Originally a poet, Vikram Seth attracted international attention in 1993 with the publication of his mammoth novel, A Suitable Boy. Set against the backdrop of post-colonial India, the novel made Seth into a literary celebrity – dubbed "India's Tolstoy" and "the Golden Boy." In 2005 he spoke to Eleanor Wachtel onstage at the Toronto International Festival of Authors about his book Two Lives. Part memoir, part family history, Two Lives chronicles the remarkable story of Seth's great aunt Henny – a German Jew who lost her family in the Holocaust – and his great uncle Shanti – an Indian-born, Berlin-trained dentist, who lost an arm fighting in World War Two. *This episode originally aired November 20, 2005.

Remembering the popular and provocative English writer, Martin Amis, who died in May 2023 at the age of 73. Son of acclaimed author Sir Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis is perhaps best known for his novels Money, London Fields and The Information. You'll also hear part of Eleanor Wachtel's 1992 interview with Kingsley Amis, recorded at his home in London. This episode originally aired in 2007.

One of the premier American poets of his generation, Mark Strand used precise, everyday language, humour and surreal imagery to describe the quiet anguish of life. A former poet laureate of the U.S., he won the Pulitzer Prize for his collection, Blizzard of One. In 1999, Mark Strand spoke to Eleanor Wachtel about summers spent in Nova Scotia, engaging with art and the language of love. He died in 2014. He was 80 years old.

Author of the powerful and poetic Grief is the Thing With Feathers, the best-selling British novelist talks with Eleanor Wachtel about his new novel, Shy, and his original imaginings of the natural world

In a special conversation recorded in Toronto in 2002, Eleanor Wachtel spoke with Barbara Holdridge and Marianne Mantell, founders of Caedmon Records, a pioneer in commercial spoken word recordings. You'll hear the voices of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Dylan Thomas, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and more.

Ayad Akhtar won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his provocative play Disgraced, described as "a combustible powder keg of identity politics." He's also tackled themes of race and culture through fiction: his first novel, American Dervish, about a young Pakistani-American boy growing up in the Midwest, and his powerful, prize-winning 2020 novel, Homeland Elegies. Frankly autobiographical, Homeland Elegies explores the idea of the "American dream" through the experience of Akhtar's parents and his own dual identity as a Muslim American following the 9/11 attacks. *This episode originally aired Oct. 25, 2020.

In a rare joint conversation recorded onstage in Montreal in 2001, popular novelist Margaret Drabble and her husband, the influential biographer Michael Holroyd, spoke to Eleanor Wachtel about their once-secret marriage, and exploring their parents' stories through works of fiction and memoir.

From Belgrade and London, the remarkable novelist, poet and memoirist, Vesna Goldsworthy. She spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2019 about her novel Monsieur Ka, an ingenious re-working of Tolstoy’s masterpiece, Anna Karenina — picking up where his story left off. Set in post-war London and focusing on the life of Anna's abandoned son, it’s an entertaining and affecting story about identity, exile and fiction.

Over the past 30 years, American writer Elizabeth McCracken has become known for her extraordinary fiction imbued with insight, heart and humour. From her first novel, The Giant's House, to her most recent story collection, The Souvenir Museum, she focuses on characters that are different, even eccentric. Her latest novel, The Hero of This Book, was inspired by her own marvellous mother. It was named a 'Best Book of the Year' by numerous publications including The Washington Post, NPR and The New Yorker.

Known for his bestselling case studies The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings and An Anthropologist on Mars, British author and neurologist Oliver Sacks was one of a kind. Infused with enthusiasm and compassion, his writing explored the depths of human consciousness. Eleanor Wachtel spoke to Sacks in 2001 about his book, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. He died in 2015. He was 82 years old.

On May 4, the winner of the inaugural US$150,000 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, which celebrates the work of Canadian and American women and non-binary writers, will be announced. In honour of the prize, Writers & Company is airing Eleanor Wachtel's last conversation with Shields, recorded at her home in Victoria in 2002. Shields died the following year. She was the author of more than 20 books including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Stone Diaries, The Republic of Love and Swann: A Mystery. Her last novel, Unless, tells the story of a writer struggling with the loss of her daughter, who's chosen to live on a downtown street corner with a cardboard sign fixed to her that reads "Goodness." *This episode originally aired on July 17, 2003.

