What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books

My guest on this episode is Guy Vanderhaeghe. Guy is a three-time winner of the Governor’s-General Award for his collections of short stories, Man Descending and Daddy Lenin, and for his novel, The Englishman’s Boy, which was also shortlisted for the Giller Prize and The International Dublin Literary Award. His novel The Last Crossing was a winner of the CBC’s Canada Reads Competition. He has also received the Timothy Findley Prize, the Harbourfront Literary Prize, and the Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Prize, all given for a body of work. Guy’s most recent novel, August into Winter, won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction and the Glengarry Book Award and was shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust Atwood Gibson Fiction Prize. His most recent book, the essay collection Because Someone Asked Me To, was published in 2024 by Thistledown Press. That book won Book of the Year and the Non-Fiction Award at the 2025 Saskatchewan Book Awards. Shelagh Rogers, former host of the CBC’s “The Next Chapter”, said that “reading this volume, I felt all my circuitry light up like a flash of fireflies, as Nadine Gordimer would say. I’m just so glad somebody asked him to.” Guy and I talk about some critical advice he got from author Margaret Laurence when he first started as a writer, the enormous shifts that have happened in the Canadian literary scene since those early days, and why his most recent novel might be his last.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Peter Counter. Peter is an author and culture critic whose first book was the essay collection Be Scared of Everything, and his non-fiction has appeared in The Walrus, Motherboard, Art of the Title, Electric Literature, and the anthology Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church. Peter’s most recent book is the memoir How to Restore a Timeline: On Violence and Memory, published by House of Anansi Press in 2023. Author and actor John Hodgman – he was the PC in those Apple vs PC commercials, fyi - called the book “a brilliant, humorous, heartbreaking examination of how certain events break our lives apart, and what we do with the pieces.” Peter and I talk about what it’s like to be a culture critic in 2025, about the various forms his memoir took over the decade or so he was writing it and trying to get it published, and about my own envy over him getting John Hodgman to blurb his book.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Rachel Giese. Rachel is an author and the deputy national editor at The Globe and Mail. Her writing has appeared in The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, NewYorker.com, Toronto Life, Today's Parent, Hazlitt and RealLife.com. Her book Boys: What it Means to Become a Man, published in 2018 by HarperCollins Canada, was a bestseller, won the Writers’ Trust of Canada Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and was named one of the Globe and Mail’s 100 Favourite Books of the year. The Toronto Star said that “Boys gives us hope that busting apart ‘The Man Box’ will ultimately lead to fuller, more rewarding lives not just for boys, but for all of us.”Rachel and I talk about publishing a somewhat hopeful book about men and masculinity right before Donald Trump became president for the first time, about her related wish that she could publish an updated version of Boys every year, and about how her conception of what constitutes good writing relates to her favourite kind of vintage alarm clock.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Sean Michaels. Sean is the author of the novels Us Conductors, which won the Giller Prize and the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize, and The Wagers. His non-fiction has appeared in the Globe and Mail, The Guardian, Pitchfork and The New Yorker, and he is the founder of the pioneering music blog Said the Gramophone. His most recent novel is Do You Remember Being Born? published by Random House Canada in 2023 and a finalist for the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize. The New York Times called it “a charming and refreshingly non-dystopian meditation on the duality of literary creation.” Sean and I talk about his complicated feelings on the collision of AI and literature, given that his most recent novel is about that very thing and even contains passages written by AI, about wanting to change his approach with each book, and about the approach he took to writing his next one, a novel for young readers.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Jon Klassen. Jon is the creator of beloved, bestselling and award-winning “hat” serious of picture books: I Want My Hat Back, This Is Not My Hat, and We Found a Hat, in addition to The Rock from the Sky, and The Skull. He has also worked as an illustrator for many other authors’ books, as well as for feature animated films, music videos, and editorial pieces. His most recent book(s) are a series of board books, Your Forest, Your Farm, and Your Island. In its review of the series, the Wall Street Journal said that “[Klassen] has kept the dry humor but skipped the darkness, and the result is pure delight.” Jon and I talk about his childhood belief that inanimate objects have feelings, about the book of his that is not only his favourite, but which he believes only got published because of