Getting Lit with Linda - The Canadian Literature Podcast

This is Getting Lit with Linda ’s 100th episode – a real milestone! To mark this specific achievement, three scholars join Linda to speak about an historic author rather than a contemporary one: the magnificent Jane Rule . Born in 1936, she authored several short story collections, essays, and novels, including The Desert of the Heart (Talon) , a landmark novel published in 1964 and made into a mo...

In this interview, award-winning poet, Farah Ghafoor talks to Linda about  Shadow Price  (House of Anansi) , shortlisted for the Trillium Prizes this year (check out our social media for pics from the event!). Since Ghafoor invites her readers to pay closer attention to our immediate biospheres, Linda does just that – opening with observations about the natural microcosm of which she is...

Anyone who knows Linda also knows that she has a very passionate love-hate relationship with the city of Montreal. While on some days, she is bursting with pride for all that is wonderful about the city, on other days, she is less keen. But she’s not alone in her ardour, as the litany of authors who have been featuring Montreal in their work highlights—from Louise Penny's Grey Wolf (Minotaur Books...

In this episode, Linda interviews Lee Lai about Cannon , the graphic novel for which Lai was shortlisted for the Carol Shields Prize (the only author on the shortlist with a Canadian connection).The friendship between the protagonist of the same name (Cannon) and Trish puts the very definition of their relationship to the test, complicated in part because Cannon is trying to be responsible to ever...

Welcome back to Season 7 of Getting Lit with Linda, where we learn to love literature one book at a time! In this episode, Linda interviews the Métis writer, Brittany Penner about her memoir, Children Like Us (Random House Canada) . It's elegantly written and carefully crafted, and, in spite of the book's length, Linda couldn't put it down. Linda and Brittany discuss her childhood, the Sixties Sco...

Announcing our seventh season! We will be somewhat delayed this year, with a start date in the late spring, but we haven't forgotten about you, our dear listeners or authors - we will begin very soon! For now, some of our future guests - specialists of the life and literature of author, Jane Rule - Marilyn Schuster (the godmother of Jane Rule Studies!), Cate Sandilands, and Amber Dean - and the te...

Why should we pay attention to scars or scar tissue? After the original injury heals and its pain recedes, should we ignore what’s left behind? In this episode, Linda mulls over these questions while considering Madeleine Thien 's "Alchemy," from her collection, Simple Recipes . Don't know Thien's work? Check out her award-winning novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing (which Linda discussed in Season...

Our warmest wishes for the season – and a reminder that this is the  last interview  for the podcast (there may be one smaller episode at the year’s end, but not an interview), before we open up voting for this year’s GLWL awards : the author featured in your favourite episode will receive a cash prize and medal to honour their involvement. In this episode, Linda reflects on how boxes ar...

On a lovely fall afternoon in October, Linda drove up to possibly one of the most charming spots in Quebec, just off-island of Montreal —Hudson, on the unceded territory of the Kanien’keha:ka. Hudson has much to commend to it, but, in this instance, it was StoryFest, the annual literary program hosted through the Greenwood Centre that invites writers to come and speak to audiences there and t...

Linda AND students of Bishop's Universit y interview the award-winning Montreal-based playwright, Jovanni Sy , in this episode of Getting Lit With Linda . Linda considers how one of his plays in particular, A Taste of Empire (Talonbooks) , obliges us confront the abuses of a system of globalization, wherein the processes involved in maximizing profit are brought to the fore. Even as the sous-chef,...

Perhaps strangely, Linda applies Betty Friedan’s 1963 feminist critique of patriarchal society The Feminine Mystique , and specifically the text “The Problem That Has No Name,” to The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana . An Australian/British author, Khurana wrote this very fine debut novel about the real-life events of two young men from Port Alberni, Northern BC and about their toxic masculinity. T...

Linda met Dr. Wendy Wong at a conference in Kelowna, organized by Dr. Karis Shearer (1:25) and hosted by SpokenWeb (1:20), when Dr. Wong spoke about her book, We, the Data (a nod to the preamble of the United States Constitution , 4:10) -- and, since then, Linda has been obsessed. Being an expert on archival theory in relation to women writers' materials, Linda has digitization - and now dataficat...