In 2016, French-Moroccan novelist Leila Slimani won the Prix Goncourt for her provocative thriller, The Perfect Nanny, which was named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review and is currently being adapted into a limited series starring Nicole Kidman. Slimani's 2020 novel, In the Country of Others, was the first of a planned trilogy – an intergenerational family saga set in Morocco after the Second World War. The forthcoming second volume, Watch Us Dance, takes place during the late 1960s and early '70s, a time when political repression and social optimism were coming head to head.

Eleanor Wachtel has spoken to the award-winning English writer Julian Barnes many times over the course of his lengthy career. In June 2016, he joined her onstage at the Bluma Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library to talk about his love of music, his novel The Noise of Time, about the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and dealing with death. *Please note this episode contains some discussion of suicide.

In this conversation from 2017, the master of the political thriller John le Carré spoke with Eleanor at his home in London about his novel A Legacy of Spies, which saw the return of his most famous character, the enigmatic British spy George Smiley. Carré talks about Smiley's enduring appeal, and about drawing on his own experience in Britain's intelligence service during the height of the Cold War for his bestselling fiction. John le Carré died in Dec. 2020 at the age of 89.

Celebrated Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat speaks to Eleanor Wachtel about her moving memoir, Brother, I’m Dying. It tells the story of Danticat's family amid turbulent times, focusing on her father and his brother, the uncle who raised her in Haiti and later died in custody as he sought refuge in Miami. *This episode originally aired October 21, 2007.

Called "a poet of ecstatic revelation," U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón brings an observant eye and sense of wonder to all her work – from 2015's Bright Dead Things, to her acclaimed 2018 collection, The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Limón's latest book, The Hurting Kind, is a finalist for the $130,000 Griffin Poetry Prize. The winner will be announced at a live event, complete with readings, on Wednesday June 7 at Koerner Hall in Toronto.

Nigerian writer Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ made a stunning debut in 2017 with her acclaimed first novel, Stay With Me. Focusing on a young couple's struggles with infertility and cultural tradition, the novel won the Prix Les Afriques, was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction and named a best book of the year by the Guardian and Wall Street Journal. Her new novel, A Spell of Good Things, examines themes of power, politics and poverty in modern-day Nigeria, interweaving the stories of two very different families across the class divide.

In Diary of an Invasion, bestselling Ukrainian novelist and journalist Andrey Kurkov documents daily life during the first year of Russia's war, fusing the personal, historical and political. Known for novels that are pointed yet playful, his most recent, Grey Bees, explores the 2014 conflict and its aftermath in eastern Ukraine through the eyes of a beekeeper living in the crosshairs. It won the 2023 National Book Critics Circle award for translation. Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv, an earlier title now out in English translation, was longlisted for the International Booker Prize.

Daniel Barenboim has been conductor of the Orchestra of Paris and musical director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Berlin State Opera, a position he held for three decades. Along with the Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said, Barenboim created the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, bringing together young musicians from the Middle East, especially Israel and the Arab world. Speaking to Eleanor Wachtel from Milan in 2008, he talked about the orchestra's historic 2005 concert in Ramallah, growing up on Bach and the meaning of music in his life. This episode originally aired on Wachtel on the Arts on IDEAS in 2008.

Eleanor Wachtel has spoken to the popular and critically acclaimed English writer Zadie Smith many times over the years, including in 2010 about her first non-fiction collection, Changing My Mind. It features essays about writers such as Franz Kafka, Vladimir Nabokov and George Eliot and touches on everything from the craft of writing to Smith’s love of films, as well as personal reflections about her family. *This episode originally aired on February 28, 2010.

One of Britain's foremost travel writers, Sara Wheeler has written bestselling books and biographies about the polar region and its famous expeditions, as well as the United States, Chile, Russia and Greece. Now, in Glowing Still: A Woman's Life on the Road, Wheeler turns the lens on herself, considering a life spent on the road and writing in what has historically been a male-dominated genre. Part memoir, part travelogue, Glowing Still spans seven continents and has been described as "funny, furious writing from the queen of intrepid travel."

One of the most brilliant and influential writers of his generation, Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer at The New Yorker, host of the Revisionist History podcast and author of many bestselling books, including The Tipping Point, Blink and Talking to Strangers. In 2012, Gladwell spoke to Eleanor Wachtel onstage at the Toronto Reference Library as part of Jamaica 50, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Jamaican independence. *This episode originally aired June 10, 2012.

English writer Sarah Bakewell is the author of engaging, accessible books about thinkers, from existentialists such as Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre to the 16th century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne – a work which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In her new book, Humanly Possible, Bakewell examines the centuries-long tradition of humanist thinking through the ideas and observations of a range of figures from Boccaccio and Erasmus to E.M. Forster and Zora Neale Hurston.

For Writers & Company's final original episode, Eleanor Wachtel is interviewed on-stage by Matt Galloway, host of CBC Radio's The Current. She then speaks with American authors Brandon Taylor and Gary Shteyngart, and receives surprise greetings from the likes of Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith.

When Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, the Swedish Academy praised her for giving "life to an essential aspect of American reality," in novels "characterized by visionary force and poetic import." In this 2012 conversation, Morrison speaks with Eleanor Wachtel about her novels Home and A Mercy, as well as growing up in Ohio and the death of her son, Slade. Toni Morrison died in 2019. She was 88.

One of the world's most celebrated writers, Michael Ondaatje is the author of such acclaimed works as Running in the Family, Anil's Ghost, In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient, which won the 2018 Golden Man Booker Prize, named the best novel of the Booker's 50-year history. His writing, both poetry and prose, is often rooted in history – from Toronto in the early 1900s, to North Africa during the Second World War, to Ondaatje's childhood in Sri Lanka. He recently won the Grand Prix for lifetime achievement from Montreal's Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival.

Agnieszka Holland is perhaps best known for her films Europa Europa, Angry Harvest and In Darkness, as well as adaptations of The Secret Garden and Washington Square. Her latest film, Green Border, about the Syrian refugee crisis along Poland's border with Belarus, is having its North American premiere at TIFF. In 2013, she spoke to Eleanor Wachtel about her three-part series, Burning Bush, set during the Prague Spring. *This episode originally aired Dec. 17, 2013.

The former laureate for Irish fiction, Sebastian Barry writes richly invented stories inspired by people in his own family – from his grandfather in the 2014 novel, The Temporary Gentleman, to Days Without End about his grandfather's uncle. His latest novel, Old God's Time, is on the longlist for this year's Booker Prize. Eleanor Wachtel has spoken to Barry many times over the years, starting in 2008 with his novel The Secret Scripture, about a 100-year-old woman forcibly confined to a psychiatric hospital. *This episode originally aired Oct. 19, 2008.

Fiction writer Yan Ge is a literary sensation in China, where she was named one of her country's "future literary masters." Her novel, translated as Strange Beasts of China, is a mysterious, imaginative tale about mythological creatures who live alongside humans. Her latest book, Elsewhere, is a collection of short stories and Ge's first book written in English. *This episode originally aired Feb. 13, 2022.

Acclaimed Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin has dedicated her life to telling the stories of Indigenous peoples. She's made more than 50 films with the National Film Board of Canada, including the landmark documentaries Christmas at Moose Factory, Incident at Restigouche and Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, and has been called "the most important filmmaker in the history of Canada." In 2008, Eleanor Wachtel spoke to Obomsawin at her home in Montreal.

The former inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction, Anne Enright won the 2008 Man Booker Prize for her novel The Gathering, which revolves around the tragic death of a young man inside a large family, told from the perspective of his grieving sister. Enright's new title, The Wren, The Wren, has been called perhaps her best novel yet. *This interview originally aired Feb. 3, 2008. Please note it contains some discussion of suicide.

Viet Thanh Nguyen's 2016 novel, The Sympathizer, tells the story of a Communist Party spy who escapes Saigon and goes to California, where he leads a double life as an intimate of a former South Vietnamese general. It won the Pulitzer Prize and was on more than 30 'best book of the year' lists. Nguyen's new title is an unconventional memoir called A Man of Two Faces. *This interview originally aired Oct. 2, 2016.

John Grisham's novel The Reckoning re-imagines a story the author encountered more than 30 years ago about a murder in small-town Mississippi. It centres on Pete, a cotton farmer returning from the Second World War, and the mystery surrounding his motive for killing the local pastor. *This interview originally aired Mar. 24, 2019.

WARNING: This discussion deals with suicide. England's Jeanette Winterson reflects on her childhood and explores her search for love and belonging in her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?. Winterson is the author of the hit, semi-autobiographical novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Her latest book, Night Side of the River, is a collection of ghost stories. *This interview originally aired in 2012.

Jesmyn Ward's novel, Salvage the Bones, is an intimate and compelling look at Hurricane Katrina and the American South. It won the National Book award in 2011. Following the success of Salvage the Bones, Ward released her memoir, Men We Reaped, which examines her experiences with racism, the absence of her father and the death of her younger brother. Her new novel, Let Us Descend, follows an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War. *This interview originally aired on Sept. 28, 2014.

