In this interview, we chat with Caroline Bicks about combatting AI in the classroom, words clanging on readers' ears, the uniquely portable magic of fiction, and so much more.
Caroline Bicks is the author of several academic books, including Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World and Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England. After she was named the University of Maine’s inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, she became the first scholar to be granted extended access by Stephen King to his private archive. In her most recent book, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King, Bicks documents her exploration of King’s early drafts and hand-written revisions, and her conversations with King about those changes. Her popular writing has appeared in the Modern Love column of the New York Times and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. She is the co-host of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast.
Books, plays, stories, and poems mentioned in this episode:
- The Wizard of Oz — L. Frank Baum
- I Know a Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours — Nat Cassidy
- "Cherrylog Road" — James Dickey
- "The Boogeyman"; Carrie; Cell; "Children of the Corn"; Christine; Cujo; Danse Macabre; "The Dark Man"; The Dead Zone; Insomnia; It; "Jerusalem's Lot"; Lisey's Story; The Long Walk; Misery; Night Shift; "Night Surf"; On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft; Pet Sematary; Rage; 'Salem's Lot; The Shining; The Stand; "Strawberry Spring" — Stephen King
- Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life — Anne Lamott
- Edward II — Christopher Marlowe
- North Woods — Daniel Mason
- A Swim in the Pond in the Rain — George Saunders
- Hamlet; Henry IV, Part I; Henry IV; Part II; Henry V; Henry VI, Part I; Henry VI, Part II; Henry VI, Part III; Macbeth; Richard II; Richard III; Romeo and Juliet — William Shakespeare
- Charlotte's Web — E. B. White
- Our Town — Thornton Wilder
- How Fiction Works — James Wood
In this interview, we chat with Luke Francis Beirne about literature versus entertainment, Atlantic Canadian textures, a literary marriage proposal, and so much more.
Luke Francis Beirne was born in Ireland in 1995 and now lives on Wolastoqey land in Saint John, New Brunswick. Beirne has published three novels with Baraka Books, Foxhunt, Blacklion and Saints Rest. His stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in outlets such as Counterpunch, NB Media Co-op, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Honest Ulsterman, and CrimeReads.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King — Caroline Bicks
- The Last Thing He Wanted — Joan Didion
- The Quiet American — Graham Greene
- The Maltese Falcon — Dashiell Hammett
- The Outsiders — S. E. Hinton
- The Bamboo Blonde; In a Lonely Place — Dorothy B. Hughes
- Hatchet — Gary Paulsen
- How Fiction Works — James Wood
In this interview, we chat with Cassidy McFadzean about skewing prepositions, trusting the reader, opting for vibes over plot, and so much more.
Cassidy McFadzean is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Crying Dress (House of Anansi, 2024). Her fiction has appeared in Joyland, The Walrus, Hazlitt, and Dead Writers (Invisible Publishing, 2025). Cassidy was born in Regina, earned an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College, and now lives in Toronto. She was the 2024-2025 Writer-in-Residence at Sheridan College, and is the 2025-2026 Poet-in-Residence at Arc Poetry Magazine.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- The Weak Spot — Lucie Elven
- Bird by Bird — Anne Lamott
- Slows: Twice — T. Liem
- Anne of Green Gables; Chronicles of Avonlea; Emily of New Moon; The Story Girl — Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Fever Dream — Samanta Schweblin
- Rock Crystal — Adalbert Stifter
- The Ice Palace — Tarjei Vesaas
In this interview, we chat with Michael Wehunt about the administrative side of professional writing, the unanticipated weirdness of public selfhood, the "moment before the moment", and so much more.
Michael Wehunt has been a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, multiple Shirley Jackson Awards, and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts' Crawford Award. In Spain, his translated works have garnered nominations for the Premio Ignotus and Premio Amaltea, winning the latter. He haunts the woods of Decatur, Georgia, with his partner and their dog. Together, they hold the horrors at bay. Most recently, he is the author of the novels The October Film Haunt and Nightjars.
Books and poems mentioned in this episode:
- Ancient Images; The Grin of the Dark; Incarnate — Ramsey Campbell
- Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture — Douglas Coupland
- Poems 1962-2020 — Louise Glück
- Carrie — Stephen King
- Beings — Ilana Masad
- The God of the Woods; Long Bright River — Liz Moore
- Ghost Wall; Ripeness — Sarah Moss
- The Violent Bear it Away — Flannery O'Connor
- "Archaic Torso of Apollo" — Rainer Maria Rilke
- Coffin Moon — Keith Rosson
In this interview, we chat with Daniel Braum about exploring the ecology of the supernatural, finding inspiration in liminal spaces, cultivating a sense of awe, and so much more.
Daniel Braum writes short stories that explore the tension between the psychological and the supernatural. He intentionally adopts the term “strange tales” for his “Twilight Zone-like stories in homage to author Robert Aickman and the intentional ambiguities of his work. His latest collection is Phantom Constellations: Strange Tales and Ghost Stories from Cemetery Dance Publications (2025). His stories appear in places ranging from The Best Horror of the Year Volume 12, edited by Ellen Datlow, and Shivers 8, edited by Richard Chizmar.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
- Cold Hand in Mine — Robert Aickman
- The Artist's Way — Julia Cameron
- Ancient Images; The Hungry Moon — Ramsey Campbell
- "Plunged in the Years" — Jeffrey Ford
- "Children of the Corn" — Stephen King
- The Ceremonies — T. E. D. Klein
- Beginnings, Middles & Ends — Nancy Kress
- Dreams of Dark and Light — Tanith Lee
- Rosemary's Baby; The Stepford Wives — Ira Levin
- Story — Robert McKee
- Conjunctions 83: The Ghost Issue — Joyce Carol Oates and Bradford Morrow, eds.
- The Jaguar Hunter — Lucius Shepard
- Shadowland — Peter Straub
- Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists — Peter Straub, ed.
- Harvest Home — Thomas Tryon
- The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers — Chris Vogler
In this interview, we chat with Hajer Mirwali about cross-disciplinary work, embodied writing, poetic mad libs, and so much more.
Hajer Mirwali is a Palestinian and Iraqi writer living in Toronto. Her first book, Revolutions (Talonbooks, 2025), is a collection of poetry on shame, pleasure, and Arab Muslim girlhood. Two poems from the collection also appear in an anthology of Palestinian poetry called Heaven Looks Like Us (Haymarket Books, 2025). Hajer’s work has been published in The Ex-Puritan, Brick Magazine, Room Magazine, and Joyland. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph, and a BA in Creative Writing from York University.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- Trust Exercise — Susan Choi
- The Butterfly's Burden — Mahmoud Darwish
- Junie B. Jones series — Barbara Park
- Who by Fire; Who by Water — Greg Rhyno
- Harry Potter series — J. K. Rowling
In this interview, we chat with Kasia Van Schaik about reverse outlining, asking "what if", sublimating emotion through landscape, and so much more.
Kasia Van Schaik is the author of the Giller Prize-nominated story collection We Have Never Lived on Earth and the forthcoming book of memoir and cultural criticism, Women Among Monuments. With Myra Bloom, she is the co-editor of the essay collection, Shelter in Text: Essays on Dwelling and Refuge. Kasia’s writing has appeared in Electric Literature, the LA Review of Books, Room, The Rumpus, the Best Canadian Poetry, and the CBC. Kasia holds a PhD in literature from McGill University and is assistant professor of English and co-director of Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, Wolastoqiyik territory.
Books mentioned in this episode:
Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë
The Secret Garden — Frances Hodgson Burnett
Autobiography of Red — Anne Carson
Boyhood; Youth; Summertime — J. M. Coetzee
Outline; Transit; Kudos — Rachel Cusk
The Days of Abandonment; the Neapolitan Quartet — Elena Ferrante
"The Robber Bridegroom" — Brothers Grimm
Sweet Days of Discipline — Fleur Jaeggy
Lucy — Jamaica Kincaid
Her Body and Other Parties — Carmen Maria Machado
Housekeeping — Marilynne Robinson
Rings of Saturn — W. G. Sebald
Flights — Olga Tokarczuk
In this interview, we chat with Jean Marc Ah-Sen about comic books, literary scenes, flipping the script on what a book can be, and so much more.
Jean Marc Ah-Sen is the author of Grand Menteur, In the Beggarly Style of Imitation, and Kilworthy Tanner. His writing has appeared in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Literary Hub, Catapult, The Comics Journal, Maclean's, The Walrus, and elsewhere.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- The Fall – Albert Camus
- I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp – Richard Hell
- The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
- Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
- Biography of X – Catherine Lacey
- Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle – Vladimir Nabokov
- Anti-Woo: The Lifeman's Improved Primer for Non-Lovers; The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship: Or the Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating – Stephen Potter
- Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones – Dee Dee Ramone
- Endling – Maria Reva
- The Dying Animal – Philip Roth
- Striptease – Georges Simenon
- The Handyman Method – Andrew Sullivan
- Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
- The Island of Doctor Moreau; The Time Machine – H. G. Wells
In this interview, we chat with Ramsey Campbell about the importance of tapping into creative instincts, the pleasure of happy accidents, the lingering impact of eerie children's tales, and so much more.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Ramsey Campbell as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer”, and the Washington Post sums up his work as “one of the monumental accomplishments of modern popular fiction”. His awards include the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature. His latest novels are Fellstones, The Lonely Lands, The Incubations and An Echo of Children. His Brichester Mythos trilogy consists of The Searching Dead, Born to the Dark and The Way of the Worm. His collections include Waking Nightmares, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead, Just Behind You, Holes for Faces, By the Light of My Skull, Fearful Implications, and a two-volume retrospective roundup (Phantasmagorical Stories) as well as The Village Killings and Other Novellas. His non-fiction is collected as Ramsey Campbell, Probably and Ramsey Campbell, Certainly, while Ramsey’s Rambles collects his video reviews, and Six Stooges and Counting is a book-length study of the Three Stooges. Limericks of the Alarming and Phantasmal is a history of horror fiction in the form of fifty limericks.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
- The Atrocity Exhibition – J. G. Ballard
- Great Short Stories of the World – Barrett H. Clark & Maxim Lieber, eds.
