Nigel Beale's Biblio File Podcast

William Taylor Jr. is a cataloger with PBA Galleries, a San Francisco-based auction house for rare books and ephemera; he specializes in fine literature, counterculture and poetry. He's an avid reader, and a prolific writer. His first book of fiction is included in the curriculum at select universities across the United States. In 2013 he was the recipient of an Acker Award, a tribute named after...

Damon Galgut is a South African novelist and playwright. He was awarded the 2021 Booker Prize for his novel The Promise and shortlisted for the prize in 2003 and 2010 right about the time I first interviewed him at his apartment in Cape Town ( listen here ). Damon was head boy at Pretoria Boys High School, matriculating in 1981, he then studied drama at the University of Cape Town. He wrote his fi...

Glenn Horowitz is an agent in the sale and placement of culturally significant archives to research institutions throughout the United States. Authors, artists, musicians, designers, and photographers represented include Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, James Salter, Eve Babitz, Deborah Eisenberg, David Foster Wallace, Vladimir Nabokov, and many more. We spoke recently via Zoom about his practice: what h...

Andrew Wylie is an American literary agent. He grew up in Sudbury, Massachusetts and attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He has a degree from Harvard University where he studied Romance Languages & Literatures. Wylie founded his eponymous literary agency in New York in 1980 and opened a second office in London in 1996. The firm now represents more than 1400 authors and literary e...

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian novelist, essayist, poet, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. She has written plenty of books, many of them prize-winners. For example, she's won "two Booker Prizes (latest in 2019, co-winner, for The Testaments), the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and P...

Don Stewart is the proprietor of MacLeod’s Books at 455 West Pender Street in downtown Vancouver, a shop famed for its magnificent piles of books, wide selection and narrow aisles. Stewart bought MacLeod's Books in 1973 from Van Andruss who'd bought it from Don MacLeod a few years after it opened in 1964. He moved the business into larger premises in 1981 only to see the place burn down the next y...

For years Paul Delaney was professor of English at the University of Moncton; prior to this he taught at various institutions in London, England. During his lifetime he has had an ongoing interest in Acadian genealogy, a topic upon which he continues to publish and conduct research. His biography of Charles de Sousy Ricketts (1866-1931), published in 1990, was the first major study of a man whose...

Andrew Coyne needs little introduction to Canadian audiences. He writes a weekly column for the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper and is a member of the At Issue panel on CBC TV's The National newscast. He has previously been national editor of Maclean's magazine and a columnist for the National Post newspaper. James Elliott Coyne (1910-2012) was a scholar, lawyer, public servant, family man, and "...

Canada has an impressive tradition of producing great printer/trade-publishers. Three of our best are Stan Bevington, Tim Inkster, and Andrew Steeves . Ancient interviews with all three can be found here on The Biblio File website. The one with Andrew took place a dozen years ago, so I figured it was time to clock another. I drove down to Kentville, Nova Scotia last month, where Andrew lives and w...

Lifted from Bill Samuel 's website : Itinerant one-time chartered accountant who has lived in Denmark, East Africa, the Gulf (Arabian/Persian, not Texan) and the Caribbean with shorter stints in Eastern Europe and various rather nice small islands. Born in England into a family with an international outlook, an interest in people and a feeling for the cultural side of life. William Foyle, one of t...

John Freeman is an American writer and a literary critic. He was the editor of Granta from 2009 to 2013, and is a former president of the National Book Critics Circle . His writing has appeared in more than 200 English-language publications around the world and he currently edits a series of anthologies of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry entitled Freeman's, published in partnership with Grove/Atla...

Kenneth White is the founder of Sutherland House Books . He is the former editor-in-chief of Saturday Night Magazine , the founding editor of  The National Post , and the former editor and publisher of  Maclean’s  magazine. He was president of Rogers Publishing, Canada’s largest magazine company, and the founding president of Next Issue Canada (now Texture), in partnership with Conde Nast, Meredit...

Jael Richardson is the author of The Stone Thrower: A Daughter’s Lesson, a Father’s Life , a memoir exploring her relationship with her father, CFL quarterback Chuck Ealey. It was adapted into a children’s book in 2016. Richardson is a book columnist and guest host on CBC’s q . She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and lives in Brampton, Ontario where she founded and s...

