David Franklin is former Chief Curator at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and editor of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and the Renaissance in Florence, a catalogue published by Yale University Press to accompany a major exhibition of the same…

Christopher Pratt is one of Canada’s most ‘prominent’ painters. He is now also a published poet. We talk here, in his home of St Mary’s Bay, Newfoundland on the Salmonier River, about his book A Painter’s Poems (Breakwater Books, 2005),…

Barbara Reid’s plasticine artwork makes her books instantly recognizable. They have won acclaim around the world, and many awards. We talk here about what makes her so good, about great children’s book illustrators, the accurate conveyance of…

Ramona Dearing lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and is the latest member of the longstanding (and increasingly famous) fiction collective The Burning Rock to publish a collection of short fiction. Dearing works for CBC Radio where she is currently…

Lisa Moore’s fiction has been published widely in literary magazines and in anthologies. Her two collections of short stories, Degrees of Nakedness and Open have received praise for their ’supple sensuality and emotional authenticity.’ She lives in Newfoundland. We talked there, and here about her recently published first novel, Alligator, about tea, pine martins, time,…

Here’s Tim Parks on his novel Cleaver: “Cleaver comes out of my love of the South Tyrol and a growing awareness/ irritation/ anxiety about the invasive nature of the public voice, the spoken media, in our minds and lives. And of course Cleaver, this…

Michael Crummey is a Newfoundland-born poet, short story writer and novelist. He is known for his historical fiction. His multi-award winning novel River Thieves depicts the relationship between European settlers and the last of the Beothuk indians…

James O. Born is a Special Agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and author of three best selling crime novels. We talk about his most recent, Escape Clause; about blurbs, putting humour and a human face on the real life experience of…

Australian Tim Winton wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer (1982), at the age of 19. It won the Australian Vogel National Literary Award. Born in Perth, in 1960, he is the author of Shallows (1986), a novel set in a whaling town, and Cloudstreet…