My guest on this episode is David Bergen. David is the author of numerous acclaimed novels and short-story collections, including The Case of Lena S, which won the 2002 Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award, and The Time In Between, winner of the 2005 Giller Prize. Four of his books have won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. David’s work has also won the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and the John Hirsch Award, and been nominated for the Manitoba Book of the Year, the Relit Prize, and the International Dublin Literary Award. Four of his books have won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. He himself was awarded the Matt Cohen Award in 2018, in honour of a distinguished lifetime contribution to Canadian literature.

His most recent novel is Away from the Dead, published in 2023 by Goose Lane Editions. Author and former What Happened Next guest Omar El Akkad called Away from the Dead “a deceptively stunning novel… written by one of Canada’s best.”

David and I talk about adding his name to the opposition to the Giller Prize’s association with Scotiabank, about the crime novel he wrote a decade ago that will finally get published next year, and about the advice he wishes he’d given Ron McLean when Ron defended one of David’s books on Canada Reads. (David and I also bond over not yet having read Middlemarch.)

This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.

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