Does anyone remember that series, New Canadian Literature (NCL), produced by McClelland & Stewart? In this interview, Linda discusses the very much new and improved series, Kanata Classics (15:06), with Stephanie Sinclair, the publisher of McClelland & Stewart -- with special guest feature, Holly, her cat. A co-editor in her own right (with her sister, Sara Sinclair), she produced You Were...

In this episode, Linda examines the resurgence of the memoir, and what readers expect - and what she expects - when we pick one up. While the first part of the episode examines the features and history of the memoir, the last part is devoted to the wonderful new memoir by Susan Swan, Big Girls Don't Cry. Highlights of this episode include: Giller prize long list (.45 sec)\ Lucy Knight and The Salt...

In this episode, Linda begins by speaking about the Kingston Writers Fest (KWF ) - if you are in reasonable distance, you MUST go! The most incredible line-up of authors will be there, including Madeleine Thien, Margaret Atwood, Canisia Lubrin, Nita Prose, and Ian Williams. She then thinks about Atlantis - what if Atlantis were about our future and not our past? She uses Atlantis as a way of consi...

In this episode, Linda interviews the phenomenal Canisia Lubrin - the acclaimed writer, critic, professor, poet, and editor. Her first book Voodoo Hypothesis (Wolsak & Wynn , 2017 ) was named a CBC Best Book. Her second book, T he Dyzgraphxst (M & S , 2020) won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry and the overall Literature prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and the Derek Walcott Prize.&...

In this episode, Linda chats with Kevin Chong about his novel The Double Life of Benson Yu ( Simon & Schuster ) shortlisted for the 2023 Giller Prize . It's a "meta" novel, in some ways - a concept that Linda explains in this episode - but it also had Linda thinking about the social media platform, Meta (formerly, Facebook). Whatever insights you might glean from this association and from this...

What are flying monkeys ?, Linda wonders - until her friend illuminates their place in relation to narcissists. Narcissism is key to understanding the Widow and Abe Strapp, two deliciously terrible main characters in Michael Crummey's novel, The Adversary (Knopf) -- which just won the D ublin Literary Award for 2025 ; this psychology is also key to understanding why certain subplot characters choo...

It's Mother's Day - and, while Linda considers how the mother is represented in several books (specifically Rachel Deustch (6:30), Boum (5:50; 6:55), and Mary Thaler (5:47), in their respective works, The Mother , Jellyfish , and Ulfhildr ), she turns her attention to the figure of the stepmother, inspired in part by her conversation with the authors of La Belle-M è re/The Stepmother (L'Hexagone )...

In this episode, Linda speaks with the award-winning CBC journalist of As it Happens , Carol Off, about her new (and fifth!) book, At a Loss for Words: Conversation in an Age of Rage (Listeners, keep your eye out: A new edition of Off's book will be available in the fall!). Published in 2024, Off wrote the book as a "cautionary tale," as she observes in this interview - and, since then, some impor...

  In this episode, Linda revisits and revisions the three “Rs” – reading, writing, and arithmetic – to reformulate a new triad. Why? Because, in her interview with Michaela Di Cesare about her play Successions , Linda learns more about Anthony, one of the main characters, and his disorder, known as prosopagnosia. Di Cesare explains that she thought of this disorder as a means of represen...

As a result of Zilla Jones’ The World So Wide, slated for publication with Cormorant Books on April 26, 2025, Linda reflects on opera (specifically Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino ) – historically an elitist art form, but one that Felicity Alexander, the protagonist of Jones’ novel, in part challenges and overcomes through the very successes of her career. The trajectory of that career takes a darker...

In this first episode of Season 6 of Getting Lit With Linda , the host – Linda Morra – begins with a few important announcements: GLWL is now being supported by the Canada Council for the Arts ! With that support, we have a "special" season that we're calling GETTING LIT GOES GLOBAL. It means we are emphasizing books or topics that take on international proportions or have international repercussi...

Happy International Women's Day - this is our Teaser for Season 6, in which a special guest joins Linda Morra to share our International Women's Day wishes with you, the listeners of Getting Lit With Linda! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

n this 78th episode and the final one of season 5, Linda offers the “Nine Days of Christmas” with nine different book recommendations for the holidays. Who makes the cut? Well, we could say you need to listen to find out, but we want you to find the books easily, so here they are with their links: Alice Zorn’s Colours in her Hands  (Freehand Books), Téa Mutonji’s Shut Up You’re Pretty (V...