Kobo in Conversation

Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with writer and filmmaker Jamaluddin Aram, winner of the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary fiction for his novel Nothing Good Happens in Wazirabad on Wednesday. It's a tapestry of stories about different people—shopkeepers, tradespeople, doctors, children, and their parents—while in the background, often very deep in the background, a war is being fought.

Novelist Jamaluddin Aram on leaving space for the reader to work

Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with Amanda Peters, author of the 2023 novel The Berry Pickers, a book about a 4-year-old girl who goes missing while her family is visiting Maine for the summer to pick blueberries. It's a book that won both the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Crime Writers of Canada's first novel award, among many other accolades. Her new book is a collection of short stories called Waiting for the Long Night Moon.

Amanda Peters on the art of thought-provoking storytelling

Michael Tamblyn spoke with Keziah Weir, winner of the 2024 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in the category of Mystery for her novel, The Mythmakers. It's the story of Sal, a writer who's hit a very rough patch in every aspect of her life. But then she discovers a short story written by an author she met some time ago—about her and her and that moment of meeting. She learns that the story is a part of a larger book and that the author is deceased. This sets her on a path of investigation into the author, his widow, and ultimately the heart of storytelling itself.

Keziah Weir's literary influences are no mystery to her

Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with fiction and comics writer Rainbow Rowell, author of the novels Eleanor & Park and Fangirl, as well as the 2017 revival of Marvel's Runaways comic book series, the current run of She-Hulk, and many other books and stories. Her newest book is Slow Dance, the story of a couple of grown-ups who've been friends since they were kids, but didn't manage to stay friends through early adulthood. 14 years after they last spoke to one another, they set about trying to figure out what kind of relationship they have now, and whether they might not have been exactly right about what kind of relationship they had back then.

Rainbow Rowell wants to write about "messy" characters

At Toronto's Harbourfront Centre, Nathan interviewed Ian Hamilton, author of the Ava Lee series, and Steve Urszenyi, author of Perfect Shot. Ian's latest book The Fury of Beijing is (possibly) the last in the series, while Steve's book kicks off the Special Agent Alexandra Martel series.

Live at MOTIVE: Thrills from Start to Finish

Michael spoke with artist, illustrator, and fashion designer, Maurice Vellekoop. Over a career spanning four decades, Vellekoop's work has been published in magazines including The New Yorker, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Fashion, and Cosmopolitan, and he's the author and illustrator of the books, The World of Gloria Badcock: A Comic for Adults, A Nut at the Opera, and Maurice Vellekoop's Pin-ups, to name just a few.

His newest book is I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together. It's a memoir of his childhood and early adulthood in a suburb of Toronto, the youngest of four siblings in a strictly religious household, and it's about coming out as a gay man at a very particular time in the 1980s.

Spending time with Maurice Vellekoop

We're sweeping up the glitter after awarding the 10th annual Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize to a trio of brilliant authors just a few days ago (more on that to come). We'll be back in your feed with more author interviews soon.

In the meantime...

When Kobo in Conversation hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj aren't reading books and interviewing authors for this show, they're working in the business of selling eBooks, audiobooks, and eReaders. In this episode, Nathan sat Michael down to get his takes on a bunch of book biz news making headlines now.* It's kind of an experiment, and we'll do it again soon—but we'll keep changing it up until we can make it feel right. Thoughts? Questions? Stuff you'd like us to cover? Email Nathan at [email protected] or drop a comment below if you're listening on YouTube.

Topics covered in this episode:

• What's a publisher, and why doesn't everybody self-publish now?
• Why does it seem like publishers buying each other all the time?
• Why are major players in high finance poking around in the book business so much lately?
• Why are big league publishing executives leaving to create new publishing companies—just to publish books by famous people?
• Costco's not going to sell books anymore: does it matter?
• Post-pandemic peril in Australian bookselling
• The "Spotify for audiobooks" before Spotify decided to be the Spotify for audiobooks

Books mentioned:

• The Trial: The DOJ's Suit to Block Penguin Random House's Acquisition of Simon & Schuster by Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch
• Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
• The works of Ernest Hemingway, published by Scribner

*Michael may have actually staged a one man studio sit-in, and Nathan rolled tape to get him to leave. Accounts differ.

Michael spoke with writer Stephen Maher, author of The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau. Informed by interviews with hundreds of people close to the events covered, as well as Maher's own conversations with Trudeau himself, it's a portrait of a complex person leading through complex times.

Stephen Maher offers readers a glimpse of The Prince

Nathan spoke with Laura Tamblyn Watts, founder and chief executive of CanAge, Canada's national seniors' advocacy organization, and author of Let's Talk About Aging Parents: A Real-Life Guide to Solving Problems with 27 Essential Conversations, a book about the many hard things facing adults who know their aging parents need to make some decisions—and probably some changes too—but they don't know where to start.

Laura Tamblyn Watts on 27 essential, and uncomfortable, conversations

Nathan spoke with novelist Anna Julia Stainsby, author of The Afterpains. It's the story of Rosy, whose grief over the loss of her infant daughter nearly twenty years ago has all but cut her off from her husband and teenage son. And it's about Isaura, an immigrant from Honduras raising her daughter in Toronto and trying to keep her out of the grip of a centuries-long curse.

Anna Julia Stainsby on ugly truths, isolation, and The Afterpains