Episodios

  • Gary Barwin, "Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction, 2024-1984" (Assembly Press, 2024)

    Gary Barwin, "Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction, 2024-1984" (Assembly Press, 2024)
    May 11 2025
    NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with award-winning author Gary Barwin about his book, Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction, 2024-1984 (Assembly Press, 2024) couples brand new and uncollected stories with selections of the most playful and ambitious of Barwin’s previous collections, including Cruelty to Fabulous Animals, Big Red Baby, Doctor Weep and Other Strange Teeth, and I, Dr. Greenblatt, Orthodontist, 251–1457. Known as a “whiz-bang storyteller” who can deliver magical, dream-like sequences and truisms about the human condition in the same paragraph, Barwin’s trademark brilliance, wit, and originality are on display in this can’t-miss collection of short fiction. About Gary Barwin: GARY BARWIN is a writer, musician and multimedia artist and the author of 34 books including Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction 2024-1984 and, with Lillian Allen and Gregory Betts, Muttertongue: what is a word in utter space. His national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates which won the Leacock Medal and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award and the Giller Prize and was longlisted for Canada Reads. His last novel, Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award and was the Hamilton Reads choice for 2023-2024. His last poetry collection, The Most Charming Creatures also won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award. His most recent novel, The Comedian’s Book of the Dead will be published by Book*Hug in 2026. His art and media works have been exhibited and presented internationally. Be:longings, a $200,000 permanent public art sculpture created with Simon Frank and Tor Lukasik-Foss was installed in Churchill Park (Hamilton). His poetry installation, The Ambitious Sky was projected on a five-storey wall in Hamilton in February 2025, an interactive multimedia poetry exhibition Located in the Ink (created with Elee Kraljii Gardiner) was exhibited at Massy Arts (Vancouver) in Fall 2024, and Bird Fiction, and an interactive multimedia work (with Sarah Imrisek) was presented at Nuit Blanche 2024 (Toronto) and, in an expanded Hamilton-specific version will be featured in Hamilton Arts Week in June 2025. Recordings of his work are available at https://garybarwin.bandcamp.com He lives in Hamilton. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity mental health, was released by Guernica Editions and won a 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award. Her poetry collection, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her short fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network and co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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    54 m
  • Kern Carter, "Boys and Girls Screaming" (Dancing Cat Books, 2022)

    Kern Carter, "Boys and Girls Screaming" (Dancing Cat Books, 2022)
    May 10 2025
    In this episode, NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Kern Carter about his acclaimed YA novel, Boys and Girls Screaming (Dancing Cat Books, 2022). About the book: When Ever's father passes away suddenly, she is devastated. Not long after that, her mom has a stroke and Ever's anguish becomes almost too much for her to handle. That's when she gets the idea to form a group she calls Boys and Girls Screaming. Along with her brother, Jericho, and her best friend, Candace, Ever wants to bring together kids from their school who have suffered trauma so they can share their stories and begin to heal. Although the other teens find solace in the group, Ever tumbles further into depression until she reaches a breaking point. As the group learns the true source of Ever's pain, they jump into action to help her find a way out. Boys and Girls Screaming tells the story of a generation of teens finding the support they need to process their trauma in their own ways. Kern Carter is a full-time freelance writer and author who has written and self-published two novels -- Thoughts of a Fractured Soul (novella) and Beauty Scars. Kern also has writing credits in Forbes, the New York Times, Global Citizen, Elle Magazine and Fatherly.com, along with having ghostwritten several books. When he's not penning novels or ghostwriting, Kern is curating stories through CRY, his online publication that creates space for artists to navigate through the emotions of their creative journey. He lives in downtown Toronto. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity mental health, was released by Guernica Editions and won a 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award. Her poetry collection, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her short fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network and co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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    58 m
  • “That In Between Time,” Fernanda Trías and Heather Cleary (MAT)

