What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books

Sheila Murray

My guest on this episode is Sheila Murray. Sheila’s short fiction has been published in many literary journals including Descant, The Dalhousie Review, and The New Quarterly. Murray is an advocate for social justice and currently leads a grassroots, volunteer-driven initiative that engages urban residents in adapting to local climate change impacts.
Sheila’s first novel, Finding Edward,  was published in 2022 by Cormorant Books. Finding Edward has been shortlisted for a Governor General’s Literary Award, longlisted for Canada Reads, and selected as the One Book One Aurora book for 2023. The novel is also finalist for the 2023 Toronto Book Award, the winner of which will be announced at a ceremony on October 10th.
Sheila and I talk about her extensive advocacy and community work, about how she says yes to every invitation to read or speak as a writer, and about how, despite the ongoing success of her first novel, she’s not getting approached by big-time agents and editors at multinational publishers—and why she’s kinda okay with that.
Sheila Murray: sheilamurray.ca
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact

Claire Cameron

My guest on this episode is Claire Cameron. Claire is the kind of person who has led canoe trips in Algonquin Park and worked as an instructor for Outward Bound. She has taught mountaineering, climbing, and whitewater rafting in Oregon and beyond. But also the kind of person whose writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, the Guardian, Lenny Letter, and Salon. Claire is the author of three novels, the most recent of which is The Last Neanderthal, which was published in 2017 by Doubleday Canada, and went on to be published in a dozen other countries. It was a bestseller in Canada, and was a finalist for the 2017 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
The Los Angeles Review of Books said about The Last Neanderthal that "Cameron pulls out all the literary stops in giving Neanderthals as much free rein, agency and authenticity as possible. . . . This could easily be the best book that shakes up the classic Neanderthal tropes in science fiction and fantasy."
Claire and I talk about how she does her best writing when is able to write from inside out, rather than the outside in, how being diagnosed with a form of skin cancer after the publication of The Last Neanderthal changed not only what she wrote about next but how she engages with the outside world, and about how the idea of taking a dump in the woods is kind of central to the way her imagination works.
 
Claire Cameron: claire-cameron.com
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact

Emily Austin

My guest on this episode is Emily Austin. Emily is the author of Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead, which was published in 2022 by Simon & Schuster Canada, and has been published in multiple other countries and in many other languages. Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead was long listed for The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award, and a finalist for the Ottawa Book Awards.
Buzzfeed called the book “the perfect blend of macabre and funny.”
Emily and I talk about how studying library science helped her avoid some of the cliches of LGBTQ+ fiction, the disassociation she feels about her book’s success, and how having a readership has makes her feel some responsibility when it comes to writing narratives about queerness and mental health issues. I also take a moment to scare Emily a little about coming out as a poet.
 
Emily Austin: emilyaustinauthor.com
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact

Stuart Ross

My guest on this episode is Stuart Ross. Stuart is a writer, editor, teacher, and self-described "small press guerrilla." Stuart is the author of over twenty books of poetry, fiction, and essays. He is the recipient of the 2019 Harbourfront Festival Prize and the 2010 Relit Prize for Short Fiction. His most recent works are The Book of Grief and Hamburgers, published by ECW Press in Spring 2022, and I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub, published by Anvil Press in the fall of 2022.
The Book of Grief and Hamburgers recently won the Trillium Book Award, and Ross himself was the subject of a special tribute night put on by his adopted town of Cobourg, Ontario.
Stuart and I talk about that tribute night, and the mix of delight and embarrassment he felt around the whole event, about what he calls his "neurotic" drive to keep starting new writing projects, and about how he identifies with the students he teaches in his poetry workshops.
 
Stuart Ross's author page at Anvil Press: anvilpress.com/authors/stuart-ross
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact

Jamie Tennant

My guest on this episode is Jamie Tennant. Jamie’s debut novel The Captain of Kinnoull Hill was published by Palimpsest Press in 2016. His second novel, River Diverted, also published by Palimpsest Press, was published in the fall of 2022. Jamie also hosts the weekly books and literature program/podcast Get Lit on CFMU, where he is also the Program Director.
Author Emily Saso said about River Diverted: “Nobody writes a charming monster quite like Jamie does.   Highly recommend if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to chuck your North American life and move to Japan.”
Jamie and I talk about his early days as a theatre kid and as the singer in a band, about his relatively late start as a novelist, and about the kinds of lessons he has learned from interviewing authors every week on his show — which is something I can very much relate to.
 
