The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

David Moscrop is a political theorist and SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Communication at the University of Ottawa. He studies democratic deliberation, political decision-making, and digital media, and is a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, and a writer for Maclean's Magazine He also provides regular political commentary for television and radio. His first book Too Dumb for Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones was published by Goose Lane Editions in March 2019.

We met at the University of Ottawa to discuss his book, just in time for Canada's 2019 Federal election. Among other things we talk about the story behind the book, making smart voting decisions, Twitter, literary agent Chris Bucci, CBC Ideas; good, rational, autonomous thinking; diverse, trusted news sources; emotional biases, negative political advertising, threats to democracy, partisanship, SNC Lavalin, Jody Wilson Raybould, the importance of investing time in order to understanding politics, bots, good citizenship, voting on principle versus strategically, party discipline, and adopting proportional representation.

And for you non-political types: it's a lot more interesting than this makes it sound.

Although E.K. Brown, a highly admired literary critic, once called poet and bureaucrat Duncan Campbell Scott "one of the chief masters of Canadian literature," Scott's reputation today lies in tatters.

Mark Abley in his fascinating biography Conversations with a Dead Man, The Legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott, explains why.

I met with him at his home in Point Claire near Montreal - where the ghost of Scott appeared. We talk, among others things, about boarding schools, Canada's residential school system, "genocide," the Department of Indian Affairs, Sir John A. MacDonald, forms of biography, assimilation, the "Indian Problem," and Scott's poetry, notably a sonnet to an "Onondaga Madonna."

Mordecai: The Life and Times has been called the 'award-winningest' book in Canadian literary history.

I met with its author Charles Foran to talk about its subject Mordecai Richler. The guts, aggression, honesty and pride of the man - a man who did things, who wrote to stimulate conversation, and argument, who was socially engaged, who asked hard, uncomfortable questions. We also discuss Richler's similarities to Pierre Trudeau. His taking on a whole movement over Quebec's sign laws; his desire to write the best novel ever written, least one book that would last; about Montreal, its tensions, and his loyalty to it; and about Canadian culture, digitization and the loss of literary life.

This interview was conducted in June, 2012

Kit Maude is a Spanish-to-English translator. He received a bachelor's degree in Comparative American Studies from the University of Warwick. In 2009 he moved to Buenos Aires where he currently lives. His translations have been featured in Granta, the Literary Review, the Short Story Project, and other publications.

We met at the Falena bookstore/wine bar in the Chacarita neighbourhood of Buenos Aires to talk literary tourism over a glass. Here's our conversation (the bookstore we reference that was once a performing arts theater, then a cinema, is called El Ateneo Grand Splendid).

Jonathan Rose is the William R. Kenan Professor of History at Drew University in Madison, NJ. His fields of study are British history, intellectual history and the history of the book (in which he happens to be a giant). His books include The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes and The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor both of which won important prizes. He has held visiting appointments at the University of Cambridge and Princeton University and he reviews books for the The Times Literary Supplement and the Daily Telegraph.

Most important viz our purposes: he was the founding president of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP), and for many years, co-editor of its journal 'Book History'.

I met with Jonathan at SHARP'S annual conference in Amherst, MA #Sharp19, to talk about his role in establishing the society. We also chat about SHARP'S history, purpose, future, and noticeable vibrancy, about the importance of history text books; Gone with the Wind; JFK, and Playboy magazine (okay, the last only in passing).

Ana María Cabanellas began her career as a lawyer, after which she joined the family-owned publishing company Editorial Heliasta as a partner. In 1979, she became President of Editorial Claridad which specializes in legal dictionaries, as well as fiction, philosophy and history. In 2006, Ms Cabanellas founded UnaLuna, which publishes children's books.

Over the years she has been extremely active in industry associations. For example, she is currently Vice- president of CADRA (Centro de Administración de Derechos Reprográficos Asociación Civil), Argentina's RRO, and Chair of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee of IFRRO. Previously, she served as President of the Cámara Argentina del Libro for seven years, was Secretary and then President of GIE from 1991-2004, and President of the International Publishers Association from 2004-2008.

She speaks frequently at publishing events around the world. In 2012, the Buenos Aires Book Fair named her one of the "50 most influential people in publishing in the Spanish Language."

We met at her offices in BA to talk about her career, her vision, publishing in Argentina, copyright, peace, education and children's books, among many other things.

Series: Biblio File in Buenos Aires

Liliana Heker was born in 1943 in Buenos Aires. Her writing career began at age 17 thanks to a letter she wrote Abelardo Castillo requesting a job at a magazine he edited. During Argentina's so called Dirty War in the seventies and eighties, she defiantly wrote and edited several well known left-wing literary journals, subtly protesting her country's violent, repressive regime, while defending the practice of literature. She also famously engaged in correspondence with Julio Cortázar, arguing that resistance to tyranny is better staged at home where the people can read your work and take faith from it, rather than from abroad.

This from Biblioasis: "She is the author of two novels and numerous books of short stories and essays, in addition to being a founder of two important Argentine literary magazines. Her collected short stories were published in Spanish in 2004 and translated into Hebrew; her stories have been included in anthologies in many countries and languages. Her collection, The Stolen Party and Other Stories, is available in English. Her novel The End of the Story was not only a literary success, but a cultural event that provoked controversy and avid discussion of how best to remember the years of the Argentine dictatorship." I met Liliana at her home in Buenos Aires to talk about all of the above, and more. Her collection of short stories, Please Talk to Me, translated by Alberto Manguel and Miranda France, is available from Yale University Press

Series: Biblio File in Buenos Aires

Guillermo Martínez is an Argentine novelist, detective fiction and short story writer. He earned a PhD in mathematical logic from the University of Buenos Aires, after which he worked for two years in a postdoctoral position at the Mathematical Institute, in Oxford. His most successful novel is Crímenes Imperceptibles known as The Oxford Murders, written in 2003. He was awarded the Planeta Prize for this novel, which was adapted into a film in 2008, directed by Alex de la Iglesia, and starring John Hurt and Elijah Wood.

We met in his apartment in Buenos Aires to discuss how mathematics and Borges have informed his novel and detective fiction writing.

Tania Craan's career as an art director and designer spans more than three decades. For the past 25 years, she has run her freelance graphic design studio. She started her career working as a designer at Penguin Books Canada and then went on to McClelland & Stewart where she became art director. In addition to books, she has designed stamps for Canada Post, three Ontario Provincial Government inquiry reports, and annual reports for a variety of corporate clients. She "blends the disciplines of publication design with an appreciation of how readers actually navigate pages and their content — into visually pleasing, highly readable communication pieces."

I met with Tania at her home near Kingston, Ontario. We talk in this interview about her career - notably her time with McClelland and Stewart - her transition from employee to freelancer, and a selection of the books she is most proud of having designed.

Eimear McBride is an Irish novelist whose debut novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, won the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize in 2013 and the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. She wrote the book in six months, but it took nine years to get it published. Galley Beggar Press of Norwich finally picked it up in 2013. The novel is written in a stream of consciousness-like style and tells the story of a young woman's complex relationship with her family.

McBride's second novel The Lesser Bohemians was published in September 2016. Set in Camden Town in the 1990s, it tells the story of the turbulent relationship between an eighteen year old drama student and a thirty-eight year old actor.

In 2017 McBride was awarded the inaugural Creative Fellowship of the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading.

We met in Montreal - where she was, at the invitation of the School of Irish Studies at Concordia University - to talk about her work, and her experience getting it published.