Writers and Company

To celebrate poetry month, a conversation with one of England?s greatest living poets, Alice Oswald. Winner of the 2017 international Griffin Poetry Prize for her book Falling Awake, Oswald's work explores the relationship between human life and the natural world. Her latest title, Nobody, is a book-length poem inspired by Homer?s Odyssey.

This week on Writers and Company, Anita Desai ? one of India's most celebrated and successful writers. Over the course of her career, which spans five decades, Desai has written several novels and has been nominated for the Booker Prize three times. Eleanor Wachtel spoke to her on stage at Montreal's Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in 2017, where she received the Grand Prix for lifetime achievement. Desai's latest book, Rosarita, is forthcoming from Picador Press. 

This interview originally aired May 7, 2017.

James Runcie's novel, The Great Passion, imagines a year in the life of Johann Sebastian Bach, culminating with the first performance of his St. Matthew Passion in Leipzig, Germany during Easter 1727. Told through the eyes of a fictional, 13-year-old student, it explores the man behind the legendary composer: an ambitious working musician and father of eight, coping with grief and loss, through faith and music. 

This interview originally aired June 12, 2022.

This week, two conversations with the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir The Return. In 2011, Libyan British author Hisham Matar spoke with Eleanor Wachtel about his childhood living under Gadhafi?s dictatorship and the search for his father, a political dissident who was imprisoned. Then, from 2020, Matar reflects on his memoir The Return and his book A Month in Siena, which explores the relationship between history, art and grief. Please note: this episode contains difficult subject matter.

This week on Writers and Company from the Archives, Irish authors Michael Collins, Claire Keegan, Colum McCann and Nuala O'Faolain. They spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2003 onstage at the Victoria Literary Arts Festival.

The American novelist and short story writer talked to Eleanor Wachtel about growing up in Mississippi and her novel, Pew, which follows a mysterious stranger who makes a big impact on a small town in the American South. This interview originally aired February 28, 2021.

This week, two conversations with Martin Amis, one of England?s most engaged and provocative writers. In 2014, Amis spoke with Eleanor Wachtel about his novel The Zone of Interest, which focuses on the Holocaust from a different angle. Its screen adaptation is nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture. Followed by a conversation from 2019 about the Italian Jewish chemist, Holocaust survivor and writer, Primo Levi ? whose work greatly inspired Amis?s writing ? featuring Levi's biographer Ian Thomson. Please note: this episode contains difficult subject matter and discussion of suicide.

American novelist and musician James McBride is best known for his bestselling memoir, The Color of Water ? about his immigrant Jewish mother and Black American father. In 2013, McBride won the National Book Award for his novel The Good Lord Bird - an irreverent portrayal of abolitionist John Brown. Eleanor Wachtel?s conversation with James McBride about these two books, and his life, first aired in 2014.

This week on Writers and Company from the Archives, Canadian poet, essayist, Greek and Latin scholar and librettist, Anne Carson. The author of Autobiography of Red and its sequel Red Doc> is also the first and only two-time winner of the Griffin Prize for Poetry. She spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2011 about her book Nox ? an elegy to her brother and a moving reflection on absence 

Novelist, memoirist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo discusses her memoir, Nine Continents, which traces her life from a Chinese fishing village to Beijing and England. It won the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award. Guo spoke to Eleanor in 2018 about transforming her past into vivid art and literature. In 2023, she published a new memoir called Radical: A Life of My Own. WARNING: This discussion deals with suicide.

Looking back on Philip Roth, one of the most celebrated American writers, who died in 2018, aged 85. From Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy?s Complaint to The Plot Against America ? Roth?s legacy lives on. He spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2009 about his early success, coping with fame and controversy, and the evolution of his writing... and his life.

The celebrated Congolese-French writer joined Eleanor Wachtel onstage at the Vancouver Writers Festival in 2016. Mabanckou's recent books are charming explorations of childhood, family and country. His memoir The Lights of Pointe-Noire relates his experience of returning to his hometown after 23 years, while his novel Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty captures his childhood spirit in the character of his 10-year-old alter ego.

This week on Writers & Company from the archives, celebrating a classic that?s also one of the most translated books in the world: Le Petit Prince or The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupe?ry. Biographer Stacy Schiff, filmmaker Mark Osborne and novelist Éric Dupont joined Eleanor Wachtel for the book's 75th anniversary in 2018 to reflect on its enduring appeal.

