Writers and Company
259 episodes - English - Latest episode: 7 days ago - ★★★★★ - 182 ratingsCBC Radio's Writers and Company offers an opportunity to explore in depth the lives, thoughts and works of remarkable writers from around the world. Hosted by Eleanor Wachtel.
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Episodes
Laurie Anderson on language, story and losing her archives to Hurricane Sandy
July 07, 2024 04:10 - 52 minutes - 48.2 MBIn 2018, Eleanor Wachtel went to New York City to interview one of North America's most renowned and daring creative pioneers, Laurie Anderson. The multimedia artist and musician had just published her retrospective book, All the Things I Lost in the Flood, inspired by the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which destroyed Anderson's archive of work and memorabilia. In this career-spanning and deeply personal conversation, she talks about the connection between story and memory, growing...
Tony Kushner on his evolution as a storyteller, from Angels in America to The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide
June 30, 2024 04:10 - 52 minutes - 47.8 MBThis week, for Pride season, the Oscar-nominated playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner. Known most recently for his movie collaborations with Steven Spielberg, including Lincoln, Westside Story and The Fablemans, Kushner's breakout hit was his epic play Angels in America, the winner of multiple Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize, among many other awards. Fuelled by the AIDS crisis and Reaganism in the 1980s, the play was made into an opera and an HBO miniseries starring Meryl Streep, Al Pacino an...
Claire Messud on the stories and secrets of a French Algerian family in The Last Life
June 23, 2024 04:10 - 50 minutes - 46.8 MBThis week, American Canadian novelist Claire Messud. Throughout her career and in her new book, This Strange Eventful History, one of TIME’s most anticipated of 2024, Messud draws on her own family's history, especially that of her French Algerian father. In 2001 she spoke with Eleanor about her novel The Last Life, which traces three generations of a French Algerian family from the perspective of a teenage girl. To conclude the program, Messud reads a chapter from the novel.
Biographer Nicholas Murray reflects on Kafka's life — this month is the 100th anniversary of his death
June 16, 2024 04:10 - 52 minutes - 48.6 MBIn honour of the centenary of the death of Franz Kafka, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, Eleanor Wachtel revisits her 2005 conversation with one of his biographers, Nicholas Murray.
Jenny Erpenbeck, winner of the International Booker Prize 2024, on The End of Days and personal transformations
June 09, 2024 04:10 - 53 minutes - 49.1 MBGermany's Jenny Erpenbeck is the winner of the International Booker Prize 2024 for her novel Kairos, translated by Michael Hofmann. She spoke with Eleanor Wachtel, who chaired the International Booker Prize jury, in 2015 about The End of Days, an imaginative story that spans the 20th century through the eyes of a character who lives multiple versions of her life. Erpenbeck also reflects on her own childhood, growing up in a literary family in East Berlin before the fall of the Wall, and the ...
Hari Kunzru on race, politics and the blues
June 02, 2024 04:10 - 53 minutes - 49.1 MBThe British born author moved to New York in 2008 to write a book set in sixteenth-century India. But he was drawn to write about America, focusing on life in the city and the Mojave Desert in his two novels White Tears and Gods Without Men. Hari Kunzru spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2017 from New York
How using her imagination saved Scottish author Jackie Kay
May 26, 2024 04:10 - 52 minutes - 48.2 MBJackie Kay’s adoption as a baby, and investigation into her birth parents — a Nigerian father and Scottish mother — give her an original take on Scotland and cultural identity. Jackie Kay talked about her uncomfortable discoveries upon meeting her birth parents, as well as her two books, Wish I Was Here and Darling: New and Selected Poems, when she met with Eleanor Wachtel at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh in 2007.
Alice Munro on writing about life, love, sex and secrets
May 19, 2024 04:10 - 52 minutes - 48.2 MBIn 2004, just before she won the Scotiabank Giller Prize (for the second time) for her story collection, Runaway, Alice Munro met Eleanor Wachtel at a restaurant near the author's home to discuss her new book, her interest in writing about infidelity and sex and her life growing up in Wingham, Ontario. The acclaimed Canadian short story writer, and Canada's first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, died on May 13, 2024.
