The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Blake Gopnik is an American/Canadian art critic who has lived in New York City since 2011 writing about art for Newsweek, the Daily Beast, The New York Times and others. From 2000 to 2010 he was chief art critic at The Washington Post, prior to which he was arts editor and critic for the Globe and Mail in Toronto. He has a doctorate in art history from Oxford University, and has written on aesthetic topics ranging from design to food, fashion to beer. He is the author of Warhol, a big new biography of the American Pop artist Andy Warhol ( Ecco, 2020), which is what we talk about, computer to computer, here. Topics covered include the practice of biography, Robert Caro, police violence and homosexuals, Warhol: genius and/or jerk? Window dressing, the Factory, shoes, silk-screening, commercial versus fine art, Pop Art, Robert Hughes and stupidity, film, the Empire State Building, banality, Tolstoy, sweeping polemics, controversy, playing dumb and much more.

Don Gillmor is an award-winning Canadian novelist, journalist and children's book author. His new book To the River (2018) explores his brother's suicide. It won the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction and was a CBC Best Books of 2019.

His novel Long Change (2015) examines the world of oil through the life and loves of one man. Mount Pleasant (2013) is a darkly comic meditation on privilege and debt set in contemporary Toronto, and his first novel, the critically acclaimed Kanata (2009), dealt with the whole sweep of Canadian history. He is also the author of a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People's History, and three other books of non-fiction.

He has written nine books for children, and won 11 National Magazine Awards plus numerous other honours. He lives in Toronto.

We met in Ottawa to discuss To the River, and to share thoughts on what it's like to lose a brother to suicide.

"Helene Atwan is the Director of Beacon Press, an independent non-profit book publisher founded in 1854. She began her publishing career in 1976 at Random House in New York as an assistant editor in their College Division, before moving to Alfred A. Knopf in 1977 as a publicity associate. She then joined The Viking Press in 1979 as the associate director of publicity. In 1981, she moved to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, where she began as the director of publicity. She also became a vice president of the house in 1987 and the associate publisher in 1991. In 1993, she joined the Pocket Books division of Simon & Schuster as a vice president and director of marketing. She was appointed director of Beacon Press by the board of trustees of the Unitarian Universalists Association in October of 1995."

We met at her offices in Boston to talk about Emerson and the history of the Beacon Press, plus its connection to the Unitarian Universalists; Helene's role with the press; social justice - slavery, reparations, inter-sectional issues, and the environment; about the price of paper, the function of design, and the process of editing books at Beacon; plus Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, and newly discovered Yes to Life, and much more.

D​avid recently mentioned to me that he was a fan of Truman Capote. I suggested we get together to discuss one of his short stories. We settled on 'Mojave'. Here's our conversation. Warning: it gets a tad raunchy at times.

Stephanie Burt is a literary critic and poet who is Professor of English at Harvard University and a transgender activist. The New York Times has called her "one of the most influential poetry critics of [her] generation".

Burt grew up near Washington, D.C. She has published four collections of poetry and many works of literary criticism. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Believer, and The Boston Review. Her book Randall Jarrell and His Age reevaluates Jarrell's importance as a poet. The book won the Warren Brooks Award in 2002. In 2017, she transitioned to female. She has since been active in LGBTQA+ rights and awareness campaigns

We met at her offices in Cambridge, MA to talk about this, and about her recent book Don't Read Poetry.

Among other things we discuss how to read poetry, or avoid it; the acceptance of music versus poetry; Seamus Heaney and James Joyce; Rupi Kaur and teenage girls, Lorine Niedecker, Robin Robertson, Terrance Hayes's 'American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin'. Reasons to read poetry: - giving voice to a state of mind, character - living the lives of others - verbal technique, challenge, wisdom - helping you to decide what to do - and underestimating the time it takes to walk places.

The Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books contains more than 80,000 items. The nucleus of the collection, which has a cut-off date of 1910, was donated to the Toronto Public Library in 1946 by a British librarian from Derbyshire, Edgar Osborne. Unable to get any English libraries to meet his conditions - to properly house his books, describe them and publish a catalogue - he settled on Toronto, largely because he was so impressed by its Children's librarian Lillian H. Smith who he'd met during a visit to the library with his wife in 1934.

I met with Librarian Jennifer Yan in late 2019. Listen as she explains why we literary tourists need to visit the Osborne Collection in Toronto.

Robert Darnton is Harvard University's Carl H. Pforzheimer Professor, Emeritus and University Librarian, Emeritus

Jessie Amaolo is a librarian at the Toronto Public Library responsible for their world-class Arthur Conan Doyle collection. Not surprisingly, much of the collection is devoted to Doyle's most famous character, Sherlock Holmes. But Conan Doyle wrote much more than just the Sherlock Holmes stories. He also wrote extensively on spiritualism, true crime, history, and current events. The collection is accessed through the Marilyn & Charles Baillie Special Collections Centre on the 5th floor of the Library, near Bloor and Yonge streets in Toronto, which is where we met to discuss why the literary tourist should visit here.