Getting Lit with Linda - The Canadian Literature Podcast

In this interview, award-winning poet, Farah Ghafoor talks to Linda about Shadow Price (House of Anansi), shortlisted for the Trillium Prizes this year (check out our social media for pics from the event!). Since Ghafoor invites her readers to pay closer attention to our immediate biospheres, Linda does just that – opening with observations about the natural microcosm of which she is a part (yep, squirrels are mentioned).This is a very smart collection, that traverses subjects as far ranging as economics to the history of trees. Ghafoor invites her readers on that journey to remind them that they are not passive consumers but making decisions every day that highlight we have more power than we think -- and it all begins with where we focus our attention. Other highlights:Trillium Prize Book Awards (2:46)Jenny Odell's How to do Nothing (6:00)Passivity, passive voice, perspectives that imply passivity (8:00)The importance of the past to our future(s) (15:30)Guy Debord’s The Society of Spectacle (22:50)The Labubus (22.35)Producer: Linda Morra; Associate Producer; Maia Harris; Music by Raphael Krux Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Linda interviews the phenomenal Canisia Lubrin - the acclaimed writer, critic, professor, poet, and editor. Her first book Voodoo Hypothesis (Wolsak & Wynn, 2017) was named a CBC Best Book. Her second book, The Dyzgraphxst (M & S, 2020) won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry and the overall Literature prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and the Derek Walcott Prize. She is also a 2022 Civitella Ranieri Fellow and has held writer residences at Queen’s University and the appointed inaugural 2021 Shaftesbury Writer in Residence at Victoria College, University of Toronto, where she has taught creative writing.This episode of Getting Lit With Linda focuses on her award-winning book, Code Noir (Knopf 2023), for which Lubrin won the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, among other accolades. In consideration of this book and how the reader is invited to engage with it, Linda mulls over Eve Sedgewick's essay, "Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, Or You're so Paranoid, You probably Think This Essay is About You." Applying Sedgewick's sense of the "reparative reader," Linda sees Lubrin's Code Noir (based on the real-life set of historical decrees that were passed centuries ago, in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France) as enjoining readers to participate in this way - not with a sense of paranoia (defensive!) but rather with an open and unassuming posture. Because Lubrin's Code Noir reminds us of the possibilities of art, form, and language, and our engagement with them. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What are flying monkeys?, Linda wonders - until her friend illuminates their place in relation to narcissists. Narcissism is key to understanding the Widow and Abe Strapp, two deliciously terrible main characters in Michael Crummey's novel, The Adversary (Knopf) -- which just won the Dublin Literary Award for 2025; this psychology is also key to understanding why certain subplot characters choose to orbit around them. Since the novel may be read as a kind of running commentary on the present political moment, we must remember that we - not just readers, but rather the people who might see our reflections in the "subplot" characters - are important to the kinds of decisions made. The conditions of the subplot are affected by those of the plot - but that may also work in reverse. The interview with Crummey also connects his earlier novel, The Innocents (2019, Random House Canada), and The Adversary to William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, explaining how these two novels might be read in relation to each other.Linda Morra (executive producer); Maia Harris (associate producer); Raphael Krux (music) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Linda speaks with the award-winning CBC journalist of As it Happens, Carol Off, about her new (and fifth!) book, At a Loss for Words: Conversation in an Age of Rage (Listeners, keep your eye out: A new edition of Off's book will be available in the fall!). Published in 2024, Off wrote the book as a "cautionary tale," as she observes in this interview - and, since then, some important political moments have evolved across the American and Canadian border. The book examines how key words, including freedom, democracy and truth, are being hijacked and weaponized in order to diminish liberal democracy. Linda and Carol speak about Roe v. Wade, the Bathhouse Raids, the outbreak of AIDS, women's rights, Judith Butler, the 2024 American election, Christopher Ruso and the "Strong and Free" organization, Hannah Arendt (25:20), Stephen Colbert's "Truthiness," the results of the 2025 Canadian election, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (29.09).Carol Off reminds us - we are not entitled to our own facts (34:24), and we need to question everything (31:20). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a result of Zilla Jones’ The World So Wide, slated for publication with Cormorant Books on April 26, 2025, Linda reflects on opera (specifically Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino) – historically an elitist art form, but one that Felicity Alexander, the protagonist of Jones’ novel, in part challenges and overcomes through the very successes of her career. The trajectory of that career takes a darker turn when she finds herself in Grenada during the 1983 American invasion of that country – not an untimely revisioning of history in view of the current American political situation (27:40; 28:50).Linda also speaks about Verdi’s La forza del destino with Renata Tibaldi as Leonore and her father's love for opera (2:15), before she turns to the interview with Zilla Jones to speak about the following:Opera’s potential as an artform vs. its polarizing, and its elitism as art form (3:20; 12:30); Kathleen Battle (18:46; 19:00)Arts vs. politics (13:30), and the uses of art in a time like this (6:00; 31:45)Other authors: Shani Mootoo (Season 3, Episode 26, 6:00); Dionne Brand, Salvaging the Wreck (16:03); Sara Ahmed’s What’s the Use? (5:00; 6:15); Toni Morrison (31:50); Robinson Crusoe (16:15)Decolonization and racial politics (12:15) and the novel as a colonial construct (16:15)Felicity as mixed-race heroine (17:30; 33:20; naming of, 39:30)Grenada (history of, 20:45, and its “Revo,” 23:10; Red Sky Revolution, 23.20); the history of the Panama Canal (27:40)Jones' research for the novel (24:35)Gender and racialized motherhood (34:10)Executive & Sound Producer: Linda Morra; Associate Producer: Maia Harris; Music by Raphael Krux ("The Madness of Linda") and Kevin MacLeod ("Natural Vibes"). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy International Women's Day - this is our Teaser for Season 6, in which a special guest joins Linda Morra to share our International Women's Day wishes with you, the listeners of Getting Lit With Linda! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Linda writes an open letter to Ivan Coyote, in response to their book, Care Of: Letters, Connections, and Cures (published by McClelland & Stewart during the pandemic). This important volume of letters is extraordinary and, while we're no longer in the throes of a pandemic, it remains as relevant as ever. With references to WB Yeat's poem "The Second Coming" and an article by Anna Russell that appeared in The New Yorker, this episode highlights the vital contribution this book makes - and it's more than just a pineapple. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.