- "A Dark-Brown Dog"; The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
- The Man Within – Graham Greene
- "The Residence at Whitminster" – M. R. James
- Rosemary's Baby; The Stepford Wives – Ira Levin
- Tales of Mean Streets – Arthur Morrison
- Lolita; Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
- "The Telltale Heart" – Edgar Allan Poe
- At the Foot of the Story Tree: An Inquiry into the Fiction of Peter Straub – Bill Sheehan
- Ghost Story – Peter Straub
- The Rupert Bear series – Herbert Tourtel & Mary Tourtel
- "Afterward" – Edith Wharton
- At Night, White Bracken; To Those from Below – Gareth Wood
In this interview, we chat with Michael LaPointe about navigating the pipeline between impulse and expression, breaking the genteel picture of literature, finding liberation in failure, and so much more.
Michael LaPointe is the author of The Creep, a novel published by Random House Canada. He has written for The New Yorker and The Atlantic, and he was a columnist with The Paris Review. His work has been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories and Best Canadian Essays, and he lives in Toronto.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- Affliction; Continental Drift; Rule of the Bone; The Sweet Hereafter – Russell Banks
- Naked Lunch – William S. Burroughs
- The Adventures of Pinocchio – Carlo Collodi
- Bleak House – Charles Dickens
- Play it as it Lays – Joan Didion
- The Lover – Marguerite Duras
- Middlemarch – George Eliot
- American Psycho; Less Than Zero; The Shards – Bret Easton Ellis
- Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
- Bad Behavior; Two Girls, Fat and Thin – Mary Gaitskill
- In a Lonely Place – Dorothy B. Hughes
- Snow Country – Yasunari Kawabata
- Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination; Sula – Toni Morrison
- The Sorrow of War – Bảo Ninh
- Inherent Vice – Thomas Pynchon
- All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
- Voyage in the Dark – Jean Rhys
- Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger
- Last Exit to Brooklyn – Hubert Selby Jr.
- Alice James: A Biography – Jean Strouse
- The Invisible Woman: The Story Of Nelly Ternan And Charles Dickens – Claire Tomalin
- Rejection – Tony Tulathimutte
- Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
In this interview, we chat with Gemma Files about horny monsters, Lovecraftian Airbnbs, the female gaze, and so much more.
Previously a film critic, journalist and teacher, Gemma Files has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She's best-known for her novel Experimental Film (Open Road Media) and her collections of short fiction, including the Bram Stoker Award-winning In That Endlessness, Our End and Blood From the Air (both from Grimscribe). Her next book, Little Horn: Stories, will be out in October from Shortwave. She is the autistic mother of an autistic son. For fun she sings, and doodles pretty monsters.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- Empire of the Sun – J. G. Ballard
- D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths; Norse Gods and Giants – Edgar Parin d'Aulaire and Ingri Parin d'Aulaire
- Black Flame – Gretchen Felker-Martin
- The Rotting Room – Viggy Parr Hampton
Barrowbeck; The Loney; Starve Acre – Andrew Michael Hurley - Bright Dead Star; Zoetrope Bizarre – Caitlín R. Kiernan
- The Jungle Book; The Second Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling
- The Magician's Nephew – C. S. Lewis
- The Reddening – Adam Nevill
- Metamorphoses – Ovid
- Cyrano de Bergerac – Edmond Rostand
- Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
- Dracula – Bram Stoker
- A Dark Matter – Peter Straub
- The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
In this interview, we chat with Emily Banks about posthumous publications, linguistic allergies, the atomic nuts and bolts of imagery, and so much more.
Emily Banks is the author of Mother Water (Lynx House Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Plume, Copper Nickel, 32 Poems, The Rumpus, CutBank, Mid-American Review, and other journals. She publishes scholarship on American gothic literature, runs The Shirley Jackson Society, and is currently editing The Oxford Handbook of Shirley Jackson. She holds an MFA from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. from Emory University. She lives in Indianapolis and teaches at Franklin College.
Books, poems, and stories mentioned in this episode:
- "Filling Station"; "In the Waiting Room" – Elizabeth Bishop
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
- Turn Up the Ocean – Tony Hoagland
- "Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors"; Hangsaman; The Haunting of Hill House; "The Lottery"; We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
- Bliss Montage; Severance – Ling Ma
- How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy – Jenny Odell
- Middle Distance – Stanley Plumly
- Pamela – Samuel Richardson
- Modern Poetry – Diane Seuss
In this interview, we chat with Naben Ruthnum about character development, avoiding TV-brained writing, making sense of first-reader notes, and so much more.
Naben Ruthnum is a Toronto-based writer of fiction, cultural criticism, film and TV. His novel A Hero of Our Time was released by Penguin Random House and was optioned for development by The Littlefield Company. His books include the YA novel The Grimmer, the World Fantasy Award-nominated horror novella Helpmeet and two thrillers penned as Nathan Ripley, both of which have been optioned for development and were published internationally. He has written for Canadian television series including Murdoch Mysteries and Cardinal. As a feature screenwriter, he’s collaborated with Kris Bertin for feature and TV projects in development at Oddfellows, BoulderLight Pictures, Automatik, Skybound, and Blink49. Kris and Naben's script Road Test made the 2024 Black List.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
- The Sorceress in Stained Glass & Other Ghost Stories – Richard Dalby, ed.
- The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
- The Black Dahlia; Killer on the Road; L.A. Confidential; My Dark Places – James Ellroy
- Black Flame – Gretchen Felker-Martin
- The James Bond series – Ian Fleming
- The Collector; The Magus – John Fowles
- The Green Carnation – Robert Hichens
- The Americans; The Tragic Muse; The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
- The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre; Supernatural Horror in Literature – H. P. Lovecraft
- The Beckoning Fair One – Oliver Onions
- A Fatal Inversion; Master of the Moor – Ruth Rendell
- Flicker – Theodore Roszak
- The Tempest – William Shakespeare
- Ghost Story; If You Could See Me Now; In the Night Room; Koko; The Throat – Peter Straub
- The Secret History – Donna Tartt
- A Dark-Adapted Eye; The House of Stairs – Barbara Vine
- The October Film Haunt – Michael Wehunt
In this interview, we chat with Sarah Bernstein about contemplation, finding time for writing, capturing the rush of language, and so much more.
Sarah Bernstein is the author of two novels, The Coming Bad Days and Study for Obedience, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is from Montreal and lives in the Scottish Highlands.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
- Hysteric; Whore – Nelly Arcan
- Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
- The Moonstone; The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
- “A Mown Lawn” – Lydia Davis
- Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin
- The Book of Questions – Edmond Jabès
- The Haunting of Hill House; “The Lottery”; The Sundial; We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
- The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
- The Place of Shells - Mai Ishizawa
- In the Wake: On Blackness and Being – Christina Sharpe
- The House Next Door – Anne Rivers Siddons
- The Door – Magda Szabó
- Clean – Alia Trabucco Zerán
In this interview, we chat with S. P. Miskowski about Asian horror cinema, the power of grief, the relentless desire to shape the self, and so much more.
S. P. Miskowski is a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, for literature and for drama. Her books have been recognized with four Shirley Jackson Award nominations and two Bram Stoker Award nominations. Her stories have appeared in many anthologies including Haunted Nights, Human Monsters, Looming Low I and II, The Madness of Dr. Caligari, Uncertainties III, October Dreams 2, The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 10, and Darker Companions: 50 Years of Ramsey Campbell, and in magazines including Identity Theory, Black Static, Vastarien, Supernatural Tales, and Cosmic Horror Monthly. Her grunge noir novel I Wish I Was Like You was named This Is Horror Novel of the Year 2017 and is available via Audible. An omnibus of her books set in the weird fictional town of Skillute, WA is forthcoming from Broken Eye Books in 2025.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
- The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales – Alfred A. Knopf, pub.
- The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024 – S. A. Cosby, ed.
- D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths – Ingrid & Edgar Parin d’Aulaire
- Go, Dog. Go! – P. D. Eastman
- Rock Paper Scissors – Alice Feeney
- The Haunting of Hill House; "Maybe it Was the Car"; “The Summer People”; We Have Always Lived in the Castle; “The Witch” – Shirley Jackson
- None of This is True – Lisa Jewell
- Audition – Ryū Murakami
- “Bluebeard”; “Cinderella” – Charles Perrault
- “The Black Cat”; “The Cask of Amontillado” – Edgar Allan Poe
- The Last Party – A. R. Torre
- The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023 – Lisa Unger, ed.
In this interview, we chat with Fawn Parker about showing the reader around the room, finding the right tense, protecting your writing time, and so much more.
Fawn Parker is the author of five books including novels What We Both Know (M&S), nominated for the Giller Prize and Hi, It's Me (M&S), nominated for the Writer's Trust Atwood Gibson Prize, and the poetry collection Soft Inheritance, which was awarded the JM Abraham Atlantic Book Award and the Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize. Her work has been published in The Walrus, Hazlitt, Literary Review of Canada, and elsewhere. Fawn is a PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick and the Poet Laureate of Fredericton.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
- The Edible Woman – Margaret Atwood
- The Mountain and the Valley – Ernest Buckler
- Libra – Don DeLillo
- The Guest – Emma Cline
- Attack of the Copula Spiders and Other Essays on Writing – Douglas Glover
- "Experience" – Tessa Hadley
- Ulysses – James Joyce
- Rejection – Tony Tulathimutte
- This All Happened – Michael Winter
- How Fiction Works – James Wood
- Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
Fawn's featured author photo is by Steph Martyniuk.
In this interview, we chat with Rod Moody-Corbett about tonal dissonance, sponging up influences, writing from memory, and so much more.
Rod Moody-Corbett is an award-winning writer from Newfoundland. His writing has appeared in Socrates on the Beach, The Drift, The Paris Review Daily, and Fiddlehead, among other publications. He is the recipient of the 2022 Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Story, a Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Award for Short Fiction, the University of Calgary’s Kaleidoscope Prize, and the CBC Canada Writes Short Story Prize (People’s Choice Award). He serves as a contributing editor for Canadian Notes and Queries.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- Experience – Martin Amis
- Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World; The Hundred Brothers; The Verificationist – Donald Antrim
- Last Evenings on Earth – Roberto Bolaño
- Save the Cat! Writes a Novel – Jessica Brody
- My Education – Susan Choi
- Underworld – Don DeLillo
- Notes from Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Last Samurai – Helen DeWitt
- Erasure – Percival Everett
- Bad Behavior; Because They Wanted To; Don’t Cry – Mary Gaitskill
- A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me; Jernigan – David Gates
- Airships – Barry Hannah
- The Road Through the Wall – Shirley Jackson
- Get Shorty; Rum Punch – Elmore Leonard
- Last Resort – Andrew Lipstein
- The Sentence is a Lonely Place – Garielle Lutz
- Moby Dick – Herman Melville
- The Ice Storm – Rick Moody
- Lectures on Literature – Vladimir Nabokov
- A House for Mr. Biswas – V. S. Naipaul
- Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas; Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family – Nicholas Pileggi
- Monkey Beach – Eden Robinson
- The Life of the Mind – Christine Smallwood
- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman – Laurence Sterne
- The Visiting Privilege – Joy Williams
- To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
- Sour Heart – Jenny Zhang
In this interview, we chat with Nour Abi-Nakhoul about copy editing, creative nonfiction, feverish creations, and so much more.
Nour Abi-Nakhoul is a writer and editor based in Montreal. She is the editor-in-chief of the award-winning quarterly Maisonneuve Magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in Hazlitt and The Walrus. Her debut novel, Supplication, was released by Penguin Random House in 2024.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- Kilworthy Tanner – Jean Marc Ah-Sen
- We Are Here to Hurt Each Other – Paula D. Ashe
- Giovanni's Room – James Baldwin
- The Guest – Emma Cline
- The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Autobiography of X; Pew – Catherine Lacey
- The Apple in the Dark – Clarice Lispector
- Fever Dream – Samanta Schweblin
- The Adventures of Ratman – Ellen Weiss
In this interview, we chat with Kathe Koja about balancing simultaneous projects, resisting online distractions, raising the literary dead, and so much more.
Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction, and creates and produces live and virtual events. Her award-winning books include The Cipher, Skin, Buddha Boy, Under The Poppy and Velocities, and she is currently at work on the Dark Factory immersive fiction project including Dark Factory, Dark Park and Dark Matter. Catherine the Ghost is her newest novel.
You can find her at kathekoja.com and on Instagram, Facebook and Threads.
Books and plays mentioned in this episode:
- Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
- Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin
- Faust – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- The Mouse and His Child; Riddley Walker – Russell Hoban
- The Default World – Naomi Kanakia
- A Place of Greater Safety; Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
- Doctor Faustus – Christopher Marlowe
- Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett – James Knowlson
- Rimbaud: A Biography – Graham Robb
- Frankenstein; The Last Man – Mary Shelley
- Lost Boy Lost Girl – Peter Straub
- The Secret Power of Music: The Transformation of Self and Society through Musical Energy – David Tame
In this interview, we chat with Paula D. Ashe about writer's block, narrative movement, urban legends, and so much more.
Paula D. Ashe (she/her) is an author of dark fiction. Her debut collection We Are Here to Hurt Each Other (Nictitating Books) was a Shirley Jackson Award winner for Single Author Collection and a Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection. Recently, she received the Joseph S. Pulver Sr. Weird Fiction Award at NecronomiCon Providence. Paula was also an associate editor for Vastarien: A Literary Journal. She lives in the Midwest with her family.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
- Supplication – Nour Abi-Nakhoul
- The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
- Books of Blood; The Damnation Game; The Hellbound Heart – Clive Barker
- Midnight Rooms – Donyae Coles
- Blood from the Air – Gemma Files
- “each thing i show you is a piece of my death” – Gemma Files & Stephen J. Barringer
- Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke – Eric LaRocca
- “Abed” – Elizabeth Massie
- The Scar – China Miéville
- Beloved; The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
- Song of the Tyrant Worm – Hailey Piper
- Flowers for the Sea – Zin E. Rocklyn
- Cows – Matthew Stokoe
- The Secret History – Donna Tartt
- The Color Purple – Alice Walker
- Where I End – Sophie White
In this interview, we chat with McKenna James Boeckner and Carlee Calver about nature writing, epistolary possibilities, elusive chicken detectives, and so much more.
McKenna James Boeckner is a Ph.D. candidate and contract lecturer at the University of New Brunswick (territory of the Wolastoqiyik people), with a specialization in long eighteenth-century British literature. As a creative writer, they slay with playwriting and have a penchant for fractured states of reality. Their most recent project is an eco-horror audio drama co-created with Carlee Calver, titled Us Soliscent Seeds. Find more of their work at memoirsofasodomite.com
Carlee Calver is a writer, playwright, and filmmaker from Bathurst, New Brunswick. She currently lives and works in Fredericton NB, where she received her M.A. in creative writing (screenwriting) from the University of New Brunswick. Her plays have been produced by Notable Acts Theatre Festival (2019) and Herbert the Cow productions (2022). She directed a FibeTV1 series called Skin and Bone (2023) that is now available online. Recently, Carlee was co-creator and producer of Us Soliscent Seeds (2023), a 4-part eco-horror audio drama set in Northern New Brunswick. All episodes are now available for streaming online.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- We Are Here to Hurt Each Other – Paula D. Ashe
- Carrie – Stephen King
- Blue Ruin; Red Pill – Hari Kunzru
- Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Maturin
- The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
- Divergent series – Veronica Roth
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona – William Shakespeare
- Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
- Dracula – Bram Stoker
In this interview, we chat with Lisa Tuttle about genre history, the ideal protagonist, Harlan Ellison's writing advice, and so much more.
Lisa Tuttle was born and raised in Austin, Texas, and moved to Britain in the 1980s. Her first novel, Windhaven, co-written with George R.R. Martin, was followed by over a dozen fantasy, science fiction, and horror novels, including three recent books set in the 1890s combining crime and supernatural fiction, featuring the detective duo Jasper Jesperson and Miss Lane; the third volume, The Curious Affair of the Missing Mummies, was published last year. She has also written hundreds of award-winning short stories collected in several volumes, including A Nest of Nightmares, The Dead Hours of the Night, and most recently, Riding the Nightmare. She is the author of The Encyclopedia of Feminism (1986) and currently writes a monthly science fiction review column for The Guardian. She lives with her husband and their daughter in Scotland.
Book and stories mentioned in this episode:
- The Saint of Bright Doors – Vajra Chandrasekera
- Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin
- Hangsaman; The Haunting of Hill House; “The Lottery” – Shirley Jackson
- The MANIAC; When We Cease to Understand the World – Benjamín Labatut
- Biography of X – Catherine Lacey
- The Seventh Mansion – Maryse Meijer
- Babysitter; By the North Gate; They; The Wheel of Love – Joyce Carol Oates
- The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
- Lake of Darkness – Adam Roberts
- Cryptonomicon; Polostan – Neal Stephenson
In this interview, we chat with Mark Anthony Jarman about hockey fiction, deadwood words, finding inspiration in newspaper clippings, and so much more.
Mark Anthony Jarman is the author of Touch Anywhere to Begin, Czech Techno, Knife Party at the Hotel Europa, My White Planet, 19 Knives, New Orleans Is Sinking, Dancing Nightly in the Tavern, and the travel book Ireland’s Eye. Burn Man, published in 2023 by Biblioasis, was an Editors Choice with the New York Times. He was an acquisitions editor for Oberon Press, and introduced many new writers through the Coming Attractions series. He is also the editor of Best Canadian Stories 2023. His novel Salvage King Ya! is on Amazon.ca’s list of 50 Essential Canadian Books and is the number one book on Amazon’s list of best hockey fiction. Widely published in Canada, the US, Europe, and Asia, Jarman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a Yaddo fellow, has taught at the University of Victoria, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the University of New Brunswick. He is also co-editor of the literary journal CAMEL.
