Canada Reads American Style

Hidden Gems with author Marion Agnew

Welcome to the latest episode of Hidden Gems in which Rebecca and Tara invite guests to recommend authors or titles that may be new to us.

Rebecca is excited to introduce author Marion Agnew whose debut novel, Making Up the Gods, from Latitude 46 Publishing, was released in October, 2023.  Kirkus Reviews calls it “A complex, heart-warming tale of love, absolution, and fortitude.”

Marion began writing creative nonfiction in the late 1990s, after her mother’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s. Her essays were collected in Reverberations: A Daughter's Meditations on Alzheimer's, published in 2019 by Signature Editions. It was shortlisted for the Louise de Kiriline Lawrence Award.

A dual citizen of the US and Canada, Marion lives and writes in Shuniah, a community north of Thunder Bay, on Lake Superior, in Robinson-Superior Treaty Territory of the Anishinaabe and Métis peoples.

Rebecca interviewed Marion about Making Up the Gods on July 8, 2024.

Recommended books:

• Good to a Fault; Close to Hugh by Marina Endicott
• Lambsquarters: Scenes from a Handmade Life; Shepherd's Sight: A Farming Life by Barbara McLean
• McLean and Wils interview: https://www.tvo.org/video/barbara-mclean-with-her-husband-retired-doctor-thomas-wils 
• The Lightkeeper's Daughters by Jean E. Pendziwol
• We're All in This Together by Amy Jones

https://www.marionagnew.com/

https://latitude46publishing.com/

https://www.instagram.com/marionagnew/

https://www.entershinebookshop.ca/collections/all-books

 

Interview - Caitlin Galway and A Song for Wildcats

Rebecca is excited to interview Canadian author Caitlin Galway on this latest episode. Caitlin is a novelist and short fiction writer whose work can be classified as literary realism, surrealism, and magical realism. A Song for Wildcats, her new short story collection published by Dundurn Press, has been named an Indigo Best Book of 2025, and was featured as a must-read in The Globe and Mail, and a most anticipated book in The Toronto Star. She has been the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.

https://caitlingalway.wixsite.com/caitlin-l-galway

https://www.dundurn.com/authors_/t156375/p149069-caitlin-galway

https://www.instagram.com/c.l.gals/

Caitlin's books:

• A Song for Wildcats:
  • A Song for Wildcats
  • Heatstroke
  • The Islanders
  • The Wisp
  • The Lyrebird's Bell
• Bonavere Howl

Other books discussed:

• Her Body Among Animals by Paola Ferrante
• We Do Not Part by Han Kang
• Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park
• The Immortal Woman by Su Chang

 

Interview - Alma Sarai and Tottering Biped Theatre

Tara welcomes Alma Sarai, a Canadian artist, actor, musician, and arts advocate, to promote Tottering Biped Theatre's summer production of "The Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged)" at Dundurn Castle Park in Hamilton, ON in August 2025. 

Alma graduated from the Theatre and Drama Studies program at the University of Toronto Mississauga, a joint program with Sheridan College. She has been deeply involved with Tottering Biped Theatre (TBT) since 2016, serving as Associate Artistic Director and Associate Producer. Alma has performed in every "Shakespeare by Nature" production since its inception, portraying roles such as Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, among many other roles in numerous plays. Since 2020, she has also been the producing Director of TBT's Summer Shakespeare Project, an annual festival held at Dundurn Castle in Hamilton, co-led with Trevor Copp.

Books mentioned:

• Ruff by Rod Carley
• Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
• How to Make Love in a Canoe: Sex in Canada by Jeff Pearce
• Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench, Brendan O'Hea
• The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race by Farah Karim-Cooper
• Whenever You're Ready: Nora Polley on Life as a Stratford Festival Stage Manager by Shawn Desouza-Coelho

Event details:

The Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged)

August 12-30, 2025 @ 7:00 pm (Tues-Sat)

 

The Carnival of Animals (live music and mime)

August 17, 24, 31, 2025 @ 7:00 pm (Sun)

 

Dundurn Castle Park , 610 York Blvd, Hamilton, ON

https://www.totteringbiped.ca/

 

 

 

2025 Reading Goals - Midyear Review

Join Rebecca and Tara as they review the progress they've made (or not) on their 2025 reading goals. 

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• Currently reading: A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
• 2025 Goals: Complete Anne of Green Gables and The Chronicles of Narnia series and read more Redwall; read children's books that have "mischievous, clever, independent girl characters"; track "mood reads"; plus, a secret goal!

