Michael spoke with R.H. Thomson: actor, director, playwright, and author of By The Ghost Light: Wars, Memory, and Families. Part memoir, part travelogue, part history, it’s a thoughtful and impassioned consideration of war and the stories we tell one another about it R.H. Thomson on viewing wars by the light of family history

In January of 2023 our host and producer Nathan Maharaj spoke with Kai Thomas, author of the novel In the Upper Country. It's a story set in the fictional Canadian town of Dunmore, a place where people fleeing slavery in the southern United States build new lives. In our roundup of the best books we read in 2023, Nathan called out In the Upper Country as the book that stayed with him the whole year and which he most wants to read again. And this past November, In the Upper Country won the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. So for all of those reasons, plus it's Black History Month, we're replaying that conversation for you. We'll be back with all-new episodes soon.

Nathan spoke with novelist Ashley Audrain, author of the 2021 international bestseller The Push. Her new book The Whispers is a story about marriage, mothers and motherhood and parenthood generally, and also women’s rage. Ashley Audrain on bringing rage from the group chat to the page

You can't possibly need more reading recommendations after our last episode featuring the best books read by the staff of Kobo in 2023 but we've never let the height of anybody's TBR pile stop us from singing the praises of our favourite books. Here are a few more, including one you absolutely must read ASAP—plus co-hosts Michael and Nathan talk about what made 2023 a different kind of year in books and why they're optimistic about what's coming next.   The best books we read in 2023

We connected with the staff of Kobo over Zoom and in our brand new studio in our new office to ask them about the best books they read in 2023. We learned what made Rebecca Ross a must-read author this year, how one staff member found the right book for remembering his rockstar friend, and what well-known series of thrillers one of our best-read colleagues wishes they'd gotten around to years ago.   The best books we read in 2023

Michael spoke with journalist and human rights advocate Rowan Jetté Knox, author of the 2019 memoir Love Lives Here: A Story of Thriving in a Transgender Family, as well as a new memoir that came out this year: One Sunny Afternoon: A Memoir of Trauma and Healing. Rowan Jetté Knox on learning from hard times

Michael spoke with Mohawk writer and editor, Alicia Elliott, author of an award-winning book of essays, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, and a new novel, And Then She Fell. It is the story of a young woman named Alice experiencing the stress of new motherhood, feeling isolated in Toronto, which feels far away, culturally more than physically, from where she grew up on Six Nations. There she's trying to carve out time for writing and keeping up appearances as the wife of a rising academic star. Alicia Elliott on telling the truth through the lens of fiction

Nathan joined Giller Prize-winning novelist Sean Michaels on stage at the Toronto International Festival of Authors to talk about his new novel Do You Remember Being Born? and the role of technology in the creation of art—from automated spellchecking to ChatGPT. Sean Michaels, live at TIFA 2023

Nathan welcomed Waubgeshig Rice to the Kobo studio to talk about the sequel to his 2018 novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, the story of an Anishinaabe community slowly realizing that what at first appeared to be a power outage might be the end of the world as we know it. In Moon of the Turning Leaves the community realizes their time in this place may be at an end, so they send out a band of walkers to find them a new home. Waubgeshig Rice on finding renewal at the end of the world

Michael spoke with writer and activist Naomi Klein, author of highly influential and bestselling books including No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, and the new book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. Like all of her books, it’s an accessible yet complex work of socioeconomic and political criticism... but it’s also funny, at times disturbing, deeply rooted in its author’s personal experience, but for any of us that spend time online or with a steady diet of media, it can feel joltingly familiar. Naomi Klein on what she sees in "the mirror world"