Kobo in Conversation

Michael Tamblyn spoke with Patrick Radden Keefe, who has been writing for the New Yorker since 2006 and is the author of nonfiction bestsellers including Empire of Pain and Say Nothing . His latest book is London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth . They were joined by an intimate studio audience. Patrick Radden Keefe on London's dark descent

Nathan Maharaj spoke with the novelist and journalist Jowita Bydlowska about her new book Unshaming: A Memoir of Recovery, Relapse, and What Comes After . It's a frank, unflinching recounting of the years following the publication of her first book, the memoir Drunk Mom . And it's a thoughtful, fearless meditation on the concept of shame.  Jowita Bydlowska speaks about her accidental expertise in...

For this special bonus episode of Kobo in Conversation , producer and co-host Nathan Maharaj was joined by one of Kobo's booksellers (and frequent Staff Picks contributor), Deandra Lalonde. They sort through the buzziest books to take along to the beach, the books landing in the next few weeks that you won't want to miss, and how best to bring a little Hollywood into your summer reading this year....

Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Sharon Bala , author of the award-winning 2018 novel,  The Boat People .  Her  new book is called  Good Guys .  It's  about  a  nearly bankrupt  international aid charity  called Children of the World , and how  their  stumbling  into the good graces of an A-list celebrity   raises a lot of money, and a lot of questions about who the good guys really are. You can...

This week we're bringing you a conversation Michael Tamblyn had in 2021 with Natalie Zina Walschots about her extremely fun novel called Hench . It's about a world where superheroes are out there saving the day in super ways, while villains, who are a lot like you and me, run organizations bent on taking over the world while also trying to keep scores up on Glassdoor. Natalie's just released a seq...

Nathan Maharaj spoke with physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, author of the 2021 book The Disordered Cosmos , a highly personal reflection on the human and inherently flawed practice of scientific inquiry and her career as a Black Jewish scientist. Her new book is The Edge of Space-Time: P articles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie . In it she explains to readers, what's really going on with qu...

Hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj dove deep on the controversy around the book  Shy Girl, which was cancelled by its publisher who alleged it was largely AI-generated. Links on  Shy Girl : The video from January 2026 that seems to have led to  Shy Girl 's cancellation: i'm pretty sure this book is ai slop - YouTube Publishing news journalist Alexandra Alter on the controversy over the cance...

Michael Tamblyn spoke with novelist Heather Marshall. She is a writer of historical fiction, including her 2022 debut bestselling novel Looking for Jane and 2024's with The Secret History of Audrey James . Heather Marshall's new book is Liberty Street . It's the story of a young journalist's quest to expose the cruelty and corruption of the Mercer Women's Prison from the inside, the women she meet...

Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Rainbow Rowell. She's the author of books including  Eleanor & Park ,  Fangirl , as well as the novel  Slow Dance , which she discussed on the show in 2024. Rainbow Rowell's new book is the novel  Cherry Baby . It's about a woman named Cherish, who everybody calls Cherry, at a moment in her life when her marriage seems to have ended and she's figuring out what co...

Nathan Maharaj spoke with Tara Gereaux, author of the novel Saltus and the novella Size of a Fist . Her new book is called Wild People Quiet . Set in 1946, it's the story of Florence, or Mrs. Banks as she's known down at Pratt's Insurance, the company where she's worked diligently for years. While out for lunch with her colleagues one day, Florence encounters a man whose mere presence threatens to...

Michael Tamblyn spoke with Eliana Ramage ,  author of  To the Moon and Back .  It's  a  novel about Steph, a young Cherokee woman who from the earliest age is obsessed with space and space travel, dreaming about one day becoming a NASA astronaut.   How Eliana Ramage set her sights on the stars for her debut novel

Nathan spoke with George Newman, psychologist and associate professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. His new book is  How Great Ideas Happen: The Hidden Steps Behind Breakthrough Success . It's a guide to generating ideas, hopefully great ideas, and learning about mental habits that often get in the way, and how creativity is a skill you can train and exercise.  G...

Joined by a live audience in Kobo's intimate event space, Michael Tamblyn spoke with novelist Leanne Toshiko Simpson, author of Never Been Better and winner of the 2025 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize . Never Been Better is the story of a group of three friends who met in a psych ward, but time has passed and now two of whom are about to get married while the third tries to figure out whether t...

Hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj caught up on the latest private equity-fueled mergers & acquisitions, what we're not talking about when we're talking about the money made from books, plus a whole lot more. This episode covers: Rosetta Books acquired by Open Road Media Why private equity is (still) interested in the book business, most recently in German companies Bookwire and Zebralution...

Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with Dan Rubinstein, author of  Water Borne: A 1,200-Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage . In it he tells the story of his journey via stand-up paddleboard through waterways around Montreal, New York City, Toronto, and his home in Ottawa. But it's also the story of all of us, and how we benefit from spending time near bodies of water.  Dan Rubinstein on finding community on wa...

Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with poet and novelist Souvankham Thammavongsa. Her first poetry collection Small Arguments was published in 2003, and in 2020 her first short story collection How to Pronounce Knife won Canada's Giller Prize. Her latest book is a novel called Pick a Colour . It's a story set in a nail salon run by a retired boxer, and it won the Giller Prize in 2025.  Souvankham Thammavo...

Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with sports broadcaster Eric Smith and writer Andrew Bricker, who together are the authors of We the Raptors: 30 Players – 30 Stories – 30 Years . It is a snackable feast of a book about Canada's only NBA team, the Toronto Raptors, who celebrate their 30th anniversary this season.  Eric Smith and Andrew Bricker on 30 years of the Toronto Raptors

Following our last episode all about the best books we read in 2025, host and producer Nathan Maharaj connected over Zoom with even more Kobo staffers—as well as Kobo in Conversation co-host Michael Tamblyn—to talk about the books that have stuck with them over the past 12 months. So welcome back once more, to our year in books.  The best books we read in 2025 We'll be back in your feed soon with...

It's no spoiler to say that Kobo is full of avid readers. So every year we get together to share the best books we read in the past year. Some of the books are new. Some are very old. All were beloved to a Kobo staffer. So across 2 whole episodes (follow to make sure you don't miss the second one!), join us as we hear from the staff of Kobo about the best books they read in 2025. The best books we...

Michael Tamblyn spoke with Miriam Toews, author of many novels including A Complicated Kindness , All My Puny Sorrows , and Women Talking , to name just a few. Her latest book is a memoir called, A Truce That Is Not Peace . Spurred by the question "why do you write?", posed by a distressingly persistent literary festival organizer, it's a work of nonfiction that delves into the author's feelings a...

Nathan Maharaj spoke with the novelist Charlotte McConaghy. Her latest book is  Wild Dark Shore . It's the story of the Salt family, the stewards of a vast seed bank on a remote island that's in danger of being washed over by rising sea levels. As they're making the hard decisions about what can be saved in the course of their evacuation, a vicious storm tears across the island and leaves a woman...

Nathan Maharaj spoke with the Oscar-nominated filmmaker and journalist Julian Brave NoiseCat. He co-directed the 2024 documentary Sugarcane  which investigated abuses at a residential school in western Canada. He is also the author of a new book called We Survived the Night: An Indigenous Reckoning . It's about his dad, and also his upbringing, and a mythical character named Coyote. Julian Brave N...

Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Mona Awad. Her debut book, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl was a Giller Prize finalist. Its follow-up Bunny was set in an Ivy League creative writing program and blended horror and suspense with wicked satire. We Love You, Bunny is her fifth novel, and it's a return to that creative writing program, revisiting the story through the perspectives of characters who...

Hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj caught up on a landmark legal decision about books and AI, the perils of bookstore merch, plus a whole lot more. This episode covers: Anthropic AI v. Authors and Authors v. Apple How Powell's Books' new mugs got  them into hot water Barnes & Noble buying Books Inc. C-suite changes at Simons & Schuster and Harper UK A novel approach to creative writing this...

Michael Tamblyn spoke with journalist Brian Stewart, whose career spanned decades, covering the US-Iraq Gulf War, famine in Ethiopia, and countless other historical events for CBC and NBC. He tells us about all of it—including what was going on in his life off-camera—in a new book: On the Ground: My Life as a Foreign Correspondent .  Brian Stewart reports on the golden age of being a foreign corre...