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 Canadaâs 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 yesterday afternoon. Among other things we talk about what itâs like to win the GG, class structures, and the future of the book (check out her website here). Please listen here:

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Listen here as  famed author of Life of Pi and self proclaimed political gadfly Yann Martel 1) Absorbs a barrage of punishing jabs I throw at him over his latest book What is Stephen Harper Reading? and 2) Punches back at a Canadian Prime Minister whom he considers to be a visionless, âfactâ-mired, fiction-eschewing ideologue.

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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 Nortonâs Forerunner; Fred Saberhagenâs Water of Thought; Poul Andersonâs Winners, Starship, Explorations and Guardians of Time; Keith Laumerâs The Breaking Earth, Beyond the Imperium, and The House in November; Harry Harrisonâs Planet of No Return and Planet of the Damned; Roger Zelazny and Fred Saberhagenâs Coils; and Steve Barnes and Larry Nivenâs 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 Cardâs Enderâs Game (1985).

 In 1986 Doherty sold his company to St. Martinâs 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 with these written words. Hear and learn how and why he has enjoyed such success in  publishing; you can just tell how much fun heâs had in the business. Itâs a joy to listen to him.

Subscribe to Nigel Bealeâs Biblio File Podcast here.

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 Star Trek publishing line), and Tor (where he headed Torâs 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, Yearâs Best SF and Yearâs 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 Awards on numerous occasions, and won in 2006, 2008 and 2009.  Hartwell has also edited four best-novel Nebula Award-winners. 

Roderick âRockyâ Stinehour is a very pleasant, accomplished gentleman from Vermont. Heâs 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 Americaâs finest scholarly publishers. 

I visited Rocky in the âNortheast Kingdomâ recently. Listen here to our conversation

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 â 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 â50s 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 â66 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 Vlietâs  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 recently to talk about artist books and a long, outstanding career. Please listen here:

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 â 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, FranÃois 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. Please listen here:

His December, 1941 portrait of a bulldoggish Winston Churchill, symbolizing Britainâs wartime resolve, brought Karsh international attention.  Among the most widely reproduced portraits in the history of photography, âChurchillâ was also one of the first to carry the famous "Karsh of Ottawa" copyright.

Please listen here:

Joshua has lecÂtured widely in the United States and Canada on the art of the book. He helped organÂize the Art of the ConÂtemÂporÂary Book ConÂferÂence at Ohio State UniÂverÂsity in 1991, and has: conÂtribÂuted artÂicles on the Private Press MoveÂment to journÂals such as Fine Print and Imprint; and curÂated exhibÂiÂtions of South African botanÂical artist Elise BodÂley, both for the SmithÂsoÂnian Museum of NatÂural HisÂtory and the AuduÂbon SociÂety; he also proÂposed the first WashÂingÂton Artistsâ Book Fair â now a bienÂnial event; and organÂized the first ever exhibÂiÂtion of fine modÂern bindÂings at the Corcoran Museum of Art in WashÂingÂton DC in 2003.

I met the Hellers at their home in WashÂingÂton, D.C. recently. Please listen here to our conversation

(* The Fisher LibÂrary referred to by Josh is locÂated at the UniÂverÂsity of Toronto. Hereâs the link)

John BidÂwell is Astor CurÂator of PrinÂted Books and BindÂings at thePierÂpont MorÂgan LibÂrary, before which he was CurÂator of Graphic Arts in the PrinÂceton UniÂverÂsity LibÂrary. He has writÂten extensÂively on the hisÂtory of paperÂmakÂing in EngÂland and America. 

The PrinÂted Books and BindÂings colÂlecÂtion at the MorÂgan conÂtains works spanÂning WestÂern book proÂducÂtion from the earliÂest prinÂted ephÂemÂera to importÂant first ediÂtions from the twenÂtiÂeth cenÂtury. HoldÂings encomÂpass a large numÂber of high points in the hisÂtory of printÂing, often exemÂpliÂfied by a lone surÂvivÂing copy or a copy that is perÂfect in every way. Areas of strength include incunÂables, early childrenâs books, fine bindÂings, and illusÂtrated books. 