    “That In Between Time,” Fernanda Trías and Heather Cleary (MAT)
    May 8 2025
    Fernanda Trías’s Pink Slime (Scribner, 2024) was first published in Spanish in October 2020, several months into a global pandemic that had bent our world into something uncannily similar to the one imagined in the Uruguayan writer’s fourth novel. Here, an environmental disaster that begins as red algae bloom in the oceans has produced a toxic wind that kills most living creatures. As the plague spreads, the protagonist chooses to remain in her coastal city, caring for a boy with a rare genetic disorder. Published in an English translation by Heather Cleary as the pandemic waned, Pink Slime continues to push against the limits of genre categories, balancing on that delicate edge between science fiction and literary realism. In dialogue with Cleary—a prolific translator of contemporary Latin American fiction who is also a critic and scholar of translation—Trías unfolds the many different ideas explored in Pink Slime, including the ethical complexities of writing about illness and disability, the difficult intimacies of mothers and daughters (and other potentially toxic relationships), how it is that we experience time and memory, and what it means to live with the looming threat of ecological collapse. Pink Slime, like Trías’s other novels, is also interested in the narrative potential of confined spaces, which constrain the movement of plot and allow for new possibilities in building characters’ psychological depth. The conversation also gets into the question of time and narrative tense when it comes to narrating the experience of disaster—a question that was crucial for the novelist as much as the translator. Together, Trías and Cleary also get into the intricacies of translation, including word choice, sound, rhythm, breath, and how to make jokes work across languages. Mentioned in this episode: The Translator’s Visibility: Scenes from Contemporary Latin American Fiction Prader-Wilis syndrome Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments: A Memoir N. Pino Luna The other pink slime Trías, El monte de las furias Plumsock Endowed Residency, Yaddo Artist’s Community (the residency that Trías briefly names toward the end of the conversation) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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    54 m
  • Joanna Miller, "The Eights" (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2025)

    Joanna Miller, "The Eights" (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2025)
    May 7 2025
    Joanna Miller’s The Eights (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2025) follows four women attending the University of Oxford in 1920. They are not the first female university students in the United Kingdom, or even the first who can hope to attain a degree, but they are the first class of women who can, if they fulfill all the requirements, attain a university degree from Oxford. Perhaps unsurprisingly, not everyone on the campus regards their presence as a plus. Views of women as lightheaded, emotionally unstable creatures incapable of mastering sophisticated thought or living without male guidance have begun to fade since the Great War of 1914–1918, but they continue to influence popular thinking. Unlike the men, women students live under strict restrictions against partying or even entertaining male visitors who are not blood relatives. Defy the rules, and they risk being “sent down” (suspended, in effect) or even dismissed from the program altogether. So what brings the four heroines to Oxford? Each has her own story, much of which becomes obvious only later in the book. Beatrice Sparks, the daughter of a suffragette, considers herself unattractive and unlikely to find a husband; Ottoline Wallace-Kerr, known as Otto, is fleeing a family bent on marrying her off to the first man who asks; Theodora (Dora) Greenwood lost her brother, then her fiancé, in France and doesn’t quite know how to go on; Marianne Grey must make her own way in the world. Together, they are known as the Eights, because they live on Corridor Eight. Although different in character, background, and interests, the four women bond, helping one another cope with the challenges that face them, individually and collectively. These include Oxford, of course, but also the lingering effects of the Great War, their personal situations, and the challenges that face most twenty-somethings as they struggle to define their place in the world. As they do, they draw us in and make us root for them to succeed—and what else would we want from a novel? Joanna Miller, a poet and former teacher, is a graduate of Oxford University’s Exeter College, as well as the university’s teacher training and creative writing programs. The Eights is her debut novel. C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her next book, Song of the Steadfast, will be released in June 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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    43 m
  • Kyle Flemmer, "Supergiants" (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025)

    Kyle Flemmer, "Supergiants" (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025)
    May 6 2025
    In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Calgary poet Kyle Flemmer about his collection of poetry, Supergiants (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025). For millennia humanity has looked upwards and traced stories in the night sky, projecting our human wants and desires outward. In Supergiants, Kyle Flemmer turns his gaze in the other direction. What does our reach for the stars say about us? Working with the technical language of engineering and astrophysics, Flemmer reorients the reader within our galaxy. Families of asteroids expand to contain their physical attributes, the mythic stories of their names and the histories of real people. We see the course of lunar exploration through the fate of the flags planted on each mission. Nebulae, blue giants and black holes enfold us. Interspersed throughout are a series of found/collage poems that visually reconfigure the elements of space exploration and our understanding of it. Through it all, Flemmer shows how we turn to the stars to make sense of ourselves and our place in the universe. About Kyle Flemmer: Kyle Flemmer is a writer, publisher, and digital media artist from Calgary in Treaty 7 territory. He founded The Blasted Tree Publishing Co. in 2014 and released his first book, Barcode Poetry, in 2021. Flemmer is the author of many chapbooks and his work has appeared in anthologies and exhibitions in Canada and abroad. Supergiants is Kyle's first trade book of poetry, and his next, The Wiki of Babel, is forthcoming from the University of Calgary Press. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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    31 m
  • Lauren K. Watel, "Book of Potions" (Sarabande Books, 2024)

