What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books

My guest on this episode is Shyam Selvadurai. Shyam’s novels include Funny Boy, Cinnamon Gardens, and The Hungry Ghosts, as well as the YA novel Swimming in the Monsoon Sea. His work has won the W. H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Lambda Literary Award, and been shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award, and the Trillium Prize. Funny Boy was made into a feature film in 2020 by director Deepa Mehta. His most recent book is the novel Mansions of the Moon, published by Knopf Canada in 2022. Maclean’s said “Selvadurai’s tale of emotionally torn star-crossed lovers—and the aftermath of their parting—is subtle, absorbing and thoroughly modern.” Shyam and I talk about the overwhelming whiteness of the Canadian book world when he first started publishing (and how that has changed for the better), about the difference between the literary reputation he has in his birth country of Sri Lanka and the one he has in Canada, and about the mall in Scarborough that might one day become a CanLit landmark, thanks to his books.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Haley Mlotek. Haley is an author, editor, and journalist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, Bookforum, The Paris Review, The Columbia Journalism Review, Vogue, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, and n+1, among others. She is a founding member of the Freelance Solidarity Project in the National Writers Union, and is currently the director of content at Feeld. Her first book, No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce, was published by Viking Books and McClelland & Stewart in 2025. Author Susan Orlean called the book “an ideal hybrid of rigorous reporting, social commentary, and personal reflection on the nature of love and divorce.” Haley and I talk about the brief urge she had to cancel publication of her book the night before it came out, about resisting the idea that writing a book about divorce makes her either an expert on divorce or an advocate for it, and about the importance of recognizing that books are not built upon two or three moments of inspiration, but upon hundreds and hundreds of small decisions.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Antonio Michael Downing. Antonio is the author of the memoir Saga Boy and the children’s book Stars in My Crown, and is the current host of CBC Radio’s book program The Next Chapter. He also writes and performs music as John Orpheus. His most recent book is the novel Black Cherokee, published in 2025 by Simon & Schuster Canada. Author Zalika Reid-Benta said that “Downing’s prose is both lyrical and controlled and weaves together a story that is, at once expansive and intimate, expertly blending the personal with the sweeping nature of the historical.” Antonio and I talk about bringing his own perspective as an author to his work on The Next Chapter, about why he handwrites the drafts of his books, and about unexpectedly discovering a kindred creative spirit in Anne of Green Gables.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Tolu Oloruntoba. Tolu is the author of the poetry collections Manubrium, The Junta of Happenstance, which won the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry,   and Each One a Furnace, a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. His most recent collection is Unravel, published by McClelland & Stewart in 2025. That book was named one of the Best Canadian Poetry Books of the year by CBC Books, and has been longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Tyee called the collection “a seeker’s book, exploring making and unmaking, doing and undoing, the twin existential horrors of ending and endlessness.”Tolu and I talk about the tensions, both good and bad, that come from winning awards so early in a career, about the pressure he put upon himself while writing Unravel, and about going in a very different direction for his next book, a collection inspired in part by Keanu Reeves’s John Wick films.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode—the first of 2026—is Robert McGill. Robert’s books include three novels, The Mysteries, Once We Had a Country, and A Suitable Companion for the End of Your Life, and two nonfiction books, The Treacherous Imagination and War Is Here. His most recent book is the short fiction collection Simple Creatures, which was published by Coach House Books in 2024, and was a finalist for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. CBC Books called the collection "a hilarious and heartbreaking portrait of the world we live in." Robert and I talk about reading reviews of his own work, about the first short story he ever wrote, which was based on a video game he could only play on his grandmother’s Vic 20—Google that, kids—and about the previously published story he almost dropped from his most recent collection, and only kept in after changing the name of the author it repeatedly references, that author being Alice Munro.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.