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• Currently reading: The Queen's Spade by Sarah Raughley
• 2025 Goals: Carol Shields Prize for Fiction; Agatha Christie; Helen Humphreys; weed physical TBR; read more short stories

If you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to share with Rebecca and Tara, please email them at craspod2019@gmail.com

 

Interview - Saad Omar Khan and Drinking the Ocean

Rebecca is excited to speak with Pakistani-Canadian author Saad Omar Khan about his debut novel, Drinking the Ocean, published by Wolsak & Wynn in 2025. Saad was born in the United Arab Emirates to Pakistani parents and lived in the Philippines, Hong Kong, and South Korea before immigrating to Canada.  He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics and has completed a certificate in Creative Writing from the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto. His short fiction has appeared in Best Canadian Stories 2025 and other publications. Saad lives outside of Toronto and is currently working on his second novel.

Books mentioned:

• Ley Lines by Tim Welsh
• Stella Maris; Blood Meridian; All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
• In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
• The Sheltering Sky; Travels: Collected Writing 1950-1993; The Stories of Paul Bowles by Paul Bowles
• Abdullah Ansari of Herat: An Early Sufi Master by A.G. Farhadi

https://www.saadomarkhan.com/

https://www.instagram.com/s.omar.khan/

https://bookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/collections/all/products/drinking-the-ocean

https://www.biblioasis.com/shop/fiction/short-fiction/best-canadian-stories-2025/

https://augursociety.org/

 

Book Chat 27

Rebecca and Tara share their latest vacation highlights as well as their favorite reads over the past month.

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• https://www.thehenryford.org/
• A Song for Wildcats: Stories by Caitlin Galway
• Stella's Carpet by Lucy E.M. Black 
• Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park
• A Psalm for the Wild-Built; A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers
• Drinking the Ocean by Saad Omar Khan
• The Fairy-Tale Detectives (The Sisters Grimm #1) by Michael Buckley
• Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• https://therooms.ca/
• The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen SookfongLee
• The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
• Pale Shadows; Paper Houses by Dominique Fortier; translated by Rhonda Mullins
• Sleepers and Ties by Gail Kirkpatrick
• Written on the Dark; The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay
• Tracking Giants: Big Trees, Tiny Triumphs, and Misadventures in the Forest by Amanda Lewis
• Hemo Sapiens by Emily A. Weedon

If you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to share with Rebecca and Tara, please email them at craspod2019@gmail.com

 

Interview - Su Chang and The Immortal Woman

Rebecca is excited to speak with Chinese-Canadian author Su Chang.  Su was born and raised in Shanghai and is the daughter of a former and reluctant Red Guard leader, which was the paramilitary arm of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution beginning in the 1960s. Today, they will be talking about her debut novel, The Immortal Woman, published by House of Anansi in March of this year.  It has already garnered a lot of attention and praise from CBC, Indigo Books, and Amazon, to name a few high-powered sources.

Highlighted books:

• Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
• Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
• Who's Irish? by Gish Jen
• Play by Jess Taylor
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith
• Kilworthy Tanner by Jean Marc Ah-Sen
• A Song for Wildcats by Caitlin Galway
• The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien

https://www.instagram.com/suchangwrites/

https://www.suchangauthor.com/

https://houseofanansi.com/products/the-immortal-woman?_pos=3&_sid=2cb7b9933&_ss=r

 

If you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to share with Rebecca and Tara, please email them at craspod2019@gmail.com

 

 

Sharing Our Shelves

Rebecca and Tara introduce a new feature, Sharing Our Shelves, that may appear again from time to time in which they each review the other's To Be Read shelf and pick their co-host's next book to read. Rebecca selected Tear by Erica McKeen for Tara and Tara selected Stella's Carpet by Lucy E.M. Black for Rebecca.

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• A Psalm for the Wild-Built; A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers
• The Living Great Lakes by Jerry Dennis
• A Feast of Wolves by Wilson Coneybeare
• Stella's Carpet by Lucy E.M. Black

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• The Midnight Project by Christy Climenhage
• Tear by Erica McKeen

If you have comments or suggestions that you would like to share with Rebecca and Tara, please email them at craspod2019@gmail.com

Happy Reading!

Interview - Harman Burns and Yellow Barks Spider

Tara chats with author Harman Burns, a Saskatchewan-born trans woman, writer, filmmaker, and sound artist. Her work has been published in Rebelle Zine, Untethered Magazine, and Metatron Press, and her story “Among Strange Machines” was shortlisted for the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction. Her debut novella, Yellow Barks Spider was published in 2024 by Radiant Press. She currently resides in Vancouver on the unceded, ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.

Books and authors mentioned:

• Little Fish; A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett
• Johnny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead
• Kai Cheng Thom
• Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
• Zulaikha by Niloufar-Lily Soltani
• Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells by Helen Scales
• House of Chains (Malazan Book of the Fallen #4/10) by Steven Erikson

https://www.instagram.com/harman.burns/

https://radiantpress.ca/shop/p/yellowbarksspider

 

 

 

Book Chat 26

Rebecca and Tara are finally back after a six-week break with lots of great titles to share!

