Podcast appearances and mentions of michael redhill

This week we're taking a trip down memory lane to the city where it all began! Our chat on Consolation by Michael Redhill delves into memory, stories, history, and a whole lotta red tape. Content warning: suicide.

In life and in art, self-reinvention can let us escape expectation and realize our purpose in an otherwise unattainable way. And yet there’s also a danger in drifting too far from the confines of reality. A layered meditation on the fluidity of identity, “A Man Is Not His Song” centers on three people who pushed the limits of persona in their life’s work: Marc Ruskin, an FBI agent who spent over 20 years undercover, juggling 12 different identities as he infiltrated mafia families, drug trafficking circles, and counterfeit money rings; Michael Redhill, a poet, playwright, and author who began writing under the female pseudonym Inger Ash Wolfe at age 40 and found new fame as a mystery novelist; and Jason Beck, an entertainer who adopted the stage name Chilly Gonzales in the late ’90s and soon learned that his outrageous alter ego allowed him to explore forbidden truths in his music and performance. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michael Redhill is the author of nine novels including Consolation, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and Martin Sloane, a finalist for the Giller Prize, Canada's most prestigious book award which he won with Bellevue Square. He's written a novel for young adults, four collections of poetry and two plays, including the internationally celebrated Goodness. He also writes a series of crime novels under the name Inger Ash Wolfe, one of which, The Calling, was made in to a feature film starring Susan Sarandon. Michael lives in Toronto. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michael Redhill reads a selection of poems at the launch of Taddle Creek No. 41, live at the LitBang! Pop-Up Shop, June 27, 2018.

Heather Tucker, author of The Clay Girl, had an entire career as a nurse, teacher, bereavement counselor, and professional writer, before she discovered that “playing with words is more fun than working with them.” What is it like to publish a debut novel at age 62? She kept an emotional journal from a young age to age 50. She was going on a big trip to Asia and taped a note on the boxes that said, “If the plane goes down, do not read. Burn these.” Then she decided to take them outdoors up North and burn them herself. She didn't lose her stories, she opened them up and set them into the universe, freed herself to pull them back and rework them in a new way Now she does positive journaling, putting actual pen to paper, drawing and painting. If her plane goes down now, she has boxes of writing and journals that she does want to share Her first books as a kid were the Junior Classics Collier's Encyclopedia set. She felt intimidated by reading, until her grade 2 teacher gave her a copy of Pippi Longstocking. After that she was obsessed with waiting for the Bookmobile to come and bring new stories How do you get started writing fiction at age 50? She joined a local writing group that has become her “tribe.” She reapplied to school for creative writing, and crashed the registration system because her student number was so outdated. Michael Redhill taught one of her courses. One day after class she told him she was afraid she'd waited too long to start writing. He replied, “It's never too late to start writing. Some start too early, but it's never too late.” Now she feels she's not late to the writing party, she just was conducting 50 years of research before she got started. For any baby boomers considering starting to write fiction, it's NOT too late. “You are the people with stories to tell. You've gathered stories through whatever your life experience has been.” How she deals with negative feedback. She has to fight the urge to explain and defend her story. But she's trying to hear the criticism and improve for the sequel How she found her publisher, ECW Press: a mix of serendipity and luck. She didn't set out to be a published author, she just wanted to write for fun What it means to her to be a Canadian author, and for The Clay Girl to be considered “CanLit” One of the most interesting part of the publishing process has been learning that readers are particular about HOW they want to read – eBooks, large-print, library, audio. Authors need to provide every format so that customers can keep discovering wonderful books in the form and location they want When she started writing fiction, she would wake up at 2am and “give the best hours of my day” to writing before she went to her day job You can make connections and have experiences no matter where you live and what you do. As long as you're experiencing (and not just observing), you're gathering stories to inform your writing “There's enough despair already in the world. I want to leave behind a legacy of hope.” www.heathertucker.ca

Sally Cooper's second novel, Tell Everything,delves into the darkest regions of the human soul, and lends credence to Kipling's line: "The female of the species is deadlier than the male." During our conversation about Tell Everything we discuss topics including: the media and murder, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, …body parts in ponds,  Rapunsil and crime plays, three way sex, the blurred, complicated lines of consent, the fear of self revelation, and love, self protection, shame and acceptance, boxes and cameras, novel writing as catharsis, iguanas in snow drifts, crime scene photographs, facing moral issues, true crime magazines, Michael Redhill's short story The Victim, and women being every bit as predatory as men. Sally Cooper grew up in Inglewood, Ontario, population 400. She has an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Guelph, and has published in such places as Shift, Blood & Aphorisms, Carousel, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and eye weekly. Her first novel, Love Object, came out in 2002 to critical acclaim. She currently teaches creative writing at Humber College and lives and writes in Hamilton, Ontario.  

Valerie Gow, Imprint Sales Director for Doubleday Canada, speaks with Michael Redhill author of Consolation.