Bookspo

Season Three of BOOKSPO launches here! But if podcasts aren't your thing, you can opt out of receiving BOOKSPO notifications. Go to https://substack.com/home and log in. Click on your personal icon in the top corner to find a drop-down menu. Select “SETTINGS.” Scroll down to find your subscriptions, and click on the arrow beside PICKLE ME THIS. Scroll to “NOTIFICATIONS” where you can opt out of anything you're not interested in being alerted to, such as podcasts. Thanks for sticking around!I loved talking to Su Chang about her debut novel, THE IMMORTAL WOMAN, which came out in March from House of Anansi Press and has been much buzzed-about in literary circles. And for good reason—this debut novel includes 70 years of contemporary Chinese history, and crosses both continents and generations to tell an epic mother/daughter tale that grapples with the traumatic legacy of China's Cultural Revolution. It's a powerful, moving and incredibly dynamic novel that complicated my understanding of China and its history in surprising and essential ways. In our conversation, Chang talks about the ambitiousness of one's debut novel being an epic, but also why she couldn't have told a story of the Cultural Revolution any other way. She talks about how she understood the Cultural Revolution as a child growing up in China overhearing discussions at the dinner table, but about how it wasn't until she'd left China and began reading uncensored histories of her country that she began to understand just why those dinner table discussions had been so different from what she'd been taught in school. She describes the kind of broad reading that's required to get close to something resembling truth, and also the ways in which she identified with the protagonist of Ayad Akhtar's HOMELAND ELEGIES and the paradoxical way in which he understands Americanness. A sweeping generational story of heartbreak, resilience, and yearning, revealing an insider's view of the fractured lives of Chinese immigrants and those they leave behind.Lemei, once a student Red Guard leader in 1960s Shanghai and a journalist at a state newspaper, was involved in a brutal act of violence during the Tiananmen Square protests and lost all hope for her country. Her daughter, Lin, is a student at an American university on a mission to become a true Westerner. She tirelessly erases her birth identity, abandons her Chinese suitor, and pursues a white lover, all the while haunted by the scars of her upbringing. Following China's meteoric rise, Lemei is slowly dragged into a nationalistic perspective that stuns Lin. Their final confrontation results in tragic consequences, but ultimately, offers hope for a better future. By turns wry and lyrical, The Immortal Woman reminds us to hold tight to our humanity at any cost.SU CHANG is a Chinese-Canadian writer. Born and raised in Shanghai, she is the daughter of a former (reluctant) Red Guard leader. Her fiction has been recognized in Prairie Fire's Short Fiction Contest, Canadian Authors' Association (Toronto) National Writing Contest, ILS/Fence Fiction Contest, the Masters Review's Novel Excerpt Contest, among others.Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit kerryreads.substack.comHello everyone, especially my new subscribers. I'm so glad you're here. Part of my Substack project is my podcast, BOOKSPO, whose third season launches in April, available to all listeners. In the meantime, I'm sharing bonus episodes like this one for paid subscribers only. You can listen to a preview above, and if you like it, please consider a paid subscription to hear the rest—you'll also receive a fresh new essay from me once a month! And some housekeeping: if podcasts aren't your thing, you can opt out of receiving BOOKSPO notifications. Go to https://substack.com/home and log in. Click on your personal icon in the top corner to find a drop-down menu. Select “SETTINGS.” Scroll down to find your subscriptions, and click on the arrow beside PICKLE ME THIS. Scroll to “NOTIFICATIONS” where you can opt out of anything you're not interested in being alerted to, such as podcasts. Thanks for sticking around! Important Links: Heather Marshall's Home on the WebMaternity Home ScandalHenry MorgentalerWhat She Said, by Elizabeth RenzettiMy abortion anniversary cakeThe M Word: Conversations About MotherhoodAbortion Rights Coalition of Canada

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit kerryreads.substack.comThank you for being a part of Seasons 1 and 2 of BOOKSPO. This bonus episode is for paid subscribers (who also receive access to my monthly essays—there is one coming early next week about Margaret Laurence's THE DIVINERS). I hope you enjoy this behind-the-scenes glimpse into my reading life, and marriage, and our perspectives on Louise Penny's ridiculo…

We've made it to another Season Finale! Thank you for coming with me on this podcasting journey this year, and helping me reach the milestones of 24 episodes, 3.8K downloads (and counting), one whole sponsored episode, and so many great conversations both on and off the pod. A year ago, this project was just a distant dream that I was almost too terrified to realize, but I made the leap, here we are, and if you've enjoyed it all even half as much as I have, we're all pretty lucky. I'm looking forward to launching BOOKSPO Season 3 in the spring, but in the meantime I'm trying to figure out ways to be compensated for my work on the project, and if you've been a fan of the pod this year, there are some ways you can help. First, if you're not a paid subscriber to my Substack, please consider upgrading. My paid subscriptions are literally as cheap as Substack will permit, but the income means a lot to me and will enable me to sustain this project. You'll also get access to my essays every month! (Paid subscribers will also get access to A VERY SPECIAL BOOKSPO BONUS episode dropping one week from today!). Second, do you know anyone who might want to reach an awesome audience of sharp-minded, literary-inclined Canadians (simply the BEST demographic) as a podcast sponsor? I'm thinking literary festivals, indie booksellers, small presses, subscription boxes, bookishly-minded entrepreneurs (are you a bibliotherapist?), writing programs, or any kind of literary booster? If this is you or someone you know, get in touch and we can hatch some plans. And now for our show….It's such a pleasure to conclude the second season of BOOKSPO with Andrew Forbes, whose latest release is also his sixth book AND his debut novel, THE DIAPAUSE. Our conversation comes complete with a defintion of the word “diapause” (although biologists among us might know it already), as well as a glimpse behind the curtain to reveal what elements of Per Petterson's OUT STEALING HORSES were on Andrew's mind as he began writing the book in August 2020, imagining possibilities for the future amidst the terrifying unknown of the Covid-19 Pandemic. The initial draft of the book was actually a novella, but Andrew's editor encouraged him to expand the story, to show his readers what happens next. Bonus content: a shout out to the very good people at Peterborough's Take Cover Books. Andrew tells me about the creative connections between his book and Petterson's, some deliberate, others less so, which is all part of the process of creation. Both books, he explains, end up being about the ways in which we struggle to understand that people we're supposed to be closest to, our parents in particular. And that childhood sense of mystery (and wonder!) is integral to his protagonist Gabriel's sense of himself and the world during that strange and oddly idyllic sumer of 2020, although life for him would never be quite so simple again. Andrew also talks about the challenges of writing into “the moving target” that is the future, which made it difficult for him to know when to stop and understand just when his work was done. When ten-year-old Gabriel and his parents retire to his late grandfather's disused cabin to wait out a pandemic, the big, dangerous world seems very far away, and Gabriel enjoys the freest summer of his young life. But tensions begin to surface, testing the family unit, and resulting in consequences that he will spend his life attempting to unravel.Spanning nearly a half-century, The Diapause is a literary-speculative-fiction novel about the near future, family, isolation, heartbreak, climate change, how we keep each other safe, and all the things we don't know about the people we know best. Part White Fang, part Station Eleven, The Diapause is a novel about how the things we seek are often the things we didn't know we'd lost.ANDREW FORBES is the author of the story collections Lands and Forests (Invisible Publishing, 2019) and What You Need (2015), which was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and named a finalist for the Trillium Book Prize. He is also the author of The Utility of Boredom: Baseball Essays (2016) and The Only Way Is the Steady Way: Essays on Baseball, Ichiro, and How We Watch the Game (2021). Forbes lives in Peterborough, Ontario.Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