Books and poems mentioned in this episode:
- Flowers of Evil – Charles Baudelaire
- Study for Obedience – Sarah Bernstein
- Cathedral – Raymond Carver
- The Stories of John Cheever – John Cheever
- Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
- The U.S.A. Trilogy – Jon Dos Passos
- Literary Theory: An Introduction – Terry Eagleton
- “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” – T. S. Eliot
- The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Attack of the Copula Spiders: Essays on Writing – Douglas Glover
- The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
- Dubliners; Ulysses – James Joyce
- The Incognito Lounge and Other Poems; Jesus’ Son; Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond – Denis Johnson
- On the Road – Jack Kerouac
- Panama – Thomas McGuane
- Dance of the Happy Shades – Alice Munro
- Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle; Lolita; Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
- The Cariboo Horses – Al Purdy
In this interview, we chat with Maryse Meijer about metaphor, quotation marks, the dubious necessity of author photos, and so much more.
Maryse Meijer is the author of Heartbreaker, Rag, Northwood, and The Seventh Mansion. She lives in Chicago.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
- Samuel Beckett: A Biography – Deirdre Bair
- Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett
- About Schmidt – Louis Begley
- Autobiography of Red – Anne Carson
- New Grub Street – George Gissing
- The Children of the Dead; Greed; The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
- Pet Sematary – Stephen King
- Bad Brains; The Cipher; Kink; Skin; Strange Angels – Kathe Koja
- The Communicating Vessels – Friederike Mayröcker
- All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy
- Hurricane Season; Paradais – Fernanda Melchor
- The Defense; Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
- Black Water; Blonde; Heat; My Sister, My Love; “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”; Zombie – Joyce Carol Oates
- With the Animals – Noëlle Revaz
- Snake Eyes – Rosamond Smith
- The Custom of the Country – Edith Wharton
Maryse's featured author photo is by Lewis McVey. The discussed image of St. Pancratius can be viewed here.
In this interview, we chat with Craig Laurance Gidney about genre mashups, writing workshops, telling Mom which of your stories to avoid, and so much more.
Craig Laurance Gidney (he/him/his) is the author of Sea, Swallow Me & Other Stories; Skin Deep Magic: Stories; Bereft (a YA novella); and A Spectral Hue (a novel). He has been a Lambda Literary Finalist three times, was a Carl Brandon Parallax Award Finalist, and won the inaugural Joseph S. Pulver Sr. Award for Weird Fiction. The Nectar of Nightmares is his most recent collection. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
- The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
- Giovanni’s Room; Go Tell It on the Mountain; If Beale Street Could Talk – James Baldwin
- Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell; Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
- Dhalgren – Samuel R. Delany
- The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
- The Uncanny – Sigmund Freud
- A Ring of Endless Light; A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L'Engle
- Black Light – Elizabeth Hand
- The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus – Joel Chandler Harris
- “The Golden Pot”; “The Sandman” – E. T. A. Hoffmann
- Finnegan’s Wake – James Joyce
- “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk” – Franz Kafka
- Delirium’s Mistress – Tanith Lee
- “The Outsider”; “The Rats in the Walls” – H.P. Lovecraft
- The Winds of Winter – George R. R. Martin
- The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern
- Tar Baby – Toni Morrison
- “A Good Man is Hard to Find” – Flannery O’Connor
- Corpsepaint – David Peak
- Queen of Teeth – Hailey Piper
In this interview, we chat with Niall Howell about crime fiction, creative spontaneity, the magic of public swimming pools, and so much more.
Niall Howell lives in Calgary, Alberta with his wife, sons, and pets. His debut noir novel Only Pretty Damned was shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction. His follow-up novel, There Are Wolves Here Too, was shortlisted by the Book Publisher's Association of Alberta for Mystery and Thriller book of the year. Niall's short fiction has been featured in The Feathertale Review and FreeFall. He is currently working on his third novel.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
- City of Margins; Shoot the Moonlight Out – William Boyle
- Save the Cat! Writes a Novel – Jessica Brody
- Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler – Raymond Chandler; edited by Frank MacShane
- The Guest – Emma Cline
- Perfidia; This Storm; Widespread Panic – James Ellroy
- Our Share of Night – Mariana Enriquez
- The Wars – Timothy Findley
- The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- A Rage in Harlem – Chester Himes
- It; Night Shift; Salem’s Lot – Stephen King
- Burnt Offerings – Robert Marasco
- Moby Dick – Herman Melville
- Peyton Place – Grace Metalious
- Devil in a Blue Dress – Walter Mosley
- Toby Tyler; or, Ten Weeks with a Circus – James Otis
- “The Black Cat” – Edgar Allan Poe
- The House Next Door – Anne Rivers Siddons
- The Secret History – Donna Tartt
In this interview, we chat with Phoebe Marmura about fear, fairies, set design, and so much more.
Phoebe Marmura is a writer and artist. Her work explores desire, femininity, domestic adventure, and reclusion. Marmura’s writing can be found in Expat Press, D.F.L. Lit, and Orca Literary Journal.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- Erotic Interludes: Tales Told by Women – Lonnie Barbach
- Naked Lunch – William S. Burroughs
- On the Road – Jack Kerouac
- Biography of X – Catherine Lacey
- Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
- Story – Robert McKee
- Portrait of Jennie – Robert Nathan
- Junie B. Jones series – Barbara Park
- The Golden Compass – Philip Pullman
- Pretty Little Liars series – Sara Shepard
- Charlotte's Web – E. B. White
In this interview, we chat with Lindsay Lerman about philosophy, procedural knowledge, writing dialogue, and so much more.
Lindsay Lerman is a writer and translator. Her first book, I'm From Nowhere, was published in 2019. Her second book, What Are You, was published in 2022. Her first translation was published in 2023. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. She is working on a novel, a philosophy manuscript, and here and there, some screenplays. She lives in Berlin.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- Gothic Metaphysics: From Alchemy to the Anthropocene – Jodey Castricano
- James and the Giant Peach; The BFG; Matilda – Roald Dahl
- Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
- Memories, Dreams, Reflections – C. G. Jung
- The Cipher – Kathe Koja
- The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Seventh Mansion – Maryse Meijer
In this interview, we chat with William Ping about historical fiction, hauntology, Animal Crossing, and so much more.
William Ping is a novelist and journalist, born and raised in St. John’s. His debut novel Hollow Bamboo was published by HarperCollins in 2023 and was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the BMO Winterset Award, and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award as well as being longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. He has previously been published in ‘Us, Now,’ Hard Ticket and Riddle Fence. William is also known for his contributions to CBC News, where he can most often be heard reading the news.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- Waiting for Godot; Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
- Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
- Death on the Ice: The Great Newfoundland Sealing Disaster of 1914 – Cassie Brown and Harold Horwood
- The King in Yellow – Robert W. Chambers
- The Wapshot Chronicle – John Cheever
- Trust Exercise – Susan Choi
- A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
- Less Than Zero; American Psycho; Imperial Bedrooms – Bret Easton Ellis
- The Beautiful and Damned; The Great Gatsby; Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Open – Lisa Moore
- Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
- Animal Farm – George Orwell
- Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different – Chuck Palahniuk
- Son of a Trickster – Eden Robinson
- The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger
- Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio – Pu Songling
In this interview, we chat with Randy Nikkel Schroeder about noir, character possession, Biblical frisson, and so much more.
Randy Nikkel Schroeder is the author of Arctic Smoke (NeWest), Crooked Timber: Seven Suburban Faerie Tales (Green Magpie), and over fifty published short stories. In his spare time, he is professor of English, Languages, and Cultures at Mount Royal University.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- Queenpin; The Turnout; You Will Know Me – Megan Abbott
- Poetics – Aristotle
- Book of Greek Myths – Ingri d'Aulaire & Edgar Parin d'Aulaire
- Save the Cat! Writes a Novel – Jessica Brody
- Dave Robicheaux novels – James Lee Burke
- The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know – Shawn Coyne
- Neuromancer – William Gibson
- Attack of the Copula Spiders and Other Essays on Writing – Douglas Glover
- Red Dragon – Thomas Harris
- Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin
- The Lottery and Other Stories – Shirley Jackson
- Rose Madder – Stephen King
- Mystic River – Dennis Lehane
- The Magician's Nephew – C. S. Lewis
- Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen – Robert McKee
- Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different – Chuck Palahniuk
- Gravity's Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
- Old Testament – Various authors
In this interview, we chat with Meghan Kemp-Gee about poetry, screenwriting, comics, and so much more.
Meghan Kemp-Gee is the author of The Animal in the Room (Coach House Books, 2023), as well as three poetry chapbooks, What I Meant to Ask, Things to Buy in New Brunswick, and More. She also co-created the webcomic Contested Strip, recently adapted as a graphic novel, One More Year. She is a PhD candidate at UNB and currently lives in North Vancouver BC.
Books mentioned in this episode:
- The Artist's Way – Julia Cameron
- 20th Century Men – Deniz Camp, Stipan Morian, & Aditya Bidikar
- The Adversary – Michael Crummey
- Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott
- Walden – Henry David Thoreau
- The Writing Moment: A Practical Guide to Creating Poems – Daniel Scott Tysdal
Welcome to Craftwork: a podcast by writers for writers co-hosted by Mike Thorn and Miriam Richer.
We created Craftwork to address questions that frequently come up in our own writing practices. Questions such as: What makes for a compelling read? Do you believe in writer’s block? What’s a piece of writing advice that really stuck with you?
In the following weeks, we’ll bring on guests and delve into topics including creative influence, thematic fixations, and the mechanics of writing across all narrative genres. We hope these conversations will benefit writers and people interested in writing.
We’ll be releasing a new episode every month or so. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter, and subscribe to us here on Spotify.
Thanks for listening!
Music by Randy Nikkel Schroeder