The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Series: Biblio File in Buenos Aires Guillermo Martínez is an Argentine novelist, detective fiction and short story writer. He earned a PhD in mathematical logic from the University of Buenos Aires, after which he worked for two years in a postdoctoral position at the Mathematical Institute, in Oxford. His most successful novel is Crímenes Imperceptibles known as The Oxford Murders, written in 2003. He was awarded the Planeta Prize for this novel, which was adapted into a film in 2008, directed by Alex de la Iglesia, and starring John Hurt and Elijah Wood. We met in his apartment in Buenos Aires to discuss how mathematics and Borges have informed his novel and detective fiction writing.

Tania Craan’s career as an art director and designer spans more than three decades. For the past 25 years, she has run her freelance graphic design studio. She started her career working as a designer at Penguin Books Canada and then went on to McClelland & Stewart where she became art director. In addition to books, she has designed stamps for Canada Post, three Ontario Provincial Government inquiry reports, and annual reports for a variety of corporate clients. She "blends the disciplines of publication design with an appreciation of how readers actually navigate pages and their content — into visually pleasing, highly readable communication pieces." I met with Tania at her home near Kingston, Ontario. We talk in this interview about her career - notably her time with McClelland and Stewart - her transition from employee to freelancer, and a selection of the books she is most proud of having designed.

Eimear McBride is an Irish novelist whose debut novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, won the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize in 2013 and the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. She wrote the book in six months, but it took nine years to get it published. Galley Beggar Press of Norwich finally picked it up in 2013. The novel is written in a stream of consciousness-like style and tells the story of a young woman's complex relationship with her family. McBride's second novel The Lesser Bohemians was published in September 2016. Set in Camden Town in the 1990s, it tells the story of the turbulent relationship between an eighteen year old drama student and a thirty-eight year old actor. In 2017 McBride was awarded the inaugural Creative Fellowship of the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading. We met in Montreal - where she was, at the invitation of the School of Irish Studies at Concordia University - to talk about her work, and her experience getting it published. 

David Robinson is executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers. He has been with CAUT since 1999, when he was first hired as director of communications. Prior to joining CAUT, Robinson was the senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Canada’s leading pro­gressive think-tank. He has also been a lecturer at Simon Fraser University, and Carleton University in Ottawa. He is the author of numerous articles, reviews, and reports on higher education and research policy, vocational education and training, and international trade and investment agreements. I met with him at his offices in Ottawa to talk about the Canadian government's current review of copyright policy. 

Ken Lopez is a renowned antiquarian bookseller who deals in rare books, specializing in modern literary first editions. He regularly issues catalogs of modern literature and less regularly, of native American literature, the literature of the Vietnam war and the 1960s, and nature writing. He also has an established record of placing authors' archives in institutional collections. Ken is a former President of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America. He operates out of Hadley, Massachusetts, where I met him to talk about, among other things, collecting books about the Vietnam War, grunts, Tim O'Brien, Raymond Carver, Mario Puzo's 'sleeping with the fishes,' native American literature, climate fiction, nature writing, John Burroughs, wildlife photography, the social value of book collecting, asking the question of your collection 'is it something people/scholars can learn from?' author archives, the importance of association copies, Ken Kesey, the editor's copy of the proofs of The Lord of the Rings, Michael Ondaatje's archive at the Harry Ransom Center, and learning throughout life.    

In 1967 Barry Moser moved from Tennessee to New England to teach at The Williston Academy in Easthampton, Massachusetts. He was soon introduced to Leonard Baskin with whom he studied at Baskin's Gehenna Press. In the spring of 1969 Moser was commissioned to illustrate a trade book, The Flowering Plants of Massachusetts (it wasn't published until 1979). He became fascinated with plants and plant lore and as a result named his press Pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium). It produced a small number of books over the next decade. In 1977 Moser met Andrew Hoyem, who asked if Moser would be interested in illustrating the Arion Press’s forthcoming Moby-Dick. He was, he did, and it was published to great fanfare. I'll let Barry pick it up from here.  We met at his home in North Hatfield, Massachusetts, and talked, among other things, about the differences between a booksmith and a bookwright, print making and illustration. About drawing and sailing, short-lived religion and agnosticism; music as religion; opposites working together as a unit, woodcuts and Leonard Baskin; the Thomas Mosher Press; Harold McGrath; art's relationship to money; the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible, David Godine; collecting Barry's work: Frankenstein, Moby Dick, Pennyroyals and trade titles, the Jump books; the distinctiveness of Barry's work; The Andrew Hoyem/Arion Press Moby Dick controversy; and the unfinished Dante's Inferno. 

