Writers and Company CBC Arts & Entertainment

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.