In this interview, we chat with Sarah Bernstein about contemplation, finding time for writing, capturing the rush of language, and so much more.
Sarah Bernstein is the author of two novels, The Coming Bad Days and Study for Obedience, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is from Montreal and lives in the Scottish Highlands.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
Hysteric; Whore – Nelly Arcan
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
The Moonstone; The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
“A Mown Lawn” – Lydia Davis
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin
The Book of Questions – Edmond Jabès
The Haunting of Hill House; “The Lottery”; The Sundial; We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
The Place of Shells – Mai Ishizawa
In the Wake: On Blackness and Being – Christina Sharpe
In this interview, we chat with Fawn Parker about showing the reader around the room, finding the right tense, protecting your writing time, and so much more.
Fawn Parker is the author of five books including novels What We Both Know (M&S), nominated for the Giller Prize and Hi, It’s Me (M&S), nominated for the Writer’s Trust Atwood Gibson Prize, and the poetry collection Soft Inheritance, which was awarded the JM Abraham Atlantic Book Award and the Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize. Her work has been published in The Walrus, Hazlitt, Literary Review of Canada, and elsewhere. Fawn is a PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick and the Poet Laureate of Fredericton.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
The Edible Woman – Margaret Atwood
The Mountain and the Valley – Ernest Buckler
Libra – Don DeLillo
The Guest – Emma Cline
Attack of the Copula Spiders and Other Essays on Writing – Douglas Glover
Fredericton’s monthly reading series, ‘The Catch-Up,’ curated and hosted by acclaimed writer Fawn Parker, returns with readings by local authors Alison Taylor, Chuck Bowie & Mike Thorn!
The reading will take place here at the bookshop on Sunday, January 26th, 2025, @ 3pm.
Alison Taylor (they/them) is a writer, editor, and filmmaker based in Fredericton. Taylor’s short stories have appeared in various journals, and their debut novel Aftershock, published by HarperCollins Canada, received the Atlantic Book Awards John and Margaret Savage First Book Award (Fiction), and was shortlisted for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. They received the 2024 Douglas Adams Richards Prize for Fiction for their work-in-progress, Confessions of a Binge Drinker (working title). They have edited a hundred-plus hours of television and many award-winning short films and music videos, and their own experimental films have screened at festivals internationally. They currently work in the editorial department at Goose Lane Editions and as a freelance editor of both books and film and video, and are working to complete a draft while two cats yell at them and a 70-pound boxer whines in their face.
Mike Thorn is a SSHRC-funded doctoral candidate in the Department of English (Creative Writing) at the University of New Brunswick. He is the author of Shelter for the Damned, Darkest Hours, and Peel Back and See. His writing has appeared in anthologies, magazines, and podcasts, including NoSleep, Vastarien, In Review Online, and American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper. He co-hosts Craftwork, a writing-themed podcast, with Miriam Richer. Website: mikethornwrites.com.
Chuck Bowie is both a writer and an author, with thirteen books/novels published and one just underway. While he enjoys writing mysteries: Suspense-Thrillers and Cozy Mysteries, he also writes short stories. All of his books are well-reviewed, and he has sat on the boards of the Writers’ Federation of NB, The Writers’ Union of Canada, is a Fellow of the Kingsbrae International Residency for the Arts, as well as being acknowledged as a member of the Miramichi Literary Trail. His thriller series chronicles the adventures of Donovan, an international thief for hire, while his cozy series (written as Alexa Bowie) follows the adventures of the owner of an arts centre as Emma solves the crimes that swirl around her centre: The Old Manse. http://www.chuckbowie.ca
In this interview, we chat with Kathe Koja about balancing simultaneous projects, resisting online distractions, raising the literary dead, and so much more.
Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction, and creates and produces live and virtual events. Her award-winning books include The Cipher, Skin, Buddha Boy, Under The Poppy and Velocities, and she is currently at work on the Dark Factory immersive fiction project including Dark Factory, Dark Park and Dark Matter. Catherine the Ghost is her newest novel.
In this interview, we chat with Paula D. Ashe about writer’s block, narrative movement, urban legends, and so much more.
Paula D. Ashe (she/her) is an author of dark fiction. Her debut collection We Are Here to Hurt Each Other (Nictitating Books) was a Shirley Jackson Award winner for Single Author Collection and a Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection. Recently, she received the Joseph S. Pulver Sr. Weird Fiction Award at NecronomiCon Providence. Paula was also an associate editor for Vastarien: A Literary Journal. She lives in the Midwest with her family.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
Supplication – Nour Abi-Nakhoul
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Books of Blood; The Damnation Game; The Hellbound Heart – Clive Barker
Midnight Rooms – Donyae Coles
Blood from the Air – Gemma Files
“each thing i show you is a piece of my death” – Gemma Files & Stephen J. Barringer
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke – Eric LaRocca
In this interview, we chat with McKenna James Boeckner and Carlee Calver about nature writing, epistolary possibilities, elusive chicken detectives, and so much more.
McKenna James Boeckner is a Ph.D. candidate and contract lecturer at the University of New Brunswick (territory of the Wolastoqiyik people), with a specialization in long eighteenth-century British literature. As a creative writer, they slay with playwriting and have a penchant for fractured states of reality. Their most recent project is an eco-horror audio drama co-created with Carlee Calver, titled Us Soliscent Seeds. Find more of their work at memoirsofasodomite.com
Carlee Calver is a writer, playwright, and filmmaker from Bathurst, New Brunswick. She currently lives and works in Fredericton NB, where she received her M.A. in creative writing (screenwriting) from the University of New Brunswick. Her plays have been produced by Notable Acts Theatre Festival (2019) and Herbert the Cow productions (2022). She directed a FibeTV1 series called Skin and Bone (2023) that is now available online. Recently, Carlee was co-creator and producer of Us Soliscent Seeds (2023), a 4-part eco-horror audio drama set in Northern New Brunswick. All episodes are now available for streaming online.
In this interview, Craig Laurance Gidney talks about genre mashups, writing workshops, telling Mom which of your stories to avoid, and so much more.
Craig Laurance Gidney (he/him/his) is the author of Sea, Swallow Me & Other Stories; Skin Deep Magic: Stories; Bereft (a YA novella); and A Spectral Hue (a novel). He has been a Lambda Literary Finalist three times, was a Carl Brandon Parallax Award Finalist, and won the inaugural Joseph S. Pulver Sr. Award for Weird Fiction. The Nectar of Nightmares is his most recent collection. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Giovanni’s Room; Go Tell It on the Mountain; If Beale Street Could Talk – James Baldwin
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell; Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
Dhalgren – Samuel R. Delany
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
The Uncanny – Sigmund Freud
A Ring of Endless Light; A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
Black Light – Elizabeth Hand
The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus – Joel Chandler Harris
“The Golden Pot”; “The Sandman” – E. T. A. Hoffmann
Finnegan’s Wake – James Joyce
“Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk” – Franz Kafka
Delirium’s Mistress – Tanith Lee
“The Outsider”; “The Rats in the Walls” – H.P. Lovecraft
In this interview, Niall Howell talks about crime fiction, creative spontaneity, the magic of public swimming pools (soggy donuts!), and so much more.
Niall Howell lives in Calgary, Alberta with his wife, sons, and pets. His debut noir novel Only Pretty Damned was shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction. His follow-up novel, There Are Wolves Here Too, was shortlisted by the Book Publisher’s Association of Alberta for Mystery and Thriller book of the year. Niall’s short fiction has been featured in The Feathertale Review and FreeFall. He is currently working on his third novel.
Books mentioned in this episode:
City of Margins; Shoot the Moonlight Out – William Boyle
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel – Jessica Brody
Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler – Raymond Chandler; edited by Frank MacShane
The Guest – Emma Cline
Perfidia; This Storm; Widespread Panic – James Ellroy
Our Share of Night – Mariana Enriquez
The Wars – Timothy Findley
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Rage in Harlem – Chester Himes
It; Night Shift; Salem’s Lot – Stephen King
Burnt Offerings – Robert Marasco
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Peyton Place – Grace Metalious
Devil in a Blue Dress – Walter Mosley
Toby Tyler; or, Ten Weeks with a Circus – James Otis
In this interview, Phoebe Marmura talks about fear, fairies, set design, and so much more.
Phoebe Marmura is a writer and artist. Her work explores desire, femininity, domestic adventure, and reclusion. Marmura’s writing can be found in Expat Press, D.F.L. Lit, and Orca Literary Journal.
Books mentioned in this episode:
Erotic Interludes: Tales Told by Women – Lonnie Barbach
Mike Thorn 