Jamie Tennant: jamietennant.ca
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact
 

Naseem Hrab

My guest on this episode is Naseem Hrab. Naseem is the author of many stories for children, which have been translated into several languages. Her book The Sour Cherry Tree, published by OwlKids Books, won a Governor General’s Literary Award in 2022. Naseem’s most recent book, Otis & Peanut, illustrated by Kelly Collier, was also published by OwlKids Books earlier this year.
 Kirkus Reviews called Otis and Peanut “a tender friendship story for the ages.” The New York Times said that its main characters “bravely follow in the footsteps of Frog and Toad and George and Martha."
(Also relevant to this conversation: Naseem’s day job is as an Associate Publisher at Kids Can Press.)
Naseem and I talk about her seeming inability to take any time off from writing stories, about why she tries very hard to ignore prize culture, and about her plans to do something she has never done before: write a book for grown ups.
 
Naseem Hrab: naseemhrab.com
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact

Carleigh Baker

My guest on this episode is Carleigh Baker. Carleigh’s debut story collection, Bad Endings, published by Anvil Press in 2017, won the City of Vancouver Book Award, and was also a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Emerging Indigenous Voices Award for fiction. Foreword magazine said, about Bad Endings, “Baker is a skillful, sensitive writer with an uncanny gift for subtle, dark humor and the ability to assume the viewpoint of her characters […] There is no judgment or condemnation in these stories, but a tender, deep savoring of the quirks that make us human.”
 
Carleigh and I talk about how winning a major award was both a shock and the occasion for some private head-swelling, about the experience (so far) of moving from a small independent press to McClelland & Stewart, and about how she keeps forgetting the very lessons she emphasizes when she is teaching creative writing.
 
Carleigh Baker: carleighbaker.com
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact

Cary Fagan

My guest on this episode is Cary Fagan. Cary is the author of many novels and collections of short stories. He has won the Toronto Book Award and the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction, and has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Writers’ Trust Fiction Award, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. He is also an acclaimed writer of books for children, having won the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, the IODE Jean Throop Book Award, a Mr. Christie Silver Medal, the Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People, and the Joan Betty Stuchner—Oy Vey!—Funniest Children’s Book Award.
Cary’s most recent books are Boney, a picture book for children, published in 2022 by Groundwood Books, and The Animals, also published in 2022, by Book*hug press. The Vancouver Sun called The Animals “Funny, provocative, magical, and warmly engaging.” Publishers Weekly, in a starred review of Boney, called it “a poetic volume that raises keen questions about ephemerality, connection, and regard across the natural world.”
 
Cary and I talk about his dual role as a writer for children and a writer for adults, about how his feelings about his own career has shifted over the years, including a period in which he contemplated giving up writing for adults altogether, about the chapbook press he runs with Bernard Kelly and his wife, Rebecca Comay, and why he feels publishing chapbooks is something maybe a lot of writers ought to do.
 
Cary Fagan: caryfagan.com
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact

Susan Musgrave

My guest on this episode is Susan Musgrave. Susan is the author of nineteen books of poetry, numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, and several books for children. In 2023, she was recognized with the George Woodcock Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement in British Columbia. Susan also teaches poetry in the University of British Columbia’s Creative Writing school, where I was lucky enough to be her student – twice – while completing my MFA degree.
 
Susan’s most recent book of poetry, Exculpatory Lilies, was published in 2022 by McClelland & Stewart, and was shortlisted for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize.
 
Susan and I talk about the literally sensational nature of her life story, about the loss of her husband Stephen Reid and her daughter Sophie, which inspired many of the poems in Exculpatory Lillies, and about her dislike of the easy and clichéd healing narrative that ends with her starting to write poetry again. (Though she is totally doing that.)
 
Susan Musgrave: susanmusgrave.com/biography
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact

Erin Pepler

My guest on this episode is Erin Pepler. Erin is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Today’s Parent, Parents Canada, SavvyMom, Romper, Scary Mommy, MoneySense, Broadview Magazine and more. Her first book, Send Me Into the Woods Alone: Essays on Motherhood, was published by Invisible Publishing in 2022.
 
Writing about the book in the Globe and Mail, Marsha Lederman said that Send Me Into the Woods Alone “is the book I wish I had had as a companion during those early, difficult months and early, difficult years. Because this book is not just instructive and insightful, it is great company. And hilarious.”
 
Erin and I talk about the tricky business of writing a book with two kids underfoot, how her Covid-aware book launch was almost derailed by her getting Covid right before it, and about the messages she receives every day from readers who want to share their own stories.
 
Erin Pepler: erinpepler.wordpress.com
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact