology of menstruation.
Dr. Jen Gunter on writing books about bodies for people
Nathan spoke with R. F. Kuang, author of the epic historical fantasy trilogy The Poppy War, as well as the 2022 novel, also a work of historical fantasy called Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution.
R. F. Kuang’s latest novel is Yellowface. It’s the story of June Hayward and Athena Liu, a pair of writers on the rise—one of whom is rising significantly faster than the other, until a fatal freak accident leaves the survivor holding an unfinished manuscript and facing a very tempting proposition.
R. F. Kuang on seeing herself in Yellowface
Michael spoke with R.H. Thomson: actor, director, playwright, and author of By The Ghost Light: Wars, Memory, and Families. Part memoir, part travelogue, part history, it’s a thoughtful and impassioned consideration of war and the stories we tell one another about it
R.H. Thomson on viewing wars by the light of family history
In January of 2023 our host and producer Nathan Maharaj spoke with Kai Thomas, author of the novel In the Upper Country. It's a story set in the fictional Canadian town of Dunmore, a place where people fleeing slavery in the southern United States build new lives.
In our roundup of the best books we read in 2023, Nathan called out In the Upper Country as the book that stayed with him the whole year and which he most wants to read again. And this past November, In the Upper Country won the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. So for all of those reasons, plus it's Black History Month, we're replaying that conversation for you.
We'll be back with all-new episodes soon.
Nathan spoke with novelist Ashley Audrain, author of the 2021 international bestseller The Push. Her new book The Whispers is a story about marriage, mothers and motherhood and parenthood generally, and also women’s rage.
Ashley Audrain on bringing rage from the group chat to the page
You can't possibly need more reading recommendations after our last episode featuring the best books read by the staff of Kobo in 2023 but we've never let the height of anybody's TBR pile stop us from singing the praises of our favourite books. Here are a few more, including one you absolutely must read ASAP—plus co-hosts Michael and Nathan talk about what made 2023 a different kind of year in books and why they're optimistic about what's coming next. The best books we read in 2023
We connected with the staff of Kobo over Zoom and in our brand new studio in our new office to ask them about the best books they read in 2023. We learned what made Rebecca Ross a must-read author this year, how one staff member found the right book for remembering his rockstar friend, and what well-known series of thrillers one of our best-read colleagues wishes they'd gotten around to years ago. The best books we read in 2023
Michael spoke with journalist and human rights advocate Rowan Jetté Knox, author of the 2019 memoir Love Lives Here: A Story of Thriving in a Transgender Family, as well as a new memoir that came out this year: One Sunny Afternoon: A Memoir of Trauma and Healing.
Rowan Jetté Knox on learning from hard times
Michael spoke with Mohawk writer and editor, Alicia Elliott, author of an award-winning book of essays, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, and a new novel, And Then She Fell. It is the story of a young woman named Alice experiencing the stress of new motherhood, feeling isolated in Toronto, which feels far away, culturally more than physically, from where she grew up on Six Nations. There she's trying to carve out time for writing and keeping up appearances as the wife of a rising academic star.
Alicia Elliott on telling the truth through the lens of fiction
Nathan joined Giller Prize-winning novelist Sean Michaels on stage at the Toronto International Festival of Authors to talk about his new novel Do You Remember Being Born? and the role of technology in the creation of art—from automated spellchecking to ChatGPT.
Sean Michaels, live at TIFA 2023
Nathan welcomed Waubgeshig Rice to the Kobo studio to talk about the sequel to his 2018 novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, the story of an Anishinaabe community slowly realizing that what at first appeared to be a power outage might be the end of the world as we know it. In Moon of the Turning Leaves the community realizes their time in this place may be at an end, so they send out a band of walkers to find them a new home.
Waubgeshig Rice on finding renewal at the end of the world
Michael spoke with writer and activist Naomi Klein, author of highly influential and bestselling books including No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, and the new book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. Like all of her books, it’s an accessible yet complex work of socioeconomic and political criticism... but it’s also funny, at times disturbing, deeply rooted in its author’s personal experience, but for any of us that spend time online or with a steady diet of media, it can feel joltingly familiar.
Naomi Klein on what she sees in "the mirror world"
Michael welcomed poet and novelist Michael Crummey to the Kobo office studio to talk about his new novel, The Adversary. Set in a fictional Newfoundland village called Mockbeggar, it's the story of a lifelong rivalry between two entrepreneurs that escalates into violence and revenge.
Michael Crummey confronts The Adversary
Nathan spoke with novelist Zalika Reid-Benta, 2020 winner of the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for her debut book Frying Plantain, and author of the new novel River Mumma. It’s the story of a young woman named Alicia, who we meet at a time in her life when things are no longer going as well as they used to. Then Alicia meets a water deity named River Mumma who tasks her with recovering a precious object—and she’s got just 24 hours to do it.
Zalika Reid-Benta on becoming the "weird writer" she's always wanted to be
Michael spoke with crime novelist S. A. Cosby, author of the 2021 breakout bestseller Razorblade Tears. His new book is All the Sinners Bleed, the story of Titus Crown, former FBI agent and Charon County Virginia’s first ever Black sheriff, who’s moved back to the county to live with his aging father. On the first anniversary of his election to sheriff he’s called to a school shooting. The investigation into the shooter's motivation leads the sheriff explore the darkest corners of Charon and reckon with the ghosts of its past and present.
S. A. Cosby on finding fascination in writing a good guy
We're taking a little bit of time off for summer, so this episode is a re-release of one we put out early last year. It's with science writer Britt Wray. Nathan spoke with her last May about her book Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis, which deals with the psychological and emotional implications of climate change, a topic that has only grown in relevance since it was first published.
Britt Wray on bringing emotions to bear on climate science
Michael spoke with writer John Vaillant, author of page-turning non-fiction that examines the relationship between humans and the natural world. His new book is Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast.At its heart is the 2016 wildfire that ravaged Fort McMurray, a city that stands at the heart of Canada’s petroleum industry—but it’s really about every city, every home, and the lives of every one of us inhabiting this increasingly flammable planet.
John Vaillant sees more fire weather in the forecast
On stage in downtown Toronto, Nathan interviewed authors Kevin Powers and Ausma Zehanat Khan about their latest novels, which introduce us to people working in the criminal justice system to solve violent crimes with far-reaching geopolitical causes—informed by each author’s own unique perspective and expertise.
Live at MOTIVE: Global Issues on the Page
In this episode recorded in-person in Kobo’s new office in downtown Toronto, Nathan spoke with novelist Tom Rachman, author of books including The Imperfectionists and The Italian Teacher. It’s our first in-person episode of Kobo in Conversation since 2020—and that’s why it sounds a little different from the episodes we’ve been making over Zoom over the past few years.
The Imposters is a novel about a novelist, but a novelist unlike most you'll meet in fiction. Dora Frenhofer was once successful and well-known, but that was some time ago; we meet her in old age, as she feels some cognitive decline that probably stands out a little more to a person who trades on feats of imagination and memory—and though she’d be the first to declare that the world doesn’t need another Dora Frenhofer book, she’s pushing herself to finish this one final novel.
Tom Rachman on inhabiting the roles of others in The Imposters
Nathan spoke with Samantha Irby, screenwriter on the TV series Shrill and most recently the Sex and the Cityreboot And Just Like That..., and the author of books including We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, Wow, No Thank You, as well as the new essay collection Quietly Hostile. They chatted about joining a TV writers' room as a superfan and why she hasn't (yet) written a book called "Garbage Time" or "Trench Mouth".
Getting unreal with Samantha Irby
Michael spoke with Rithu Bhasin, social justice advocate, entrepreneur, and author of We’ve Got This: Unlocking the Beauty of Belonging, a book about building a culture where everyone feels welcome to show up with their whole self. And it’s also a very personal book, in which she shares her own difficult journey towards a sense of belonging.
Ritu Bhasin, on the good, the bad, and belonging
We spoke with Ore Agbaje-Williams, author of the new novel The Three of Us. It’s a story about three people: a husband and wife, and the wife’s friend, who is definitely not the husband’s friend. It’s a wickedly funny book told through three voices in tension with one another, and possibly also objective reality.
