Episodes

  • Gloria Blizzard, "Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas" (Dundurn Press, 2025)

    Gloria Blizzard, "Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas" (Dundurn Press, 2025)
    Feb 2 2025
    Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas (Dundurn Press, 2025) by Gloria Blizzard is a diasporic collection of essays on music, memory, and motion. In this powerful and deeply personal essay collection, Gloria Blizzard, in an international diasporic quest, moves up and down an urban subway line; between Canada and Trinidad; to and from a hospital emergency room; back and forth in time — and as a descendent of Africa living in the Americas, negotiates the complexities of culture, geography, race, and language. Through food, music, dance, and family history, Blizzard explores the art of belonging — to a family, a neighbourhood, a group, or a country. Using traditional narrative and the tools of poetry, Blizzard’s essays hover at the crossroads, in the spaces where art, science, and spirit collide. The intimate becomes universal, the questions are all relevant, and the answers of our times require a sleight of hand — the holding of simultaneous and overlapping worlds. About Gloria Blizzard: Gloria Blizzard is an award-winning writer and poet, and a Black Canadian woman of multiple heritages. Her work explores spaces where music, dance, spirit, and culture collide. She lives in Toronto. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    30 mins
  • Joel Z. Garrod, "Royal Histories: The Transformation of the Royal Bank of Canada, 1864-2022" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

    Joel Z. Garrod, "Royal Histories: The Transformation of the Royal Bank of Canada, 1864-2022" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
    Feb 1 2025
    In this engaging interview, young scholar Dr, Joel Z. Garrod explains his book's main argument, with a personal touch. In Royal Histories: The Transformation of the Royal Bank of Canada, 1864-2022 (U Toronto Press, 2025), Garrod presents a historical analysis of the Royal Bank of Canada, illustrating how Canadian capitalism and the Canadian banking industry have transformed as they have consolidated nationally and expanded abroad. Emphasizing how national institutions and rules are increasingly becoming capabilities for transnational forms of capital accumulation, the book draws on extensive primary and secondary sources to document the transformation of the assemblage of territory, authority, and rights that have supported the bank’s activities over time. Linking the bank’s history to the policy regimes of the welfare state and neoliberalism, Garrod contends that our present period of globalization severely limits the extent to which nation-states can absorb capitalist crises or be a site of successful social reform. Connecting the Canadian experience to the wider transformation of global capitalism, Royal Histories illuminates the effects of globalization and the changing landscape of banking and finance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    58 mins
  • Adam Chapnick, "Canada First, Not Canada Alone: A History of Canadian Foreign Policy" (Oxford UP, 2024)

    Adam Chapnick, "Canada First, Not Canada Alone: A History of Canadian Foreign Policy" (Oxford UP, 2024)
    Feb 1 2025
    The definitive history of Canadian foreign policy since the 1930s, Canada First, Not Canada Alone: A History of Canadian Foreign Policy (Oxford UP, 2024) examines how successive prime ministers have promoted Canada's national interests in a world that has grown increasingly complex and interconnected. Eleven case studies focus on environmental reform, Indigenous peoples, trade, hostage diplomacy, and wartime strategy illustrate the breadth of issues that shape Canada's global realm. In this lively interview, Asa McKercher offers explains the structure of the book, its main take-way and how Canada has positioned itself in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Kathleen Lippa, "Arctic Predator: The Crimes of Edward Horne Against Children in Canada's North" (Dundurn, 2025)

    Kathleen Lippa, "Arctic Predator: The Crimes of Edward Horne Against Children in Canada's North" (Dundurn, 2025)
    Jan 20 2025
    After years of research, journalist Kathleen Lippa has written about the shocking crimes of a trusted teacher who wrought lasting damage on Inuit communities: Arctic Predator: The Crimes of Edward Horne Against Children in Canada’s North (Dundurn Press, February 2025). In the 1970s, a young schoolteacher from British Columbia was becoming the darling of the Northwest Territories education department with his dynamic teaching style. He was learning to speak the local language, Inuktitut, something few outsiders did. He also claimed to be Indigenous — a claim that would later prove to be false. In truth, Edward Horne was a pedophile who sexually abused his male students. From 1971 to 1985 his predations on Inuit boys would disrupt life in the communities where he worked — towns of close-knit families that would suffer the intergenerational trauma created by his abuse. In this book, Kathleen examines the devastating impact the crimes had on individuals, families, and entire communities. Her compelling work lifts the veil of silence surrounding the Horne story once and for all. More about Kathleen Lippa: Kathleen Lippa is a Canadian journalist, born in Toronto and raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Kathleen trained as a professional dancer at The Quinte Ballet School and The School of the Toronto Dance Theatre before embarking on a journalism career. At Memorial University, from which she graduated with a BA (English) in 1998, she worked on the student newspaper, the muse. Following graduation, she worked at a number of Canadian newspapers including The Express (St. John’s) where she won a Canadian Community Newspaper Association award for arts reporting, The Hanover Post (Ontario), a number of newspapers under the corporate umbrella of the Northern News Services, 24 Hours (Toronto), and the Calgary Sun. For Northern News Services, after a short stint in Yellowknife, Kathleen served as Bureau Chief in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Her experience includes writing, editing, page layout and design, and photography. Her Northern experience was in a cross-cultural setting primarily reporting news from Inuit communities. After spending many years in Iqaluit, Kathleen now lives with her husband in Ottawa and St. John’s. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Melanie Dennis Unrau, "The Rough Poets: Reading Oil-Worker Poetry" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2024)

