Kobo in Conversation

In the spirit of "Christmas in July," we're presenting a special live episode of Kobo in Conversation from the Toronto International Festival of Authors' inaugural Ever After, the romance book festival. This was recorded back in November 2025, and though it deals with some extremely seasonal themes, we don't mind a little Christmas in July and we thought you might be into it as well.

For a session called "Snowflakes and Sparks," Michael Tamblyn spoke with authors Marissa Stapley and Karma Brown writing under their pen names Julia McKay and Kristine Winters, about what Christmas and Christmas Romance means to them, as well as their COVID-era collaborations as Maggie Knox.

LIVE from Ever After, with Julia McKay & Kristine Winters

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Michael Tamblyn spoke with Patrick Radden Keefe, who has been writing for the New Yorker since 2006 and is the author of nonfiction bestsellers including Empire of Pain and Say Nothing. His latest book is London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth. They were joined by an intimate studio audience.

Patrick Radden Keefe on London's dark descent

Nathan Maharaj spoke with the novelist and journalist Jowita Bydlowska about her new book Unshaming: A Memoir of Recovery, Relapse, and What Comes After. It's a frank, unflinching recounting of the years following the publication of her first book, the memoir Drunk Mom. And it's a thoughtful, fearless meditation on the concept of shame.

Jowita Bydlowska on becoming an expert on shame by accident

For this special bonus episode of Kobo in Conversation, producer and co-host Nathan Maharaj was joined by one of Kobo's booksellers (and frequent Staff Picks contributor), Deandra Lalonde. They sort through the buzziest books to take along to the beach, the books landing in the next few weeks that you won't want to miss, and how best to bring a little Hollywood into your summer reading this year.

Books mentioned:

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
• Whistler by Ann Patchett
• Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune
  • From 2023: Carley Fortune on summer love and second chances
• Heartstopper #6 by Alice Oseman
• Big Little Truths by Liane Moriarty
• The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson
• The Odyssey by Homer
• There's Only One Sin in Hollywood by Rasheed Newson
• On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle

And check out dozens more summer picks HERE.

Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Sharon Bala, author of the award-winning 2018 novel, The Boat People. Her new book is called Good Guys. It's about a nearly bankrupt international aid charity called Children of the World, and how their stumbling into the good graces of an A-list celebrity raises a lot of money, and a lot of questions about who the good guys really are.

You can watch their conversation too: https://youtu.be/6_YeVizUPr4

Sharon Bala on the absurdity of so-called Good Guys

This week we're bringing you a conversation Michael Tamblyn had in 2021 with Natalie Zina Walschots about her extremely fun novel called Hench. It's about a world where superheroes are out there saving the day in super ways, while villains, who are a lot like you and me, run organizations bent on taking over the world while also trying to keep scores up on Glassdoor.

Natalie's just released a sequel to Hench, and it's called Villain.

[From 2021:]

We learned about some of the fantastical worlds Natalie enjoyed exploring as a young reader "often for sheer escapism," as well as the writers she drew inspiration from while starting out as a writer herself, and as a lifelong student of supervillainy:

• Robert O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and Z for Zachariah
• High fantasy including J. R. R. Tolkien, but also Shannara, Dragonlance, and "anything with a wizard holding an orb on the cover" or "a skeleton holding a sword"
• Christian Bök, Karen Solie, bp Nichol, and other writers "doing super weird things with language and the structural materiality of language..."
• Soon I Will Be Invincible "was the first book I read from the perspective of a supervillain."
• "Paradise Lost is really important to me ... the relationship between Satan the adversary to the world informs the way I write villains."
• Neil Gaiman's Sandman, where "a character who's a villain in one context becomes the protagonist in another."
• Vicious by V E Schwab
• Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus and various writings of Catherynne M. Valente for their "messed up fairy tale feel."

Nathan Maharaj spoke with physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, author of the 2021 book The Disordered Cosmos, a highly personal reflection on the human and inherently flawed practice of scientific inquiry and her career as a Black Jewish scientist. Her new book is The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie. In it she explains to readers, what's really going on with quantum cats? what does a light-swallowing black hole actually look like? what can we learn about quantum theory from the Afrofuturist jazz musician Sun Ra? —and a whole lot more.

Why Chanda Prescod-Weinstein sees hope in cosmic curiosity

Hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj dove deep on the controversy around the book Shy Girl, which was cancelled by its publisher who alleged it was largely AI-generated.

Links on Shy Girl:

• The video from January 2026 that seems to have led to Shy Girl's cancellation: i'm pretty sure this book is ai slop - YouTube
• Publishing news journalist Alexandra Alter on the controversy over the cancellation of Shy Girl: A.I. Is Writing Fiction. Publishers Are Unprepared. - The New York Times
• Publishing industry analyst Thad McIlroy on what NYT omitted from their piece: I Broke the Year's Biggest Literary Story. The New York Times Took the Credit | The Walrus
• Two very "inside baseball" overviews of what happened:
  • The New Publishing Standard's deep dive on Shy Girl
  • Publisher's Weekly industry analysis
• What might be the last extant page on any of Hachette's sites about the book: Shy Girl: Read the femgore revenge novel that EVERYONE is talking about! by Mia Ballard - Books - Hachette Australia

Other links from this episode:

• Why AI detection is hard People who frequently use ChatGPT for writing tasks are accurate and robust detectors of AI-generated text - ACL Anthology (mistakenly attributed to MIT in the episode)
• Past episodes of this show that touched on the use of AI in book publishing:
  • Michael bets on "AI Sally Rooney" (from October 2024)
  • Anna Gomez enlisted AI for research assistance when writing a romance road trip (November 2024)
  • Sean Michaels wrote a book about AI and art by using AI for parts of it (November 2023)

More author interviews at kobo.com/conversation

Find past Booktalking episodes here

Michael Tamblyn spoke with novelist Heather Marshall. She is a writer of historical fiction, including her 2022 debut bestselling novel Looking for Jane and 2024's with The Secret History of Audrey James. Heather Marshall's new book is Liberty Street. It's the story of a young journalist's quest to expose the cruelty and corruption of the Mercer Women's Prison from the inside, the women she meets there, and a police detective trying to uncover a secret 30 years later.

How Heather Marshall brings readers into places of the past

Nathan Maharaj spoke with novelist Rainbow Rowell. She's the author of books including Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, as well as the novel Slow Dance, which she discussed on the show in 2024. Rainbow Rowell's new book is the novel Cherry Baby. It's about a woman named Cherish, who everybody calls Cherry, at a moment in her life when her marriage seems to have ended and she's figuring out what comes next.

Why Rainbow Rowell's Cherry Baby had to be her sexiest book yet