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In-depth conversations with authors about their books—how and why they write, the books and authors they admire, and so much more. Plus, occasional takes on what's going on in the business of books. And year-end round-ups of reading recommendations from the staff of Rakuten Kobo, the global digital bookseller.
Hosted by Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj.
Hosted by Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj.
160 Episodes
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Michael Tamblyn spoke with Miriam Toews, author of many novels including A Complicated Kindness, All My Puny Sorrows, and Women Talking, to name just a few. Her latest book is a memoir called, A Truce That Is Not Peace. Spurred by the question "why do you write?", posed by a distressingly persistent literary festival organizer, it's a work of nonfiction that delves into the author's feelings around the deaths by suicide of both her father and her sister. Miriam Toews on her new memoir, and the surprising truth of good comedy
Nathan Maharaj spoke with the novelist Charlotte McConaghy. Her latest book is Wild Dark Shore. It's the story of the Salt family, the stewards of a vast seed bank on a remote island that's in danger of being washed over by rising sea levels. As they're making the hard decisions about what can be saved in the course of their evacuation, a vicious storm tears across the island and leaves a woman washed up on the shore—and she's alive. Charlotte McConaghy found fear on the Wild Dark Shore
Nathan Maharaj spoke with the Oscar-nominated filmmaker and journalist Julian Brave NoiseCat. He co-directed the 2024 documentary Sugarcane which investigated abuses at a residential school in western Canada. He is also the author of a new book called We Survived the Night: An Indigenous Reckoning. It's about his dad, and also his upbringing, and a mythical character named Coyote. Julian Brave Noisecat set out to tell a story in the trickster tradition
Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Mona Awad. Her debut book, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl was a Giller Prize finalist. Its follow-up Bunny was set in an Ivy League creative writing program and blended horror and suspense with wicked satire. We Love You, Bunny is her fifth novel, and it's a return to that creative writing program, revisiting the story through the perspectives of characters who apparently want to set the record straight but end up pulling us even further down this dark and twisting rabbit hole. Mona Awad on returning to the world of Bunny
Hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj caught up on a landmark legal decision about books and AI, the perils of bookstore merch, plus a whole lot more. This episode covers: Anthropic AI v. Authors and Authors v. Apple How Powell's Books' new mugs got them into hot water Barnes & Noble buying Books Inc. C-suite changes at Simons & Schuster and Harper UK A novel approach to creative writing this November Somehow, neither of them mentioned a specific book this time. They've been spoken to and have promised to do better in the future. More author interviews coming soon to kobo.com/conversation
Michael Tamblyn spoke with journalist Brian Stewart, whose career spanned decades, covering the US-Iraq Gulf War, famine in Ethiopia, and countless other historical events for CBC and NBC. He tells us about all of it—including what was going on in his life off-camera—in a new book: On the Ground: My Life as a Foreign Correspondent. Brian Stewart reports on the golden age of being a foreign correspondent
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with Antonio Michael Downing, author of the 2021 memoir Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming, as well as the illustrated children's book Stars in My Crown. For just about a year now he's also been the host of CBC's The Next Chapter, where every week he talks to authors (and once in a while an opinionated bookseller) about books they want people to pay attention to. He joined us to talk about his first novel: Black Cherokee. It's the story of Ophelia Blue Rivers, a girl growing up in South Carolina where her mixed ancestry leaves her struggling for acceptance amidst the Cherokee community where her grandmother raised her. Antonio Michael Downing's literary journey into the South
Host Michael Tamblyn spoke with novelist Scott Alexander Howard, winner of the 2025 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and author of The Other Valley. It's the story of Odile Ozanne, a young girl who lives in a small village in a valley. In the next valley over, in the west, there is an identical village where events from 20 years ago are taking place, and in the valley to the east there is another village where it's 20 years in the future. Occasionally, and under the strictest controls and in a disguise rendering them unidentifiable, people will visit the other valleys, looking forward, or backward in time. One day, visitors from the east—that is, from the future—are recognized by Odile, and she has to carry on pretending she hasn't seen what she knows she saw. Scott Alexander Howard on the border-crossings between present and past
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Rob Franklin. His debut novel Great Black Hope is about a young man, named Smith, who gets arrested for cocaine possession on his way home from a party at the end of an oppressively hot New York summer. Smith is Black, and he's queer; he's also a Stanford graduate and his family back in Atlanta is, as they say, not without means. As Smith's court date looms and he enters treatment for addiction, he's grieving the sudden and tragic death of a friend. Rob Franklin's upwardly-mobile, downwardly-spiraling Great Black Hope
This past spring Kobo held an event for employees called KoboCon. It was an opportunity for the staff of Kobo to share interesting things they're working on and some big ideas they're grappling with. One of those big ideas was how the information ecosystem affects readers, writers, and individuals coming together at work, so we brought in expert explainer and debunker Timothy Caulfield to talk about it through the lens of his latest book The Certainty Illusion: What You Don't Know and Why It Matters. While we take a little break for the summer, we're bringing you that on-stage conversation now. Timothy Caulfield and The Certainty Illusion - Live at KoboCon 2025!