    Melanie Dennis Unrau, "The Rough Poets: Reading Oil-Worker Poetry" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2024)
    Jan 19 2025
    Oil workers are often typecast as rough: embodying the toxic masculinity, racism, consumerist excess, and willful ignorance of the extractive industries and petrostates they work for. But their poetry troubles these assumptions, revealing the fear, confusion, betrayal, and indignation hidden beneath tough personas. The Rough Poets: Reading Oil-Worker Poetry (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2024) by Dr. Melanie Dennis Unrau presents poetry by workers in the Canadian oil and gas industry, collecting and closely reading texts published between 1938 and 2019: S.C. Ells’s Northland Trails, Peter Christensen’s Rig Talk, Dymphny Dronyk’s Contrary Infatuations, Mathew Henderson’s The Lease, Naden Parkin’s A Relationship with Truth, Lesley Battler’s Endangered Hydrocarbons, and Lindsay Bird’s Boom Time. These writers are uniquely positioned, Melanie Dennis Unrau argues, both as petropoets who write poetry about oil and as theorists of petropoetics with unique knowledge about how to make and unmake worlds that depend on fossil fuels. Their ambivalent, playful, crude, and honest petropoetry shows that oil workers grieve the environmental and social impacts of their work, worry about climate change and the futures of their communities, and desire jobs and ways of life that are good, safe, and just. How does it feel to be a worker in the oil and gas industry in a climate emergency, facing an energy transition that threatens your way of life? Unrau takes up this question with the respect, care, and imagination necessary to be an environmentalist reader in solidarity with oil workers. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 mins
  • Loleen Berdahl et al., "For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities" (U Alberta, 2024)

    Loleen Berdahl et al., "For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities" (U Alberta, 2024)
    Jan 17 2025
    Arts graduate education is uniquely positioned to deliver many of the public good needs of contemporary Canada. For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities (U Alberta, 2024) argues, however, that graduate programs must fundamentally change if they are to achieve this potential. Drawing on deep experience and research, the authors outline how reformed programs that equip graduates with advanced skills can address Canada’s most vexing challenges and seek action on equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization. In the episode, the authors, Loleen Berdahl, Jonathan Malloy and Lisa Young, chart how current approaches to graduate education emerged and make a data-informed case for change. We also discuss an evidence-based vision for reimagining arts graduate education and actor-specific steps to achieve this potential. This interview was conducted by Shreya Urvashi, a doctoral researcher of sociology and education based in Toronto, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    43 mins
  • Mark Celinscak, "Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp" (U Toronto Press, 2015)

    Mark Celinscak, "Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp" (U Toronto Press, 2015)
    Jan 16 2025
    The Allied soldiers who liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 were faced with scenes of horror and privation. With breathtaking thoroughness, Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp (U Toronto Press, 2015) documents what they saw and how they came to terms with those images over the course of the next seventy years. On the basis of research in more than seventy archives in four countries, Mark Celinscak analyses how these military personnel struggled with the intense experience of the camp; how they attempted to describe what they had seen, heard, and felt to those back home; and how their lives were transformed by that experience. He also brings to light the previously unacknowledged presence of hundreds of Canadians among the camp's liberators, including noted painter Alex Colville. Distance from the Belsen Heap examines the experiences of hundreds of British and Canadian eyewitnesses to atrocity, including war artists, photographers, medical personnel, and chaplains. A study of the complicated encounter between these Allied soldiers and the horrors of the Holocaust, Distance from the Belsen Heap is a testament to their experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 17 mins
  • Mariam Pirbhai, "Garden Inventories: Reflections on Land, Place and Belonging" (Wolsak and Wynn, 2023)

    Mariam Pirbhai, "Garden Inventories: Reflections on Land, Place and Belonging" (Wolsak and Wynn, 2023)
    Jan 14 2025
    In Garden Inventories: Reflections on Land, Place and Belonging (Wolsak and Wynn, 2023), author Mariam Pirbhai looks carefully at the pocket of land she has called home in Southern Ontario for the past seventeen years, which she notes is a milestone for her, and asks how long it takes to be rooted to a place? And what does that truly mean? Seeing the landscape around her with the layered experience of a childhood spent wandering the world, Pirbhai shares her efforts to create a garden and understand her new home while encouraging others to do reconsider the land on which they live, and how they treat it. The result is a delightful collection of essays that invites the reader to see the beautiful complexity of the land around us all in a new way. About Mariam Pirbhai: Mariam Pirbhai is an academic and creative writer. Her most recent work titled Garden Inventories: Reflections on Land, Place and Belonging (Wolsak & Wynn 2023), was a 2024 Foreword Indies finalist for nature/nonfiction, and received Honourable Mention for the 2024 Alanna Bondar Memorial Book Prize. Her novel titled Isolated Incident (Mawenzi 2022), won the 2024 IPPY Gold Medal for multicultural fiction and IPPY Silver Medal for Canadian regional fiction, and a debut short story collection titled Outside People and Other Stories (Inanna 2017), won the 2018 IPPY Gold Medal for multicultural fiction, and 2019 American Bookfest award for short fiction. Pirbhai is Full Professor of English at Wilfrid Laurier University, where she teaches and specializes in postcolonial studies and creative writing, and is the author of several academic studies on the literatures of the global South Asian diaspora. Pirbhai has served as President of CAPS (Canadian Association for Postcolonial Studies), Canada’s longest-running scholarly association devoted to postcolonial and global anglophone literatures. Pirbhai lived in England, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines, before her family settled in Canada. She lives and works in Waterloo, Ontario. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    44 mins