The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Prizes are ridiculous. Winners are often poor writers. Short lists are political. The whole world kneels before a bunch of Swedish academics who only read books in translation...

So what does Tim Parks really think of book awards? Listen up. You'll also get his thoughts on Salman Rushdie and J.M. Coetzee.

Dr. Don Nichol is an English Professor at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada. He has been researching copyright law and its role in the history of writing and publishing for more than a decade. He is the author of Pope's Literary Legacy, published by the Oxford Bibliographical Society in 1992, and editor, more recently, of The New Foundling Hospital for Wit 1768-1773, a three-volume set containing enhanced facsimiles of some of the 18th-century's most popular and salacious English satire.

Nothing too salacious in our conversation, unfortunately, but we do have a rollicking good talk about 18th Century booksellers and authors, the Copyright Act of 1710, copyright libraries, 14 year protection, perpetual monopoly, the famous Alexander Pope and his friend John Gay, Dr. Johnson, and his biographer James Boswell, less famous Andrew Miller, and my new hero, the independent Scottish bookseller/philanthropist Alexander Donaldson, a Warren Buffet of his age.

Periodically you'll hear what sounds like an earthquake rumbling in the background…this is nothing more than a soft Atlantic cross-breeze wafting through Don's corner (yes, he's made it) office in the Arts building where the interview was conducted.

Fran Durako is owner of the Kelmscott Bookshop in Baltimore, Maryland. We talk here about her love of William Morris, fine printing and Victorian book illustration, the transition from book collector to seller, and art as a 'positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to.'

Acclaimed Canadian novelist and critic David Gilmour was born in London, Ontario in 1949. His first novel, Back on Tuesday, was published in 1986, followed by How Boys See Girls in 1991 and An Affair with the Moon in 1993. Lost Between Houses, published in 1999, was nominated for the Trillium Book Award. Sparrow Nights, his fifth novel, was published by Random House to rave reviews. His latest novel A Perfect Night to go to China won Canada's 2005 Governor General's Award for Fiction. I met with David in the foyer of the Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa the morning after he received his award from the Governor General at Rideau Hall.

We talk about winning it, sex, suicide, kids, the perfect woman, wearing spandex at discos and the fact that for him, conquering for women and affirmation are not the same thing.

He is a candid, funny, sensitive man worth listening to, plus, in my opinion, Canada's best novelist.

Hope the background Christmas carols, and what sounds like a flock of little tweety birds, aren't too distracting…

Martin Levin was for 17 years the popular (particularly at Book Expo Canada where we met) Books Editor at the (Toronto) Globe and Mail newspaper, and, according to Dennis Johnson, founder of MobyLives and co-founder/co-publisher of Melville House, one of the most esteemed in the business.

We talk here about namesakes in Tolstoy, guilt, tragedy, sorrow at not being able to review anywhere near all worthy books, blockbusters syphoning money away from deserving titles, getting boys to read books, graphic novels, Canadian literature as post-colonial/nationalist; Cynthia Ozick; post-modern levelling; discerning value; the benefits of competition; the decline of book talk in print; and Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Jamie Byng is Publisher at Canongate Books, an independent publishing firm based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Thanks in part to his tireless efforts, and the huge success of its Booker-winning novel Life Of Pi, Canongate won Publisher Of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2003. It won again in 2009. Jamie is also the originator, and (was) first Chair of World Book Night.

In 2005 he launched the first in a series of Canongate novellas that feature ancient myths from various cultures reimagined and rewritten. Though the initial titles received mixed reviews, the series was branded by many as "bold" and "ambitious."

I met with Jamie at Book Expo 2006 in Washington D.C. We talk here about, among other things, this myth series and his appreciation of mythology; the bible underlying creative imagination and the Western Canon and his skill presenting and capitalizing on the concept; ambiguity; the responsibility we parents have to make the lives of our children interesting, at least; Joseph Campbell; Margaret Atwood; and living without fear.

Interview with used antiquarian book dealer Peter Ellis at his shop on Cecil Court Road in London, England.

Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published more than thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T.S. Eliot Prize. He is Founding Chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and was Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 to 2004. He has served as both president of the Poetry Society (UK) and as Poetry Editor at The New Yorker magazine.

He was in Ottawa, Canada for the April 2006 edition of the Ottawa International Writers Festival. We met at my apartment, where we talked about, among other things: poetry as pemmican; initials, dashed expectations, the movie Ice Age, James Joyce's secular epiphanies, the luck of Shakespeare and Mozart, what constitutes great poetry, judgement, pigs, the depth(s) of Johnny Depp, and hot water bottles.

Nobel Prize winning poet Derek Walcott read at the Blue Metropolis Writers Festival in Montreal several weeks ago. We talk here about England, parents, Ted Hughes, William Blake, combining painting and poetry, the sea, getting laid, and the theme of returning. In addition to experiencing him as an articulate, moving communicator, I also found Derek Walcott to be, like many great men, humble and approachable.