When Montreal author Eric Chacour wrote his first book, he didn't expect it to become a huge hit in France. Translated from French to English by Pablo Strauss, What I Know About You is a novel set in Cairo and Montreal, exploring sexuality as well as family secrets and pressures. It's nominated for this year's Giller Prize and Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Eric and Mattea Roach discuss the inspiration behind his debut novel. 

In Rachel Kushner’s latest novel, Creation Lake, an undercover agent is tasked with sabotaging a group of young activists in rural France. Rachel joins Mattea Roach to talk about blending a spy premise with meditations on life’s big questions, putting an anti-hero at the centre of her story and why writing this novel was a transcendent experience. Creation Lake is a finalist for the 2024 Booker Prize.

When Alan Hollinghurst's novel The Line of Beauty won the Booker Prize in 2004, it was the first time a book about the gay experience won the award. Now his newest novel, Our Evenings, puts a biracial boy who’s discovering queer culture for the first time at the front and centre. Alan and Mattea Roach discuss how growing up gay in Britain inspires his writing.

Fawn Parker's latest book centres on a woman navigating life immediately following the death of her mother. The novel is a finalist for this year’s Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Fawn and Mattea Roach talk about grief, loss and the real-life inspiration behind Hi, It's Me.

When a trio of characters living in a lakeside cabin in the summer of 2020 begin reading a book of horror stories, the details start to bleed into real life. This is the premise of Erica McKeen's latest novel. Erica talks to Mattea Roach about why she uses horror to explore the mundane and complex aspects of everyday life.

When Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach series was first published 10 years ago, it was a sensation. The mysterious environmental phenomenon known as Area X captivated readers and inspired a movie. Now the saga continues with a highly anticipated fourth installment, Absolution. Jeff talks to Mattea Roach about the inspiration behind the series, dealing with climate threats to his home in Florida and what fiction can teach us about our own environmental crisis.

V.V. Ganeshananthan won two of the world's biggest fiction prizes this year: the U.K. Women's Prize and the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. Her novel Brotherless Night imagines one Tamil family's experience during the first decade of Sri Lanka's civil war, told through the eyes of a courageous medical student. V.V. speaks to Mattea Roach about the complexities of writing fiction about a real conflict, grappling with authenticity and diasporic storytelling, and her almost 20-year journey working on the novel.

Alberta's Badlands, the world's largest dinosaur bone repository, set the eerie stage for Corinna Chong's novel Bad Land. It follows a loner whose family secrets, like the ancient bones buried deep beneath the earth, are destined to be uncovered. Corinna talks to Mattea Roach about drawing from her own life to bring flawed characters and complicated family relationships to life.

Everything and Nothing At All by Jenny Heijun Wills is an essay collection where the author reflects on her experiences as a transnational adoptee. Jenny was born in Korea and was adopted by a white Canadian family in southwestern Ontario when she was nine months old. Twenty years ago, she reconnected with her Korean birth family. She talks to Mattea Roach about this journey — which also inspired her prize-winning memoir, Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related — and about how writing and literature have helped her figure out who she is.

In Matt Haig's latest bestseller, The Life Impossible, a retired math teacher goes on a Spanish adventure after inheriting a house on Ibiza. But things on the island aren't quite what they seem. For Matt, the story's surrealist elements mirror aspects of his own journey through depression and mental illness — and coming through it with new ideas about what's possible. He speaks with Mattea Roach about striving for authentic optimism in his fiction.

Music featured in this episode:

"Rainy Days and Mondays" written by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols, performed by Carpenters, from the 1971 self-titled album, Carpenters, produced by Jack Daugherty.

Poet Aldona Dziedziejko's Ice Safety Chart: Fragments is a beautiful, experimental essay about different moments from Aldona's life in the Northwest Territories. The writer, who now lives in Alberta, spoke to Mattea Roach about their life, literary inspirations and her big win.