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Wally Lamb, the author of novels including She's Come Undone, I Know This Much Is True, and The Hour I First Believed. His new novel, his first in nearly a decade, is The River is Waiting. It's about Corbin Ledbetter, Corby to his friends, husband to Emily and father to twins Maisie and Niko. Corby's at the precipice of mid-life when he makes a terrible, terrible mistake. It's the kind of mistake most of us would struggle to imagine ever coming back from, but that's what Corby has to figure out as he endures punishments from society, family, and the harshest judge of all, himself. Wally Lamb on wading into autobiography for The River is Waiting
Host Michael Tamblyn spoke with Eliza Reid, author of the novel Death on the Island. It's a mystery set on a remote island in Iceland where a dinner party of diplomats turns fatal for the deputy ambassador of Canada. And it just so happens that the elements of this story—Iceland, diplomacy, and the perils of being a Canadian out in the world—these are all things that Ottawa-born Eliza Reid knows well from the 8 years she spent as the First Lady of Iceland. Eliza Reid on paying homage to the difficult work of diplomacy
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with poet and novelist Aaron Kreuter. His new book is Lake Burntshore, which tells the story of the summer of 2013 at a Canadian Jewish summer camp that's just fired a several camp counsellors after they're caught smoking (then-illegal) marijuana. The enterprising son of the camp's owner springs into action and comes up with a surprising solution to their sudden staffing needs: a group of charming and very young Israeli soldiers. Aaron Kreuter finds new possibilities in summer camp
Host Michael Tamblyn spoke with Elyse Graham, author of Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War Two. It's the true story of how the United States, as war raged in Europe, quickly built an organization staffed with intelligence officers recruited not from the military—but from the ranks of the bookworms—the academics, librarians, and archivists found in universities and libraries across the US. After being trained in the art of espionage (and mortal combat) they were sent off to faraway places as exceptionally well-read spies. Elyse Graham tells the story of WWII's scholarly spies
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with Liann Zang, author of the new novel Julie Chan is Dead. In it, Julie Chan is in fact very much alive but her estranged twin sister Chloe, a wildly successful social media influencer, has suddenly died and it just so happens that Julie is for just a moment the only person in the world who knows Chloe is dead. So she decides to pick up and start living Chloe's apparently fabulous life, letting the world believe it's Julie Chan's body being carried out of Chloe's apartment on a stretcher. Liann Zhang on satirizing social media influencers from the inside
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Jon Hickey, author of Big Chief. It's takes place in an Anishinaabe reservation called Passage Rouge Nation during the last weekend before a Tribal Presidential election. Incumbent president Mack Beck is coasting to another term happily overseeing tribal governmental matters as well as the Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel when his rival, activist Gloria Hawkins begins gaining steam in the home stretch. Gloria's campaign, by the way, is being run by Mack's estranged sister Layla, while his own campaign is run by his childhood friend and local boy made good in law school Mitch Caddo, who by the way seems to have almost had a thing with Layla back when they were kids. Jon Hickey on the politics of apocalypse
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with Claire Cameron, author of the novels The Bear and The Last Neanderthal. Her new book is How to Survive a Bear Attack. It's a memoir of family, of illness, of love, and the author's ongoing fascination with a 1991 bear attack that happened in a wilderness she knows so well. Claire Cameron on what she's learned from studying monsters
Host Michael Tamblyn spoke with mystery novelist Nita Prose, author of the international bestseller The Maid. It's the story of Molly Gray, a 20-something hotel maid whose job perfectly suits her need for order and predictable routine. As tends to happen in mystery novels set in hotels, Molly discovers a dead guest and finds herself a suspect in the ensuing murder investigation—an investigation which she undertakes in parallel, with the help of her friends. In Nita's latest book, The Maid's Secret, Molly is riding high: she's been promoted to Head Maid & Special Events Manager, she's engaged to the love of her life—the dashing Juan Manuel, and she's just learned that she's the owner of a piece of art that might be worth millions… If, that is, she can find out who stole it on the day it was supposed to be sold at auction. Nita Prose on saying goodbye to Molly Gray
In our latest installment in this series, hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj caught up on a book whose author they're not going to get to interview. Topics covered in this episode: Meta's problem with an ex-employee's tell-all memoir The cognitive perils of being a billionaire The publishing perils of nonfiction Moving fast and breaking things as sage wisdom from the elders of Silicon Valley LibGen and the fight in the courts over Faire Use in AI models Books mentioned: Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism - A Memoir by Sarah Wynn-Williams Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with podcaster Nate DiMeo about his book The Memory Palace, based on the podcast by the same name. In The Memory Palace, history comes in vignettes, as short stories, as jewels carefully mined from a variety of sources. Nathan and Nate talked about history as story, how Nate realized the thing that made him the best guy to sit next to at the bar was a great idea for a podcast, and the making of The Memory Palace's star-studded audiobook. Nate DiMeo on shaking up the past in The Memory Palace
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