Best known for her Cazalet Chronicles and a dozen other books, English novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard turned to her own life in her memoir, Slipstream. In the book, and in this conversation with Eleanor Wachtel from 2003, she reflects on her difficult upbringing in London in the 1920s and '30s, on her first marriage during the Second World War, and shares her account of her widely discussed breakup with renowned writer Kingsley Amis. Howard died 10 years ago, aged 90.

Australia's most celebrated Indigenous author Alexis Wright spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2009 about her award-winning novel Carpentaria. Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Her new novel, Praiseworthy, will be published in Canada in February.

This week, to strike a celebratory note, an encore presentation of Writers & Company's 20th anniversary special with acclaimed writers Dionne Brand, Margaret Drabble, Deborah Eisenberg and Andrew O'Hagan. They joined host Eleanor Wachtel onstage at the Toronto International Festival of Authors in 2010. *This interview originally aired Oct. 31, 2010.

Winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, Irish poet Seamus Heaney died ten years ago when he was 74. Known for poems that engage with the immediacy of the natural world and its physicality, Heaney spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2010 about his book Human Chain. It won UK's £10,000 Forward Prize, among Heaney's many other honours. *This interview originally aired May 23, 2010.

At 95, Lore Segal has been writing for almost sixty years. The author of Other People's Houses, Half the Kingdom and Shakespeare's Kitchen, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Segal's latest book is called Ladies' Lunch and Other Stories. It's been named a New Yorker Best Book of the Year. *This interview originally aired Oct. 20, 2013.

Lydia Davis has been called "one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction." Her 2007 short story collection, Varieties of Disturbance, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Davis's newest title, Our Strangers, contains 144 short stories in 300 pages. Lydia Davis spoke to Eleanor Wachtel on stage at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal. *This interview originally aired June 10, 2007.

WARNING: This discussion deals with suicide. Sigrid Nunez's eighth title, The Friend, won the 2018 U.S. National Book Award. Hailed as "a subtle, unassuming masterpiece," it follows a woman grieving the death of her friend as she cares for his 180-pound Great Dane. Nunez followed it with What Are You Going Through, which was named a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2020. Her new novel, The Vulnerables, takes place during the early days of Covid lockdown. *This interview originally aired on May 30, 2021.

In honour of novelist and critic A.S. Byatt, who died on November 16, Writers & Company revisits her 2009 interview with Eleanor Wachtel, recorded live at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal. Byatt was there to launch her novel, The Children's Book, and to receive the festival's $10,000 Grand Prix. *Please note this interview includes reference to suicide. It originally aired on May 24, 2009.

In 2019, Eleanor Wachtel spoke to German-American graphic artist Nora Krug about her award-winning illustrated memoir, Belonging. It's a powerful and compassionate investigation into Krug's family's involvement in the Second World War and the impact of history on successive generations. Her new book, Diaries of War: Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine and Russia, is a real-time, personal record from a Ukrainian journalist and an anti-war Russian artist, which Krug solicited and then illustrated. *This interview deals with difficult subjects including the Holocaust and antisemitism. It originally aired on March 10, 2019.

WARNING: This discussion deals with suicide. In late 1994, Eleanor Wachtel spoke to award-winning author and Vietnam War veteran Tim O'Brien. He's the author of such acclaimed books as Going After Cacciato, The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods. O'Brien new novel ? his first in 20 years ? is called America Fantastica. *This interview originally aired on Jan. 15, 1995.

Jesmyn Ward's novel, Salvage the Bones, is an intimate and compelling look at Hurricane Katrina and the American South. It won the National Book award in 2011. Following the success of Salvage the Bones, Ward released her memoir, Men We Reaped, which examines her experiences with racism, the absence of her father and the death of her younger brother. Her new novel, Let Us Descend, follows an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War. *This interview originally aired on Sept. 28, 2014.

WARNING: This discussion deals with suicide. England's Jeanette Winterson reflects on her childhood and explores her search for love and belonging in her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?. Winterson is the author of the hit, semi-autobiographical novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Her latest book, Night Side of the River, is a collection of ghost stories. *This interview originally aired in 2012.

John Grisham's novel The Reckoning re-imagines a story the author encountered more than 30 years ago about a murder in small-town Mississippi. It centres on Pete, a cotton farmer returning from the Second World War, and the mystery surrounding his motive for killing the local pastor. *This interview originally aired Mar. 24, 2019.