Show Notes
Season 1, Episode 14 How Photography Helps Rawi Hage Tell Stories This week we dive into the world of fiction, and we’re in conversation with award-winning writer Rawi Hage. Born in Beirut, he lived in Lebanon through the civil war in the 1970s and then immigrated to Canada in 1992. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, and you might know him for acclaimed novels such as De Niro’s Game, Cockroach, and Beirut Hellfire Society.
Hage recently released his first collection of short stories, Stray Dogs. In the May issue of The Walrus, we featured the story “The Wave.” Hage recently sat down with Jessica Johnson, the editor-in-chief at The Walrus, to talk about his latest book, being a political writer, and identity.
Links: Hear more about JS Rutger’s story about housing inequality: thewalrus.ca/podcasts-the-deep-dive-s1e2/ Read an excerpt from Rawi Hage’s new short story collection: thewalrus.ca/the-wave/ thewalrus.ca/im-not-your-kind-of-muslim/ thewalrus.ca/ok-ok-blue-jays/ spoon-tamago.com/2022/04/13/koenji-writing-cafe/
Credits: Thanks for joining us on this week’s episode of The Deep Dive. It was produced by Sheena Rossiter and myself with editing help from Simran Singh.
Thanks so much to Rawi Hage for joining us this week and to Jessica Johnson for doing the interview.
Music for this podcast is provided by Audio Jungle. Our theme song is “This Podcast Theme” by Inplus Music. Additional music includes “Stay Cool” by Loops Lab, “Podcast Intro” by Inplus Music, “Floating Cities” by David MacLeod, and “Oh My” by Patrick Patrikios.
More from The Deep Dive from The Walrus
Two former voices from The Walrus—Tajja Isen, the former digital editor, now editor-in-chief at Catapult magazine, and digital director Angela Misri, who by the time this episode is available will have moved on to Toronto Metropolitan University as its newest assistant professor. Misri talked to Isen about her new book, Some of my Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service. It’s an essay collection about race, justice, and the limits of good intentions. Tajja Isen is also the co-editor of the essay anthology The World As We Knew It: Dispatches from a Changing Climate. Some of My Best Friends is her debut essay collection. Angela Misri is a novelist and digital journalist based in Toronto. In this episode: Isen describes why she wrote this book and the journey she marked through writing it. Then Isen talks about the baggage people bring to the books they read and how she approached writing the nine essays in the collection. Isen then describes the toughest and easiest chapters to write and why absolution is a theme that shows up throughout. Isen also talks about the publishing industry and fighting the impulse to pigeonhole a book on a shelf or genre that is more than one thing. Finally, Isen gives some advice for new writers. Links: Why Success in Canada Means Moving to America
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