Pierre Assouline is a French writer and journalist. He was born in Casablanca, Morocco and has published several novels. He has written biographies of, among others, the legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson; Hergé, the creator of The Adventures of Tintin ; Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the art dealer, and Georges Simenon, the detective novelist and creator of Inspector Maigret.  As a journalist...

After graduating from university in 2005 Maylis Besserie began  teaching documentary production at the Institute of Communications and Media in Paris , and joined France Culture as a radio producer and host . In February 2020 she published her first novel, Le Tiers Temps ( Gallimard ) . It evokes the last days of  Samuel Beckett in a Parisian retirement home . The protagonist, while describing his...

'Barnet Lee "Barney" Rosset, Jr. (1922 – 2012) was owner of the  Grove Press publishing house and publisher and editor-in-chief at the Evergreen Review . He led a successful legal battle to publish the uncensored version of D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover , and later was the American publisher of Henry Miller's controversial novel Tropic of Cancer . The right to publish and distribu...

Jacques Shore is a partner in Gowling WLG's Ottawa office, a member of the firm's Advocacy Group, and past leader of the firm's Government Affairs Group. ​ He has acted as lead negotiator on many business and government-related initiatives and  has worked actively on behalf of the federal government of Canada and provincial governments on a broad range of legal and public policy matters ​, includi...

Richard Nash is a coach, strategist, and serial entrepreneur. He led partnerships and content at the culture discovery start-up  Small Demons and the new media app Byliner. Previously he ran independent publishers Soft Skull (not Skill) Press and Red Lemonade where he published Maggie Nelson, Lynne Tillman, Vanessa Veselka’s Zazen , Alain Mabanckou, and many others, for which work he was awarded t...

David Frum is a senior editor at T he Atlantic . From 2014 through 2017, he served as chairman of the board of trustees of the leading UK center-right think tank, Policy Exchange . In 2001-2002, he served as speechwriter and special assistant to President George W. Bush; in 2007-2008, as senior adviser to the Rudy Giuliani presidential campaigns. Frum is the author of ten books, most recently Trum...

Peter Florence is a British festival director, ​​ notable for founding the Hay Festival with his ​ parents , Norman ​  and Rhoda Florence ​. FYI t​ he first festival ​was financed with  winnings from a poker game. Peter ​ ​ was educated at Ipswich School, Jesus College, Cambridge, and the University of Paris and has an MA in Modern and Medieval Literatures. He holds honorary doctorates from ​four...

Mark Bourrie is a Canadian lawyer, blogger, journalist, author, historian, and lecturer. His work has appeared in many Canadian magazines and newspapers. In 2020, his book  Bushrunner: The Adventures of Pierre Radisson , won the final RBC Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction.    Known widely as the namesake of ships and hotel chains, Pierre-Esprit Radisson is perhaps best described, writes Mark,...

Ian Wilson  was chief Librarian and Archivist of Canada from 2004 to 2009. Prior to this as National Archivist, with Roch Carrier the then National Librarian, he developed and led the process to merge the National Archives and National Library into a unified institution. "His distinguished career has included archival and information management, university teaching and government service." In addi...

Larry Grobel is the author of more than 25 books - including Conversations with Capote ( which received a PEN Special Achievement award), and Talking with Michener . He has been a freelance writer for more than 40 years, having written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and Movieline and many other publications. He is also a renowned interviewer, having conducted and writt...

Jonathan Rose is the William R. Kenan Professor of History at Drew University. His fields of study are British history, intellectual history and the history of the book. He was the founding president of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing , and has served as the president of the Northeast Victorian Studies Association. His book, The Intellectual Life of the British Wo...

Reni Eddo-Lodge , is a London based, award winning author and journalist. Her writing focuses on feminism and exposing structural racism. She's the author of the Jhalak Prize winning, bestselling  Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race ,  published by Bloomsbury, and host of a podcast series called  About Race. Why I'm no Longer Talking topped a public poll of twenty books shortliste...