What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books

Rollie Pemberton (Cadence Weapon)

My guest on this episode is Rollie Pemberton. Rollie is a writer, rapper, producer, poet and activist who performs under the name Cadence Weapon. His album Parallel World won the 2021 Polaris Music Prize and his writing has been published in Pitchfork, The Guardian, Wired, Toronto Life, and Hazlitt. Rollie has also acted as Poet Laureate for his hometown of Edmonton, Alberta. He also recently released a song and a video celebrating that city’s hockey team and its run for the Stanley Cup. Rollie’s debut book is the memoir Bedroom Rapper: Cadence Weapon on Hip-Hop, Resistance and Surviving the Music Industry, which was published by McClelland & Stewart in 2022.
The Toronto Star called Bedroom Rapper “an intriguing window into a creative mind that takes creativity and the constant betterment of that creativity very seriously.”
Rollie and I talk about his relentlessly curatorial approach to art and the world, about the need for more and better artistic criticism, and about why he thinks books and writing will soon eclipse music as his central creative pursuit.
This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.

John Vaillant

My guest on this first episode of The Walrus era is John Vaillant. John is a Vancouver author and journalist whose acclaimed, award-winning nonfiction books, The Golden Spruce and The Tiger, were national bestsellers. His debut novel, The Jaguar’s Children, was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. John has written for, among others, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and... The Walrus. John’s most recent book is Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, which was published by Knopf Canada in 2023. Fire Weather was a national bestseller, and won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize For Political Writing, the Baillie Gifford Prize For Nonfiction, and the 2024 J.W. Dafoe Book Prize, in addition to being a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize, a National Book Award, the Hubert Evans Prize, and a Pulitzer Prize. The Guardian called the book “an urgent warning—and an all-consuming read.”
John and I talk about how the devastating things he writes about in Fire Weather really are our new reality, about the fact that he is still talking publicly about the book almost every single day—even a year after it was published—and about why the novel he had been planning to write instead of Fire Weather will probably remain unwritten.
 
This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
 

Alissa York

My guest on this episode is Alissa York. Alissa is the author of the novels Mercy, Effigy (which was shortlisted for the Giller Prize), Fauna and The Naturalist (which was winner of the Canadian Author’s Association Fiction Award, and the  short fiction collection, Any Given Power.  Alissa’s essays and articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Brick magazine and elsewhere, and she teaches at Humber College, where she is the coordinator for the Creative Writing program. Full disclosure, we used to have offices right across the hall from each other at Humber.
Alissa’s most recent book is Far Cry, which was published by TK in 2023 by Random House Canada. The Toronto Star said Far Cry is “dazzling and brilliant” and called it “a transfixing, glorious novel.”
Alissa and I talk about the Humber Creative Writing program, how she makes herself disconnect from social media, and most other social things, when she is working on a book, and where she begins when she is starting a new novel.
 
Alissa York: alissayork.com
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact

Cody Caetano

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
 

Nina Dunic

My guest on this episode is Nina Dunic. Nina is writer, editor, and journalist whose has done work for the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, CBC Docs and others. After winning a number of short story contests less than a decade ago, Nina turned to writing fiction. Nina’s first book is the novel The Clarion, which was published by Invisible Publishing in 2023. The Clarion was longlisted for the Giller Prize and just last week, it won the Trillium Prize. It was also named one of the Globe and Mail's Best Books of 2023, and the Best Canadian Debut of 2023 by Apple Books. It also appeared on the CBC'S list of Best Canadian Fiction of 2023.
The Toronto Star called The Clarion “a wonderful, and promising, debut.”
Nina and I talk about her how she has dealt with nervousness around getting interviewed – it involves cognac – about maintaining distance between her fiction writing self and her real self, and about the surreal feeling she gets watching her debut book, which she was certain would disappear without a trace, get all of this recognition from critics, readers, and award juries. (We recorded this conversation shortly before she won Trillium Prize, but we talk about that, too.)
 