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle): 

• One of Ours by Willa Cather
• Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park
• King Leary by Paul Quarrington
• Pay Dirt by Sara Paretsky
• Looking for Smoke by K.A. Cobell
• Blue Horses by Mary Oliver
  • If I Wanted a Boat"
  • "Watering the Stones"
  • "Franz Marc's Blue Horses"
• "Garnett Kilberg Cohen and Cravings" podcast, February 13, 2024

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• https://riverbookshop.com/ in Amherstburg, Ontario
• The Immortal Woman by Su Chang
• The ANNEthology: A Collection of Kindred Spirits Inspired by the Canadian Icon, compiled by Judith Graves and edited by Robin Sutherland
• Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey
• Notes Towards Recovery by Louise Ells
• “Dr. Louise Ells and Lies I Told My Sister” podcast, February 1, 2025
• Our Green Heart: The Soul and Science of Forests by Diana Beresford-Kroeger
• The Weeping Degree: How Astrology Saved Me from Suicide by Kelly Watt
• No Credit River by Zoe Whittal
• Songs for the Brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari
• The Ghost Orchard by Helen Humphreys

 

Hidden Gems with author Joanne Jackson

Tara chats with author Joanne Jackson about Canadian Prairie authors.

Saskatchewan Hidden Gems:

--Beatrice and Virgil; The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel

--Life on the Refrigerator Door; Polly Diamond series by Alice Kuipers

--Going to Beautiful; Russell Quant Mysteries by Anthony Bidulka

--Snake in the Raspberry Patch by Joanne Jackson

--A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

--Author Gail Bowen

https://www.joannejackson.ca/

https://www.instagram.com/joannejacksonauthor/

 

 

Reader Repartee with Zeralda

Rebecca is joined by friend of the podcast Zeralda to answer the Five Questions for Reader Repartee:

• How did you become a reader?
• What book do you wish you could read again for the first time?
• Which author, living or dead, would you like to meet in person and why?
• What fictional character would you like to meet and why?
• What are you currently reading?

Responses:

• The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
• Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series by Louise Penny
• The Iliad by Homer
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• The Last Ranger by Peter Heller
• Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo
• My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
• Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman by Patrick Hutchison

 

CBC's 2025 Canada Reads Wrap Up with Host Ali Hassan

Rebecca and Tara again welcome host Ali Hassan for their annual wrap up of the CBC’s Canada Reads debates!

https://standupali.com/

https://standupali.com/my-book

https://www.instagram.com/standupali

Recommended books:

• American War; What Strange Paradise; One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
• A History of Burning by Janika Oza

 

THIS YEAR’S WINNER:

• A Two-Spirit Journey by Ma-Nee Chacaby and Mary Louisa Plummer; championed by Indigenous advocate Shayla Stonechild

THE RUNNERS-UP:

• Dandelion by Jamie Chai Yun Liew; championed by "Pastry Nerd" Saïd M’Dahoma
• Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper; championed by actor Michelle Morgan
• Jennie's Boy by Wayne Johnston; championed by author Linwood Barclay
• Watch Out for Her by Samantha M. Bailey; championed by Olympic Gold Medal swimmer Maggie Mac Neil

https://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads

 

CBC's 2025 Canada Reads DAY THREE Wrap Up

Rebecca and Tara discuss Day THREE of CBC's Canada Reads debates!

STILL IN:

• Dandelion by Jamie Chai Yun Liew; championed by "Pastry Nerd" Saïd M’Dahoma
• Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper; championed by actor Michelle Morgan
• A Two-Spirit Journey by Ma-Nee Chacaby and Mary Louisa Plummer; championed by Indigenous advocate Shayla Stonechild

NOW OUT:

• Watch Out for Her by Samantha M. Bailey; championed by Olympic Gold Medal swimmer Maggie Mac Neil
• Jennie's Boy by Wayne Johnston; championed by author Linwood Barclay

https://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads

 

Please note that on DAY FOUR Rebecca and Tara will be live on YouTube wrapping up the debates with Jolene (@bookwormadventure girl) on Thursday, March 20 @ 7:30 pm EDT:

https://www.youtube.com/@canadareadsamericanstyle

Also, make sure to check out Jolene's YouTube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@BookwormAdventureGirl

 

CBC's 2025 Canada Reads DAY TWO Wrap Up

Rebecca and Tara discuss Day TWO of CBC's Canada Reads debates!

STILL IN:

• Dandelion by Jamie Chai Yun Liew; championed by "Pastry Nerd" Saïd M’Dahoma
• Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper; championed by actor Michelle Morgan
• Jennie's Boy by Wayne Johnston; championed by author Linwood Barclay
• A Two-Spirit Journey by Ma-Nee Chacaby and Mary Louisa Plummer; championed by Indigenous advocate Shayla Stonechild

NOW OUT:

• Watch Out for Her by Samantha M. Bailey; championed by Olympic Gold Medal swimmer Maggie Mac Neil

https://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads