What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books

My guest on this episode is Jackie Khalilieh. Jackie is a writer and former teacher whose first book, the YA novel Something More , was published by Tundra Books in 2023. That novel was shortlisted for the Ruth & Sylvia Shwartz Award, as well as the Snow Willow Award, and was selected for several Best of the year lists, including by the New York Public Library and Audible Books Canada. Publish...

My guest on this episode is Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer. Kathryn is the author of the novels All the Broken Things ,  Perfecting , and  The Nettle Spinner , as well as the story collection,  Way Up , which won the Danuta Gleed Award. Her work has been published in Granta Magazine, Maclean’s Magazine, The Walrus, Joyland, This Magazine, and elsewhere. Her fiction has won a Danuta Gleed Award and been nom...

My guest on this episode is Kelly S. Thompson. Kelly is a former Logistics Officer in the Canadian Armed Forces who began writing about her military experiences in a blog for Chatelaine magazine. She wrote about those experiences again in her debut book, Girls Need Not Apply , which was published in 2019 by McClelland & Stewart, named a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book, and became an instant bestse...

My guest on this episode is Rollie Pemberton. Rollie is a writer, rapper, producer, poet and activist who performs under the name Cadence Weapon. His album Parallel World won the 2021 Polaris Music Prize and his writing has been published in Pitchfork, The Guardian, Wired, Toronto Life, and Hazlitt. Rollie has also acted as Poet Laureate for his hometown of Edmonton, Alberta. He also recently rele...

My guest on this first episode of The Walrus era is John Vaillant. John is a Vancouver author and journalist whose acclaimed, award-winning nonfiction books, The Golden Spruce and The Tiger , were national bestsellers. His debut novel, The Jaguar’s Children , was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. John has written for, among others,...

My guest on this episode is Alissa York. Alissa is the author of the novels Mercy, Effigy (which was shortlisted for the Giller Prize), Fauna and The Naturalist (which was winner of the Canadian Author’s Association Fiction Award, and the  short fiction collection, Any Given Power.  Alissa’s essays and articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Brick magazine and elsewhere, and sh...

My guest on this episode is Cody Caetano. Cody is a writer and an off-reserve member of Pinaymootang First Nation. He also works as a literary agent at CookeMcDermid. Cody’s debut memoir, Half-Bads in White Regalia , was published Penguin Canada’s Hamish Hamilton imprint in 2023 and was a national bestseller. It won the 2023 Indigenous Voices Award for Best Published Prose, was shortlisted for the...

My guest on this episode is Nina Dunic. Nina is writer, editor, and journalist whose has done work for the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, CBC Docs and others. After winning a number of short story contests less than a decade ago, Nina turned to writing fiction. Nina’s first book is the novel The Clarion , which was published by Invisible Publishing in 2023. The Clarion was longlisted for the Gi...

My guest on this episode is... me. That’s because my most recent novel, Lump , was published exactly one year ago this week by the Rare Machines imprint of Dundurn Press, so I am officially in WHAT HAPPENED NEXT territory. My guest interviewer on this episode is Julie S. Lalonde. Julie is an internationally recognized women’s rights advocate and public educator. Her book Resilience is Futile: The...

My guest on this episode is Laurie Petrou. Laurie is the author of four books, including the short story collection Between , and the novels Sister of Mine and Love, Heather . She is an Associate Professor at the RTA School of Media at Toronto Metropolitan University. Laurie’s most recent book is Stargazer , published in 2022 by Verve Books. Author Marissa Stapley called Stargazer "a sinuous, capt...

My guest on this episode is Jordan Abel. Jordan is the author of  The Place of Scraps  (which won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize),  Un/inhabited , Injun  (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize) and NISHGA , which won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres award and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Wilfrid Eggleston Aw...

My guest on this episode is Andrew F Sullivan. Andrew is the author of the novel WASTE , a Globe & Mail Best Book of the Year, and the short story collection All We Want is Everything , also a Globe & Mail Best Book of the Year and finalist for the ReLit Award. Andrew’s most recent two books are the novels The Marigold , published by ECW Press in Spring 2023, a finalist for the Aurora Awar...

My guest on this episode is Ken McGoogan. Ken is the author of sixteen books—most of them nonfiction narratives, but also a few novels. His books include Fatal Passage , Lady Franklin’s Revenge , and Canada’s Undeclared War: Fighting Words from the Literary Trenches . Ken has won the Pierre Berton Award for Popular History and the University of British Columbia Medal for Canadian Biography. A fell...

My guest on this episode is Sheima Benembarek. Sheima is a journalist who’s written for The Walrus, Broadview, Maisonneuve, and the Literary Review of Canada. She has worked as special reports editor at Strategy, a senior editor for Toronto Life, an events manager for The Walrus, a business development and brand communications lead at Corporate Knights, and as an associate editor at Broadview. Cur...

My guest on this episode is Scott Chantler. Scott is the creator of multiple graphic novels for both adults and young readers, including  Northwest Passage , Two Generals, which was voted by CBC's Canada Reads as one of the 40 best Canadian non-fiction books of all time, the Three Thieves series (winner of the Joe Shuster Award for Best Comic for Kids), and Bix . He has been the illustrator for ma...

My very special guest on this one-year-anniversary episode is Meaghan Strimas. Meaghan is the author of three collections of poetry, including Junkman's Daughter and A Good Time Had By All , which was shortlisted for the 2011 ReLit Award. She the editor of The Selected Gwendolyn MacEwen and co-edited  Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology with the late Priscila Uppal. She is a professor in t...

My guest on this episode is Rob Benvie. Rob is the author of three novels, including Safety of War and Maintenance , both published by Coach House Books. His writing has appeared in  McSweeney’s ,  Dazed ,  Vice ,  Joyland ,  The Puritan ,  CNQ , and  Best Canadian Essays. He also co-wrote the screenplay for the 2021 film  Stanleyville . Rob was a founding member of the band Thrush Hermit, and per...

My guest on this episode is Lawrence Hill. Lawrence is the author of eleven books including the novels The Book of Negroes and The Illegal, and the memoir Black Berry Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada and Blood: The Stuff of Life , which was the CBC Massey Lecture in 2013. Lawrence is the winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book...

My guest on this episode is Amber Cowie. Amber is the author of a number of bestselling novels, starting with Rapid Falls , which was published in 2018 by Lake Union Publishing, an imprint of Amazon Publishing and was a Whistler Book Awards nominee. Her essays have been published in the New York Times , Salon , the Globe and Mail , and Scary Mommy . Amber’s most recent novel, Last One Alive , was...

My guest on this episode is Joyce Grant. Joyce is an award-winning children’s author, a freelance journalist, an editor, and an educator. She is the author of a trio of picture books published by Fitzhenry & Whiteside, and a pair of middle-grade novels published by Lorimer. Joyce’s most recent book is Can You Believe It? How to Spot Fake News and Find the Facts , published by Kids Can Press in...

My guest on this episode is Liz Harmer. Liz is a writer, editor, and teacher whose first novel, The Amateurs was published in 2018 by Knopf Canada and was a finalist for the Amazon First Novel Award. In 2019, Liz was a Bread Loaf fellow and the runner-up to the Mitchell Prize in Poetry. She has won a National Magazine Award in Personal Journalism, was a finalist for the Journey Prize, and has been...

My guest on this episode is Mark Pupo. Mark is a writer and editor who was a senior editor at Toronto Life magazine, and was their food writer for many years. Mark has also served as a senior editor at Chatelaine magazine, the director of Special Projects at Macleans magazine, and was the editor in chief at Reader’s Diges t Canada. Mark’s first book is Sundays: A Celebration of Breakfast and Famil...

My guest on this episode is Terry Fallis. Terry’s first novel, The Best Laid Plans , which began as a podcast and was initially self-published, won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and was re-published by McClelland & Stewart in 2008. That book went on to win the 2011 edition of Canada Reads and was adapted as a CBC Television series and a stage musical. His next two novels,  The High Road...

My guest on this episode is Denise Da Costa. Denise is an author and visual artist who studied Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia and is an alumna of the Humber School of Writers and the Diaspora Dialogues mentorship program. Her debut novel, And the Walls Came Down,  was published in 2023 by Dundurn Press. Author Zalika Reid-Benta called And the Walls Came Down  “a beautiful e...

My guest on this episode is Omar El Akkad. Omar is an author and celebrated journalist whose debut novel, American War, was published in 2017. It was an international bestseller, was translated into thirteen languages, and won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize as well as being nominated for nearly a dozen other awards. It wa...