Nina Dunic: https: ninadunic.com
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact

Nathan Whitlock

My guest on this episode is... me. That’s because my most recent novel, Lump, was published exactly one year ago this week by the Rare Machines imprint of Dundurn Press, so I am officially in WHAT HAPPENED NEXT territory.
My guest interviewer on this episode is Julie S. Lalonde. Julie is an internationally recognized women’s rights advocate and public educator. Her book Resilience is Futile: The Life and Death and Life of Julie S. Lalonde was published by Between the Lines in 2020. It was named one of the best books of the year by CBC Books and the Hill Times and won the 2020 Ontario Speaker’s award. It also won an Independent Publisher Book Award in 2021. (In addition to all that, Julie was the very first guest I had on this podcast.)
Julie and I talk about the differences between publishing your first book and publishing your third, how to deal with other authors sucking up all the sales and attention, and the author I consider my dream-get for this podcast.
Julie S. Lalonde: yellowmanteau.com
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact

Laurie Petrou

My guest on this episode is Laurie Petrou. Laurie is the author of four books, including the short story collection Between, and the novels Sister of Mine and Love, Heather. She is an Associate Professor at the RTA School of Media at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Laurie’s most recent book is Stargazer, published in 2022 by Verve Books. Author Marissa Stapley called Stargazer "a sinuous, captivating exploration of the mysterious depths of female friendship.”
Laurie and I talk about the lessons she has learned since her first book about what to say no to and what to yes to, about the skills she has acquired while collaborating with a TV writer for her next book, and how she handles getting identified as a writer by people in her neighbourhood.
Laurie Petrou: lauriepetrou.com
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact

Jordan Abel

My guest on this episode is Jordan Abel. Jordan is the author of The Place of Scraps (which won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Un/inhabited, Injun (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize) and NISHGA, which won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres award and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction, and the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize. Jordan is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta where he teaches Indigenous Literatures, Research-Creation, and Creative Writing.
Jordan’s most recent book is Empty Spaces, which was published by McClelland & Stewart in 2023, and was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award. In its review of Empty Spaces, the Boston Globe called it “a singular, incantatory work.”
Jordan and I talk about how being in academia has enriched his creative work, and why, all the same, he doesn’t always feel he belongs there, and about how he was shocked that his agent and publisher would take a chance on a book as strange and difficult as Empty Spaces, and about how odd it is that his published work to date has been so dark and serious, when he doesn’t see himself that way at all. (We do a lot of laughing in this episode, FYI.)
 
Empty Spaces by Jordan Abel at Penguin Random House Canada.
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact

Andrew F. Sullivan

My guest on this episode is Andrew F Sullivan. Andrew is the author of the novel WASTE, a Globe & Mail Best Book of the Year, and the short story collection All We Want is Everything, also a Globe & Mail Best Book of the Year and finalist for the ReLit Award. Andrew’s most recent two books are the novels The Marigold, published by ECW Press in Spring 2023, a finalist for the Aurora Awards and the Locus Awards, and named a Best Book of the Year by Esquire, The Verge, Book Riot and the Winnipeg Free Press, and The Handyman Method, which he cowrote with Nick Cutter, and which was published by Simon & Schuster in Fall 2023.
Book List called The Handyman Method “a terrific horror novel, with a spellbinding story full of surprises and superb writing that is vivid, visceral, and, at times, darkly beautiful.” Publishers Weekly said about The Marigold that “this impressively bleak vision of the near future is as grotesquely amusing as it is grim.” 
Andrew and I talk about how grateful he is for the amount of attention The Marigold has received, but also how he worked his ass off and was very strategic about ensuring it had a chance to get that attention, also the enormous difference between publishing with an indie press like ECW and with a multinational like Simon & Schuster, and how nearly burnt himself out promoting two novels in one year.
 
Andrew F. Sullivan: andrewfsullivan.com
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact
 

Ken McGoogan

My guest on this episode is Ken McGoogan. Ken is the author of sixteen books—most of them nonfiction narratives, but also a few novels. His books include Fatal Passage, Lady Franklin’s Revenge, and Canada’s Undeclared War: Fighting Words from the Literary Trenches. Ken has won the Pierre Berton Award for Popular History and the University of British Columbia Medal for Canadian Biography. A fellow of the Explorers Club and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, McGoogan sails as a resource historian with Adventure Canada. Ken’s most recent book is Searching for Franklin: New Answers to the Great Arctic Mystery, which was published by Douglas & McIntyre in 2023. The Vancouver Sun wrote about that book, that “there's a raw immediacy, a forceful current of white-knuckle suspense, to McGoogan's recreation of events."
 
Ken and I talk about his brief time as a firewatcher and how that directly inspired at least one of his books, about whether Searching for Franklin really is his last book about the search for the Northwest Passage (short answer: probably, but it depends), and about his upcoming book, in which he shifts his subject from the Franklin expedition to fascism.
 
Ken McGoogan: kenmcgoogan.com
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact