My guest on this episode is Michael Christie. Michael is the author of the 2012 story collection, The Beggar's Garden, which was longlisted for the Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Writers' Trust Prize for Fiction, and won the Vancouver Book Award. His 2015 novel If I Fall, If I Die was also longlisted for the Giller Prize, as well as the Kirkus Prize, and was selected as a New York Times Editors' Choice Pick, and was on numerous best-of-the-year lists. His essays and book reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Globe & Mail. Michael’s most recent novel is Greenwood, which was published in 2019 by McClelland & Stewart. That books was a national bestseller and won the Le Prix du Livre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and the 2020 Arthur Ellis Award for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing. It was also shortlisted for the 2020 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, and longlisted for the Giller Prize, and was a 2023 Canada Reads Finalist. The New York Times Book Review called Greenwood “superb” and said it “penetrates to the core of things.”

Michael and I talk about how his writing career has been influenced by his previous semi-pro skateboarding career, about converting Greenwood into a TV series, and about how while working on his new novel, he had to resist the temptation to copy the narrative formula that had worked so well in Greenwood.

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

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