The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Hosted ByNigel Beale

THE BIBLIO FILE is one of the world's leading podcasts about "the book" and an inquiry into the wider world of book culture. Hosted by Nigel Beale it features wide ranging conversations with authors, poets, book publishers, booksellers, book editors, book collectors, book makers, book scholars, book critics, book designers, book publicists, literary agents and other certified bibliophiles.


All Episodes

Glenn Patterson on Belfast, Cities, Disney, Tolstoy and Public Houses

Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia under Malcolm Bradbury. He is the author of seven novels. The first, Burning Your Own (1988), set in Northern Ireland in 1969, won a Betty Trask…

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Alaa Al Aswany on Fiction and Democracy

Egyptian writer Alaa al Aswany was born in 1957 and studied dentistry in Egypt and Chicago. In addition to fiction, he writes on literature, politics, and social issues. His second novel, The Yacoubian Building, an ironic take on modern Egyptian…

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John Hollander on Good and Bad Poetry

Born in 1929 in New York, educated at Columbia, John Hollander is a poet and literary critic. He has written more than a dozen books of poetry, and seven books of criticism, including Rhyme’s Reason of which Harold Bloom said: “[it is] on all…

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Andre Alexis on the themes in his Novels

André Alexis was born in 1957 in Trinidad and Tobago. His parents left for Canada when he was a baby. The family reunited in Ottawa when Alexis was four years old. He still remembers the trauma of this separation; it has coloured much of his writing…

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Andrew O’Hagan on Determination, Memoir, Israel, Martin Amis, Islam and Coloured Doors

Andrew O’Hagan’s most recent novel, Be Near Me, has just won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It is the story of an English priest who takes over a small Scottish parish in a post-industrial town by the sea; a story of art and politics,…

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Irene Gammel on Lucy Maud Montgomery & Anne of Green Gables

William Deverell on how to write Crime Mystery Novels

William Deverell, has been widely hailed as Canada’s greatest ‘literary mystery’ writer. This from his website: “Deverell worked as a journalist for seven years, with Canadian Press Montreal, the Vancouver Sun and the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, where he was night city editor while at the University of Saskatchewan law school and editor of the student newspaper….

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David Solway on What makes a Poem Great

In honour of Poetry Month, here is my interview with Canadian poet, critic and political writer, David Solway. We first discuss what constitutes a great poem in the context of ‘political’ and other agendas that some poets incorporate into their…

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Sally Cooper on her second novel, Tell Everything

Sally Cooper’s second novel, Tell Everything,delves into the darkest regions of the human soul, and lends credence to Kipling’s line: “The female of the species is deadlier than the male.” During our conversation about Tell Everything we discuss…

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