As a huge fan of books about houses and home, I fell in love with Jenny Haysom's debut novel KEEP and was swept away by this story of three lives connected by the very unlikely occupation of real estate home staging, this inspired by Jenny's own experience with this job a long time ago, as she explains to me in our BOOKSPO conversation. And this was a conversation I enjoyed in particular because Jenny's BOOKSPO pick is a book by one of my all-time favourite authors, the wonderful and brilliant Carol Shields, who is due for a renaissance, Jenny asserts, and I agree entirely. Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.In our discussion, Jenny makes the case for SWANN being one of Shields' best novels (I required a bit of convincing!) and talks about her favourite parts of the book, especially the Emily Dickinson connection, which found its way into KEEP. She tells me what she had to learn in order to make the transition from poetry to fiction, what she learned about fiction (and life itself!) from Carol Shields, and confesses that she wishes readers would pay as much attention to the language in her fiction as in her poetry, as her choices there are just as careful and deliberate. A timely tale of ownership and loss, loneliness and connection, and a meditation on all the stuff in our lives.Home staging is an art of erasure. But in some cases—no matter how much clutter you remove, or how many coats of white paint you apply—stains bleed through, and memories rise from the walls like ghosts. Harriet, an elderly poet whose eccentricities have been compounded by years of living alone, must sell her beloved house. Having been recently diagnosed with dementia, she is being moved into a care facility against her wishes. When stagers Eleanor and Jacob are hired for the job, they quickly find themselves immersed in Harriet's brimming and mysterious world, but as they struggle to help her, their own lives are unravelling.Keep is a meditation on all the stuff in our lives—from the singular, handcrafted artifact to indelible, mass-produced plastics. As Jenny Haysom excavates the material of our domestic spaces, she centres the people within them and celebrates the power of memory, even when it falters.JENNY HAYSOM has published her writing in magazines across Canada. Her debut poetry collection, Dividing the Wayside, won the Archibald Lampman Award and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Jenny lived in Ottawa for nearly thirty years, on the unceded, ancestral lands of the Algonquin Nation, and has recently returned to Nova Scotia, in Mi'kma'ki, where she grew up. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

New BOOKSPO, and this time we're talking about THE ELEVATOR, by Priya Ramsingh, a book about modern love that read like a breeze, but also tackles important questions about race, trauma, toxic relationships, eating disorders and life in the city. It's the story of Aria and Rob, who are familiar to each other from encounters in their building's elevator, and about what transpires between them when these nearly-strangers match on a dating app. Will they? Won't they? The course of love never did run smooth! But along the way, we meet a wider cast of characters who comprise Rob and Aria's community, including the wonderful Mila, a character whose creation was informed by Ramsingh's reading of Vivek Shraya's memoir, I'M AFRAID OF MEN. Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Priya tells me about how her diverse and multicultural cast of characters was not by design, per se, but instead a reflection of the Toronto she lives in and wants to celebrate in the novel. And one of favourites (and those of many readers too!) is the character of Mila, Aria's neighbour and friend, whose own story—growing up against the backdrop of her Filipino mother's nail salon where she was supported and encouraged in subtle and interesting ways as she came into her identity as a trans woman—is just as captivating as those of the main characters. And while details of Mila's life were indeed inspired by the memoir I'M AFRAID OF MEN (which Ramsingh notes she'd read before, and perhaps had lingered in her subsconscious) the character herself appeared to Ramsingh almost fully formed, which was the most wonderful creative gift. Aria Ramdeen is learning to love herself—and her favourite foods—again. No guilt, no toxic boyfriend. Full of newfound confidence, she subscribes to LoveinTO, a Toronto-based dating website, where she's matched with a crush she's had for years: the attractive light-haired man who lives in her building. Aria messages him on the app, but there's no response, leaving her quite embarrassed.Rob Anderson, who's recently divorced, secretly admires Aria. He just lacks the confidence to approach her. And since he's let his LoveinTO sub­scription lapse, he doesn't see Aria's message. Suddenly, Aria seems guard­ed when they run into one another, and the pair endure months of long, awkward silences together in the elevator. Until one day, Rob decides to give the app another chance and subscribes again.A fresh and entertaining modern story of two people from different back­grounds who find each other despite the pitfalls of dating technology, opin­ions from friends and family, and their own personal trauma. The Elevator will leave readers feeling hopeful about love, food and life in a big city.Priya Ramsingh is a writer and photographer. Her debut novel, Brown Girl in the Room, was published by Tightrope Books (2017). Her short story, Pies for Lunch, was shortlisted for best short fiction in 2021 by The Caribbean Writer. She is a former reporter and diversity columnist for Metroland Media, and she continues to write op-eds for the Toronto Star. In her spare time, Priya is a wildlife photographer and naturalist. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Ramsingh now lives in Toronto. For more about Priya, please visit her website – https://priyaramsingh.ca/ Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

I've been so looking forward to sharing my conversation with Richard Van Camp, whose childhood obsession with the works of Stephen King (and so many other iconic authors!) was a force behind BEAST, the 30th book of Richard's 30 years in publishing. BEAST is the kind of book that his younger self would have wanted to read, although I think readers of all ages will appreciate this story blending horror, Indigenous tradition, teenage yearning, friendship, adventure, and a kickass ‘80s soundtrack. Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.With his characteristic exuberance, Richard talks to me about how he used to have ration his Stephen King reading back when he was a teenager, about how King's IT was the book that spoke to his soul, and about how he's learned from King's novels how to up the stakes for his characters (and their readers). He also tells me how the foundation of BEAST is an actual peace treaty between the Tłįchǫ and the Chipewyan peoples, and how he hopes this novel inspires readers to consider the peace that needs upholding in their own worlds and their responsibilities toward that. Returning to his favourite setting of Fort Simmer, Northwest Territories, Richard Van Camp brings his exuberant style to a captivating teen novel that blends the supernatural with 1980s-era nostalgia to reflect on friendship, tradition and forgiveness.For as long as Lawson can remember, his life in a small Northwest Territories town has revolved around “the Treaty” between the Dogrib and the Chipewyan, set down centuries ago to prevent the return of bloody warfare between the two peoples.On the Dogrib side, Lawson and his family have done their best to keep the pact alive with the neighbouring Cranes, a family with ancestral ties to a revered Chipewyan war chief. But even as Lawson and his father dutifully tidy the Cranes' property as an act of respect, their counterparts offer little more than scowls and derision in return, despite the fact that both families are responsible for protecting the treaty.Worse still, it seems that one of the Cranes' boys is doing all he can to revive the old conflict: Silver, fresh out of jail, has placed himself in the service of a cruel, ghoulish spirit bent on destroying the peace. Now it's up to Isaiah Valentine, a Cree Grass Dancer, Shari Burns, a Metis psychic, and Lawson Sauron, a Dogrib Yabati—or protector—to face what Silver Cranes has called back.This latest feat of storytelling magic by celebrated author Richard Van Camp blends sharply observed realism and hair-raising horror as it plays out against a 1980s-era backdrop replete with Platinum Blonde songs and episodes of Degrassi Junior High. Unfolding in the fictional town of Fort Simmer—the setting of previous Van Camp stories—Beast delivers a gripping, spirited tale that pits the powers of tradition against the pull of a vengeful past.Born in Fort Smith, NWT, bestselling author Richard Van Camp is a member of the Dogrib (Tłįchǫ) Dene Nation. A graduate of the En'owkin Centre's writing program in Penticton, BC, he completed his BFA in writing at the University of Victoria and received an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. His work has won many awards and honours, among them the Blue Metropolis First Peoples Literary Prize and the title of Storyteller of the Year from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

My conversation with Kirti Bhadresa begins with reflections about our mutual friend Melanie Masterson, who died in December 2021 after years of living with metastatic breast cancer. Kirti tells me how Melanie's example inspired her to make the most of her own time and prioritize completing her first book, AN ASTONISHMENT OF STARS. And then she reveals her BOOKSPO pick, Naben Ruthum's CURRY, a book that, Kirti explains, gave her permission to write stories about racialized women the way she wanted to rather than in a way that's circumscribed. Kirti and I mention the Turning the Page on Cancer Readathon, which is this weekend, with proceeds to RETHINK, improving outcomes for young women with breast cancer. If you'd like to contribute, you can sign up yourself at https://turning-the-page-on-cancer-2024.raisely.com/ or donate to my campaign at https://turning-the-page-on-cancer-2024.raisely.com/kerry-clare Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.In our conversation, Kirti explains how CURRY made her understand that diasporic Indians (both in fiction and in the world!) can exist in a variety of different ways, and those ways need not always be powered by nostalgia. She tells me the fascinating story of how her story collection began with a list poem, each item on the item becoming a paragraph, and then those paragraphs growing into stories. Her stories, in her mind, aren't necessarily laid out in the order they are in the book, but instead are all taking place concurrently (which is also how she wrote them, in bits and pieces, when life in general seemed so fractured during the COVID Pandemic), and then she shares how the title story in the collection came to her in a dream. The wife who uses the name of her white husband in public. The mother who cleans the small-town hospital while her daughter moves to the city to forget their shared past. The well-behaved teen girl who anxiously watches her older sister slip further and further away from their hovering parents. Each of these characters is both familiar and singular, reminding us of women we have been, of our mothers and daughters, neighbors and adversaries.Kirti Bhadresa is a keen observer of humanity, especially of the BIPOC women whose domestic and professional work is the backbone of late-stage capitalism but whose lives receive so little attention in mainstream culture. An Astonishment of Stars is a collection that sees those who are unseen and cuts to the heart of contemporary womanhood, community collisions, and relationships both chosen and forced upon us.Kirti Bhadresa's fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, The Quarantine Review, The Sprawl, and Room, and she has been a finalist for the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association Award in the category of Feature Writing. Bhadresa lives with her family in Calgary, AB, on Treaty 7 territory. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

Marilynne Robinson's debut novel never actually came to mind while I was reading Anne Hawk's THE PAGES OF THE SEA (which The Guardian called “evocative of the beauty of the Caribbean and full of sparkling observation" when it was published in the UK in July), but when I learned that HOUSEKEEPING was Hawk's BOOKSPO pick, it made such perfect sense. The everpresence of water, Robinson's lake and Hawk's sea, houses that blurred boundaries between inside and out, marginalized from their communities, their depictions of childhood and of children who give form to their worlds. It had been nearly 20 years since I last read HOUSEKEEPING, and it was a really remarkable experience to pick it up again to read within the context of Hawk's same-but-very-different novel, set in an unnamed Caribbean island during the 1960s as a young girl makes sense of the absence of her mother who has left to find work in England, as so many people from the Caribbean did during the post-war period, comprising the Windrush Generation. Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.My conversation with Anne Hawk is such a gift. She talks about her desire to write about childhood, to create a narrative showing the ways in which children communicate with their surroundings and spend their seemingly idle time constructing and reconstructing the world around them. She tells me about her own curious relationship with HOUSEKEEPING, a book that keeps on giving, and also about how she doesn't truly really believe that one book begets another, but how both books share an atmosphere, an undercurrent of sadness and loss, as well as characters well rooted in their fear of abandonment. Hawk then explains the story of the Windrush Generation, and talks about how THE PAGES OF THE SEA is different from other books on the subject that readers might have encountered before. On a Caribbean island in the mid-1960s, a young girl copes with the heavy cost of migration.When her mother emigrates to England to find work, Wheeler and her older sisters are left to live with their aunts and cousins. She spends most days with her cousin Donelle, knocking about their island community. They know they must address their elders properly and change their shoes after church. And during the long, quiet weeks of Lent, when the absent sound of the radio seems to follow them down the road, they look forward to kite season. But Donelle is just a child, too, and though her sisters look after her with varying levels of patience, Wheeler couldn't feel more alone. Everyone tells her that soon her mother will send for her, but how much longer will it be? And as she does her best to navigate the tensions between her aunts, why does it feel like there's no one looking out for her at all?A story of sisterhood, secrets, and the sacrifices of love, The Pages of the Sea is a tenderly lyrical portrait of innocence and an intensely moving evocation of what it's like to be a child left behind.Anne Hawk grew up in the Caribbean, the UK and Canada. She has worked as a journalist, a paralegal and was for many years a secondary school teacher. She is married and lives in London. The Pages of the Sea is her first novel. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

Oh my goodness, this is a good one, a conversation beginning with Jennifer Whiteford expounding on the literary qualities of the mixtape, music (both making it and loving it) being the foundation of her wonderful new novel MAKE ME A MIXTAPE, the perfect book for October, a story that manages to be cozy and edgy at the very same time. And the book Jennifer chose for her BOOKSPO pick? Why, it's the 2015 memoir HUNGER MAKES ME A MODERN GIRL, by Carrie Brownstein, she of Sleater Kinney fame (and Jennifer recalls hearing “Little Babies” for the first time on CBC Radio's BRAVE NEW WAVES all those years ago…) Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Jennifer Whiteford reflects on how Sleater Kinney gave her a model for women having confidence in their art, even if some critics didn't take it seriously, and how she applies that to her own work in the romance genre. She explains what a remarkable and thoughtful book Brownstein's memoir really is (not your typical rock memoir!), how Brownstein's book gave her a foundation from which to explore the ways in which bands are such pressure cookers for relationships, and how she was so moved the first time she read it because she and Brownstein are contempories and—twenty years later—the memoir brought her right back to the person she used to be. A guarded punk-rocker-turned-barista meets a big-hearted sound tech who charms his way into her life and helps her revisit her musical past in this truly charming, cozy fall romance.Allie Andrews gave up on the music world ten years ago. No wild tours, no late nights, no career-ending inter-band blowouts. Just day after comfortable day of working in her aunt's café in Brooklyn and recording '80s cover songs in her tiny apartment. The last thing she wants, or expects, is to be recognized as former punk rocker Allie Jetski. But a last-minute coffee delivery lands her face-to-face with the big, handsome (and quite possibly number one fan of the Jetskis) Ryan Abernathy.Ryan isn't about to forget meeting the lead singer of one of his favorite bands. Undeterred by her prickly demeanor, he sets his mind to helping Allie find her wayback to the Jetskis—so she can come to terms with what happened all those years ago. Allie finds Ryan hard to resist, and her quiet life is turned upside down as she is swept up in the hunt for her old bandmates.But when Aunt Mindy announces that she's decided to sell the café, Allie is faced with a life-altering choice: play it safe and take over the business, or risk opening herself up to a future in music . . . and maybe even love.JENNIFER WHITEFORD (she/her) lives in Ottawa, Ontario, with her partner, children, dog and record collection. She writes regularly for Razorcake, a long-standing punk publication. She was also a founding member of the "all girl, all rock" band Sophomore Level Psychology. With those rock 'n roll days behind her, she now mostly stays home and reads. Find her on Instagram at @jenniferwhitefordwrites. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

This episode of BOOKSPO is brought to you by COPIBEC, and their new three-part podcast series COPYRIGHT ACT: A CENTURY OF STORIES, a fascinating journey through the 100-year history of copyright in Canada—and even beyond it. Rich, immersive, and also FUN (!), COPYRIGHT ACT: A CENTURY OF STORIES, a series funded by the Government of Canada, is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Visit https://bit.ly/bookspo-copyright-act to start listening now. Many thanks to our sponsor! Suzy Krause's I THINK WE'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE was a total word-of-mouth book for me, a book I picked up because a trusted friend promised I would love it—and I did! A comforting book about the end of world—can you even fathom such a thing? It's a novel that Suzy pitches—most remarkably—as (wait for it…) Iain Reid's I'M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS meets Stuart McLean's VINYL CAFE DIARIES. Cozy and unsettling at once. Okay! And just as much as I loved the book, I adored our conversation. Suzy talks to me about how her initial BOOKSPO pick was Iain Reid's I'M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS, but when she realized Ashley Tate had picked it already back in Season 1, she went with Stuart McLean instead. Both authors, she explains, give her a kind of permission as a writer, Reid to get a little weird, and McLean to lean into her instincts to see the good in people, the possibility of community. Her characters, she tells me, are inspired by the kind of people she grew up around, and my favourite character in the book just might be a checker at her local grocery store….I'm looking forward to hanging out with Suzy IRL next week at Type Books Junction (2887 Dundas St. W) where I will be moderating a discussion between her and Marissa Stapley about their wonderful new novels. Event begins at 7pm. Join us!Marlen and Hilda Jorgensen's family has received two significant pieces of news: one, Marlen has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Two, a cosmic blast is set to render humanity extinct within a matter of months. It seems the coming Christmas on their Saskatchewan farm will be their last.Preparing for the inevitable, they navigate the time they have left together. Marlen and Hilda have channeled their energy into improbably prophetic works of art. Hilda's elderly father receives a longed-for visitor from his past, her sister refuses to believe the world is ending, and her teenaged nephew is missing. All the while, her daughter struggles to find her way home from Berlin with the help of an oddly familiar stranger. For everyone, there's an unsettling feeling that this unprecedented reality is something they remember.Suzy Krause is the bestselling author of Sorry I Missed You and Valencia and Valentine. She grew up on a little farm in rural Saskatchewan and now lives in Regina, where she writes novels inspired by crappy jobs, creepy houses, personal metaphorical apocalypses, and favorite songs. Her work has been translated into Russian and Estonian. Suzy lives in Regina, Saskatchewan.Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

This is a really special BOOKSPO for me, to have the opportunity to share a conversation with my friend Marissa Stapley, who has followed up her New York Times bestselling LUCKY (a Reese's pick!) with THE LIGHTNING BOTTLES, a fiercely feminist trip back to the ‘90s music scene and Marissa's best book yet. We talked about the magic of A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD, and how that novel comprising connected stories helped inspire Marissa's very first book, as well as her latest, and also about the magic of connected-ness in general. Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.In our discussion, Marissa talks about what music meant to her as a teen in the 1990s, her awareness at the time that she was living through an important cultural moment, the way that women have been written out of the story of grunge, and how she intends this novel to be a way to finally tell the story properly. She tells me about what it took to write a story about the music industry in which real life figures make cameos, how her main characters had to come from her imagination in order to be real on the page, who exactly her novel's villain was based on, and what she had to learn about loss before she was ready to write a book like this. The author of New York Times bestseller and Reese's Book Club pick Lucky returns with a spellbinding story of rock 'n' roll and star-crossed love—about grunge-era musician Jane Pyre's journey to find out what really happened to her husband and partner in music, who abruptly disappeared years earlier.He was the troubled face of rock 'n' roll…until he suddenly disappeared without a trace.Jane Pyre was once half of the famous rock n' roll duo, the Lightning Bottles. Years later, she's perhaps the most hated—and least understood—woman in music. She was never as popular with fans as her bandmate (and soulmate), Elijah Hart—even if Jane was the one who wrote the songs that catapulted the Lightning Bottles to instant, dizzying fame, first in the Seattle grunge scene, then around the world.But ever since Elijah disappeared five years earlier and the band's meteoric rise to fame came crashing down, the public hatred of Jane has taken on new levels, and all she wants to do is retreat. What she doesn't anticipate is the bombshell that awaits her at her new home in the German countryside: the sullen teenaged girl next door—a Lightning Bottles superfan—who claims to have proof that not only is Elijah still alive, he's also been leaving secret messages for Jane. And they need to find them right away.A cross-continent road trip about two misunderstood outsiders brought together by their shared love of music, The Lightning Bottles is both a love letter to the 90s and a searing portrait of the cost of fame.MARISSA STAPLEY is the New York Times bestselling author of Lucky, a Reese's Book Club pick, and several other internationally bestselling novels, many of which have been optioned for television and translated into several languages. She is also one half of the writing duo behind The Holiday Swap and All I Want for Christmas by Maggie Knox, and co-author of Three Holidays and a Wedding. She has worked as a journalist, magazine editor, and creative writing teacher, and currently resides in Toronto with her family. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

COLOURS IN HER HANDS is a brand new Montreal novel from Alice Zorn (following 2016's FIVE ROSES), a story of family, art, community and good intentions gone awry, and I was so pleased to speak to Alice about the book, and to learn how it all began with the 30+ year relationship she had with her late sister-in-law, Jo, who had Down syndrome. Jo's own perspective on the world (and the limits imposed on her by those who were more concerned with that Jo couldn't do instead of her talents and capabilities) turned into a narrative challenge for Zorn: how to write a book about somebody who sees the world the way that Jo did? And from that challenge, Mina and her brother Bruno were born. Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.In our conversation, Alice talks about getting permission to write Jo's story, how feedback on early attempts resulted in the necessity of a complete rewrite with an entirely different narrative shape, and how she refused to read Mark Haddon's THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN NIGHTTIME under after she'd finally written a draft of her own book. Once she did, however, she found that Haddon's approach to writing his character Christopher (peeling away labels instead of sticking to them) affirmed many of the choices she'd made in writing Mina. About COLOURS IN HER HANDS: A witty, layered and compelling novel about a woman with Down Syndrome, exploring textile art, sibling relationships, friendships, and good intentions gone awry.What is intellectual disability? Ask Bruno, who is at his wits' end trying to predict what his sister, Mina, will do next. Ask Iris, who is entranced by the wildly inventive embroidery Mina creates. Ask Gabriela, who loves Mina and disagrees when Bruno uses Mina's constant demands as an excuse not to have a child.Meet Mina in her overstuffed Montreal apartment, surrounded by her treasures. She knows she is the best paper sorter at the recycling plant where she works. She is proud to be diabetic but equally happy to cheat on her diet. The colours she stitches hum with life.Colours in Her Hands is a nuanced and thought-provoking novel about family, about art, about questioning the way the world treats those who are different. With an unforgettable voice, Mina navigates the labyrinth that society sets for her with dignity, inventiveness, and aplomb.Alice Zorn is the author of two novels and a book of short fiction. Her novel Five Roses was translated into French and was a finalist for the Ontario Library Association Evergreen Award. Her collection Ruins and Relics was a finalist for the Quebec Writers' Federation's First Book Award. She has twice placed first in Prairie Fire's fiction contest, won the Manitoba Magazine Award for Fiction, and has published stories in literary journals including The Fiddlehead and The New Quarterly. Originally from Ontario, she now lives in Montreal. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

Ayelet Tsabari's SONGS FOR THE BROKENHEARTED is out this week in North America, and I'm so thrilled for the opportunity to talk to her about this beautiful book, which began as a story about Yemeni Jewish mothers and daughters and became ever richer once Tsabari came upon the long tradition of Yemeni women's songs—she even found her own voice by joining a choir! But long before she knew these songs, there was Arundhati Roy's THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS, the very first novel Tsabari ever read in English, and a novel that opened up the world for her in many different ways. Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.In this conversation, Ayelet explains how learning about Yemeni women's songs shaped her novel, talks about how fascinating it was that so many of these songs (written and sung by women in arranged marriages) were about passionate love, and recalls how inspiring it was to encounter Arundhati's novel in which the writer tells the story of her corner of the world in all its complexity. She also discusses how she had to find her voice in English by writing nonfiction first, and how—before she was ready to write this novel—she'd had to rediscover the faith she'd had as a child. About SONGS FOR THE BROKENHEARTED: A young Yemeni Israeli woman learns of her mother's secret romance in a dramatic journey through lost family stories, revealing the unbreakable bond between a mother and a daughter in the debut novel of an award-winning literary voice1950. Thousands of Yemeni Jews have immigrated to the newly founded Israel in search of a better life. In an overcrowded immigrant camp in Rosh Ha'ayin, Yaqub, a shy young man, happens upon Saida, a beautiful girl singing by the river. In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, they fall in love. But they weren't supposed to; Saida is married and has a child, and a married woman has no place befriending another man.1995. Thirty-something Zohara, Saida's daughter, has been living in New York City—a city that feels much less complicated than Israel, where she grew up wishing her skin were lighter, her illiterate mother's Yemeni music quieter, and that the father who always favored her was alive. She hasn't looked back since leaving home, rarely in touch with her mother or sister, Lizzie, and missing out on her nephew Yoni's childhood. But when Lizzie calls to tell her their mother has died, she gets on a plane to Israel with no return ticket.Soon Zohara finds herself on an unexpected path that leads to shocking truths about her family—including dangers that lurk for impressionable young men and secrets that force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, her heritage, and her own future.AYELET TSABARI is the author of the memoir in essays The Art of Leaving, finalist for the Writer's Trust Hilary Weston Prize and The Vine Awards, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019.Her first book, the story collection The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish Fiction.The book was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, was nominated for The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and has been published internationally.She's the co-editor of the award-winning anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language. Ayelet teaches creative writing at The University of King's College MFA and at Guelph MFA in Creative Writing. Her debut novel, Songs for the Brokenhearted is forthcoming with Random House and HarperCollins Canada in September 2024. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

BOOKSPO is back for a spectacular second season, kicking off with Corinna Chong and her latest, BAD LAND, a novel which, she tells me, began with a curious dream, along with her childhood memories of the unique topography of Drumheller, Alberta, and (however unconsciously) took inspiration from the extraordinary progragonist of Jeanette Winterson's 1989 novel SEXING THE CHERRY. Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Corinna talks about how arriving in Drumheller feels like going back in time, the seeming unreality of such a landscape, the metaphoric possibility of fossils, about how teaching SEXING THE CHERRY required her to be intimately connected with the text, the challenge of writing a slow-burn narrative, and more! I loved this weird and wonderful novel so much, and our conversations lived up to all my expectations. About BAD LAND:A slow-burning story exploring the generational effects of repression and transgression, set against the raw, eerie landscape of the badlandsRegina is a socially awkward loner who is content to live a life withdrawn from everyone except her cherished pet bunny. But after seven years of silence, Regina's brother, Ricky, shows up unannounced on her doorstep, along with his daughter, Jez - a peculiar six-year-old with an unnerving vicious streak - upending Regina's quiet life.It's clear to Regina that something terrible has happened, though the truth won't come to the surface easily. After all, Regina and Ricky lived a childhood fraught with secrets buried as deep as the fossils in the desolate landscape around them. But this secret is one that cannot stay buried for long, and its exposure sets off a calamitous journey through the plains and mountains of Alberta's badlands to the coast of BC, forcing Regina to confront the brutality of family love and to question how far she is willing to go to preserve it.By turns thrilling and heartwarming, rife with gothic tension, and carried by fervent compassion, Bad Land is a story about the toxic nature of guilt, the fragility of memory, and the ways we shape our own versions of the truth in order to survive.CORINNA CHONG'S books are the novel Bad Land (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024), the acclaimed story collection The Whole Animal (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023) and the novel Belinda's Rings (NeWest Press, 2013). Her short fiction has appeared in magazines across Canada. She lives in Kelowna, BC, where she teaches in the English department at Okanagan College. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

First episode drops Wednesday September 5… Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

We break ALL THE RULES (okay, there was only ever one rule, but still) with our season finale and the magnificent Andrea Warner's appearance on the podcast this week. It's one of my favourite writers talking about my favourite movie, and how it was foundational to Andrea's own experience and inspired her compelling new homage/memoir/cultural-criticism hybrid, THE TIME OF MY LIFE: DIRTY DANCING, a book I adored.Andrea talks about why Dirty Dancing is a project worth breaking the rules for, how Eleanor Bergstein was prescient in understanding the precarity of reproductive rights in America during the 1980s, her subversion in making an illegal abortion the centre of her screenplay, the film's best lines (I carried a watermelon?), how it models community care in action, how fantastic is its demonstration of enthusiastic consent, why it's important to be honest in critiquing the pop culture we love, and Andrea also has a VERY controversial take on the iconic pop song that gave her book its title, and SO MUCH MORE! Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.An engaging exploration into the enduring popularity of Dirty Dancing and its lasting themes of feminism, activism, and reproductive rightsWhen Dirty Dancing was released in 1987, it had already been rejected by producers and distributors several times over, and expectations for the summer romance were low. But then the film, written by former dancer Eleanor Bergstein and starring Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze as a couple from two different worlds, exploded. Since then, Dirty Dancing's popularity has never waned. The truth has always been that Dirty Dancing was never just a teen romance or a dance movie — it also explored abortion rights, class, and political activism, with a smattering of light crime-solving.In The Time of My Life, celebrated music journalist Andrea Warner excavates the layers of Dirty Dancing, from its anachronistic, chart-topping soundtrack, to Baby and Johnny's chemistry, to Bergstein's political intentions, to the abortion subplot that is more relevant today than ever. The film's remarkable longevity would never have been possible if it was just a throwaway summer fling story. It is precisely because of its themes — deeply feminist, sensitively written — that we, over 30 years later, are still holding our breath during that last, exhilarating lift.ANDREA WARNER lives in Vancouver on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Her books include Rise Up and Sing!: Power, Protest, and Activism in Music and Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography. Plus an expanded, updated, and retitled release of her first book is coming this fall 2024, now called We Oughta Know: How Celine, Shania, Alanis, and Sarah Ruled the '90s and Changed Music. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

Deepa Rajagopalan is the author of the short story collection PEACOCKS OF INSTAGRAM, a book that's so great it's got me accosting strangers in the street, and she came to our conversation with a very cool twist on the Bookspo format. Her Bookspo pick is Alice Munro's short story “Corrie” (which was included in her 2012 DEAR LIFE), which she used as inspiration for her own same-but-different story “Rahel,” published in her collection.Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.In our conversation, we talk about the possibilities offered to writers by constraints, about excellent titles, and less immediately-excellent titles named for characters (like Corrie and Rahel) who have to do the work to earn them, about writing bold and unapologetic women, how to create a story collection that functions as a whole, the delight of giving readers little Easter eggs, how reading Alice Munro carefully can be as useful as an MFA degree, and so much more! Engrossing, witty yet devastating stories about diasporic Indians that deftly question what it means to be safe, to survive, and to call a place home.An underappreciated coffee shop server haunted by her past attracts thousands of followers on social media with her peacock jewellery. A hotel housekeeper up against a world of gender and class inequity quietly gets revenge on her chauvinist boss. And a foster child, orphaned in an accident directly attributable to climate change, brings down her foster father, an oil lobbyist, in spectacular fashion.With an intense awareness of privilege and the lack of it, the fourteen stunning stories in Peacocks of Instagram explore what it means to be safe, to survive, and to call a place home.DEEPA RAJAGOPALAN won the 2021 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award. Her work has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies such as the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, the New Quarterly, Room, the Malahat Review, Event, and Arc. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph. Born to Indian parents in Saudi Arabia, she has lived in many cities across India, the US, and Canada. Deepa works in the tech industry in Toronto. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

This episode of BOOKSPO is guaranteed to put a song in your head, as Michelle Hébert tells me all about how revisiting Emma Donoghue's 1997 story collection KISSING THE WITCH helped her discover solutions to problems she was facing in developing the characters in EVERYTHING LITTLE THING SHE DOES IS MAGIC, her debut novel, which is out this week and pretty magic in its own right. Hébert tells me about the serendipitous way in which she's managed to build her own fairy tale library, about what Donoghue's twists on familiar tales showed her about understanding difficult characters' motivations, about how female characters are so often adversarial and she wanted to do something different, the leap she took to couple her story of age-old curses and fairy tale tropes with a brilliant 1980s' pop and rock soundtrack, about how maybe ‘80s pop culture and the world of fairy tales are not so incongruous after all, and names the most bonkers ‘80s song of all time, which turns up on her novel's soundtrack. About EVERY LITTLE THING SHE DOES IS MAGIC: Kitten Love's family is haunted by the memory of her teenaged aunt, Nerida, who died just days before Kitten's birth in 1970. Her mother, Queena, believes the family is cursed, and she's determined not to let disaster strike again. She won't let Kitten out of her sight—especially to visit the beaches that surround the town. She's built a bomb shelter to protect against Soviet attack, and she's desperate to protect her husband, Stubby, from the fatal and mysterious Love Heart.Kitten thinks she knows how to defeat their curse: magic. But when protection spells and clues from tarot cards aren't enough to save Stubby, Kitten turns her back on the things that make her life magical, and Queena turns her back on reality. She preserves everything as it was the day Stubby died in 1987—from the gold shag rug in the bathroom to the Duran Duran posters in Kitten's room. Kitten, herself, is forbidden to change.Kitten tastes freedom when she falls in love and moves to British Columbia, but reinventing herself without the curse is harder than she expects. Tragedy and her own reliance on magical thinking eventually lead her back home to Queena, her brother Thom, and Aunt Bunny, who are equally stuck in their pasts. When tarot cards begin mysteriously showing up in her room, warning of a betrayal and encouraging an unlikely romance, she's certain someone is watching her. Could the heartbreak that almost destroyed Kitten's family be the very thing that helps them move on?A darkly humorous family saga woven around tarot cards and a mixtape of '80s songs, Every Little Thing She Does is Magic is a heady mix of music, ghosts, love, and nostalgia.Michelle Hébert grew up on the beaches and marshes of Cumberland County, Nova Scotia. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction, degrees in journalism and social work, and she studies tarot on the side. Her writing about mental health, social justice, and finding joy where it seems there's none to be had has appeared in Writerly magazine and in audio essays and short documentaries for CBC Radio. Her first book, Enriched by Catastrophe: Social Work and Social Conflict After the Halifax Explosion, was published in 2009. Michelle has lived across Canada but makes her home in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Mi'kma'ki), with several cats, a dog, and her two adult children. You can find more of her writing (and pictures of her cats) at michellehebertwrites.com. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

Oh, wow, get ready for Adrienne Gruber's amazing conversation about her fourth book, which is also her first essay collection, MONSTERS, MARTYRS AND MARIONETTES: ESSAYS ABOUT MOTHERHOOD, and the numerous threads that connect it to Sarah Manguso's memoir ONGOINGNESS: THE END OF A DIARY. We talk about Gruber's movement from poetry to prose, about the expansiveness of Manguso's memoir, the lack of expansiveness in motherhood in general, how both books talk about the postpartum haze, how parenthood does wild things with the concept of linear time, the surrealness of Gruber's pandemic pregnancy, the gift of knowing you want children, what kinds of experiences need to be lived before than can be imagined, and so much more. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did. Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes is a revelatory collection of personal essays that subverts the stereotypes and transcends the platitudes of family life to examine motherhood with blistering insight.Documenting the birth and early life of her three daughters, Adrienne Gruber shares what it really means to use one's body to bring another life into the world and the lasting ramifications of that act on both parent and child. Each piece peers into the seemingly mundane to show us the mortal and emotional consequences of maternal bonds, placing experiences of “being a mom” within broader contexts—historical, literary, biological, and psychological—to speak to the ugly realities of parenthood often omitted from mainstream conversations.Ultimately, these deeply moving, graceful essays force us to consider how close we are to death, even in the most average of moments, and how beauty is a necessary celebration amidst the chaos of being alive.ADRIENNE GRUBER is an award-winning writer originally from Saskatoon. She is the author of five chapbooks, three books of poetry, including Q & A, Buoyancy Control, and This is the Nightmare, and the creative nonfiction collection, Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes: Essays on Motherhood. She won the 2015 Antigonish Review's Great Blue Heron poetry contest, SubTerrain's 2017 Lush Triumphant poetry contest, placed third in Event's 2020 creative non-fiction contest, and was the runner up in SubTerrain's 2023 creative non-fiction contest. Both her poetry and non-fiction has been longlisted for the CBC Literary Awards. In 2012, Mimic was awarded the bp Nichol Chapbook Award. Adrienne lives with her partner and their three daughters on Nex̱wlélex̱m (Bowen Island), B.C., the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

Okay, buckle up for this one. Robin Lefler's sophmore novel NOT HOW I PICTURED IT is the shipwreck rom-com you've been waiting for, a pitch perfect DREAM of a book whose wacky premise brings some real heft to the table. And I'm so happy to be able to talk to her about NINE PERFECT STRANGERS, by Lianne Moriarty, the novel about a group of people isolated together at a wellness centre that inspired Lefler as she shaped her own book.Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Listen as Robin talks about what she loves about Moriarty's hybridity, the challenges of writing a locked room mystery, how annoying it was to have to keep track of her characters' food rations, the real island with an actual castle that inspired the setting for her story, the surprising thing she learned about creating a plot outline (spoiler: it works!), and why it was important to her to write about characters who are still becoming themselves in their 40s. About NOT HOW I PICTURED IT: The OC meets The Unhoneymooners in this shipwreck romcom when the reunited cast of a hit show get stuck on a deserted island with nothing but their complete lack of survival skills, simmering drama, and the sneaking suspicion that someone is up to no good.Agnes “Ness” Larkin has been out of the spotlight for twenty years since her quick departure from a starring role in a hit teen TV drama. When the show is tapped for a reboot, no one is more surprised than Ness that she signs on to rejoin the cast, leaving behind a normal—if not exactly thrilling—life in Toronto. Also back for round two are Libby, Ness's former best friend and soon to be makeup empire magnate, and Hayes, Ness's one-that-got-away who has risen to A-list fame (and somehow gotten even better looking) in the years she's been gone.When they set off for filming near the Bahamas, a storm leaves the seven actors and one production assistant stranded on a small island with only an abandoned, derelict mansion to wait out the storm. But when the weather clears and a new day rises—their boat is gone too.Stuck in a bizarre, crumbling house on an uninhabited island with possibly the most useless survival group in history, Ness and her co-stars are forced to revisit a minefield of past transgressions and come to terms with the adults they've become as they work together to ride out the storm. Or at least pretend to—they are actors, after all.Interspersed with weather reports, fictional memoir excerpts, a dating profile and Perez-Hilton-esque blog posts, Not How I Pictured It is a rollicking novel of delightful absurdity, pithy dialogue, and no shortage of heart.ROBIN LEFLER grew up near Toronto and (briefly) pursued an ill-fated career in equine massage therapy before stumbling into the world of robotics and tech sales. Not How I Pictured It is her second novel. Her first, Reasonable Adults, was published in 2022. Robin Lefler still lives in her hometown with her family and two very needy canines. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

Today I'm thrilled to be bringing you my conversation with award-winning writer Leslie Shimotakahara about her new novel SISTERS OF THE SPRUCE, set during World War One in Haida Gwaii (then known as the Queen Charlotte Islands) and loosely inspired by her grandmother's experiences, and how the spirit of Charlotte Bronte's classic JANE EYRE both infuses the novel's atmosphere and also helped inspire its protagonist. Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Leslie tells me about her long history as an avid reader, the story behind her memoir THE READING LIST (in which a wayward academic learns to love reading for pleasure again), how she first came upon JANE EYRE, what it felt like to encounter the novel again years later, and I also mention the fascinating bit of historical detail in SISTER OF THE SPRUCE that blew my mind! About SISTERS OF THE SPRUCE: World War One is in high gear. Fourteen-year-old Khya Terada moves with her family to a remote, misty inlet on Haida Gwaii, then the Queen Charlotte Islands, in northern British Columbia, known for its Sitka spruces. The Canadian government has passed an act to expedite logging of these majestic trees, desperately needed for the Allies' aircrafts in Europe. At a camp on the inlet, Khya's father, Sannosuke—a talented, daring logger with twenty years of experience since immigrating from Japan—assumes a position of leadership among the Japanese and Chinese workers.But the arrival of a group of white loggers, eager to assert their authority, throws off balance the precarious life that Khya and her family have begun to establish. When a quarrel between Sannosuke and a white man known as “the Captain” escalates, leading to the betrayal of her older sister, Izzy, and humiliation for the family, Khya embarks on a perilous journey with her one friend—a half-Chinese sex worker, on the lam for her own reasons—to track down the man and force him to take responsibility. Yet nothing in the forest is as it appears. Can they save Izzy from ruination and find justice without condemning her to a life of danger, or exposing themselves to the violence of an angry, power-hungry man?Drawing on inspiration from her ancestors' stories and experiences, Shimotakahara weaves an entrancing tale of female adventure, friendship, and survival.Leslie Shimotakahara's memoir, The Reading List, won the Canada-Japan Literary Prize, and her fiction has been shortlisted for the KM Hunter Artist Award. She has written two critically acclaimed novels, After the Bloom and Red Oblivion. After the Bloom received a starred review from Booklist and is Bustle's number one choice in “50 Books To Read With Your Book Club,” while Kirkus Review praised Red Oblivion for displaying “virtuosity in this subtle deconstruction of one family's tainted origins.” Her writing has appeared in the National Post, World Literature Today, and Changing the Face of Canadian Literature, among other anthologies and periodicals. She completed a PhD in English at Brown University. She and her husband live in Toronto's west end. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

What a delight to bring you this conversation with Emily Austin about her beautiful and hilarious new novel INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SPACE, how some interesting feedback on her first novel inspired her to deepen her own understanding of love, and how ideas from bell hooks' ALL ABOUT LOVE found their way into her fiction. BOOKSPO/ Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Emily talks about her tendency to write her way through problems she's trying to solve, how she'd never written about love before her debut fiction, why the protagonist in her new book is afraid to be loved, and we talk about the vulnerability required on the part of both reader and writer for a true reading connection to be possible. About INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SPACE: A fast-paced, hilarious, and ultimately hopeful novel for anyone who has ever worried they might be a terrible person—from the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead.Enid is obsessed with space. She can tell you all about black holes and their ability to spaghettify you without batting an eye in fear. Her one major phobia? Bald men. But she tries to keep that one under wraps. When she's not listening to her favorite true crime podcasts on a loop, she's serially dating a rotation of women from dating apps. At the same time, she's trying to forge a new relationship with her estranged half-sisters after the death of her absent father. When she unwittingly plunges into her first serious romantic entanglement, Enid starts to believe that someone is following her.As her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid must contend with her mounting suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her. Because at the end of the day there's only one person she can't outrun—herself.Brimming with quirky humor, charm, and heart, Interesting Facts about Space effortlessly shows us the power of revealing our secret shames, the most beautifully human parts of us all.EMILY AUSTIN is the author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Interesting Facts about Space, and the poetry collection Gay Girl Prayers. She was born in Ontario, Canada, and received two writing grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts. She studied English literature and library science at Western University. She currently lives in Ottawa, in the territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

This week I'm talking with Waubgeshig Rice about his new novel MOON OF THE TURNING LEAVES, which came out in Canada last fall and was just published in the United States, and how he was inspired by Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel BLOOD MERIDIAN to craft a narrative in which the land guides the story. BOOKSPO/Pickle Me This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Waub talks about why he thinks BLOOD MERIDIAN is a post-apocalyptic novel, what he thinks of McCarthy's representation of Indigenous characters, what he's most proud of having accomplished in his latest book, and how Emily St. John Mandel's STATION ELEVEN helped inspire him too. Miigwech to Waub for this excellent conversation! About MOON OF THE TURNING LEAVES:In the years since a mysterious cataclysm caused a permanent blackout that toppled infrastructure and thrust the world into anarchy, Evan Whitesky has led his community in remote northern Canada off the rez and into the bush, where they've been rekindling their Anishinaabe traditions, isolated from the outside world. As new generations are born, and others come of age in a world after everything, Evan's people are stronger than ever. But resources around their new settlement are drying up, and elders warn that they cannot stay indefinitely.Evan and his teenaged daughter, Nangohns, are chosen to lead a scouting party on a months-long trip down to their traditional home on the shores of Lake Huron—to seek new beginnings, and discover what kind of life—and what danger—still exists in the lands to the south.Waubgeshig Rice's exhilarating return to the world first explored in Moon of the Crusted Snow is a brooding story of survival, resilience, Indigenous identity, and rebirth.WAUBGESHIG RICE grew up in Wasauksing First Nation on the shores of Georgian Bay, in the southeast of Robinson-Huron Treaty territory. He's a writer, listener, speaker, language learner, and a martial artist, holding a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He is the author of the short story collection Midnight Sweatlodge (2011), and the novels Legacy (2014) and Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018). He appreciates loud music and the four seasons. He lives in N'Swakamok—also known as Sudbury, Ontario—with his wife and three sons. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

This time I'm talking with Ashley Tate, bestselling debut author of TWENTY-SEVEN MINUTES, about how reading Iain Reid's smash hit novel I'M THINKING OF ENDINGS gave her permission to write the blendy psychological thriller-literary mash-up of her dreams (or worst nightmares?). In our conversation, Ashley talks about stumbling upon Reid's debut novel without any idea of what she was getting into, how the novel gave her permission to write the kind of book she wants to read, about leaping over the bounds and limits of genre, how for her it always starts with character, the ways in which an ordinary setting can be absolutely creepy with the right tension, and why it makes sense that a story about grief is so destabilizing. About TWENTY SEVEN MINUTES: Welcome to West Wilmer.Where everyone knows everyone.And where everyone has a secret.THE QUESTION No one in the small, claustrophobic town of West Wilmer can forget Phoebe Dean, their sweet, beloved golden girl. It's been ten years since the car crash that tragically took her life, yet one question lingers: Why did it take her brother, Grant, twenty-seven minutes to call for help after the accident?THE SECRET As the anniversary of Phoebe's death approaches, Grant is consumed by memories of that night and everything he lost: his future, his reputation, his little sister. And the secret he's been keeping all these years is threatening to undo him. But he and Phoebe weren't the only ones in the car that night. Becca was there, too, and she'll do anything to protect Grant.THE TRUTH Everyone in West Wilmer remembers Phoebe, but only June Delroy remembers the other person lost that same night. Her brother, Wyatt, disappeared ten years ago, without a trace.Until someone appears at her door.Someone who may know where Wyatt went all those years ago.Someone who knows what really happened that night.Someone who is ready to tell the truth.Taking place over three days and culminating in a shocking twist that will leave you breathless, Twenty-Seven Minutes is a gripping story about what happens when grief becomes unbearable, dark secrets are unearthed, and the horrifying truth is revealed.ASHLEY TATE worked for over a decade as a writer and an editor for various publications as well as Canada's first online magazine. Twenty-Seven Minutes is her debut. She lives with her husband, their two children, and their dog in Toronto. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

Another week, another BOOKSPO pairing. I'm so excited to bring you my conversation with Shawna Lemay all about how a chance encounter with Annie Dillard's PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK at an Edmonton bookshop in the 1990s created a path that's led all the way to here and Lemay's latest book, the essay collection APPLES ON THE WINDOWSILL. Shawna talks about the notion of pre-internet books, why she likes seeing the world with her camera, how APPLES ON THE WINDOWSILL is an indoor book (not a single muskrat!), what Annie Dillard has to tell us about still-life, and what we can learn from the still-lives on our kitchen counters. This conversation is a celebration of the extraordinary ordinary, and I'm so happy to share it with you! About APPLES ON THE WINDOWSILL:Apples on a Windowsill is a series of meditations on still life, photography, beauty, and marriage. Full of personal reflections, charming anecdotes, and the history behind the art of still lifes, this lyrical memoir takes us from Edmonton to Rome to museums all over North America as Lemay discusses the craft of writing, the ups and downs of being married to a painter, and her focus on living a life in art and in beauty. A must read for fans of The Flower Can Always Be Changing, Everything Affects Everyone, and Rumi and the Red Handbag.Shawna Lemay is the author of The Flower Can Always Be Changing (shortlisted for the 2019 Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction) and the novel, Rumi and the Red Handbag, which made Harper's Bazaar's #THELIST. She has also written multiple books of poetry, a book of essays, and the experimental novel Hive. All the God-Sized Fruit, her first book, won the Stephan G. Stephansson Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Calm Things: Essays was shortlisted for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction. She lives in Edmonton. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome BACK to BOOKSPO! This time I'm talking to novelist Charlene Carr (“the Canadian Jodi Picoult,” in case you didn't know) about her new novel WE RIP THE WORLD APART, and how her bookspo was David Chariandy's 2018 memoir I'VE BEEN MEANING TO TELL YOU: A LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER. Charlene talks about how David Chariandy's memoir gave her permission to write the story she needed to tell, why she chafes at the ideas that she's obligated (as a person of colour) to “fix” racism or that all her work must concern race, how “racial identity is so rarely a matter of personal choice,” and the ways in which ideas about reproductive justice are interwoven with all of this. About WE RIP THE WORLD APART: A sweeping multi-generational story about motherhood, race and secrets in the lives of three women, perfect for readers of Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half and David Chariandy's BrotherWhen 24-year-old Kareela discovers she's pregnant with a child she isn't sure she wants, it amplifies her struggle to understand her place in the world as a woman who is half-Black and half-white, yet feels neither.Her mother, Evelyn, fled to Canada with her husband and their first-born child, Antony, during the politically charged Jamaican Exodus of the 1980s, only to realize they'd come to a place where Black men are viewed with suspicion—a constant and pernicious reality Evelyn watches her husband and son navigate daily.Years later, in the aftermath of Antony's murder by the police, Evelyn's mother-in-law, Violet, moves in, offering young Kareela a link to the Jamaican heritage she has never fully known. Despite Violet's efforts to help them through their grief, the traumas they carry grow into a web of secrets that threatens the very family they all hold so dear.Back in the present, Kareela, prompted by fear and uncertainty about the new life she carries, must come to terms with the mysteries surrounding her family's past and the need to make sense of both her identity and her future.Weaving the women's stories across multiple timelines, We Rip the World Apart reveals the ways that simple choices, made in the heat of the moment and with the best of intentions, can have deeper repercussions than could ever have been imagined, especially when people remain silent.CHARLENE CARR lives in Nova Scotia with her husband and daughter. She has published nine novels and recently received grants from Arts Nova Scotia and the Canada Council for the Arts to write her next one. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

The first episode of BOOKSPO begins with a splash as I'm joined by the authors of brand new mystery novel BURY THE LEAD, co-written by bestsellers Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti, whose “bookspo” was the smash-hit novel THURSDAY MURDER CLUB, by Richard Osman. In our conversation, Kate and Liz tell their origin stories as mystery readers, discuss what inspired them about Osman's book, outline just what makes for a great mystery series, why feminism is a necessary part of their world-building, and share their strategy about how to keep that series from getting too preposterous (ie keeping dead vicars to a minimum!). About BURY THE LEAD: A big-city journalist joins the staff of a small-town paper in cottage country and finds a community full of secrets … and murder.Cat Conway has recently returned to Port Ellis to work as a reporter at the Quill & Packet. She's fled the tattered remains of her high-profile career and bad divorce for the holiday town of her childhood, famous for its butter tarts, theatre, and a century-old feud.One of Cat's first assignments is to interview legendary actor Eliot Fraser, the lead in the theatre's season opener of Inherit the Wind. When Eliot ends up dead onstage on opening night, the curtain rises on the sleepy town's secrets. The suspects include the actor whose career Eliot ruined, the ex-wife he betrayed, the women he abused, and even the baker he wronged. With the attention of the world on Port Ellis, this story could be Cat's chance to restore her reputation. But the police think she's a suspect, and the murderer wants to kill the story—and her too. Can Cat solve the mystery before she loses her job or becomes the next victim of a killer with a theatrical bent for vengeance?KATE HILTON is the bestselling author of three novels: The Hole in the Middle, Just like Family, and Better Luck Next Time. When not writing, Kate works with psychotherapy and life coaching clients in the area of transformational change. No stranger to reinvention herself, Kate has had prior careers in law, university administration, publishing, and major gift fundraising. She lives in Toronto in a blended family—including a husband, two sons, a stepdaughter, and a rescue dog.ELIZABETH RENZETTI is a bestselling Canadian author and journalist. She has worked for the Globe and Mail as a reporter, editor, and columnist. In 2020 she won the Landsberg Award for her reporting on gender equality. She is the author of the essay collection Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls and the novel Based on a True Story. Her book What She Said: Conversations about Equality will be published in 2024. She lives in Toronto with her family. Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Pickle Me This at kerryreads.substack.com/subscribe