Show Notes
My guest on this episode is Karen Solie. Karen is the author of the poetry collections Short Haul Engine, Modern and Normal, Pigeon, The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out, and The Caiplie Caves–which have won her the Dorothy Livesay Award, the Pat Lowther Award, the Trillium Poetry Prize, and the Griffin Prize. Her most recent collection, Wellwater, was published by House of Anansi in 2025. It won the Governor General's Award For Poetry, the Forward Prize, and the T.S. Eliot Prize. It was also named a book of the year by the Guardian, the Financial Times, the CBC, and the Observer. The Times Literary Supplement called the book “authoritative and unforgettable.”
Karen and I talk about how little stress she felt going into T.S. Eliot Prize event, mostly because she assumed she had very little chance of winning, about the joy of using the prize money to pay off her credit card debt, and about her plans for her next book, which may see her taking a break from poetry.
This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus. Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books
My guest on this episode is Rachel Deutsch. Rachel is a writer, cartoonist, and illustrator whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, PRISM, The Pinch, McSweeney’s, Mother Tongue, Mutha Magazine, and in the popular newsletter ParentData by author Emily Oster. Her first book is the graphic memoir The Mother, published in 2025 by Douglas & McIntyre. Author Ashley Audrain called the book “profound, candid and wonderfully witty,” and “a tender self-reflection about the tumbling journey through early motherhood.”
My guest on this episode is Thea Lim. Thea is a novelist and culture writer whose work has appeared in The Nation, the Paris Review, Guernica, The Guardian, Granta, The Walrus, and elsewhere. Her debut book was the novel The Same Woman, and her most recent is the novel An Ocean of Minutes, which was published by Penguin Canada in 2018 and was nominated for Canada Reads, the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award, the ALA Reading List for Science Fiction, the Giller Prize, and the Sunburst Award. The Irish Times called it “a timely novel that brings a fresh perspective on the complex subjects of migration and displacement that plague our world today.”
My guest on this episode is Susan Holbrook. Susan is an author and poet whose works include ink earl, Throaty Wipes, Joy Is So Exhausting, and misled. She is also the author of How to Read (and Write About) Poetry and edited Intertidal: Daphne Marlatt - The Collected Earlier Poems and The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson: Composition as Conversation. Her work has been nominated for numerous awards, including the Governor General's Award, the Trillium Book Award, the Trillium Award for Poetry, and the Pat Lowther Award. Her most recent book is Steamy: A Menopause Symptomology, published by Coach House Books in 2025. That book was shortlisted for a Warland Award. Author Suzette Mayr called it “a refreshing, irreverent, no-effs-left-to-give exploration and meditation on what it means to grow older and go through menopause.”
My guest on this episode is Stephen R. Bown. Stephen is an author and historian whose books have been translated into nine languages and have won the BC Book Prize, the Alberta Book Award, the William Mills Prize for Polar Books, among others. His 2020 book, The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire, won the J.W. Defoe Book Prize and the National Business Book Award. His most recent book is Dominion: The Railway and the Rise of Canada, published by Doubleday Canada in 2023. That book was a national bestseller and was named a Best Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail, History Today and The Hill Times. The Literary Review of Canada said that “at a time when too many writers and readers are turning away from historical non-fiction, Dominion reminds us that Canadian history is nothing to be afraid of.”
My guest on this episode is Katrina Onstad. Katrina is the author of three novels and one non-fiction book. Her books have been nominated for the Giller Prize and a Toronto Book Award. Her journalism, which has won several National Magazine Awards, has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Toronto Life, Elle, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, and elsewhere. She recently began creating podcasts, including the award-winning series Don’t Listen to Us with Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody. Katrina’s most recent book is the novel Stay Where I Can See You, published by HarperCollins Canada in 2020. That novel won an award for Best Crime Writing in Canada, and the Toronto Star called it “a fine piece of storytelling from one of Toronto’s most versatile writers.”