Nigel Beale's Biblio File Podcast

Chip Kidd is an American graphic designer best known for his book covers. Based in New York City, Kidd is arguably the most famous dust jacket designers in the world. He has been credited by many as having spawned "a revolution in the art of America book packaging,” despite having no recognizable style. In fact, he says that “A signature look is crippling… [because] the simplest and most effective...

Bay Area letterpress printer, designer, and publisher Peter Rutledge Koch   is recognized as one of the most accomplished printers and typographic designers of his generation. Here he is in his own words: "For the past thirty-two years I have cultivated a cross-media dialogue between art, philosophy and literature. I have conducted my business as a fine-art printer as a means of creating and trans...

Classical Pursuits is a cultural and educational travel company based in Toronto, Canada, specializing in small group literary travel and learning vacations. It provides adventures for the mind and travel for the soul - to places like Hemingway's Paris, Joyce's Dublin, Dante Alighieri's Italy, and Flannery O’Connor’s Savannah and the Andalusia family farm in Georgia. It offers both scheduled small...

Steven Heller wears many hats and has written and/or published many books (190+ to date). For 33 years he was an art director at the New York Times , originally on the OpEd Page and for almost 30 of those years with the  New York Times Book Review . Currently, he is co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author Department, Special Consultant to the President of SVA for New Programs, and writes the Visual...

Charlotte Gray is one of Canada’s best-known writers, and author of ten acclaimed books of literary non-fiction. Born in Sheffield, England, and educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, she began her writing career in England as a magazine editor and newspaper columnist. After coming to Canada in 1979, she worked as a political commentator, book reviewer and magazine colum...

Marc Côté is the publisher of Cormorant Books , "a literary house noted for the discovery and development of Canadian writing talent and the publishing of Québécois fiction translated into English." He has won Canada's Libris Award for Editor of the Year twice and Cormorant has won the Libris Award for Small Presses three times. At Cormorant, Marc has acquired and edited many award-nominated books...

Serge Loubier is President and CEO of Marquis Book Printing , "Canada’s number one monochrome book printer," founded in 1937. As Serge puts it: "Along with my love of book printing and manufacturing and all the technology that goes into it is a passion for the end result. Literature as an art form is about contributing to culture, challenging assumptions and fueling our desire to learn. I apprecia...

Sheila Fischman is a renowned Canadian translator who specializes in translating works of contemporary Quebec literature into English. Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan she was brought up in Ontario, and holds an M.A. from the University of Toronto. She is a former editor of the Montreal Star's book section, as well as a columnist for The Globe and Mail and the Montreal Gazette and a broadcaster for...

A specialist in Canadian publishing history, Janet B. Friskney, is the author of New Canadian Library: The Ross-McClelland Years , 1952-1978 (published by the University of Toronto Press). Her publication credits include articles on the Methodist Book and Publishing House of Toronto, nineteenth-century Bible and tract society activity in Canada, and the history of publishing for the blind in Canad...

Chester Gryski holds a B. A. (Hons) in Political Science and Economics from the University of Toronto and a J. D. from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. He was called to the Ontario bar in 1976. He has acted for MPAC and its predecessor assessing authorities since 1976. In those 40 years, he has dealt with all types of properties and all issues with a particular emphasis on industrial pr...

Daniel Woolf is a British/Canadian historian. He served as the 20th Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario from September, 2009 to June, 2019, when he returned to teaching and research. He was previously Professor, Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts.  He studied history a...

John Ivison  is a Scottish Canadian journalist who is Ottawa Bureau Chief for the  National Post . Raised in Dumfries, Scotland, he worked as a reporter for  The Scotsman  newspaper in Edinburgh and as deputy business editor of  Scotland on Sunday . He was educated at the University of Glasgow, McMaster University and the University of Western Ontario, where he earned a masters degree in Journalis...

This past summer Meghan O’Rourke was appointed editor of The Yale Review . In an award citation the Whiting Foundation praised her “far-reaching and ambitious” work, and noted that her “voice stands out for its power and originality.” She is the author of the memoir The Long Goodbye  (2011) and the poetry collections Once  (2011),  Halflife  (2007), and  Sun In Days  (2017) ,  which  The New York...

