Commotion is where you go for thoughtful and vibrant conversations about all things pop culture. Host Elamin Abdelmahmoud calls on journalists, critics, creators and friends to talk through the biggest arts & entertainment stories of the day, in 30 minutes or less.

In this episode, Elamin is joined by authors Jael Richardson and David A. Robertson, and bookseller and publisher Martha Sharpe to chat about updating the Can Lit canon. What is considered to be a Canadian literary classic? Has that changed? Has it remained the same? More episodes of Commotion are available here: https://link.mgln.ai/cwea-bookends

This week on Bookends, we revisit Eleanor Wachtel’s conversation with Bernardine Evaristo. 

Bernardine is the recipient of the Outstanding Contribution award by the Women’s Prize for Fiction. It’s a special, one-time award to celebrate achievement over the course of a career. “Outstanding” is the perfect word to describe Bernardine’s accomplishments — in addition to several acclaimed books, Bernardine has dedicated the past 40 years to uplifting underrepresented writers and promoting inclusivity in literature. Eleanor and Bernardine spoke on Writers & Company in 2020 about Bernardine’s Booker award-winning novel, Girl, Woman, Other, and how her family background shaped her journey as a writer. 

• Hear the full interview here: https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/writers-company/bernardine-evaristo-black-british-identity-and-her-booker-winning-novel-girl-woman 
• Check out the rest of the Writers & Company archive: https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/writers-company 

Whether it’s battling your girlfriend’s “seven evil exes," reinterpreting childhood memories or celebrating the beauty of becoming a parent, comics and graphic novels transport readers to different worlds … and help us better understand the one we live in. In the first season of Bookends, Mattea Roach spoke with some of today’s leading cartoonists about their work and the inspiration they draw from life. In this special summer edition of the show, we’re revisiting Mattea's conversations with Adrian Tomine, Alison Bechdel, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Sarah Leavitt and Chris Ware.

Hear the full conversations here:

• Adrian Tomine: Answering his readers' burning questions
• Alison Bechdel on making money and seeing Fun Home in a new light
• Bryan Lee O’Malley: 20 years of Scott Pilgrim
• Sarah Leavitt: Illustrating grief too wide for words
• Chris Ware: Inside the sketchbooks of a comics master

Five days a week acclaimed interviewer Tom Power sits down with the artists, writers, actors and musicians who define pop culture. 

In this episode, Tom chats with the cartoonist and writer Gabrielle Drolet. A few years ago, Gabrielle developed a condition that made her unable to use her hands. It kept getting worse over time, and as Gabrielle searched for a diagnosis, she also had to find new ways to make art. Her new memoir “Look Ma, No Hands” is the story of an artist coming to terms with disability, adapting to the unexpected, and ultimately learning to express herself again. Gabrielle joins Tom to talk about those experiences that informed her memoir. 

More episodes of Q with Tom Power are available here: https://link.mgln.ai/qwtp

To wrap up our first season, Bookends is bringing you to the Festival of Literary Diversity in Brampton. Tanya Talaga, Morgan Campell and Amal Elsana Alh'jooj may be memoir writers from different walks of life — but a common thread in their work is how they continually use their voices to negotiate challenging conversations. They recently joined Mattea Roach on stage for a live panel, where they spoke about the value of difficult conversations … and how telling personal stories creates empathy at large.

Hear the rest of our interview with Tanya Talaga here:

• Tanya Talaga: Searching for her great-great grandmother — a story of family, truth and survival

For Montreal writer Chris Bergeron, the power of transgender storytelling is revolutionary. Her novel Valid is about a 70-year-old trans woman who is forced back into the closet to survive in a dystopian Montreal. Valid, translated from French by Natalia Hero, was chosen for this year’s One eRead Canada campaign. Chris sat down with Mattea Roach at a live virtual event in April. They spoke about the relationship between transness and technology, the meaning of “dystopian autofiction” and how the city of Montreal is always in transition. 

If you enjoyed this conversation, check out these episodes:

• Helen Phillips: In a world run by AI, what makes us human?
• Judith Butler: Breaking down why people fear gender

For Chyana Marie Sage, being “soft as bones” means accepting that humans are both strong and fragile — and have immense capacity for healing. Her new memoir, Soft As Bones, is her quest to better understand the childhood trauma that scarred her family. It's also a tapestry of poetry, history, Cree language, traditional ceremony and folklore — and delves into her experiences and those of her family with compassion and strength. Chyana joins Mattea Roach to share the catharsis she felt from writing about painful memories and the care she took to portray everyone with empathy.

If you enjoyed this conversation, check out these episodes:

• Tanya Talaga: Searching for her great-great grandmother — a story of family, truth and survival
• Teresa Wong: Illustrating her family's past — in all its ordinary and epic moments

Before becoming a writer, Kyle Edwards had dreams of playing hockey … and as an Indigenous player, he grapples with complex feelings about the game and its place in Canadian culture. He explores this in his debut novel, Small Ceremonies. The story follows the Tigers, a hockey team made up of Indigenous teens from Winnipeg. The teens are coming of age in the rink — and the dynamics on the ice often mirror the tensions off of it. Kyle tells Mattea Roach about how sports reflect society, how hockey serves as its own kind of ceremony and why Winnipeg is so special to him.

If you enjoyed this conversation, check out these episodes:

• Ocean Vuong finds beauty in a fast food shift
• David A. Robertson puts stories at the heart of reconciliation

Taylor Jenkins Reid is a literary superstar. She’s known for writing epic settings, complex women and love stories that stretch across time and place — you might know her from novels such as The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo or Daisy Jones and the Six. Her new novel, Atmosphere, is a space thriller that captures all of her signatures. It’s about outer space, falling in love and being a woman at NASA … and that’s just the half of it. Taylor tells Mattea Roach about why writing about astronauts is so difficult, approaching life in the public eye and why the book is dedicated to her daughter.

If you enjoyed this conversation, check out these episodes:

• Casey McQuiston: Celebrating queer love and joy and navigating the future of romance
• Emma Donoghue boards a train destined for disaster

Nearly 20 years after her breakout memoir, Fun Home, cartoonist Alison Bechdel is still unearthing new truths about her life in that time. The memoir and its Broadway adaptation changed Alison’s life and brought a degree of success she was unaccustomed to. She explores these themes in her latest work, a comic novel called Spent. It’s about a cartoonist's complicated relationship with money and capitalism, and the struggle to stay true to her values. Alison tells Mattea about creating a fictionalized version of herself ... and shares surprising revelations about her parents, which have given her new insight into her own life story.

If you enjoyed this conversation, check out these episodes:

• Adrian Tomine: Answering his readers' burning questions
• Rumaan Alam: How would you spend a billion dollars?