Ore Agbaje-Williams on writing a character who says it all out loud
We spoke with Canadian journalist and bestselling romance novelist Carley Fortune, author of the new book Meet Me at the Lake. It’s a summer love story about Fern Brookbanks, who's forced to grieve the sudden death of her mother while trying to run her family’s lakeside resort, alongside the manager who happens to be her ex. Unbeknownst to her, Fern’s mom had hired a consultant just before she died; and unfortunatelyit turns out to be Will Baxter, the guy who stole Fern's young heart years ago and then vanished from her life, but never her thoughts.
Carley Fortune on summer love and second chances
We spoke with David Grann, author of non-fiction page-turners including The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazonand Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, to say nothing of his many incredible articles about crime and adventure that he’s written over the past twenty years for The New Yorker. And he has a new book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.It’s about seafaring, nautical battles, castaways on the brink of starvation, but it’s also about the very fabric of society.
David Grann on the brutal truths revealed in The Wager
Shelley Read is the author of the novel Go as a River, a story set in the 1940s on a peach farm in a Colorado town called Iola. She spoke with us about finding the voices of her quiet characters through her deep knowledge of the history and geography of the region.
Shelley Read on bringing life to quiet characters
We spoke with Zoe Whittall, poet, screenwriter, and novelist. Her new book The Fake is a novel about a liar named Cammie and two people who fall under her spell—and then have to pick up the pieces of their lives when they fall out of it.
Zoe Whittall on the truth about liars
We spoke with writer Hua Hsu, author of Stay True: A Memoir. It’s a heartfelt, thoughtful book about family, friendship, and figuring out who you are—and was widely lauded as one of the best non-fiction books of 2022.
Hua Hsu on the strange characters of memoir
We spoke with Lindsay Wong, author of the memoir The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family,which was a finalist for Canada Reads in 2019, and the YA novel My Summer of Love and Misfortune.
And she has a marvelously macabre new short story collection, Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality.
Lindsay Wong tells us pleasant things about discomfort
We were joined by novelist Cherie Dimaline, author of The Marrow Thieves,its sequel Hunting by Stars,and the acclaimed literary novel Empire of Wild.Her new book is VenCo, a work of speculative fiction in which a secretive corporation named VenCo hires a powerful witch to assemble an elite coven—before the recruits are found by an ancient witch hunter.
Cherie Dimaline on connecting with the extraordinary
We're bringing you a conversation from the Kobo Writing Life Podcast, where writers talk about how they're navigating the many publishing options available to authors today. Check out Jackie Lau on the Kobo Writing Life Podcast, with links to Jackie's books and the books discussed in this episode: KWL – 310 – Writing Romance, Working with Kobo Originals, and More with Jackie Lau
And here's our Q&A with Jackie on the Kobo blog: Jackie Lau on writing romance, fake dating, and Asian representation
We spoke with author and book designer CS Richardson, whose first novel The End of the Alphabetwon the 2008 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best 1st Book. His new book, All the Colour in the World is a kaleidoscopic novel about a boy’s love affair with art and a man’s struggle with loss. And while we had him on the line, we took the opportunity to talk a bit about his other career as one of Canada’s most celebrate d book designers.
CS Richardson on writing with all the colour in the world
We spoke with Kai Thomas, author of the novel In the Upper Country, setin the fictional Canadian town of Dunmore, a place where people fleeing slavery in the southern United States build new lives.
Kai Thomas conjures fiction from the history of the upper country
Because you can never hear about too many great books, here's another batch of the best books Kobo staff read in 2022. There's memoir, investigative journalism, fun facts, romance, and more (also moors)!
The best books we read in 2022
We asked the staff of Kobo about the best eBooks and audiobooks they read in 2022, and we heard about memoirs, literary masterpieces, page-turning non-fiction, family sagas, mind-opening nature writing, sci-fi love stories across time, and so much more.
The best books we read in 2022
We spoke with award-winning science writer Harold McGee, author of the new book Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells,a wondrous and entertaining guide to the smells of food, yes, but also of our surroundings—indoor as well as outdoor, from rotten eggs and wet dogs to coffee and perfume—and offers readers a whiff of the very building blocks of the universe itself.
Harold McGee on the science of smells
The final of three interviews we recorded at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre as part of the Toronto International Festival of Authors.
With novelists André Forget author of In the City of Pigs, and Naben Ruthnum author of A Hero of Our Time we spoke about their darkly comic novels that play with themes of work, art, and the unreality of even so-called real estate.
Beneath the veneer with Naben Ruthnum and André Forget
The second of three interviews we recorded at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre as part of the Toronto International Festival of Authors.
We interviewed novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz, author of several critically acclaimed bestselling novels, but most recently The Latecomer. It's the story of the Oppenheimer family, who are materially very comfortable, and fairly uncomfortable in just about every other way.
Jean Hanff Korelitz, live at TIFA 2022
Over the next few weeks we'll be sharing recordings of live interviews conducted at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre as part of the Toronto International Festival of Authors.
The first of these features international bestselling author Marian Keyes speaking about her pandemic project, Again, Rachel, the unexpected (to her) sequel to her breakout 90s bestseller Rachel's Holiday.
We spoke with Marian back in 2020 as well: Marian Keyes on getting older... but never feeling grown up
We were joined by actor, playwright, and novelist Ann-Marie MacDonald, author of the international bestseller Fall on Your Knees, to talk about her new novel, Fayne, a work of historical fiction about a girl named Charlotte, her father Henry, a painting of Charlotte’s late mother and infant brother—and a secret that lies between them.
Ann-Marie MacDonald on staying open to surprise.
We spoke with Chief Robert Joseph, a Hereditary chief of the Gwawaenuk First Nation and honourary witness to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission about his new book Namwayut: A Pathway to Reconciliation. In the book and in this episode, Chief Joseph shares an intimate view of his own life while making an impassioned plea to readers to embrace vulnerability, summon the courage to recognize truth and trauma, and take steps towards reconciliation.
Chief Robert Joseph on the need and desire for reconciliation
We spoke with Chief Robert Joseph, a Hereditary chief of the Gwawaenuk First Nation and honourary witness to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission about his new book Namwayut: A Pathway to Reconciliation. In the book and in this episode, Chief Joseph shares an intimate view of his own life while making an impassioned plea to readers to embrace vulnerability, summon the courage to recognize truth and trauma, and take steps towards reconciliation.
Chief Robert Joseph on the need and desire for reconciliation
Novelist Hernan Diaz is a professor at Columbia University and the author of In the Distance, a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. We spoke with him about a range of topics that inform his new novel Trust, a fractured, multi-layered book about the life and ambitions of the fictional tycoon Andrew Bevel.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
Novelist Hernan Diaz is a professor at Columbia University and the author of In the Distance, a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. We spoke with him about a range of topics that inform his new novel Trust, a fractured, multi-layered book about the life and ambitions of the fictional tycoon Andrew Bevel.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
Deon Meyer is the author of The Dark Flood, the newest installment in his Benny Griessel series of detective novels set in South Africa. We spoke with Deon as part of the Toronto International Festival of Authors' Mystery & Crime Festival: MOTIVE.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
Enjoy this conversation with non-fiction thriller author Ben Mezrich, author of The Accidental Billionairesand Bringing Down the House about his new historical fiction novel The Midnight Ride, which started out as a wildly ambitious project taken up in the early days of the pandemic. We spoke with Ben as part of the Toronto International Festival of Authors' Mystery & Crime Festival: MOTIVE.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
We spoke with Cory Silverberg, educator, entrepreneur, researcher, and author of the books What Makes a Baby, Sex is a Funny Word,and the new book, You Know, Sex.These books are approachable and factual guides to sex and bodies, but also grown-up feelings, experiences, and all kinds of stuff that can be really hard for anyone to talk about. Supported by Fiona Smyth’s vivid and playful illustrations, Cory Silverberg’s writing always finds a humane and plain-spoken way to explain everything from the functioning of reproductive organs to the nuances of consent and everything else anybody could want to know about how to use their body.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
Some listeners may recognize the voice of our guest Elamin Abdelmahmoud from the CBC podcasts Party Linesand Pop Chat. He joined us to talk about his new book, Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces in which he writes movingly of his relationship to his personal elsewhere, the Sudanese city of Khartoum from which he came to Kingston, Ontario as a child. He also writes beautifully about his passion for country music and affinity for the American South, and mounts a convincing defense of the much-maligned musical genre known as Nu Metal.