Linda Morra is a Professor at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Quebec where she teaches Canadian, American, and Indigenous literatures.  She served as the 2016-2017 Craig Dobbin Chair of Canadian Studies at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland, and previously was awarded a Sproul Fellowship from Canadian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She has won several notable research...

Sandra Campbell , a graduate of Carleton and Ottawa Universities, specializes in Canadian and Caribbean (Bermuda) women’s writing, in particular for the period 1880-1940. She has a particular interest in women’s autobiography as well as gender, and the publishing industry. Professor Campbell has taught at Carleton, the University of Ottawa and McGill University, and as a Visiting Lecturer at Bermu...

Michel Gauthier has enjoyed a distinguished career in the field of festival events, tourism and recreation. He was instrumental in coordinating the participation of HRH Princess Margriet of the Netherlands in the 50th Anniversary Celebrations of the Canadian Tulip Festival, an organization that he managed from 1992 - 2005. This flagship event draws millions of visitors from all over the world each...

"In 1989, Scott deWolfe began selling Shaker books, ephemera, photographs and manuscripts. Frank Wood had been selling used and rare books since the 1970s. Both worked for the Sabbathday Shaker Community in Maine. When the two realized they would make good business partners, they started doing shows together in 1990. Two years later, during a snow storm on April Fool's Day, the doors to De Wolfe &...

Earlier this year the Beinecke Library hosted an exhibition entitled  Bibliomania; or Book Madness: A Bibliographical Romance . It takes its name from the history of “arrant book-lovers” written by Thomas Frognall Dibdin. "It follows these lovers of the book through four case studies, observing the powerful and often unexpected relationships of books with their readers, owners, authors, collectors...

John Sawatsky  is a Canadian author, journalist and interviewing consultant. Born in Winkler, Manitoba, he attended Simon Fraser University in the late 1960s graduating in political science. He started his career as an investigative reporter in the 1970s. While working as Ottawa correspondent for the  Vancouver Sun  he published a series of articles on misdeeds of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police...

Laura Claridge  has written books ranging from feminist theory to biography and popular culture, most recently the story of an American icon,  Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners , for which she received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. This project also received the J. Anthony Lukas Prize for a Work in Progress, administered by the Nieman Foundation...

Barabara Slate is "an artist, cartoonist, graphic novelist, comic book creator, and writer. She is one of the few female artists who has created, written, and drawn comics for both DC and Marvel Comics."   In 1986 Barbara created 'Angel Love' for DC Comics, an adult-themed series for teenagers. In an exhibition review, The New York Times described her art as "emphatically of our time with its narr...

Leslie Hurtig was born into a house of books and has had a long, successful career in Canada’s book industry. She has worked for some of Canada’s best bookstores, acted as a sales representative and publicist for some of North America’s great publishers, and worked as a foreign rights and contracts manager at Raincoast Books. Leslie sat on the Board of Directors for the Vancouver Writers Fest befo...

Bruce Fye   is an American retired cardiologist, medical historian, writer, bibliophile and philanthropist. He is emeritus professor of medicine and the history of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, and was the founding director of the institution’s W. Bruce Fye Center for the History of Medicine, named by the Clinic in his honour as a result of his philanthropy. In addition to building up a large colle...

Christopher Lyons , is the head librarian of rare books and special collections at McGill University's McLennan Library. He was formerly in charge of  McGill’s Osler Library which holds the collection of it’s founder, Sir William Osler (1849–1919). A major figure in modern medical history, Osler is "well known as a scientific researcher, a great medical pedagogue, a humanist, and an advocate for a...

Ambassador Bruce Heyman is an American businessman and served as  United States Ambassador to Canada  under Barack Obama from 2014 until 2017. He appears regularly on CBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg, CTV, CNBC, and other media outlets as an expert on trade and bilateral issues. Bruce lives in Chicago with his wife and co-author Vicki Heyman who was an American cultural envoy in Canada, leading cross-...