The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is the author of thirteen books, including The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve; The Swerve: How the World Became Modern; Shakespeare's Freedom; and Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. He is General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and of The Norton Shakespeare, has edited seven collections of criticism, and is a founding editor of the journal Representations. His honors include the 2016 Holberg Prize from the Norwegian Parliament, the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and the 2011 National Book Award for The Swerve.

Among his named lecture series are the Adorno Lectures in Frankfurt, the University Lectures at Princeton, and the Clarendon Lectures at Oxford. He has held visiting professorships at universities in Beijing, Kyoto, London, Paris, Florence, Torino, Trieste, and Bologna, as well as the Renaissance residency at the American Academy in Rome.

We met at the the Brattleboro Literary Festival in Vermont to talk about his most recent book Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics, in which Donald Trump's name isn't mentioned once. I, however, make a point of mentioning it frequently.

"Beowulf Sheehan studied photography at New York University and the International Center of Photography. His childhood love of stories in books and music grew into an adulthood love of storytellers in the arts, entertainment, and humanities. Beowulf makes portraits, communicates ideas, and shares the stories of compelling artists and figures who impact society and culture."

His book AUTHOR "captures the essence of 200 writers, historians, journalists, playwrights, and poets from 35 countries, from Roxane Gay to Masha Gessen, Patti Smith to Zadie Smith, Karl Ove Knausgaard to J.K. Rowling, and Jonathan Franzen to Toni Morrison."

I met Beowulf at the Brattleboro Literary Festival, and there talked with him about author photographs, Helumt Newton, father's love, drawing characters in stories, storytelling, studying what you don't like, business experience, farting around in your twenties, ICP, leaping into what you love, celebrating your subjects' journeys, making novel pictures, Leslie Jamison's photograph, the sidewalks of New York City, the Donna Tartt opportunity, commercial viability, serious photographs, Vanessa Veselka's tattoo, close reading, Harper Collins, Anthony Bourdain, humility and mutual respect, Iman, and vulnerability.

John Shoesmith is Outreach Librarian at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto, and curator of the 2013 exhibition Death Greatly Exaggerated: Canada's Thriving Small and Fine Press which explored examples of the fine book-making craft in Canada since the year 2000 while nodding to Canada's small presses.

We met at the Fisher and talked, among other things, about famed printer and book designer Robert Reid, Fraser Mines Revisited, Kuthan's Menagerie, McGill University Press, the Lande Bibliography of Canadiana, Heavenly Monkey, Barbarian Press, Pericles, Crispin and Jan Elsted, Simon Brett, Gus and Will Rueter, the Aliquando Press, Stan Bevington, Glenn Goluska, Margaret Atwood, Porcupine's Quill, Tim Inkster, Walter Bachinski and Shanty Bay Press, Circus, George Walker, The Book of Hours, the Church Street Press, Gapereau Press, Andrew Steeves, Michael Torosian, Lumiere Press, Hell Box Press, ordering the Death Greatly Exaggerated catalogue, book fairs, and bookplates by Wesley Bates.

Lumiere Press is the private press of Michael Torosian. In the fine press tradition, the books are composed in lead, hand printed and hand bound. The press is devoted exclusively to photography, and each book aspires in its concept, graphic design, and bookmaking craftsmanship to be the manifestation of its artistic content. The shop's first printing press was acquired in 1981, and in 1986 the publishing program was launched with the publication of Edward Weston: Dedicated to Simplicity.

I met with Michael in his Toronto workshop. We talk here, among other things, about Edward Weston and his son Cole, simplicity, abstraction, the homage series, self-education, the octavo format, Mohawk letterpress paper, harmony, marketing, Aaron Siskind, modernist photography, idols, completionists, Walter Gretzky, The Complete Photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, composition, the photo album, the book as the medium of photography, Glenn Goluska, privates presses as the vision of individuals, Stan Bevington, antiquarian book dealers, Buffalo NY, instincts and good taste, Printing for Poetry, matching typefaces to the times, recording conversations, a 10-zillion-photograph-a-minute universe; ambition, research and Saul Leiter; Eduard Steichen, and the Lumiere Press archive at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, essayist and poet in Toronto. He has worked as a book columnist for The National Post, and as the poetry editor of The Walrus. He is the author of three books: the poetry volumes Bloom and The Scarborough, and Strike Anywhere, a collection of his writing about literature, television and culture. His essays and investigative stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Toronto Life, The Walrus, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He was the 2017 Margaret Laurence Fellow at Trent University and a finalist for the Allan Slaight Prize for Journalism.

I met Michael at his home in Toronto to talk about his essays in Strike Anywhere (Porcupine's Quill, 2016) Canadian Poetry, Rupi Kaur, Al Purdy and Wordsworth, common speech and common sense, Carmine Starnino and The Lover's Quarrel, John Metcalf, Leonard Cohen and schmaltz, John Thompson, Dante, Scott Griffin, the Saudi arms deal, Margaret Atwood, MacBeth, long-form investigative journalism, crime reporting, self-interest, radical truth-telling and men crying.

Elaine Dewar – author, journalist, television story editor—has been propelled since childhood by insatiable curiosity and the joy of storytelling. Her journalism has been honored by nine National Magazine awards, including the prestigious President's Medal, and the White Award. Her first book, Cloak of Green, delved into the dark side of environmental politics and became an underground classic. Dewar has been called "one of Canada's best muckrakers and "Canada's Rachel Carson."

We met at her house in Toronto to talk about her latest book, "The Handover: How Bigwigs & Bureaucrats Transferred Canada's Best Publisher and the Best Part of Our Literary Heritage to a Foreign Multinational;" about the history of McClelland and Steward, Jack McClelland's love of Canada, Canadian authors and Canadian Literature, government funding of Canadian publishers, nationalist policy, Avi Bennett, the University of Toronto, Penguin RandomHouse, oligopsonies, deep throat, tax credits, improperly given grants, "Puts," $16 million worth of debts, cleverness, Robert Pritchard, diversity of thought, lies, money made re-issuing The Handmaid's Tale, Canada as the first post-national country, benefits of economic nationalism, bureaucrats, how Canada works, Canadian stories, and solutions.

Peggy L. Fox is the former president and publisher of New Directions, was Tennessee Williams's last editor, and is James Laughlin's literary coexecutor. She lives in Athens, New York, where we met to talk about, among other things, her career at New Directions, Tennessee Williams, the Chinese poet Bei Dao, Norfolk confetti, contacts and connections, James Laughlin's literary influence, letter writing, re-introducing deceased giants, Barbara Elpler, W.G. "Max" Sebald, Gore Vidal, and New Directions's colophon design.

Richard Minsky is an American scholar of bookbinding and a book artist. He is the founder of the Center for Book Arts in New York City.

We met in his studio in Hudson, NY to talk, among other things, about the proselytizing of book art, books as metaphors, the art of book covers, publishers' bindings, modernism, art history and the evolution of technology, Will Bradley, the acquisition of books, stamped book covers, gilt, the stamping process, the extraordinary lives of some book cover designers, catalogues and the importance of good photographs, thinking hard and writing about your collection, Amelia E. Barr, the joys of shopping on e-bay, Rochester NY, and the Barbara Slate Archive.

Michel Tremblay was born in Montreal in 1942. He studied graphic arts and became a linotypist like his father and brother. He wrote his first play Le Train in 1959 and with it won the 1964 Radio Canada Young Author's Competition. But it was his second play Les Belles-Sœurs that established him as an important writer - the first play to use Joual and feature working class women on the stage, the first of a cycle of plays set in the Plateau Mont Royal district of Montreal. He went on to write a series of novels chronicling life in the Plateau. Throughout his work he examines the difficulties and issues facing homosexuals.

Over 50 years he has produced some 36 novels, 26 plays, three musical comedies, three books of short stories, seven film scripts and 3000 characters. His plays have been produced all around the world and he has been awarded the title of Chevalier d'l'ordre des Arts et des lettres de France and the Prix David from Quebec for his body of work.

We met in Montreal and talked largely about his play Hosanna, but also about him being Quebec's Balzac, le petit peuple de Montreal, writing dialogue in Joual, the experimental 70s, hating the Quebecois movie Cain, swearing hockey players, the Sheila Fischman, Les Belles-Sœurs, Le Refus Global, incarnating yourself inside your characters, fantastical stories, women's critiques of society, Quebec's identity crisis, Rene Lesveque, Pierre Trudeau, Mordecai Richler, the importance of movies and Fellini's 8 1/2.

Patrick deWitt was born on Vancouver Island in 1975. He has also lived in California, Washington, and Oregon, where he currently lives with his wife and son. He is the author of two novels, Ablutions and The Sisters Brothers, which won Canada's Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. Here's how the jury described it: "Brothers Eli and Charlie Sisters are at the centre of this "great greedy heart" of a book. A rollicking tale of hired guns, faithful horses and alchemy. The ingenious prose of Patrick DeWitt conveys a dark and gentle touch."

I met with Patrick in Ottawa to discuss his award-winning novel. Listen as we talk, among other things, about mannered language, the Coen Brothers, Charles Portis, horses, psychopaths, masturbation, arts funding and being Canadian.

* Update: The Sisters Brothers has recently been made into a movie directed by Jacques Audiard and starring John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix. Patrick's latest novel is French Exit.