Yolande de SoisÂsons in Prayer
âPsalter-Hours of Yolande de SoisÂsonsâ
France, AmiÂens, ca. 1280â90
MS M.729, fol. 232v
PurÂchased by J. P. MorÂgan, Jr., 1927

The colÂlecÂtion is founÂded upon acquisÂiÂtions of PierÂpont MorÂgan, who sought to estabÂlish in the United States a libÂrary worthy of the great European colÂlecÂtions. Among the highÂlights are three GutenÂberg Bibles, works by Lord Byron, Charles DickÂens, Edgar Allan Poe, John Ruskin, Mark Twain, HerÂman Melville, and WilÂliam MorÂris, and clasÂsic early childrenâs books. The Carter BurÂden ColÂlecÂtion of AmerÂican LitÂerÂatÂure, a major 1998 gift, strengthens the Morganâs twentieth-century holdÂings with authors such as Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, VladiÂmir Nabokov, GerÂtrude Stein, and TenÂnessee Williams. 

I talk here with John BidÂwell about the colÂlecÂtion, what it conÂtains, how it was acquired.

Julia Margaret Cameron

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 playâs end, Denmarkâs 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 Jamesâs succession. At the start of the play Lear is firmly established as king of a united Britain. This reflected Jamesâs 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, from St. Francis Xavier University, and I discuss the themes of succession and the divine right of kings  in Hamlet and King Lear.

We met recently in Ottawa where Mina was the international guest of honour at Bloody Words, Canadaâs 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); please listen here:

Please listen here:

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 âchallenging and often frustrating process of reading into oneâs own work;â 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 usâthe 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 inhabitâare 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 talked about workshops in general, and what happened in Montreal specifically. Please listen (may have to crank it a bit) here:

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.

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 âColumnist of the Yearâ 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 teacherâs supposed friend, Barbara Covett. It was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize for fiction, and was recently released as a feature film, starring Cate Blanchett and Dame Judi Dench."

We met recently in Ottawa to talk, âcompanionablyâ about her latest novel The Believers.

Please listen here:

Nino Ricciâs first novel, the best-selling Lives of the Saints, won international acclaim and a host of awards, including, in Canada, the Governor Generalâs 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 Generalâs 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 Penguinâs 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, bilingualismâs mixed legacy, the Charter, budget deficits, the pride of being Canadian, and philosopher-kings.

Please listen here:

Meir Shalev, (pictured above with his sister) one of Israelâs most celebrated novelists,was born in 1948 in Nahalal, Israelâs 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 2006âthe 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 recently. We talk here about, among other things, television, satire, The Daily Show, great sentences, labels, Gogol, gardening and farming.

Please listen here:

Clarkeâs 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 recently 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. Please listen here:

Crime novelist,  film director, childrenâs 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 recently 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 here about her experience.

Open Letter is the University of Rochesterâs literary publishing house. â 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.â

âChad 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.â We talk here among other things about the dominance of great non-English speaking novelists, Roberto BolaÃo, Julio Cortazar (Hopscotch is one of Postâs 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.

Please listen here: (Apologies for the rather abrupt ending).

Copyright  2009 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

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.

Please listen here:

Copyright  2009 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

This from contemporary writers: One of South Africaâs most distinguished writers, Andrà 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 book, 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.  Devilâs 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, has just been published.

I met Andre Brink recently at his home in Cape Town. (His lovely young wife Karina greeted me at the door and led me into his book-lined study. Before entering the house however, I encountered this in the garden:

). 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 âPlant me a Tree,â English as his second language, Picasso, recommended wines and staying in South Africa, despite his nephew having been shot dead by intruders last year at his home just north of Johannesburg.

Stephen Johnson is Managing Director of the recently formed 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 Struikâs political power, Apartheidâs banning of Anna Sewellâs Black Beauty, the current governmentâs under-funding of libraries, political corruption and the loss of early promise, Apartheid by other means, freedom, story-telling and other explanations for South Africaâs flourishing publishing sector, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Jacob Zumaâs shower head, and plans Johnson has for the future of his company.

Please listen here:

Copyright  2009 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

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.

Sheâs 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 Writerâs 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.  

Dawn and I talk here about the history of the Festival, Northrop Fryeâs 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 childrensâ authors, Richard Ford, classroom visits, and inspired students. For more information on this yearâs Frye Festival please click here.

Please listen to our conversation here:

in the shadow of the Heinz ketchup factory, about the role of a books editor, Pittsburghâs 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 Bobâs connection with authors David McCullough and Michael Chabon, and his disconnect with Philip Roth and Paul Theroux; about Ernest Hemingwayâs Cuban home, and the reviewing genius of John Updike.

Please listen here:

Copyright  2009 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

Poet, author, Priscila Uppal, an English professor too at York University, challenges traditional psychological and anthropological models of mourning in her new book We Are What We Mourning: 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 âmove on;â 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 didnât know their parents very well; didnât know their countries of origin, didnât 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.

Please listen to a âlivelyâ conversation here:

Copyright  2009 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

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 recently to talk about his engaging, important new novel Little Bee. Topics discussed include masks, truth-telling, trauma, trust, happiness, the struggle to survive, Maslowâs 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.

Please listen here:

Copyright  2009 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

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 sheâs 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. Sheâs a hostess for all of us, a sundressâd 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 Christinaâs World."

We met at her home recently in Chicago, and talked about, among other things, the origins of Bookslut, her underemployment at Planned Parenthood, ex-boyfriends, blog advertising, hiring writers, shrinking book review sections, writing for oneself, inexplicable successes, the name âBookslutâ and thoughts of changing it, Somerset Maugham, favourite novels, and the future of blogs.

Copyright  2009 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

I was in Chicago recently and met with Keith Michael Fiels, Executive Director (since July 2002) of the American Library Association. According to  The ALA Constitution  the purpose of ALA is ââto promote library service and librarianship.â Stated mission is âTo 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.â In 1998 the ALA Council voted commitment to five Key Action Areas as guiding principles for directing the Associationâs 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, among other things, these principles, 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.

Copyright  2008 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

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, Iâve Been Reading Lately. He has written for the Poetry Foundation, the Chicago Reader, the Bloomsbury Review, the New-York Ghost, the Quarterly Conversation, and McSweeneyâs Internet Tendency. His short fiction has recently been published in the New York Moon. Levi is also an editor with Joyland - Chicago edition (heâs currently accepting submissions from current and/or former Chicagoans. For more information, you can e-mail him at levistahlATgmail.com)

We met recently 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) âParkerâ mystery novels, most notably The Hunter, which, though stained through with violent âthuggeryâ is, according to Levi, very well written, and filled with insight into humanity.

Copyright  2008 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

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 Taxiâs mission is âto advance independent literary culture through publications and programs that foster awareness and appreciation of innovative writing.â 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 Taxiâs website tells us that the publication is a winner of the Alternative Press Award for Best Arts & Literature Coverage that runs âreviews 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 Taxiâs commitment to innovative publishing.â

I dined and conversed with RainTaxi editor Eric Lorberer , indoors, recently in Minneapolis. We talk here about the state and nature of todayâs book reviewing business. Please excuse the abrupt ending.

Copyright  2008 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

Kathy Stransky co-owner, with her husband, of Midway Used and Rare Books on University Avenue in St. Paul Minnesota for the past 27 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, itâs 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.

Copyright  2008 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

Today is Family Literacy Day! Literacy is defined as âthe ability to understand and employ printed information in daily activities at home, at work and in the community - to achieve oneâs goals, and to develop oneâs knowledge and potential.â 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, we talk 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, publishersâ business models, and bringing the U.K.âs 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 canât miss how-to topic: Seven Steps to Phenomenal Sex.

Copyright  2008 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

Please listen here:

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 recently at his home to talk books. Topics covered include deaccessioning, Railway and mining tycoon James J. Hill, Robert"s friendship with Elmer Anderson, book collector adn Governor of Minnesota; Robertâs interest in words and language, his expertise in dictionaries and grammars and lack of interest in Dr. Johnsonâs Dictionary, Better World Booksâs business model, partnering to buy and sell expensive books, and advice for the novice bookseller. 

Copyright  2008 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

Please listen here

Rosemary Furtak has been librarian at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for 25 year. She is co-curator of âText Messagesâ, an exhibit on artistâs books currently showing (until April 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 curatorsâand how to go about collecting artist books. We talk too about the challenges of cataloguing artist Ed Ruschaâs 26 Gasoline Stations,

about the prolific and surprising Dieter Roth, inexpensive materials and Richard Tuttle, and Lawrence Weiner, his Statements and his art making process. The works of these four are highlighted in the exhibition.

Copyright  2008 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

Please listen here:

Photo by NB

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,  Loveâs 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.

Copyright  2008 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

Please listen to the Biblio File interview here:

"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, Johannâs Cabinet of Wonders, Goddess, and Mid-Life Crisis . On television, besides her role as federal employee SM3 Sexsmith on Power Play, Jacobs 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 Beckettâs Happy Days directed by Leah Cherniak.