    Lauren K. Watel, "Book of Potions" (Sarabande Books, 2024)
    May 1 2025
    Lauren k. Watel's Book of Potions (Sarabande Books, 2025) is the winner of the 2023 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, selected by Ilya Kaminsky. Written with tremendous urgency and ferocious candor, the prose poems of Book of Potions captures a woman caught in the middle of life: no longer young, not yet old, trapped between generations, locked in stereotyped roles and stultifying social norms, confined by other people's expectations and their projections of what a woman should be. By turns enraged, funny, frustrated, astute and joyful, these short hybrid pieces (potion = poem + fiction) combine the lyric compression of poetry with the narrative expansiveness of prose. Readers will meander, spellbound, through a wildly imaginative dream world of fairy-tale landscapes, allegorical insights, social satire, thought experiments and vivid surreal imagery, scenes of otherworldly strangeness and haunting beauty. These potions are elixirs in language, some healing, some poisonous, all magical. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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    37 m
  • Linda Trinh, "Seeking Spirit: A Vietnamese (Non) Buddhist Memoir" (Miroland, 2025)

    Linda Trinh, "Seeking Spirit: A Vietnamese (Non) Buddhist Memoir" (Miroland, 2025)
    Apr 30 2025
    Join NBN host Hollay Ghadery for a thought-provoking conversation with Linda Trihn about her memoir, Seeking Spirit: A Vietnamese (Non)Buddhist Memoir (Miroland, 2025). Linda Trinh had everything she thought an immigrant woman should want: motherhood, career, and security. Yet, she felt empty. Growing up in Winnipeg, Linda helped her mom make offerings to their ancestors and cleaned her late dad’s altar. These were her mother’s beliefs, but was Buddhism Linda’s belief? In her late-twenties, Linda sought answers in Egypt and China and prayed during corporate downsizing, seeking meaning in contemporary life. Via a collection of essays, she plays with form and structure to show the interconnection of life events, trauma, and spiritual practice, to move from being a passive believer to an active seeker. About Linda Trinh: Linda Trinh is a Vietnamese Canadian author who writes nonfiction and fiction for adults and children. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in literary magazines such as The Fiddlehead, Room, Prairie Fire, and This Magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as Black Cat anthology and Alternate Plains: Stories of Prairie Speculative Fiction. She has been nominated for two National Magazine Awards. Her award-winning early chapter book series, The Nguyen Kids, explores Vietnamese culture and identity with elements of the supernatural, spirituality, and social justice woven in. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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    38 m
  • John Copenhaver, "Hall of Mirrors" (Pegasus Crime, 2025)

    John Copenhaver, "Hall of Mirrors" (Pegasus Crime, 2025)
    Apr 29 2025
    Hall of Mirrors (Pegasus Crime 2025) was selected as a New York Times Crime Novel of the Year. It opens with a fire – it’s May 1954 and Lionel Kane is watching his apartment go up in flames with his lover and writing partner Roger Raymond trapped inside. The police are sure that it’s a suicide. A couple of months earlier, Judy and Philippa attend a lecture by Ray Kane, one of their favorite mystery authors, and help him when he starts to look unwell. He’s a little off, newly fired from his State Department job because of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s purge of communists and homosexuals. A few months earlier, with hopes that he’d write about it, Judy and Philippa sent Ray Kane an anonymous packet of details about Adrian Bogdan, the spy and serial killer they’d been hunting for years, but they don’t know that Adrian was responsible for Ray Kane’s firing. After the lecture, they learn that “Ray Kane” is the pen name for Roger and Lionel, and Roger is the author’s public face because Lionel is Black. Lionel has two strikes against him; gay and Black, and Judy also has a few challenges; she’s mixed race, also gay, she has a personal connection to the serial killer, and the FBI is trying to stop her from learning the truth. John Copenhaver’s debut novel, Dodging and Burning, won the 2019 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery, and The Savage Kind earned the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ Mystery. A passionate advocate for queer voices in crime fiction, Copenhaver is a founding member of Queer Crime Writers and currently serves on the board of International Thriller Writers. He mentors aspiring writers in the Low-Residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska and teaches creative writing and literature at Virginia Commonwealth University. He lives in Richmond, Virginia, with his husband, artist Jeffery Paul Herrity. When he's not writing or teaching, he's watching movies—and listening to them. Copenhaver has a passion for film scores and a collection of rare scores he's been curating since high school. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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    30 m
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