Carey Cranston took on the role of President of the American Writers Museum in September of 2016. Prior to that Carey served for 12 years as President of Fox College, a private career college in Chicago, and prior to that he was a Vice President at Hill & Knowlton, a global PR firm, where he led the digital and web services division  We met at the Museum, and talked about, among other things, the Museum's mission, Frederick Douglass, The Great Gatsby, writing as a concept writ large, the written word, Bob Dylan, song writing, Alan Light,identity, an American voice, immigrant stories, Tupac, deceased authors, promoting the present, the "book cloud," fun, Museum founder Malcolm O'Hagan, the Dublin Writers Museum, the Declaration of Independence, the importance of ideas, the On the Road scroll, the joys of digital, Amaze Design, dust jackets, school groups, typewriters, and inspiration. 

David McKnight is an accomplished librarian and book collector, "imbued with remarkable passion and resolve." As Director of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML), at the University of Pennsylvania David is responsible for insuring stewardship, management, discovery, and preservation of the collection and for maintaining the visibility of RBML within and outside of the Penn community. At the Penn Libraries, he has also served as Curator of the Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image. Before coming to Penn, he headed the Rare Books and Special Collections Division at McGill University Libraries and was the Principal Librarian at McGill's Humanities and Social Sciences Library. He is the author of Experiment, Printing the Canadian Imagination: Highlights from the David McKnight Canadian Little Magazine and Small Press Collection. McKnight invested 30 years in developing this collection, one that has "considerable potential for literary research in the areas of Canadian Modernist poetry, avant-garde literature, and the production of small magazines in Canada." He generously donated the collection to the University of Alberta Libraries in 2012, and this catalogue was published in 2018 to accompany an exhibition held at the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library. David and I met in Montreal to talk about his experience amassing this essential collection. Among other things we discuss Ken Norris's Little Magazine in Canada 1925-80, Roy MacSkimming's The Perilous Trade, disappointment in Library and Archives Canada, New Wave Canada: The Coach House Press and the small press movement in English Canada in the 1960s, Carl Spadoni, Merrill Distad, wives of book collectors, fine presses, literary experiment, Adrian King-Edwards and The Word Bookstore in Montreal, bill bissett, bp nichol, Mac Jamieson, TISH, Bill Hoffer, j.w. curry, Nicky Drumbolis, Nelson Ball's catalogues, Wynne Francis's correspondence, Contact Press, Vehicule Press, Quebecois magazines, and The Gotham Bookmart exhibition.

Levi Stahl is the marketing director of the University of Chicago Press and the editor of The Getaway Car: A Donald E. Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany.  We met in Chicago to discuss the role of the book marketer, getting books out into the world and bought, helping the sales department, Thoreau, content and numbers, advertising and the price point of books, print on demand and short runs, shelf and display space, disseminating scholarship, advances, authenticity, and advice for authors on how to use social media. 

Wayson Choy was born in Vancouver in 1939. He spent his childhood in the city's Chinatown and subsequently attended the University of British Columbia where he studied creative writing. He moved to Toronto in 1962, and taught at Humber College from 1967 to 2004. His novel The Jade Peony (1995) won the Trillium Book Award and the City of Vancouver Book Award. His novel All That Matters, was published in 2004.  I interviewed him about it some years later in Ottawa. Our conversation was among the first I recorded for the Biblio File. During it we talk about a range of topics, including the immigrant experience, conflicting cultural values, the language of the heart, tradition, butterflies, grandmothers, the colonial system, "the other," wisdom and storytelling, extended families, television, ancestors, elders and sons, obedience, ghosts, short leaders and actors, community, doing the right thing, luck, important things being invisible, internalized oppressions, banquet tables, and bananas.  Regrettably our conversation cuts off at about the 33 minute mark, but I nonetheless wanted to post it to mark Wayson's passing. He died today, April 29th, 2019 at the age of 80. RIP.