In the course of our conversation he snuck into the interviewer's seat, proving just how much he wants to know about everyone's story about their own personal elsewhere—and what their favourite Carly Rae Jepsen song is.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation
We were joined by science writer Riley Black, author of several bestsellers on paleontology including My Beloved Brontosaurus, Written in Stone, and Skeleton Keys. And if you've read literally anything anywhere about dinosaurs in the last decade, you’ve probably happened upon pieces by her in National Geographic, WIRED, Smithsonian Magazine, and Scientific American.
Her new book is The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World. It’s a richly narrated story that starts with the end of the world, and also depicts the beginnings of the world where our mammal forebears would learn to thrive—and it represents a new beginning for the author as well.
Here more from Kobo in Conversation
Sheila Heti is a novelist, playwright, and former interviews editor for the literary magazine The Believer. We spoke with her (and her dog Feldman) about her new novel Pure Colour and how her novels come into being.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
We spoke with Britt Wray, broadcaster, science writer, and researcher at the intersection of mental health and climate change. Her new book is Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisiswhich is a deeply felt and thoroughly-researched study of what it means to wake up every day and live our lives on this warming planet of ours—without succumbing to despair about it all.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
Podcast aficionados may recognize our guest Stephanie Foo from her work on This American Life,Snap Judgment, and 99% Invisible, to name just a few of her credits. And now she has written a book called What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma that's both a memoir of growing up in an abusive and neglectful environment and also an explainer on complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), a condition that’s not as well-known as it should be—though its effects could be extremely broad.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
NoViolet Bulawayo is the Booker Prize shortlisted author of We Need New Names and the new novel Glory, a fable-like retelling of the two years between the overthrow of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and his death. It's moving, provocative, and surprisingly funny.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
We spoke with Julia Quinn, author of the Bridgerton series of Regency romance novels. She told us about what it was like to see her characters come to life on-screen, and we asked her whether we'll eventually see a cinematic interpretation of a Smythe-Smith musicale. (Originally released February 12, 2021)
We'll be back soon with new episodes of Kobo in Conversation.
Kathryn Schulz is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and author of the 2010 nonfiction bestseller, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. Her new book is a memoir, Lost & Found, which chronicles the grief of losing her father as well as the joy of finding love--with some surprising and fascinating lessons about typography, meteorites, and the philosophy of finding along the way.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and 2021 McArthur "Genius" Fellowship recipient. We spoke with him about his newest book, A Little Devil in America: Notes on Black Performance,and we learned about this book's evolution, how he's handling his recent run of successes, and which books he's been re-reading since childhood.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
What happens when you ask around a global digital bookselling company about the best books its staff read in the past year? You get more books than you can fit into one episode.
Enjoy more of the best books we read in 2021!
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
We asked the staff of Kobo about the best eBooks and audiobooks they read in 2021.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
Our friends at the Kobo Writing Life podcast spoke with romance writer Chloe Liese, author of The Mistletoe Motive.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
Writing duo Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham are better known to fans as James S. A. Corey, author of The Expanse, the epic science fiction series that has just concluded with Leviathan Falls. We spoke with them about the surprising seed of the 9-volume series and what they learned from working on The ExpanseTV show, which is also drawing to a close.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a theoretical physicist and the author of The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred.In that book she not only explains in layperson's terms the phenomena she observes as a scientist, but also how she observes science as a social and fundamentally human activity, with all the messiness that entails. We spoke with her about many things, including her East LA upbringing, and how she sees herself and people like her among the generations of humans watching the stars.
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Janelle Shane writes the blog AI Weirdness, where she delights readers with broken outcomes of the latest developments in artificial intelligence, ranging from computer-generated recipes like horseradish brownies, to pickup lines like, "You look like a thing, and I love you." She's also the author of the book, You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place. We spoke with her about the uses and abuses of artificial intelligence, and we learned why it's unlikely anybody's going to read a wholly AI-written novel anytime soon.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation.
Edward Rutherfurd is the author of epic works of historical fiction including London, Russka, The Dublin Saga, and the new novel, China. We spoke with him about how he finds the right scale for his enormous books and when one of the many projects he has simmering is ready to be fleshed out into a manuscript of many hundreds of pages. And he shared with us his perspective on how he confronts the challenge of getting inside the minds of characters who would have lived centuries ago and half a world away.
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In this special episode of Kobo In Conversation Michael spoke with Shari Lapena, the Canadian queen of domestic suspense, as part of the Toronto International Festival of Authors with an audience watching online and asking questions.
Listen to hear about Lapena's award-nominated false start as a novelist, where she got the idea for her new book Not A Happy Family, and why--unlike other mystery writers--she doesn't work with a "murder wall."
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We're back with a new season of Kobo in Conversation! This week, Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus series of Scottish crime novels, joins us to talk about his new novel The Dark Remains, which he wrote with assistance from, and in tribute to his literary hero, the late William McIlvanney. He spoke about how life under covid lockdown unlocked a wave of writing productivity, and which books helped him get his reading mojo back.
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Phenderson Djèlí Clark's books take readers into places in history that feel familiar, but have spun off of the timeline we exist on. In Ring Shout we meet a militia fighting in Georgia against the Ku Klux Klan, which has invited actual demons into its hooded ranks with the help of the magical cinema of D. W. Griffith. But he's also written about a steampunk version of early 20th century Cairo in the Dead Djinn Universe and an alternate history of New Orleans during the US Civil War in The Black God's Drums. We spoke with him about writing (and overwriting), his mythologically-rich upbringing, and how he (an academic historian in his day job) picks points in history to tweak in his novels and novellas.
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As we draw Season 4 of Kobo in Conversation to a close, we bring you a conversation with theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack on a wholly different kind of ending. Listeners may recall host Michael Tamblyn's praise for The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) in our year-end Staff Picks episode, where he found that during 2020, it helped to have a sense of time and space and the forces acting on every particle throughout the universe. Michael spoke with Katie about the 5 theoretical ways the universe will end, and we learned why for her the study of astrophysics is preferably a "social" science.
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Torrey Peters' debut novel Detransition, Baby wasn't supposed to be a novel. She'd self-published a pair of novellas and was planning on doing the same for this book -- until it outgrew her plans for it. She spoke with us about her writing career, how she navigates expectations of representation, and why Detransition, Baby is perfectly suited to a mainstream publisher who doesn't specialize in reaching transgender readers. Plus, she told us about the surprising direction she's going in with her next novel.
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Paleontologist Steve Brusatte joined us to talk about his new book for young readers, The Age of Dinosaurs as well as his 2018 book for adults, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. We learned about his passion for giving readers a sense of dinosaurs as living, breathing animals, and what his hopes are for the future of paleontology.
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Helen Oyeyemi, author of Gingerbread and the playful new novel Peaces, spoke with us about the importance to her writing process of taking long book-free breaks, and how serving on juries for literary prizes has made her certain that she'll never win a major award.
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Dr. Suzanne Simard, author of Finding the Mother Tree, spoke with us about the astonishing science of how trees communicate with one another. And she gave us a view into the hard work, dirty hands, and heartbreak of a life spent living in and studying forests.
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Natalie Zina Walschots spoke with us about her novel Hench, the day-to-day work of supervillainy, and why fanfic is her marker of success as a writer.
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With the publication of his first book in 2000, Malcolm Gladwell pioneered and proceeded to dominate a whole genre of non-fiction where concepts explored in academic research were made presentable to a mass audience. But to write his latest book The Bomber Mafia, he approached his craft in a new way.
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In this final episode of Season 3 of Kobo in Conversation, we spoke with Julia Quinn, author of the Bridgerton series of Regency romance novels. She told us about what it was like to see her characters come to life on-screen, and we asked her whether we'll eventually see a cinematic interpretation of a Smythe-Smith musicale.
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In Gutter Child Jael Richardson creates a dystopian world where disadvantage for some is written into law. In this wide-ranging conversation we spoke with her about this new novel, as well as the past and future of her writing career, and we learned how she conceives of her roles as a broadcaster and literary festival director who can bring a lot of attention to books and authors.
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In her novel Little Threats, Emily Schultz transports readers to the summer of 1993, when a terrible crime was committed -- and possibly a miscarriage of justice. We spoke with Emily about her inspiration for this story of crime and punishment, how she sees the style of this book in connection to her other books, and why she set out not to write just another crime novel about a dead girl.
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We spoke with actor Joanne Vannicola about their memoir, All We Knew But Couldn't Say and learned how they turned painful memories of their upbringing into a story of growth and self-discovery.
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Journalist and novelist Linden MacIntyre joined us to talk about his new audiobook, The Wake: The Deadly Legacy of a Newfoundland Tsunami.
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We spoke with poet and scholar Billy-Ray Belcourt about his new book, A History of My Brief Body, a poetic, intellectual work of theory, essay, and memoir. He explained how he builds on the work of others in his own writing and what drives his mission to locate joy at the centre of Indigenous stories.
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As epic as our staff picks roundup was last week, we just couldn’t stop once we got started.
In 2020, even the most avid readers struggled to find the time and focus amid new routines to immerse themselves in the comfort of books. Fortunately, some of us at Kobo found a way through and got to spend time reading great things -- and we’re happy to share them with you here.
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Our friends at the Kobo Writing Life podcast spoke with romance writer Talia Hibbert, author of Wrapped Up in You.
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Read Wrapped Up in You on Kobo.
Marian Keyes joined us to talk about Grown-Ups, her new book about money, family, love, and the pressure to meet the expectations of others, even the ones we love.
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We spoke with Vicki Laveau-Harvie, author of The Erratics, about why she doesn't see her book as a misery memoir, the proper place for catharsis, and why we're unlikely to ever find her on Twitter.
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Toronto journalist Eternity Martis spoke with us about her memoir, They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up.
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In Tobly McSmith's debut Stay Gold, a young adult novel about a transgender boy named Pony, he tells the story of a character who embraces the truth of his gender identity in his teens, much earlier than the author did himself. In our conversation we learn that he was creating a world that might have been and offering comfort to the next trans guy growing up in central Texas.
Learn more about and contribute to Tobly's foundation for gender-affirming healthcare at staygoldfund.org
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Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, joined us to talk about his new book, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis. In this wide-ranging discussion Jared speaks about the COVID-19 crisis, as well as authoritarianism, and the need for nations to have the humility to see their errors -- and hopefully learn from them.
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We're back, safely ensconced with microphones and broadband internet, bringing you a new season of conversations with authors about books!
To kick things off, we spoke with Eden Robinson, author of the Trickster trilogy.
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To end our second season, we spoke with Timothy Caulfield, public health expert and the author of The Science of Celebrity... Or, is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything.
Hear more from Kobo in Conversation and subscribe to be sure to hear all that we've got coming in Season 3.
We spoke with neuroscientist, musician, and author Daniel Levitin about his latest book, Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives.
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We spoke with thriller writer (and former newspaper columnist and humourist) Linwood Barclay about the myth of writer's block and the discipline required to rein in his comic gifts.
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Hello, fellow reader. We thought that right now, when we're all getting less human contact than ever, it would be a good time to get as personal as we can with you, our listeners.
So for the next little while, we'll be popping bonus episodes into this feed where you'll hear from our staff of readers and booksellers, and they're going to tell you all about a book they recommend.
Read Simon's pick, Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
Read Michael's note on why and how Kobo transitioned to being 100% work-from-home for the next while: Why we're now working remotely, and how we'll make it work
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Screenwriter and novelist Lori Lansens sat down with us to talk about her latest book This Little Light and how hard it was to write a dystopian novel in 2019 -- and how to play "spiritual double-dutch".
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Lauren McKeon, author of No More Nice Girls and Kobo Emerging Writer Prize nominee for her 2018 book F-Bomb spoke with us about where feminism is now, the meaning of success in a rigged game, and what to do with the energy of anger.
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We spoke with Jesse Thistle, Métis-Cree scholar and author, about his moving, poetic memoir, From the Ashes.
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Investigative journalist Robyn Doolittle on fairness, ethics, and the law in the realm of sexual consent and how attitudes have shifted since #MeToo.
Content warning: this episode discusses sexual assault. Though there's nothing explicitly violent mentioned, this episode may not be suitable for all listeners.
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And subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
British crime novelist Ann Cleeves discusses her new book The Long Call, why she's drawn to small places yet itches to change scenery, why reading literature in translation helps predict the future, and how libraries prop up whole sectors of the economy.
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And subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
Julie Evelyn Joyce tells us about the inspiration behind her debut novel, Steeped In Love, and what it was like to win the 2019 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Romance.
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And subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
In this special live episode, poet Saeed Jones joins host maxine bailey on stage to talk about his memoir, How We Fight For Our Lives.
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And subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
Kobo CEO, Michael Tamblyn, speaks with the Canadian broadcast personality and writer Ziya Tong about her debut nonfiction book, The Reality Bubble.
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And subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
We chatted with novelist and essayist Jonathan Safran Foer about his newest book, We Are The Weather.
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And subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
In this special episode of Kobo in Conversation, Kobo staff share their top book recommendations for the holiday season.
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In this episode, Michael is joined by Andrew Solomon, as they discuss his latest book, Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change, as well as his 2012 best-seller, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity.
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And subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
In this episode, Michael is joined by Zalika Reid-Benta, as they discuss her debut novel, eye-opening books, and navigating different backgrounds. Zalika also treats us by reading an excerpt from her book.
Andreas Souvaliotis, founder of Carrot Rewards, joins Michael to discuss his life, lessons, and the books that shaped both him and his recent memoir Misfit.
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In this episode, Michael is joined by Karen McManus (and another special guest). The three discuss her latest novel Two Can Keep a Secret, her love of The Hunger Games and other favourite reads.
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In this episode, Michael is joined by Dr. Julia Shaw and they discuss her latest book Evil: The Science Behind Humanity's Dark Side as well as some of her favourite reads.
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In 2015, when French readers were asked to name their favourite author, Marc Levy tied with Victor Hugo. Today he talks with Michael about his most recent work, the value of dreaming, and the importance of curiosity.
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The winner of the 2018 Kobo Emerging Writers Prize for Mystery and Crime Fiction for her debut novel The Lost Ones talks with Michael about her lifelong love of books, her creative drive, and how trying to break into the world of screenwriting led to her writing her first book.
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Craig Davidson is a literary shapeshifter, with several novels in multiple genres. He speaks with Michael about writing for children, his family's reaction to his horror writing, and his first work of nonfiction, the CBC Canada Reads 2018 nominated Precious Cargo: My Year of Driving the Kids on School Bus 3077.
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Maria Qamar, winner of the 2018 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction for her book Trust no Aunty, and the creative brain behind Instagram's @hatecopy, spoke with Michael about the power of aunties in our lives, her love of superheroes, and how hating copywriting led to becoming an artist in the age of the internet.
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Our guest is an award-winning journalist and the author of American War, winner of the 2018 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction and a CBC Canada Reads 2018 nominee. Learn how Omar's experiences in the field informed his debut novel about a second US Civil War.
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Michael speaks with the author of Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents, winner of CBC Canada Reads 2018, about empathy, loss, and how his family let light shine in after one of the darkest chapters in Canadian history.
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In this special episode of Kobo in Conversation, Kobo staff share their top book recommendations for the holiday season.