Rebecca is excited to speak with Pakistani-Canadian author Saad Omar Khan about his debut novel, Drinking the Ocean, published by Wolsak & Wynn in 2025. Saad was born in the United Arab Emirates to Pakistani parents and lived in the Philippines, Hong Kong, and South Korea before immigrating to Canada. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics and has completed a certificate in Creative Writing from the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto. His short fiction has appeared in Best Canadian Stories 2025 and other publications. Saad lives outside of Toronto and is currently working on his second novel.

Books mentioned:

• Ley Lines by Tim Welsh
• Stella Maris; Blood Meridian; All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
• In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
• The Sheltering Sky; Travels: Collected Writing 1950-1993; The Stories of Paul Bowles by Paul Bowles
• Abdullah Ansari of Herat: An Early Sufi Master by A.G. Farhadi

https://www.saadomarkhan.com/

https://www.instagram.com/s.omar.khan/

https://bookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/collections/all/products/drinking-the-ocean

https://www.biblioasis.com/shop/fiction/short-fiction/best-canadian-stories-2025/

https://augursociety.org/

Rebecca and Tara share their latest vacation highlights as well as their favorite reads over the past month.

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• https://www.thehenryford.org/
• A Song for Wildcats: Stories by Caitlin Galway
• Stella's Carpet by Lucy E.M. Black
• Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park
• A Psalm for the Wild-Built; A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers
• Drinking the Ocean by Saad Omar Khan
• The Fairy-Tale Detectives (The Sisters Grimm #1) by Michael Buckley
• Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• https://therooms.ca/
• The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen SookfongLee
• The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
• Pale Shadows; Paper Houses by Dominique Fortier; translated by Rhonda Mullins
• Sleepers and Ties by Gail Kirkpatrick
• Written on the Dark; The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay
• Tracking Giants: Big Trees, Tiny Triumphs, and Misadventures in the Forest by Amanda Lewis
• Hemo Sapiens by Emily A. Weedon

If you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to share with Rebecca and Tara, please email them at craspod2019@gmail.com

Rebecca is excited to speak with Chinese-Canadian author Su Chang. Su was born and raised in Shanghai and is the daughter of a former and reluctant Red Guard leader, which was the paramilitary arm of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution beginning in the 1960s. Today, they will be talking about her debut novel, The Immortal Woman, published by House of Anansi in March of this year. It has already garnered a lot of attention and praise from CBC, Indigo Books, and Amazon, to name a few high-powered sources.

Highlighted books:

• Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
• Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
• Who's Irish? by Gish Jen
• Play by Jess Taylor
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith
• Kilworthy Tanner by Jean Marc Ah-Sen
• A Song for Wildcats by Caitlin Galway
• The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien

https://www.instagram.com/suchangwrites/

https://www.suchangauthor.com/

https://houseofanansi.com/products/the-immortal-woman?_pos=3&_sid=2cb7b9933&_ss=r

If you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to share with Rebecca and Tara, please email them at craspod2019@gmail.com