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CBC Radio's Writers and Company offers an opportunity to explore in depth the lives, thoughts and works of remarkable writers from around the world. Hosted by Eleanor Wachtel.
100 Episodes
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For the conclusion of Writers and Company, the tables are turned and author Madeleine Thien interviews Eleanor Wachtel. Recorded at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal last spring, Thien speaks with Eleanor about her early life in Montreal, memorable moments from her career and more. They also look back on Eleanor's conversations with Antiguan American novelist and memoirist Jamaica Kincaid and British neurologist Oliver Sacks. Plus, Jeopardy! superchamp Mattea Roach joins Eleanor to talk about hosting CBC's new author interview show, Bookends.The entire Writers and Company archive will gradually be made available on the Simon Fraser University Library’s Digitized Collections website. You can find it here: https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/writersandcompany-collection/writers-company
The Scottish author reflects on the stories she grew up with, the influence of feminism and how time moves in circular patterns. Ali Smith has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize four times. Her 2014 novel How to Be Both won the Women's Prize for fiction and the Costa Book Award for novel. She spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2018 about the first two books in her Seasonal Quartet series, Autumn and Winter.
1The American architect, known for challenging the idea of form, reflects on his life and the experiences that shape his work, from his days as a lieutenant in the Korean War to his time studying in Europe. He founded the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and is the author of several books on architecture and design, including Lateness. Peter Eisenman spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2011.
The American novelist draws on her experience growing up in an interracial family in her edgy, prize-winning fiction. Raised with an acute black consciousness, during a time when "'mixed' wasn't an option; you were either black or white," Senna brings an awareness — and astute analysis — of class, race and identity to all her writing. She spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2018 about her novel New People and her memoir Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History.
Novelist and biographer Francine du Plessix Gray reflects on the fascinating lives of her parents in her memoir, Them, which follows their journey from the artistic Russian émigré community of 1930s Paris to the top of New York's high society. The memoir won the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. Francine du Plessix Gray was a French American writer and regular contributor to The New Yorker. Her books include Lovers and Tyrants, At Home with the Marquis de Sade, Madame de Staël and Soviet Women. She died in 2019.
Born during the Depression in Lockport, New York, Joyce Carol Oates started writing as a teen and has since written more than one hundred books, many of them portraying the darkness of American society. Her writing has earned her virtually every major American literary prize, as well as Montreal’s Blue Metropolis Grand Prix in 2012. After accepting that prize, she joined Eleanor Wachtel on stage to talk about her life, her work and her latest novel, Mudwoman.
The Indian journalist and novelist writes stories that are autobiographical and revealing. Kumar joined Eleanor Wachtel in 2018 to talk about his book Immigrant, Montana - a mix of fiction, memory, politics and the pursuit of romance. Kumar's new novel is called My Beloved Life.
Even though Edna O’Brien left Ireland more than 50 years ago, the texture and atmosphere of the country continue to permeate her work. Her first seven books were banned or suppressed in Ireland. In fact her debut novel, The Country Girls, was burned in her home parish for depicting the ambitions and sexual desires of young women. Today, O'Brien is celebrated as one of Ireland's greatest living writers.In this conversation with Eleanor Wachtel from 2009, Edna O'Brien talks about her scandalous early success, her mother's enduring influence, and her portrait of Romantic poet Lord Byron, the world's first global celebrity. 2024 marks the 200th anniversary of Byron's death, when he was just 36 years old.
In 2018, Eleanor Wachtel went to New York City to interview one of North America's most renowned and daring creative pioneers, Laurie Anderson. The multimedia artist and musician had just published her retrospective book, All the Things I Lost in the Flood, inspired by the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which destroyed Anderson's archive of work and memorabilia. In this career-spanning and deeply personal conversation, she talks about the connection between story and memory, growing up in the Midwest with seven brothers and sisters, her relationship with Lou Reed, her partner of 21 years, and becoming unlikely pen pals with John F. Kennedy.
This week, for Pride season, the Oscar-nominated playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner. Known most recently for his movie collaborations with Steven Spielberg, including Lincoln, Westside Story and The Fablemans, Kushner's breakout hit was his epic play Angels in America, the winner of multiple Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize, among many other awards. Fuelled by the AIDS crisis and Reaganism in the 1980s, the play was made into an opera and an HBO miniseries starring Meryl Streep, Al Pacino and Emma Thompson. In this conversation with Eleanor Wachtel from 2011, Kushner also talks about his later work, The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, a family drama that evokes George Bernard Shaw and Mary Baker Eddy.
This week, American Canadian novelist Claire Messud. Throughout her career and in her new book, This Strange Eventful History, one of TIME’s most anticipated of 2024, Messud draws on her own family's history, especially that of her French Algerian father. In 2001 she spoke with Eleanor about her novel The Last Life, which traces three generations of a French Algerian family from the perspective of a teenage girl. To conclude the program, Messud reads a chapter from the novel.
In honour of the centenary of the death of Franz Kafka, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, Eleanor Wachtel revisits her 2005 conversation with one of his biographers, Nicholas Murray.
Germany's Jenny Erpenbeck is the winner of the International Booker Prize 2024 for her novel Kairos, translated by Michael Hofmann. She spoke with Eleanor Wachtel, who chaired the International Booker Prize jury, in 2015 about The End of Days, an imaginative story that spans the 20th century through the eyes of a character who lives multiple versions of her life. Erpenbeck also reflects on her own childhood, growing up in a literary family in East Berlin before the fall of the Wall, and the ways in which history, politics and her experience with personal and national transformations have inspired her work.
The British born author moved to New York in 2008 to write a book set in sixteenth-century India. But he was drawn to write about America, focusing on life in the city and the Mojave Desert in his two novels White Tears and Gods Without Men. Hari Kunzru spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2017 from New York
Jackie Kay’s adoption as a baby, and investigation into her birth parents — a Nigerian father and Scottish mother — give her an original take on Scotland and cultural identity. Jackie Kay talked about her uncomfortable discoveries upon meeting her birth parents, as well as her two books, Wish I Was Here and Darling: New and Selected Poems, when she met with Eleanor Wachtel at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh in 2007.
In 2004, just before she won the Scotiabank Giller Prize (for the second time) for her story collection, Runaway, Alice Munro met Eleanor Wachtel at a restaurant near the author's home to discuss her new book, her interest in writing about infidelity and sex and her life growing up in Wingham, Ontario. The acclaimed Canadian short story writer, and Canada's first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, died on May 13, 2024.
Paul Auster spoke with Eleanor Wachtel about his novel Oracle Night, the ways in which reality and fiction blend and how coincidences shape our lives at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal in 2004. The writer of The New York Trilogy, Leviathan and 4 3 2 1, among many other books, was best known for his postmodernist fiction and meta-narratives. He died on April 30, 2024. He was 77.
From his childhood in San Francisco's sand dunes to sitting in French cafes with Philip Glass and Samuel Beckett, Richard Serra reflects on his life and work during a 2011 conversation with Eleanor Wachtel. Best known for his evocative and monumental steel structures, you can find Serra's sculptural works all over the world, including his piece Titled Spheres in Toronto Pearson Airport. Serra died in March. He was 85.
This week on Writers and Company, British poet Raymond Antrobus. Antrobus spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2019 about his collection, The Perseverance, which explores his complicated relationship with his late father and growing up deaf.
This week, Irish novelist Colm Toibin discusses his short story collection, Mothers and Sons, which explores the unspoken and shifting dynamics in these relationships. Toibin is the author of Brooklyn, which was made into an Oscar-nominated feature film starring Saoirse Ronan, as well as Nora Webster, The Magician and more. His latest novel, Long Island, is the sequel to Brooklyn.
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"Tiger" was a type of panzer used by the Nazis. Sounds like grandpa was a bad ass.
This was so intensely brilliant and inspiring.
Fantastic! Hilarious. such authenticity and innocence. Going to find books!
Why would you consort with Niall Ferguson, Eleanor?
Nice Interview, Enjoyed The Episode, Fascinating Insight Into The Author's Life And Work! I Love All The Jack Reacher Books! Interesting To Understand The Author's Psyche About His Life & Writings! Cheers!