Chance, fate and fiction: looking back at American novelist and filmmaker Paul Auster
May 12, 2024 04:10 - 55 minutes - 51.2 MBPaul Auster spoke with Eleanor Wachtel about his novel Oracle Night, the ways in which reality and fiction blend and how coincidences shape our lives at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal in 2004. The writer of The New York Trilogy, Leviathan and 4 3 2 1, among many other books, was best known for his postmodernist fiction and meta-narratives. He died on April 30, 2024. He was 77.
Looking back on American sculptor Richard Serra and how he became the Man of Steel
May 05, 2024 04:10 - 52 minutes - 48.5 MBFrom his childhood in San Francisco's sand dunes to sitting in French cafes with Philip Glass and Samuel Beckett, Richard Serra reflects on his life and work during a 2011 conversation with Eleanor Wachtel. Best known for his evocative and monumental steel structures, you can find Serra's sculptural works all over the world, including his piece Titled Spheres in Toronto Pearson Airport. Serra died in March. He was 85.
Poet Raymond Antrobus on hearing, seeing and grieving through verse
April 28, 2024 04:10 - 59 minutes - 54.3 MBThis week on Writers and Company, British poet Raymond Antrobus. Antrobus spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2019 about his collection, The Perseverance, which explores his complicated relationship with his late father and growing up deaf.
Colm Toibin on the unspoken and powerful dynamics between mothers and sons
April 21, 2024 04:10 - 53 minutes - 49 MBThis week, Irish novelist Colm Toibin discusses his short story collection, Mothers and Sons, which explores the unspoken and shifting dynamics in these relationships. Toibin is the author of Brooklyn, which was made into an Oscar-nominated feature film starring Saoirse Ronan, as well as Nora Webster, The Magician and more. His latest novel, Long Island, is the sequel to Brooklyn.
Alice Oswald on poetry, nature and the shedding of identity
April 14, 2024 04:10 - 52 minutes - 48.4 MBTo celebrate poetry month, a conversation with one of England’s greatest living poets, Alice Oswald. Winner of the 2017 international Griffin Poetry Prize for her book Falling Awake, Oswald's work explores the relationship between human life and the natural world. Her latest title, Nobody, is a book-length poem inspired by Homer’s Odyssey.
The beautiful, melancholy world of Anita Desai
April 07, 2024 04:10 - 58 minutes - 53.5 MBThis week on Writers and Company, Anita Desai — one of India's most celebrated and successful writers. Over the course of her career, which spans five decades, Desai has written several novels and has been nominated for the Booker Prize three times. Eleanor Wachtel spoke to her on stage at Montreal's Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in 2017, where she received the Grand Prix for lifetime achievement. Desai's latest book, Rosarita, is forthcoming from Picador Press. This inte...
James Runcie on the beauty, sorrow and genius of Johann Sebastian Bach
March 31, 2024 04:10 - 59 minutes - 54.4 MBJames Runcie's novel, The Great Passion, imagines a year in the life of Johann Sebastian Bach, culminating with the first performance of his St. Matthew Passion in Leipzig, Germany during Easter 1727. Told through the eyes of a fictional, 13-year-old student, it explores the man behind the legendary composer: an ambitious working musician and father of eight, coping with grief and loss, through faith and music. This interview originally aired June 12, 2022.
How Hisham Matar's writing reflects life under dictatorship and the pain of his father's abduction
March 24, 2024 04:10 - 56 minutes - 51.4 MBThis week, two conversations with the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir The Return. In 2011, Libyan British author Hisham Matar spoke with Eleanor Wachtel about his childhood living under Gadhafi’s dictatorship and the search for his father, a political dissident who was imprisoned. Then, from 2020, Matar reflects on his memoir The Return and his book A Month in Siena, which explores the relationship between history, art and grief. Please note: this episode contains difficult subje...
Irish writers Michael Collins, Claire Keegan, Colum McCann and Nuala O'Faolain reflect on home and away
March 17, 2024 04:10 - 52 minutes - 48.2 MBThis week on Writers and Company from the Archives, Irish authors Michael Collins, Claire Keegan, Colum McCann and Nuala O'Faolain. They spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2003 onstage at the Victoria Literary Arts Festival.
Catherine Lacey imagines a character without race or gender in her novel, Pew
March 10, 2024 05:10 - 55 minutes - 50.6 MBThe American novelist and short story writer talked to Eleanor Wachtel about growing up in Mississippi and her novel, Pew, which follows a mysterious stranger who makes a big impact on a small town in the American South. This interview originally aired February 28, 2021.
Martin Amis on The Zone of Interest and Primo Levi’s unshakeable influence
March 03, 2024 05:10 - 56 minutes - 51.5 MBThis week, two conversations with Martin Amis, one of England’s most engaged and provocative writers. In 2014, Amis spoke with Eleanor Wachtel about his novel The Zone of Interest, which focuses on the Holocaust from a different angle. Its screen adaptation is nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture. Followed by a conversation from 2019 about the Italian Jewish chemist, Holocaust survivor and writer, Primo Levi — whose work greatly inspired Amis’s writing — featuring Levi's biograp...
James McBride on the complicated history of race in the United States
February 25, 2024 05:10 - 52 minutes - 48.4 MBAmerican novelist and musician James McBride is best known for his bestselling memoir, The Color of Water – about his immigrant Jewish mother and Black American father. In 2013, McBride won the National Book Award for his novel The Good Lord Bird - an irreverent portrayal of abolitionist John Brown. Eleanor Wachtel’s conversation with James McBride about these two books, and his life, first aired in 2014.
How writer and scholar Anne Carson used elegy to piece together fragments of her late brother
February 18, 2024 05:10 - 53 minutes - 49.2 MBThis week on Writers and Company from the Archives, Canadian poet, essayist, Greek and Latin scholar and librettist, Anne Carson. The author of Autobiography of Red and its sequel Red Doc> is also the first and only two-time winner of the Griffin Prize for Poetry. She spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2011 about her book Nox — an elegy to her brother and a moving reflection on absence
Xiaolu Guo traces her unlikely journey from a rural Chinese fishing village to life in London as a writer
February 11, 2024 05:10 - 52 minutes - 48.3 MBNovelist, memoirist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo discusses her memoir, Nine Continents, which traces her life from a Chinese fishing village to Beijing and England. It won the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award. Guo spoke to Eleanor in 2018 about transforming her past into vivid art and literature. In 2023, she published a new memoir called Radical: A Life of My Own. WARNING: This discussion deals with suicide.
The incomparable Philip Roth: looking back on his life in fiction
February 04, 2024 05:10 - 54 minutes - 50.3 MBLooking back on Philip Roth, one of the most celebrated American writers, who died in 2018, aged 85. From Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy’s Complaint to The Plot Against America — Roth’s legacy lives on. He spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2009 about his early success, coping with fame and controversy, and the evolution of his writing... and his life.
Alain Mabanckou on his profound connection to the Republic of the Congo
January 28, 2024 05:10 - 52 minutes - 48.4 MBThe celebrated Congolese-French writer joined Eleanor Wachtel onstage at the Vancouver Writers Festival in 2016. Mabanckou's recent books are charming explorations of childhood, family and country. His memoir The Lights of Pointe-Noire relates his experience of returning to his hometown after 23 years, while his novel Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty captures his childhood spirit in the character of his 10-year-old alter ego.
The enduring magic of The Little Prince: with Stacy Schiff, Mark Osborne and Éric Dupont
January 21, 2024 05:10 - 1 hour - 55.5 MBThis week on Writers & Company from the archives, celebrating a classic that’s also one of the most translated books in the world: Le Petit Prince or The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Biographer Stacy Schiff, filmmaker Mark Osborne and novelist Éric Dupont joined Eleanor Wachtel for the book's 75th anniversary in 2018 to reflect on its enduring appeal.
Elizabeth Jane Howard looks back on learning, love and her marriage to Kingsley Amis
January 14, 2024 05:10 - 51 minutes - 47.5 MBBest known for her Cazalet Chronicles and a dozen other books, English novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard turned to her own life in her memoir, Slipstream. In the book, and in this conversation with Eleanor Wachtel from 2003, she reflects on her difficult upbringing in London in the 1920s and '30s, on her first marriage during the Second World War, and shares her account of her widely discussed breakup with renowned writer Kingsley Amis. Howard died 10 years ago, aged 90.
How fighting for Indigenous rights shaped Alexis Wright as a storyteller
January 07, 2024 05:10 - 51 minutes - 47.1 MBAustralia's most celebrated Indigenous author Alexis Wright spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2009 about her award-winning novel Carpentaria. Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Her new novel, Praiseworthy, will be published in Canada in February.
Dionne Brand, Margaret Drabble, Deborah Eisenberg & Andrew O'Hagan reflect on life and writing
December 31, 2023 05:10 - 53 minutes - 48.7 MBThis week, to strike a celebratory note, an encore presentation of Writers & Company's 20th anniversary special with acclaimed writers Dionne Brand, Margaret Drabble, Deborah Eisenberg and Andrew O'Hagan. They joined host Eleanor Wachtel onstage at the Toronto International Festival of Authors in 2010. *This interview originally aired Oct. 31, 2010.
Nobel Prize-winner Seamus Heaney on the place of politics in poetry
December 24, 2023 05:10 - 52 minutes - 48.2 MBWinner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, Irish poet Seamus Heaney died ten years ago when he was 74. Known for poems that engage with the immediacy of the natural world and its physicality, Heaney spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2010 about his book Human Chain. It won UK's £10,000 Forward Prize, among Heaney's many other honours. *This interview originally aired May 23, 2010.
How writing helped Lore Segal survive a traumatic wartime childhood
December 17, 2023 05:10 - 52 minutes - 48.4 MBAt 95, Lore Segal has been writing for almost sixty years. The author of Other People's Houses, Half the Kingdom and Shakespeare's Kitchen, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Segal's latest book is called Ladies' Lunch and Other Stories. It's been named a New Yorker Best Book of the Year. *This interview originally aired Oct. 20, 2013.
A virtuoso of the short story, Lydia Davis's work is surprising and memorable
December 10, 2023 05:10 - 52 minutes - 47.8 MBLydia Davis has been called "one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction." Her 2007 short story collection, Varieties of Disturbance, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Davis's newest title, Our Strangers, contains 144 short stories in 300 pages. Lydia Davis spoke to Eleanor Wachtel on stage at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal. *This interview originally aired June 10, 2007.
In her prizewinning fiction, Sigrid Nunez deals with life — and death — with empathy and wit
December 03, 2023 05:10 - 1 hour - 57.1 MBWARNING: This discussion deals with suicide. Sigrid Nunez's eighth title, The Friend, won the 2018 U.S. National Book Award. Hailed as "a subtle, unassuming masterpiece," it follows a woman grieving the death of her friend as she cares for his 180-pound Great Dane. Nunez followed it with What Are You Going Through, which was named a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2020. Her new novel, The Vulnerables, takes place during the early days of Covid lockdown. *This interview originally aired on...
Looking back at A.S. Byatt, the celebrated English novelist and imaginative intellectual
November 26, 2023 05:10 - 54 minutes - 50 MBIn honour of novelist and critic A.S. Byatt, who died on November 16, Writers & Company revisits her 2009 interview with Eleanor Wachtel, recorded live at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal. Byatt was there to launch her novel, The Children's Book, and to receive the festival's $10,000 Grand Prix. *Please note this interview includes reference to suicide. It originally aired on May 24, 2009.
Nora Krug asks tough questions about her German family's wartime past
November 19, 2023 05:10 - 1 hour - 56.1 MBIn 2019, Eleanor Wachtel spoke to German-American graphic artist Nora Krug about her award-winning illustrated memoir, Belonging. It's a powerful and compassionate investigation into Krug's family's involvement in the Second World War and the impact of history on successive generations. Her new book, Diaries of War: Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine and Russia, is a real-time, personal record from a Ukrainian journalist and an anti-war Russian artist, which Krug solicited and then illustrated....
Vietnam veteran Tim O'Brien on fictionalizing his war stories
November 12, 2023 05:10 - 50 minutes - 46.1 MBWARNING: This discussion deals with suicide. In late 1994, Eleanor Wachtel spoke to award-winning author and Vietnam War veteran Tim O'Brien. He's the author of such acclaimed books as Going After Cacciato, The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods. O'Brien new novel – his first in 20 years – is called America Fantastica. *This interview originally aired on Jan. 15, 1995.
Jesmyn Ward on exploring the stories of America's South
November 05, 2023 04:10 - 52 minutes - 48.5 MBJesmyn Ward's novel, Salvage the Bones, is an intimate and compelling look at Hurricane Katrina and the American South. It won the National Book award in 2011. Following the success of Salvage the Bones, Ward released her memoir, Men We Reaped, which examines her experiences with racism, the absence of her father and the death of her younger brother. Her new novel, Let Us Descend, follows an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War. *This interview originally aired on Sept. 28, 2014.
Jeanette Winterson brings humour and understanding to a fraught childhood
October 29, 2023 04:10 - 52 minutes - 48.6 MBWARNING: This discussion deals with suicide. England's Jeanette Winterson reflects on her childhood and explores her search for love and belonging in her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?. Winterson is the author of the hit, semi-autobiographical novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Her latest book, Night Side of the River, is a collection of ghost stories. *This interview originally aired in 2012.
How John Grisham turned his passion for justice into bestselling legal thrillers
October 22, 2023 04:10 - 52 minutes - 48.2 MBJohn Grisham's novel The Reckoning re-imagines a story the author encountered more than 30 years ago about a murder in small-town Mississippi. It centres on Pete, a cotton farmer returning from the Second World War, and the mystery surrounding his motive for killing the local pastor. *This interview originally aired Mar. 24, 2019.
Viet Thanh Nguyen on redefining what it means to be a refugee
October 15, 2023 04:10 - 52 minutes - 48.5 MBViet Thanh Nguyen's 2016 novel, The Sympathizer, tells the story of a Communist Party spy who escapes Saigon and goes to California, where he leads a double life as an intimate of a former South Vietnamese general. It won the Pulitzer Prize and was on more than 30 'best book of the year' lists. Nguyen's new title is an unconventional memoir called A Man of Two Faces. *This interview originally aired Oct. 2, 2016.
Anne Enright on her Booker-winning novel, The Gathering, and how Canada helped make her a writer
October 08, 2023 04:10 - 51 minutes - 46.8 MBThe former inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction, Anne Enright won the 2008 Man Booker Prize for her novel The Gathering, which revolves around the tragic death of a young man inside a large family, told from the perspective of his grieving sister. Enright's new title, The Wren, The Wren, has been called perhaps her best novel yet. *This interview originally aired Feb. 3, 2008. Please note it contains some discussion of suicide.
Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin on her legendary career and the power of storytelling
October 01, 2023 04:10 - 53 minutes - 49 MBAcclaimed Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin has dedicated her life to telling the stories of Indigenous peoples. She's made more than 50 films with the National Film Board of Canada, including the landmark documentaries Christmas at Moose Factory, Incident at Restigouche and Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, and has been called "the most important filmmaker in the history of Canada." In 2008, Eleanor Wachtel spoke to Obomsawin at her home in Montreal.
Chinese writer Yan Ge finds solace in creating literary worlds
September 24, 2023 04:10 - 1 hour - 60.8 MBFiction writer Yan Ge is a literary sensation in China, where she was named one of her country's "future literary masters." Her novel, translated as Strange Beasts of China, is a mysterious, imaginative tale about mythological creatures who live alongside humans. Her latest book, Elsewhere, is a collection of short stories and Ge's first book written in English. *This episode originally aired Feb. 13, 2022.
Novelist Sebastian Barry explores the personal stories behind Ireland's political history
September 17, 2023 04:10 - 53 minutes - 48.7 MBThe former laureate for Irish fiction, Sebastian Barry writes richly invented stories inspired by people in his own family – from his grandfather in the 2014 novel, The Temporary Gentleman, to Days Without End about his grandfather's uncle. His latest novel, Old God's Time, is on the longlist for this year's Booker Prize. Eleanor Wachtel has spoken to Barry many times over the years, starting in 2008 with his novel The Secret Scripture, about a 100-year-old woman forcibly confined to a psychi...
Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland examines moral choice in an immoral world
September 10, 2023 04:10 - 53 minutes - 48.8 MBAgnieszka Holland is perhaps best known for her films Europa Europa, Angry Harvest and In Darkness, as well as adaptations of The Secret Garden and Washington Square. Her latest film, Green Border, about the Syrian refugee crisis along Poland's border with Belarus, is having its North American premiere at TIFF. In 2013, she spoke to Eleanor Wachtel about her three-part series, Burning Bush, set during the Prague Spring. *This episode originally aired Dec. 17, 2013.
Zadie Smith on writing, family and her addiction to reading
September 03, 2023 04:10 - 54 minutes - 49.9 MBEleanor Wachtel has spoken to the popular and critically acclaimed English writer Zadie Smith many times over the years, including in 2010 about her first non-fiction collection, Changing My Mind. It features essays about writers such as Franz Kafka, Vladimir Nabokov and George Eliot and touches on everything from the craft of writing to Smith’s love of films, as well as personal reflections about her family. *This episode originally aired on February 28, 2010.
John le Carré on his legacy as a spy-turned-novelist
August 27, 2023 04:10 - 1 hour - 62.4 MBIn this conversation from 2017, the master of the political thriller John le Carré spoke with Eleanor at his home in London about his novel A Legacy of Spies, which saw the return of his most famous character, the enigmatic British spy George Smiley. Carré talks about Smiley's enduring appeal, and about drawing on his own experience in Britain's intelligence service during the height of the Cold War for his bestselling fiction. John le Carré died in Dec. 2020 at the age of 89.
Oliver Sacks on how an unconventional childhood shaped his love of science
August 20, 2023 04:10 - 52 minutes - 48.3 MBKnown for his bestselling case studies The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings and An Anthropologist on Mars, British author and neurologist Oliver Sacks was one of a kind. Infused with enthusiasm and compassion, his writing explored the depths of human consciousness. Eleanor Wachtel spoke to Sacks in 2001 about his book, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. He died in 2015. He was 82 years old.
Toni Morrison on family bonds, race and coping with personal tragedy
August 13, 2023 04:10 - 52 minutes - 48.2 MBWhen Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, the Swedish Academy praised her for giving "life to an essential aspect of American reality," in novels "characterized by visionary force and poetic import." In this 2012 conversation, Morrison speaks with Eleanor Wachtel about her novels Home and A Mercy, as well as growing up in Ohio and the death of her son, Slade. Toni Morrison died in 2019. She was 88.
Acclaimed poet Mark Strand was known for meditative, spare verse that was anything but simple
August 06, 2023 04:10 - 50 minutes - 46.2 MBOne of the premier American poets of his generation, Mark Strand used precise, everyday language, humour and surreal imagery to describe the quiet anguish of life. A former poet laureate of the U.S., he won the Pulitzer Prize for his collection, Blizzard of One. In 1999, Mark Strand spoke to Eleanor Wachtel about summers spent in Nova Scotia, engaging with art and the language of love. He died in 2014. He was 80 years old.
Julian Barnes on love, loss and Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich
July 30, 2023 04:10 - 53 minutes - 48.6 MBEleanor Wachtel has spoken to the award-winning English writer Julian Barnes many times over the course of his lengthy career. In June 2016, he joined her onstage at the Bluma Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library to talk about his love of music, his novel The Noise of Time, about the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and dealing with death. *Please note this episode contains some discussion of suicide.