Happy Days, written in 1961, observes determined human optimism in the face of a universe without meaning. Winnie, Beckettâs "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 Beckettâs "testament to the resourcefulness of the human spirit"

Tanja and I talk here about playing Winnie, the difficulty of working at cliffâs 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.

Born, raised and currently resident in Ottawa, Canada, Christian McPhersonâs 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. Please listen here as we talk, among other things, about death, the misery of TV news, and a light hearted approach to life:

Ross Raisin is a young British author born in Keighley, Yorkshire. He has 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.

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 Authorsâ 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 recently at the IFOA, to talk about his latest 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.

Copyright  2008 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

Listen to the Biblio File interview with Nigel Beale here:

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 OâConnor thought best constituted a good short story. Iâve 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 Yesterdayâs 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.

Joe Dunthorne is a graduate of the Creative Writing Masters 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 recently 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 dustjackets which both attract attention

and complement content.

(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)

Bruno Racine was appointed President of the National Library of France on April 2 2007. Over the years he has held many senior postions within the French government including: Director General Cultural Affairs for the City of Paris (1988-1993), Director of lâAcadÃmie de France à Rome (1997-2002), and Chairman du Centre Pompidou (2002-2007). He is also a writer. Non-fiction books include his best selling: Art of living in Rome and Art of living in Tuscany. His novel the Governor of MorÃe (Grasset) won Franceâs First Novel Prize in 1982.

We talk here about the role of a national library, about scanning and digitization, Google, the Lyon library (Franceâs second largest), Europeana, the value added offered by Librarians, Canadaâs amalgamation of its National Archives and Library, the unlikelihood that France will follow suit, public servant novelists, Stendhal, and failure and success in careers and love.

AMITAV GHOSH is one of Indiaâs 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.

(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)

The Biblio File Copyright Nigel Beale 2008 

Junot DÃaz 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 (1948) and Nancy Allen professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

We met recently at the IFOA in Toronto, and talked about, among other things storytelling as a way to give voice to lost life, unique characters, 9/11 and Americaâs dual response: Why donât they like us? and Weâre 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.

(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)

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 Canadaâs Governor Generalâs 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.

Nam Le has won this yearâs Â60,000 Dylan Thomas Prize. It recognizes the best young writer in the English-speaking world with the goal of ensuring that the inspirational nature of Dylanâs writing lives on.

I met with Nam in Toronto recently 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 OâConnor thought best constituted a good short story. Iâve listed some of them here.

Nam Le is author of The Boat, a collection of âstories 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.â

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 â 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.

For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com

Joseph Boyden has just 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!

It now ranks among the ten largest (250,000 to 300,000 books, CDs, records, etc. per year) in the United States.

Beryl Barr

is the currently in charge of the Book Sale. I talked with her recently, and asked her to give listeners her top ten hints on how best to run a used book sale.

Hereâs our conversation:

For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com

David Curruthers, 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 here ( please see bottom of this post) about pure fibre rags,

old jute coffee bags, cover stock, denim  

and blue paper, beaters

pulp

vat-like structures for pulp

and machines that take 95% of the moisture out of the pulp

and flatten it so that it can been 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.

Please listen here:

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 intesection 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 Listaâs 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 dragonâs tail." Using a framework of existing poems, in the way that James Joyce used Homerâs Odyssey, Lista has borderline plagarized 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 Slotinâs achievements - with the attendant hubris and arrogance necessary to take risks and make anything new - and taking on those qualities in his own work, Listaâs poems do glitter, but more lastingly than that word would suggest. Dazzle too has a showiness I donât 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 in the last post, I am reminded of how rarely one encounters great literary work. Poetry especially. Pablo Neruda, Ted Hughes, Robin RobertsonâI 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 have.

I felt something of this while reading the handful of poems Michael sent me (please find three in a future post) in advance of our conversation. We talk here about the suicidal dangers of emulating Joyceâs Ulysses, and the bookâs unapproachability; punning, the multiple meanings of bloom, epiphanies, coincidences, translation, sex and physics, life and death.

For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com

Copyright  2008 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

We start with Rebecca Rosenblum, author of Once, " a collection of sixteen stories portraying the constricted and confused lives of the rootless twenty-somethings â students, office techies, waitresses, warehouse labourers, street hustlers â 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.

 Please listen here:

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 fatherâs 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 Byronâs reputation critically and commercially. Hereâs how it starts:

No breath of air to break the wave

That rolls below the Athenianâs grave,

That tomb which, gleaming oâer the cliff,

First greets the homeward-veering skiff,

High oâer the land he saved in vain;

When shall such hero live again?

Copyright  2008 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

Please listen here:

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!

Please Listen here:

Sheâs written four to date, including A Complicated Kindness which won the GGâs Award for Best Fiction in 2004.  We talk here about her latest The Flying Troutmans, about her fatherâs struggle with depression and the stigma that still surrounds the disease, 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.

Please listen:

(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)

We met recently at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talked, among other things, about the historical mystery genre, Ellis Peters, Wilkie Collinsâs 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,

We talk about living in war conditions, New York, Deer Hunter and Russian roulette, art as memory, the absurdity of war, the dangers of organized religion, fundamentalism, politics and the writer, canoing and moose, womenâs clothing, Arabic poetry and the influence of fathers.

We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talk here about his motherâs 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 Sidneyâs Arcadia.

(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)

Please listen here:

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, Tolstoyâs 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.

Copyright  2008 by Nigel Beale

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.

(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)

Please listen here: 

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 its greatness.

Listen here to part one of our conversation:

âbody 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 Redhillâs 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.

Listen here:

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.âs Georgetown neighborhood in 1970 and named it Booked Up. In 1988he 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. Brooksâs 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.

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 âFloridaâs largest book storeâ for elementary classes. Both have been active in the American Booksellerâs 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.

I talked with Patrick recently 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.

(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)

We talk here, at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, of his love of Milton, Eliot and ice-hockey, about poetry being written mainly to impress girls (see here for more on this hot topic), the Madonna-Whore complex, Charles Wright as the best living poet in the world, and what metaphor does in our lives

(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)

Heâs also a master storyteller as youâll 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 childrenâs room, the Red Sox and the Yankees, why the ebook hasnât replaced the paperback, Brewster Kahle versus Google and the Internet archive, and the question of whether or not information will be âfree for allâ to improve the world.

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)

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 Generalâs Literary Award for Fiction. It tells the story of a young manâs struggle to survive the Great Famine in Ireland of 1847. On his odyssey through Ireland and Britain, and across the Atlantic to Canada Fergus Oâbrien encounters death, violence, sexual heat, âboy soldiers, brigands, street toughs and charming, willful girls â all struggling for survival in the aftermath of natural catastrophe magnified by political callousness and brutal neglect. â 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.

We talk here, at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, about the role of the translator, her Swannâs 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 thatâs timeless.

Copyright  2007 by Nigel Beale

During our conversation Arthur refers to the person who restored John Harrisonâs extraordinary marine timekeepers. That person is Lt Cdr Rupert T. Gould. His story can be found in Time Restored: The Harrison timekeepers and R.T. Gould, the man who knew (almost) everything, by Jonathan Betts. Arthure also refers to a number of âclassicâ book on clocks. The include: Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers, and The Watch and Clockmakers Handbook: Dictionary and Guide, both by F.J. Britten, English Domestic Clocks by Cescinsky and Webster, and French Clocks the World Over, by Tardy.

As for us non-technical types interested in this fascinating field Arthur recommends Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World by David Landes.

We talk here about C.S. Lewis, the role of the book designer, the award winning Bedside Book of Birds, âthumbage,â 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. as one of the best designed books in recent memory.

(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)

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 placeâwhere 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.

Copyright  2006 by Nigel Beale

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.

Copyright  2006 by Nigel Beale

(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)

We talk here about the definitions of erotica and pornography (a common joke: âErotica is when you use a feather. Pornography is when you use the whole chicken.â?), 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.

Cohenâs 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 yearsâ 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.

(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)

We talk here about her stories, my favourites, and hers, bodies in bags, judging oneâs 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.

Copyright  2006 by Nigel Beale

Copyright  2006 by Nigel Beale

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 Landâs Edge (1993). Dirt Music (2001), was shortlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize.

I spoke with him during the 2005 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. An extremely likeable, self effacing man with interesting ideas about the relationship between writing and music, as you will hear if you choose to listenâ

Copyright  2005 by Nigel Beale

We talk about it, prizes, Shakespeare, Hardy, Lawrence, stylism, and his looks and wish to be a fat woman. Andrew Miller is as articulate orally as he is in writing. Hearâdonât just take my word for itâ

Copyright  2005 by Nigel Beale.