In this episode, Linda speaks about Shani Mootoo's Starry Starry Night (Book*hug Press), an auto-fictional work that confirms Mootoo’s exceptional talent, in its sophisticated narration and vivid delineation of scenes from a childhood in Trinidad. Mootoo traces the early life of Anju, roughly based on Mootoo’s own childhood, the heart-rending contours of that life – but, as she ruminated in their interview together, she approached those painful experiences with a sense of dispassionate observation and compassion, for herself and for others, documenting upon what is unfurling at every moment. And then she concludes, “It was all a gift.” Linda takes a moment in her introduction to reflect on the loss of her beloved cat, Pinky, and confirms - it was indeed all a gift, including this very special interview with Shani Mootoo.

In this discussion between Linda and the magnificent Eastern Townships of Quebec writer, Louise Penny, they are initially joined by her dogs, Muggins and Charlie (see our social media feed!). And, of course, the conversation was greatly enriched by her dogs’ vocal contributions. After a short and lively exchange with them, Louise and Linda turn to her most recent novels The Grey Wolf and The Black Wolf, which just came out in paperback in August, and The Last Mandarin (Macmillan; her second collaboration, this time with journalist Melissa Fung), which just came out in hardcover.

Penny really needs almost no introduction - but she is the author of the best-selling mystery series that features Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and has published over 20 novels, which have been translated into over 23 languages, sold millions of copies worldwide, and repeatedly reached number 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. In this episode, she and Linda discuss questions of democracy, rights, daily acts of kindness, decency, and love, and who really is the villain.

In this special bonus episode, Linda collaborates with the Association of English-language Publishers of Quebec (AELAQ) and the Quebec Writers' Federation (QWF) to draw attention to and celebrate Quebec Book Day (August 12th) by interviewing five authors about their four books (she says "four" authors in the episode, but Linda never claimed she could count well). The writers and books featured in this episode include:

• Raymond Biesinger and Nine Times my Work Has Been Ripped Off (Drawn & Quarterly, 1:20; 4:10)

• Kaie Kellough and Interposition (Random House, 2:00; 17.55)

• Derek Aronhie:nens Montour and Elin Sandberg Miller and Everyday Reconciliation (HarperCollins, 2:35; 30:53)

• Anita Rau Badami and Asha in her Garden (Knopf, 3:41; 45:47)

This is Getting Lit with Linda’s 100th episode – a real milestone! To mark this specific achievement, three scholars join Linda to speak about an historic author rather than a contemporary one: the magnificent Jane Rule. Born in 1936, she authored several short story collections, essays, and novels, including The Desert of the Heart (Talon), a landmark novel published in 1964 and made into a movie in 1985. The movie was titled Desert Hearts (2.10) directed by Donna Deitch. The three scholars are Marilyn Schuster, “the godmother of Jane Rule Studies” (3.00; author of Passionate Communities and A Queer Love Story, 14.15 ), Amber Dean (working on a second volume of Jane Rule’s letters exchanged with Rick Bébout, 14:18 ), and Cate Sandilands (completing a collection of stories, titled Dear Jane Rule). Why are they so enamored of her? You’ll have to listen to this episode to find out!

In this interview, award-winning poet, Farah Gahfoor, talks to Linda about Shadow Prize (House of Anansi), shortlisted for the Trillium Prizes this year (check out our social media for pics from the event!). Since Gahfoor invites her readers to pay closer attention to our immediate biospheres, Linda does just that – opening with observations about the natural microcosm of which she is a part (yep, squirrels are mentioned).

This is a very smart collection, that traverses subjects as far ranging as economics to the history of trees. Gahfoor invites her readers on that journey to remind them that they are not passive consumers but making decisions every day that highlight we have more power than we think -- and it all begins with where we focus our attention.

Anyone who knows Linda also knows that she has a very passionate love-hate relationship with the city of Montreal. While one some days, she is bursting with pride for all that is wonderful about the city, on other days, she is less enthusiastic. But she’s not alone in her ardour, as the litany of authors who have been featuring Montreal in their work highlights—from Louise Penny's Grey Wolf (Minotaur Books) to Lee Lai's award-winning Cannon (Drawn & Quarterly), Montreal is a city that people love to write about. In this episode, Linda chats with another such author – Arjun Basu – about his novel The Reeds (ECW Press) – and how Montreal is featured, somewhat unobtrusively as part of the plot but also as another character in this novel. The four main characters, each perspective advancing the plot, are what Basu refers as “Four Equals One”—but Linda adds Montreal to that list.

Want to know more about this novel? Check out this review in Montreal Review of Books.

Producer: Linda Morra; Associate Producer; Maia Harris; Music by Raphael Krux

In this episode, Linda interviews Lee Lai about Cannon, the graphic novel for which Lai was shortlisted for the Carol Shields Prize (the only author on the shortlist with a Canadian connection).The friendship between the protagonist of the same name (Cannon) and Trish puts the very definition of their relationship to the test, complicated in part because Cannon is trying to be responsible to everyone around her—and the net result is that Cannon fails to advocate for herself.

Lai refers to Love in a F** Up World by the activist and educator Dean Spade, which Linda picked up after the interview. She was fascinated by Spade's question: How do we build lasting and effective resistance movements, if we are not even examining the ethical foundations of relationships like friendship? That’s the question that Lee Lai takes up. Lai isn’t dismissive or casual about friendship—it isn’t “just friendship” in that sense, but rather friendship that is fair, ethical, democratic.

In this episode, Linda interviews the Métis writer, Brittany Penner about her memoir, Children Like Us (Random House Canada). It's elegantly written and carefully crafted, and, in spite of the book’s length, Linda just couldn't put it down. Linda and Brittany discuss her childhood, the Sixties Scoop (14:32), Brittany's story around being adopted into a Mennonite family (19:10), and the medical system, in Saskatchewan and Quebec, and across Canada.

Announcing our seventh season! We will be somewhat delayed this year, with a start date in the late spring, but we haven't forgotten about you, our dear listeners or authors - we will begin very soon! For now, some of our future guests - specialists of the life and literature of author, Jane Rule - Marilyn Schuster (the godmother of Jane Rule Studies!), Cate Sandilands, and Amber Dean - and the team at Getting Lit With Linda would like to share their best wishes for Happy International Women's Day!

We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts for their support. Producer & Host: Linda Morra; Associate Producer: Maia Harris; Music: Raphael Krux.

Why should we pay attention to scars or scar tissue? After the original injury heals and its pain recedes, should we ignore what’s left behind? In this episode, Linda mulls over these questions while considering Madeleine Thien's "Alchemy," from her collection, Simple Recipes. Don't know Thien's work? Check out her award-winning novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing (which Linda discussed in Season 1, Episode 3) and her most recent novel, The Book of Records. She also offers her best wishes for the new year, in this, the last episode of Season 6 (2025).

In this episode, Linda reflects on how boxes are at times about imposed limitations. "Don’t box me in," you might argue – or let’s try to think outside the box (because we can’t stand the way things have been otherwise going. It’s time for a change). And it is this -- thinking and living outside the lines (and boxes) -- that Susan Swan’s wonderful new memoir, Big Girls Don’t Cry: A Memoir About Taking Up Space (HarperCollijns), compels us to do, to locate our sense of dignity and agency, to find our sense of self-worth.

Linda drove up to Hudson to interview the journalist, Brian Stewart, about his memoir, On the Ground: My Life as a Foreign Correspondent -- a perfect book for this year's theme, Getting Lit Goes Global. Stewart was, for decades, one of Canada’s most prominent television journalists, acclaimed for his foreign coverage for both CBC’s The National and The Journal. He worked in 10 war zones, hosted the CBC foreign affairs show Worldview, and interviewed many of the historic figures of his time. In this interview and in his book, Stewart speaks of the urgency of having journalists on the ground to bear witness to what is happening across the globe and of having journalists as moral witnesses, reminding audiences of the costs globally of famine and war and environmental disaster, of the need for greater political accountability.

Linda AND students of Bishop's University interview the award-winning Montreal-based playwright, Jovanni Sy, in this episode of Getting Lit With Linda. Linda considers how one of his plays in particular, A Taste of Empire (Talonbooks), obliges us confront the abuses of a system of globalization, wherein the processes involved in maximizing profit are brought to the fore. Even as the sous-chef, also named Jovanni Sy, tries to glamorize the industry of haute cuisine, we as spectators and readers must grapple with an imperialist system that undergirds it, that funnels wealth and resources from all corners of the earth to a centralized core. 

Linda also announces a new award, the 2025 Getting Lit With Linda prize, being launched on December 15 of this year. Details about this award can be found on website, gettinglitwithlinda.com.

Perhaps strangely, Linda applies Betty Friedan’s 1963 feminist critique of patriarchal society The Feminine Mystique, and specifically the text “The Problem That Has No Name” (0:45), to The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana. An Australian/British author, Khurana wrote this very fine debut novel about the real-life events and the violent actions of two young men from Port Alberni, Northern BC. This novel thus addresses another problem not yet properly identified, except perhaps in more general ways: disaffected or disconnected young men in Western society, who are situated in that space between adolescence and adulthood, and who are making key decisions about who they will become as they mature.

Linda met Dr. Wendy Wong at a conference in Kelowna, organized by Dr. Karis Shearer (1:25) and hosted by SpokenWeb (1:20), when Dr. Wong spoke about her book, We, the Data (a nod to the preamble of the United States Constitution, 4:10) -- and, since then, Linda has been obsessed. Being an expert on archival theory in relation to women writers' materials, Linda has digitization - and now datafication (7:45) - very much on the brain (and probably on her computer too).

Does anyone remember that series, New Canadian Literature (NCL), produced by McClelland & Stewart? In this interview, Linda discusses the very much new and improved series, Kanata Classics (15:06), with Stephanie Sinclair, the publisher of McClelland & Stewart -- with special guest feature, Holly, her cat.

In this episode, Linda examines the resurgence of the memoir, and what readers expect - and what she expects - when we pick one up. While the first part of the episode examines the features and history of the memoir, the last part is devoted to the wonderful new memoir by Susan Swan, Big Girls Don't Cry.. Stay tuned for an interview with Swan in a future episode!

In this episode, Linda thinks about Atlantis as a way of considering the dystopian novel, Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves (Penguin Random House). Using James Cairns’ In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Trouble Times (Wolsak & Wyne), she thinks about why we read novels that are apocalyptic in nature. Cairns, she notes, refers to Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind (HarperCollins) and shows how we get some measure of satisfaction from reading them. Dimaline’s novel may offer that kind of satisfaction, but it is very much based in Indigenous community and what Daniel Heath Justice would call “embodied sovereignty.”

This episode of Getting Lit With Linda focuses on Canisia Lubrin’s award-winning book, Code Noir (Knopf 2023), for which Lubrin won the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, among other accolades. In consideration of this book and how the reader is invited to engage with it, Linda mulls over Eve Sedgewick's essay, "Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, Or You're so Paranoid, You probably Think This Essay is About You." Applying Sedgewick's sense of the "reparative reader," Linda sees Lubrin's Code Noir (based on the real-life set of historical decrees that were passed centuries ago, in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France) as enjoining readers to participate in this way while considering the Black diaspora - not with a sense of paranoia (defensive!) but rather with an open and unassuming posture. Because, above all else, Lubrin's Code Noir reminds us of the possibilities of art, form, and language, and our engagement with them.

In this episode, Linda chats with Kevin Chong about his novel The Double Life of Benson Yu (Simon & Schuster) shortlisted for the 2023 Giller Prize. It's a "meta" novel, in some ways - a concept that Linda explains in this episode - but it also had Linda thinking about the social media platform, Meta (formerly, Facebook). Whatever insights you might glean from this association and from this interview, what is clear is the real and urgent need to re-examine various forms of masculinity. The timing of this episode’s release - Father’s Day - underscores this importance.

In this novel, the main character, Benson Yu, is writing a graphic novel based on his own life, and he tells us as readers what he can't or won't talk about because of his traumatic past and injured masculinity. It's a compelling read that makes us consider character and genre in ways that are quite provocative.