WARNING: This discussion deals with suicide. In late 1994, Eleanor Wachtel spoke to award-winning author and Vietnam War veteran Tim O'Brien. He's the author of such acclaimed books as Going After Cacciato, The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods. O'Brien new novel – his first in 20 years – is called America Fantastica. *This interview originally aired on Jan. 15, 1995.

In 2019, Eleanor Wachtel spoke to German-American graphic artist Nora Krug about her award-winning illustrated memoir, Belonging. It's a powerful and compassionate investigation into Krug's family's involvement in the Second World War and the impact of history on successive generations. Her new book, Diaries of War: Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine and Russia, is a real-time, personal record from a Ukrainian journalist and an anti-war Russian artist, which Krug solicited and then illustrated. *This interview deals with difficult subjects including the Holocaust and antisemitism. It originally aired on March 10, 2019.

In honour of novelist and critic A.S. Byatt, who died on November 16, Writers & Company revisits her 2009 interview with Eleanor Wachtel, recorded live at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal. Byatt was there to launch her novel, The Children's Book, and to receive the festival's $10,000 Grand Prix. *Please note this interview includes reference to suicide. It originally aired on May 24, 2009.

WARNING: This discussion deals with suicide. Sigrid Nunez's eighth title, The Friend, won the 2018 U.S. National Book Award. Hailed as "a subtle, unassuming masterpiece," it follows a woman grieving the death of her friend as she cares for his 180-pound Great Dane. Nunez followed it with What Are You Going Through, which was named a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2020. Her new novel, The Vulnerables, takes place during the early days of Covid lockdown. *This interview originally aired on May 30, 2021.

Lydia Davis has been called "one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction." Her 2007 short story collection, Varieties of Disturbance, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Davis's newest title, Our Strangers, contains 144 short stories in 300 pages. Lydia Davis spoke to Eleanor Wachtel on stage at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal. *This interview originally aired June 10, 2007.

At 95, Lore Segal has been writing for almost sixty years. The author of Other People's Houses, Half the Kingdom and Shakespeare's Kitchen, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Segal's latest book is called Ladies' Lunch and Other Stories. It's been named a New Yorker Best Book of the Year. *This interview originally aired Oct. 20, 2013.

Winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, Irish poet Seamus Heaney died ten years ago when he was 74. Known for poems that engage with the immediacy of the natural world and its physicality, Heaney spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2010 about his book Human Chain. It won UK's £10,000 Forward Prize, among Heaney's many other honours. *This interview originally aired May 23, 2010.

This week, to strike a celebratory note, an encore presentation of Writers & Company's 20th anniversary special with acclaimed writers Dionne Brand, Margaret Drabble, Deborah Eisenberg and Andrew O'Hagan. They joined host Eleanor Wachtel onstage at the Toronto International Festival of Authors in 2010. *This interview originally aired Oct. 31, 2010.

Australia's most celebrated Indigenous author Alexis Wright spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2009 about her award-winning novel Carpentaria. Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Her new novel, Praiseworthy, will be published in Canada in February.

Best known for her Cazalet Chronicles and a dozen other books, English novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard turned to her own life in her memoir, Slipstream. In the book, and in this conversation with Eleanor Wachtel from 2003, she reflects on her difficult upbringing in London in the 1920s and '30s, on her first marriage during the Second World War, and shares her account of her widely discussed breakup with renowned writer Kingsley Amis. Howard died 10 years ago, aged 90.

This week on Writers & Company from the archives, celebrating a classic that’s also one of the most translated books in the world: Le Petit Prince or The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Biographer Stacy Schiff, filmmaker Mark Osborne and novelist Éric Dupont joined Eleanor Wachtel for the book's 75th anniversary in 2018 to reflect on its enduring appeal.

The celebrated Congolese-French writer joined Eleanor Wachtel onstage at the Vancouver Writers Festival in 2016. Mabanckou's recent books are charming explorations of childhood, family and country. His memoir The Lights of Pointe-Noire relates his experience of returning to his hometown after 23 years, while his novel Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty captures his childhood spirit in the character of his 10-year-old alter ego.

Looking back on Philip Roth, one of the most celebrated American writers, who died in 2018, aged 85. From Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy’s Complaint to The Plot Against America — Roth’s legacy lives on. He spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2009 about his early success, coping with fame and controversy, and the evolution of his writing... and his life.