the success of the hat series, and about our shared love of children’s author William Steig—and our shared dislike of the films based on Steig’s most famous book, Shrek! This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Chelene Knight. Chelene is the author of the collection Braided Skin, the memoir Dear Current Occupant, which won the Vancouver Book Award, the novel Junie, which also won the Vancouver Book Award, and the self-help memoir Let It Go. Chelene’s most recent book is Safekeeping: A Writer’s Guided Journal for Launching a Book with Love, published by House of Anansi in early 2025. Author Kai Thomas called it “current, comprehensive, and full of care.” Chelene and I talk about the expectations she had about the life of a writer when she published her first book, about how she has learned to be intentional in her decision-making and not chase every opportunity that comes her way as a writer, and about the ideas that may end up driving her next book, a potential novel.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Jason Logan. Jason is an artist, graphic designer, and ink maker, and the founder of the Toronto Ink Company. He is the author of the books If We Ever Break Up, This Is My Book, iGeneration, Festus, and Make Ink: A Forager's Guide to Natural Inkmaking. He is the subject of the 2022 documentary The Colour of Ink, which premiered at that year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Jason’s most recent book is How to Be a Color Wizard: Forage and Experiment with Natural Art Making, published by MIT Kids Books in 2024. Kirkus Reviews called the book “practical, imaginative, magical fun.” Jason and I talk about the missing letter U in the title of his most recent book, about learnig to write books after one early draft actually put his wife to sleep, and about how he has embraced the recognition that  comes with being the central subject of a feature documentary.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Glenn Dixon. Glenn is an author and former educator whose work has appeared in National Geographic, the New York Post, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, and Psychology Today. His books include the travel memoirs Tripping the World Fantastic, Pilgrim in the Palace of Words, and Juliet’s Answer, which was a national bestseller and has been published in twelve countries. His most recent book is the novel Bootleg Stardust, published by Simon & Schuster in 2021. Author and broadcaster Grant Lawrence called the book “a totally wild ride through the opulent and trashy world of 70s rock and roll.”Glenn and I talk about releasing his first novel at the tail end of COVID lockdown, about recording original music for that novel with equipment previously used by, among others, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, and about the weird naming debate he recently had with the editors of his next novel, which features a sentient vacuum cleaner.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Aviva Rubin. Aviva is an author and essayist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, and Toronto Life, amongst other places. She is the author of the memoirs Tomorrow was Always Too Late For Me and Lost and Found in Lymphomaland. Her most recent book is the novel WHITE, published by re:books in 2024. Kirkus Reviews called it “a provocative exploration of the ties that bind and the mad hatred that kills.”Aviva and I talk about the brief moment of internet notoriety she experienced after writing a New York Times column on parenting and casual nudity, about the shift from memoir to fiction with her last book, and about the odd sense of hesitation her novel was greeted with by media and by author festivals, at a moment when a novel about how someone becomes a white supremacist is the very definition of timely.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this special live episode is Anne Michaels. Anne is an internationally award-winning novelist whose books have been translated into more than forty-five languages. She is the winner of the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Trillium Book Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has been shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize and twice for the Giller Prize. She has also been twice longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her novel Fugitive Pieces was made into a feature film. Her most recent novel, Held, was published by McClelland & Stewart in 2024, and shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Giller Prize. Alice Jolly, writing about Held in The Observer, said that “at the heart of this book lies the question of how goodness and love can be held across the generations. For Michaels, our final task is ‘to endure the truth.’”Anne and I spoke live onstage at Humber Polytechnic’s Lakeshore Campus on July 10th, as part of Humber’s Summer Workshop in Creative Writing (which I also coordinate). This is an edited version of that conversation.Anne and I talk about how, despite being both an internationally bestselling author and a fairly shy person, she has never developed a public persona for things like onstage interviews, about the importance of, in her words, “distillation, distillation, distillation” in her novel-writing process, and about the idea of writers who revise their work even after it has been published.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Steve Paikin. Steve is an author, journalist, and broadcaster who hosted TVO’s nightly current affairs show The Agenda for 19 years, until that show ended earlier this summer. He is an officer of the Order of Canada, a member of the Order of Ontario, and the author of eight books. His most recent book, John Turner: An Intimate Biography of Canada's 17th Prime Minister, was published by Sutherland House in 2022. The Globe & Mail called John Turner “an insightful portrait of a powerfully talented but deeply conflicted individual who influenced the story of our country, mostly for the better.”Steve and I talk about his decision to leave The Agenda (and the legendary broadcaster whose advice planted the seed for that departure), about why he  chose to write a deeply researched biography of a man who was Prime Minister for a whopping 79 days, and about taking on not just one, but three new book projects.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Valérie Bah. Valérie is a multidisciplinary Québécois artist, filmmaker, documentarian, photographer, and writer whose first book was the collection The Rage Letters, translated from the French and published by Metonymy Press. Valérie’s most recent book is their first novel (and first book in English) Subterrane. That book was published by Véhicule Press in 2024 and was the winner of the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. The Montreal Review of Books said that Subterrane “hums with high-context, sublingual information, the kind that resists total comprehension joyfully and exactingly.”Valérie and I talk about the surreal experience of winning the Amazon First Novel Award (including the timely consumption of edibles), about how they feel at home in multiple artistic mediums and practices at once, and about their recurring lottery-winning fantasies, which involve a very particular make of car.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Leanne Toshiko Simpson. Leanne is an author and educator who co-founded a reflective writing program at Canada’s largest mental health hospital and teaches at the University of Toronto. Her debut is the novel Never Been Better, published by HarperCollins Canada in 2024. That book recently won the KOBO Emerging Writer Prize in the category of Romance. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews called the novel “a funny, refreshing, and generous story full of wisdom on mental health.”Leanne and I talk about how she, as someone with bipolar disorder, handles moments of emotional upheaval, about the benefits of being a writer publicly identified with that disorder, and about the reaction she has received, from romance readers and from readers interested in reading about issues of mental health, to writing a rom-com novel about pysch ward survivors.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Natalie Zina Walschots. Natalie is an author, game designer and journalist whose books include two poetry collections, DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains and Thumbscrews. Her most recent book is the novel Hench, published by HarperCollins in 2021. That book was a finalist on Canada Reads and was nominated for a Locus Award for Best First Novel. The New York Times called it “witty and inventive.” Natalie and I talk about the multiple times she has written, then scrapped, the sequel to Hench, about finally cracking the novel while working in a borrowed camper in small-town Nova Scotia, and about the Canadian book that would have turned her very chill experience with Canada Reads into a “medieval joust.”This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Tickets for the live onstage interview with Anne Michaels on July 10 at the Humber Lakeshore Campus in Toronto. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Michelle Good. Michelle’s first book, the novel Five Little Indians, won the HarperCollins/UBC Best New Fiction Prize, the Amazon First Novel Award, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Award, the Evergreen Award, the City of Vancouver Book of the Year Award, and even Canada Reads. Her most recent book, Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous life in Canada was published in 2023 by HarperCollins Canada. That book was a #1 national bestseller and won the High Plains Book Award, and was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Balsillie Prize for Public Policy and the Indigenous Voices Award. Author Waubgeshig Rice said that "Truth Telling is at once heartfelt, instructive, and authentic." Michelle and I talk about her “bemusement” over becoming a successful and celebrated author in her late 60s, about the sense of responsibility and pressure that comes with her new high-profile status, and about how, despite all the awards and accolades, the process of writing the follow-up to Five Little Indians has been just as stressful and full of self-doubt as it was the first time.Please check out Indigenous WatchdogThis podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Tickets for the live onstage interview with Anne Michaels on July 10 at the Humber Lakeshore Campus in Toronto. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Michael Crummey. Michael is the author of seven books of poetry, a collection of short stories, and a half-dozen novels, all of which have won and/or been shortlisted for major literary prizes, including the Giller, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction. His most recent novel, The Adversary, was published in 2023 by Knopf Canada. That book was a #1 national bestseller, and recently won the Dublin Literary Award. The New York Times called it “a twisty, gloriously grim novel." Michael and I talk about winning the Dublin Literary Award, about the intense struggle he had writing his very first novel, River Thieves, and about his gratitude for the success of The Adversary—a novel he worried might end his career as a writer.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Tickets for the live onstage interview with Anne Michaels on July 10 at the Humber Lakeshore Campus in Toronto. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Teresa Wong. Teresa is an author and artist whose work has appeared in The Believer, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s and The Walrus. Her first book, the graphic novel Dear Scarlet, was longlisted for CBC Canada Reads. Her most recent book is the graphic novel All Our Ordinary Stories, published in 2024 by Arsenal Pulp Press. It was also longlisted for Canada Reads, and won two Alberta Literary Awards. (NB: as you’ll hear, this episode was recorded a day before the book won.) Publishers Weekly said that “Wong explores her Chinese immigrant parents' history with gentle curiosity, wry humor, and moments of aching regret” and called the book “a resonant journey into the past.”Teresa and I talk about the potential meditative benefits of learning to swim as an adult, which she is currently doing, about worrying she was done making books entirely after All Our Ordinary Stories was published, and about her complicated thoughts on the whole concept of literary awards.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Tickets for the live onstage interview with Anne Michaels on July 10 at the Humber Lakeshore Campus in Toronto. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Kerry Clare. Kerry is the author of the novels Mitzi Bytes and Waiting for a Star to Fall and the editor of The M Word: Conversations About Motherhood, Kerry also edits the Canadian books website 49thShelf.com, is host of the BOOKSPO podcast, and writes about books and reading at her longtime blog, Pickle Me This. Kerry’s most recent book is the novel Asking for a Friend, published by Doubleday Canada in 2023. Author Marisa Stapley said that “this novel is like the best kind of friend: honest, wise, complicated, endearing, smart.”Kerry and I talk about her new podcast and how it fits into a publishing landscape that seems to change completely every 5 years or so, about being surprised (and a little disappointed) that she had to work to promote her most recent novel just as hard as she did her first, and about the sense of liberation she felt, early on, when she realized she didn’t have to try to write “pretentious CanLit.”This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Tickets for the live onstage interview with Anne Michaels on July 10 at the Humber Lakeshore Campus in Toronto. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Sid Sharp. Sid is an artist and illustrator whose debut graphic novel for young readers, The Wolf Suit, was featured in Best of the Year lists by the New York Public Library, School Library Journal, and The Globe and Mail, and has been translated into French, German, and Italian. Their most recent graphic novel, Bog Myrtle, was published in 2024 by Annick Press, and was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection. It has also been nominated for an Eisner and Doug Wright awards. Publishers Weekly called the book a “lighthearted and surreal take on evergreen themes surrounding the benefits of kindness that’s more Brothers Grimm than classic Disney.”Sid and I talk about how they originally had no plans to create work for children, about the fun but very exhausting experience of meeting young readers in the wild, and about how they need, in their words, to “draw some weird, sad stuff for grown-ups” before tackling another kids’ book.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Tickets for the live onstage interview with Anne Michaels on July 10 at the Humber Lakeshore Campus in Toronto. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is John Lorinc. John is a journalist and editor who writes regularly for places like the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, The Walrus, and Spacing Magazine, where he is a senior editor. His previous books include The New City and Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias. He has also contributed to, co-edited, or project-managed a number of essay anthologies for Coach House Books, including one that has just come out, called Messy Cities: Why We Can’t Plan Everything. The most recent book for which he is the sole author is the memoir No Jews Live Here, published in 2024 by Coach House. The Literary Review of Canada called the book “a poignant exploration of survival and identity that will resonate deeply with readers interested in Holocaust history.”John and I talk about his enduring interest in cities, about writing a Holocaust-themed memoir after working for so long in the realm of urbanism, and about his long relationship with Coach House BooksThis podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Tickets for the live onstage interview with Anne Michaels on July 10 at the Humber Lakeshore Campus in Toronto. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.