Talkingbooksandstuff's podcast

The PNE (Pacific National Exhibition) is a Vancouver tradition, an annual fair started in 1910 that is famous for its farm animals, dog trick shows, and amusement park - highlighted by Canada's oldest wooden roller coaster still in existence. In 1980, when Nick Marino was twelve years old, he started working at the PNE and quickly learned that there was more to the fair than winning stuffed animal...

Buffy Cram's fiction and non-fiction have appeared in multiple literary publications on both sides of the border as well as in the best-selling anthology, Darwin's Bastards: Stories From Tomorrow. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and has attended residencies at Hedgebrook and the Banff Centre for the Arts. She has been a fiction finalist for the Western Magazine Awards, has been nomin...

Jon Klassen is a Canadian-born author/illustrator. He has written and illustrated three picture books of his own and illustrated many other author's texts. His own books are called I Want My Hat Back, This Is Not My Hat and We Found A Hat. Highlights of his illustrated books are Sam & Dave Dig A Hole by Mac Barnett, The Dark by Lemony Snicket, and his latest is The Wolf, The Duck & The Mouse also...

Dennis talks to award winning crime author, Sam Wiebe.

Dennis discusses Ted Chamberlin's book "Storylines"

Naomi Hansen is an author, writer, and editor. Her first book, Only in Saskatchewan: Recipes & Stories from the Province's Best-Loved Eateries, was published by TouchWood Editions in spring 2022. Naomi is the recipient of two 2023 Saskatchewan Book Awards for Only in Saskatchewan: the First Book Award and the Book of the Year Award. She is a regular contributor for many publications, including Can...

Dennis talks with Hilary Atleo from Iron Dog Books, in Vancouver, BC

Tim Ryan has published stories in The Write Launch, The Prairie Journal, Prometheus Dreaming, Short Editions, Chaleur Magazine, Alberta Views Magazine and the Short Story Dispenser. His story "Scottie" won the 2017 Alberta Views Annual Short Story contest and was a finalist for the 2018 AMPA Fiction award. In 2020, his short story "Karen" was nominated by the Prairie Journal for the 2020 Journey A...

Natalie MacMaster is a Canadian fiddler from Troy, Inverness County, Nova Scotia who plays Cape Breton fiddle music. MacMaster has toured with the Chieftains, Faith Hill, Carlos Santana, and Alison Krauss, and has recorded with Yo-Yo Ma. She has appeared at the Celtic Colours festival in Cape Breton, Celtic Connections in Scotland, and MerleFest in the United States. 

Dennis interviews poet Dennis Cooley

Amy Stuart is the #1 bestselling author of three novels: Still Mine, Still Water, and Still Here. Shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award and winner of the 2011 Writers' Union of Canada Short Prose Competition, Amy is the founder of Writerscape, an online community for hopeful and emerging writers. Amy lives in Toronto with her husband and their three sons.

Marq de Villiers is a journalist and author who never found a real job and so just kept on writing, a few million words by now, for newspapers, magazines and books (14 and counting, with a few ghost-writing gigs tacked on). Along the way he has lived in some interesting places (Cape Town, Moscow, Asturias in northern Spain, London and a short stint in Timbuktu), picked up a few awards (among them...

Wanda John-Kehewin is a Cree writer who uses her work to understand and respond to the near destruction of First Nations cultures, languages, and traditions. When she first arrived in Vancouver on a Greyhound bus, she was a nineteen-year-old carrying her first child, a bag of chips, a bottle of pop, thirty dollars, and a bit of hope. After many years of travelling along her healing journey, she sh...

Robert Bringhurst is a Canadian poet, typographer and author. He has translated substantial works from Haida and Navajo and from classical Greek and Arabic. He wrote The Elements of Typographic Style, a reference book of typefaces, glyphs and the visual and geometric arrangement of type. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in June 2013.

Dennis interviews Richard Perry from Perry Podcast Productions

Amid the tension of the Cold War, caught between capitalism and communism, Canada and the Soviet Union, young Canadian diplomat Gary J. Smith must navigate the rink, melting the ice between two nations skating a dangerous path.

 In the autumnal darkness of October 6, 1894, an unseen figure rang the doorbell at the Parkdale home of a well-to-do Toronto family and then shot Frank Westwood in his doorway. Weeks later, Clara Ford, a Black tailor and single mother known for her impeccable work ethic, resolute personality, and predilection for wearing men's attire, was arrested for the killing.  Carolyn Whitzman tells the comp...

Dennis interviews Tommy John and Rob Ehman at Shyster's Tavern in Langham,  Saskatchewan.   

What happened in 1907 that led to racist and violent demonstrations against the Asian immigrant communities in Vancouver? How can we make sure something like it doesn't happen again?  Based on his 360° Riot Walk, Henry Tsang has curated a book that combines essays and photography to shine a light on the darkness of Vancouver's past and its uncertain future: White Riot.      

Jade Wallace's poetry, fiction, and essays have been published or are forthcoming in literary journals across Canada, the USA, England, Ireland, Sweden, New Zealand, and India, including This Magazine, Canadian Literature, and Hermine. They are the author of several chapbooks, most recently the collaborative A Trip to the ZZOO (Collusion Books) and A Barely Concealed Design (Puddles of Sky Press),...

Andrea Menard is an accomplished Métis singer/songwriter, actor, speaker, wellness trainer, retreat host, and the founder of the Sacred Feminine Learning Lodge. As seen in USA Today, Andrea is an influencer in Feminine leadership and was named one of Women Executive Network's (WXN) Canada's Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award Winner in 2020. An advocate for rematriation and reconciliation, Andrea t...

Charles "Charlie" Demers "Just Demers" is a Juno-nominated stand-up comedian, BC Book Prize-nominated author, & co-star of two Emmy-winning Netflix animated series, Beat Bugs and The Last Kids on Earth.  

Growing up in Eastern Ontario, Leo become a regular tourist of Tatooine, Middle Earth, and that barn in Charlotte's Web by the age of eight. He first trained to work in museums before taking up the pen as a journalist, newspaper editor, and then corporate business writer. His passion for the fantastical and the historical, as well as finding the root of a story, fuel him in creating worlds of his...

Fascinated by ghost stories and crime fiction, she had been writing both for well over 20 years, drawing on close to two decades as a crime reporter. She enjoys reading, portrait drawing, travel and spending time with family and friends. She is the author of The Sullivan Gray Series, a paranormal mystery series featuring a young man who can see the ghosts of homicide victims. The only way for Sull...

John Brady McDonald joins us about his new book "Carrying It Forward: Essays from Kistahpinânihk"