My guest on this episode is Cody Caetano. Cody is a writer and an off-reserve member of Pinaymootang First Nation. He also works as a literary agent at CookeMcDermid. Cody’s debut memoir, Half-Bads in White Regalia, was published Penguin Canada’s Hamish Hamilton imprint in 2023 and was a national bestseller. It won the 2023 Indigenous Voices Award for Best Published Prose, was shortlisted for the 2023 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award, the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and Canada Reads. It was named one of the best books of the year by The Globe and Mail and CBC Books.

The Toronto Star said about Half-Bads in White Regalia that “Caetano’s voice leaps off the page with a rhythmic, hip-hop style right from the first page.”

Cody and I talk about some of his pre-publishing jobs, and how they relate to his current ones, about how he handles being someone from a very different background than most people in the book world, and what it’s like to be a writer who is also an agent—someone who knows how the sausage gets made. 

Cody Caetano: codycaetano.com

Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.

Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact