Crow Reads Podcast

In honour of National Poetry Month, in this episode, I speak with poet and scholar Anna Veprinska about her masterfully crafted poetry collection Wound Archive . We discuss the completeness of fragments and the resistance to closure, the use of white space and punctuation, and the editing process within compression. Anna Veprinska is the author of the poetry collections  Wound Archive  (Porcupine&...

In this episode we speak with Scott Alexander Howard about his award winning book, The Other Valley. Scott Alexander Howard has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, where his research focused on the relationship between emotion and memory. His debut novel,  The Other Valley , was a Washington Post notable novel of 2024, a CBC best book of the...

In this episode I talk with author Carissa Halton about her debut novel Revolution Songs along with discussing research within place, how researching real people can help a writer with character development, the ways strategic planning can support a writer’s career, and writing historical fiction with authenticity, even when the truth of that authenticity is problematic. Carissa Halton is an award...

In this episode of Crow Reads I talk with multi-genre author,podcaster and publicist, Hollay Ghadery about her multifaceted career, the pace of publishing and being in the public eye, the complexities and significance of being a literary citizen and the thing she wants every emerging writer to know.  Hollay Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in Ontario onAnishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Cr...

In this episode, I talk with Trina Moyles and Anna Kuelken about their experience writing and producing the film, Women Who Dig. Originally a book by Trina Moyles, the Women Who Dig film is produced by Anna Kuelken. We talk about creative collaboration, and what it meant to share the stories of women farmers, the weaving of multiple stories throughout the film and grandmother inspiration. Women Wh...

After some time away to rethink, reinvigorate, and rebuild,Crow Reads is back with a new episode. This season I’m broadening our conversations into the literary world and interviewing, yes authors, as well as publishers, literary festival directors, editors, agents and more. For our firstinterview of the season, I’m delighted to interview the incomparable Dr. Lisa Martin, author and creative writi...

In this episode of Crow Reads, Rayanne Haines speaks to poet, scholar, and translator Leilei Chen about her 2023 poetry collection, I Have Forsaken Heaven & Earth, But Never Forsaken You (Frontenac House). They discuss Chen’s history as a writer, translator and scholar, the act of betrayal in translation, the unknowingness and ambiguity of translation, publishing and editorial work, and the ho...

In this episode of Crow Reads, Rayanne speaks to author Astrid Blodgett about her 2023 short story collection, This is How we Disappear, (UofA Press). The collection explores the consequences of grief and denial and single moments that change perceptions, lives, and attachments forever. Crisp prose and unexpected plot twists move relatable characters through vivid outdoor settings and interior dep...

In this month’s podcast Rayanne Haines speaks with playwright and poet, Natalie Meisner about her book, It Begins in Salt , a masterful collection of poems that wander the halls of an ocean blue-collar life while rummaging the heart spaces of growing up, and evolves into mothering, labours, and loves. This is a poetry book for poets evidenced in the staccato of line details, the rhythms that echo...

In this month’s podcast Shima Robinson AKA Dwennimmen speaks to us, among other things, about finding your place in the poetry community, supporting the community while advocating for artist payment, self-publishing and self-creation, and finding the intent of the poem through performance. Amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton - Treaty 6) born poet and spoken word artist Shima Robinson embodies, with ever...

For Ali Bryan, writing is an act of imagination performed as daily ritual. For this Calgary based author, character and plot speak as one device, and she rebels against labels that diminish the value of her writing and use of humour as a tool towards story development. This award-winning author writes family the way we live family, with no judgments or pre-conceived notions of what the characters...

In this episode, Rayanne speaks with Margaret Macpherson about her new book, Tracking the Caribou Queen: Memoir of a Settler Girlhood . The conversation looks at the ways the memoir touches on the racism deeply embedded in the North in the 60's and 70's and her understanding of it as a child and now in self-reflecting as an adult. Macpherson discuss, with a frankness, stepping outside of h...

In this month’s podcast Rayanne Haines speaks with Emily Riddle about her debut poetry collection, The Big Melt. The collection is rooted in nehiyaw thought and urban millennial life events. It examines what it means to repair kinship, contend with fraught history, go home and contemplate prairie ndn utopia in the era of late capitalism and climate change. Part memoir, part research project, this...

In this episode, Rayanne Haines speaks with author Leslie Greentree about character vs plot driven stories, how short story and novel writing are shaped, writing flawed characters and controversial stories, and about career longevity in an increasingly competitive market. Leslie Greentree’s short story collection, Not The Apocalypse I was Hoping For , is a masterful collection that shapeshifts thr...

In this episode, Rayanne speaks with author Sandra S.G. Wong about writing the lived experience, the layers of research and character development that come with crime writing, ambiguity and suspense, and how women characters are perceived and approached in novel writing. In her latest novel, Wong, approaches family dynamics while also writing an “An unusual blend of mystery, domestic suspense, and...

In this episode, Rayanne speaks to Skylar Kay about her debut poetry collection, Transcribing Moonlight. Her poetry explores how surrounding environments reflect and mirror human experiences, especially her experiences as a queer transgender woman. Rayanne and Skylar discuss the Haibun form, healing through poetry and reclaiming the feminine figure of the moon for Trans Women. 

In this episode of Crow Reads, Rayanne Haines interviews Jason Purcell, a writer and musician from amiskwaciwaskahikan, Treaty 6 (Edmonton, Alberta), where they are also the co-owner of Glass Bookshop. As a chronically ill writer, Jason writes at the intersection of queerness and illness and is the author of the chapbook  A Place More Hospitable  (Anstruther Press).  Swollening &nbs...

In this moving, joyful and vulnerable episode of Crow Reads, I talk with author and postdoctoral fellow, Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike about his short story collection Double Walhala, Double Trouble, how the tenderness of Shakespeare and other romantic poets brought him to poetry during dark times in Nigeria’s history, the value of family, mentorship and relationships in both African and Alberta lite...

For this episode of Crow Reads, Rayanne speaks with Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author, Premee Mohamed about her novel, The Annual Migration of Clouds , genre labels, climate change, finding an agent and how to know when your book is done!  The Annual Migration of Clouds starts off by telling us - The world is nothing like it once was: climate disasters have wracked the c...

In September’s episode of Crow Reads, Rayanne Haines talks with Trina Moyles, author, writer, and wildfire lookout about her latest book. Lookout: Love, Solitude, and Searching for Wildfire in the Boreal Forest , is a memoir about Moyles four summers working alone at a remote lookout tower in Canada’s northern boreal forest, offering an eyewitness account of the increasingly unpredictable nature o...

In August’s episode, Rayanne interviews Titilope Sonuga about her new role as Edmonton’s ninth Poet Laureate, the act of shapeshifting as a writer, artist and women, and the importance of hope and healing through poetry in these times. Sonuga’s most recent book, This is How We Disappear is described as an exploration of the physical and emotional disappearance of women and a celebration of th...

In July’s episode, Rayanne interviews Dr. Micheline Maylor. Dr. Maylor was Calgary’s Poet Laureate from 2016-18. Her latest poetry collection is The Bad Wife (U of A Press, 2021). The Bad Wife is an intimate, first-hand account of how to ruin a marriage. This is a story of divorce, love, and what should have been, told in a brave and unflinching voice. Pulling the reader into a startling web of se...

In today’s episode of Crow Reads, our first podcast in partnership with Read Alberta and under our new name, we speak with Ellen Kartz, poet and small press publisher. Ellen and I talk about lived experiences as catalysts for change, chasing and catching dreams, the social landscape evolving conversations and creating dialogue within Canadian publishing, and om mani padme hum . Born and raised in...

It is National Indigenous History month and I’m delighted to share this conversation between myself and Metis scholar and poet Marilyn Dumont. During this episode, we talk about discovery of self and place, colonization and survival, the evolution of identity, the strength of Indigenous narratives as part of honouring healing and witnessing through story vs settler shame, and the importance of bei...

In this episode with spoken word poet, advocate and educator and Andrea Thompson, we talk about Oral Culture, Empowerment through poetry, Mental Health, Gatekeeping and Authenticity, and Powerful Black Artist Movements. It was hard to stop talking! Andrea has been publishing and performing her work for over twenty-five years. In 2005 her spoken word album, One, was nominated for a Canadian Urban M...