What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books

Nathan Whitlock
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In each episode of What Happened Next, author Nathan Whitlock interviews other authors about what happens when a new book isn’t new anymore, and it’s time to write another one. This podcast is presented in partnership with The Walrus.https://thewalrus.ca/podcasts/what-happened-next/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. Phoebe Wang

    1D AGO

    Phoebe Wang

    My guest on this episode is Phoebe Wang. Phoebe is the author of the poetry collections Admission Requirements and Waking Occupations. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The Globe & Mail, The New Quarterly, Brick, The Unpublished City, and The Unpublished City: Volume II, The Lived City, which she co-edited. Her most recent book is Relative to Wind: On Sailing, Craft, and Community, published by Assembly Press in 2024. Kirkus Reviews called it “a thoughtful, illuminating look at life away from land.” Phoebe and I talk about the impact of her very first publication, about being edited, right at the start of her career, by one of the country’s best-known and most beloved poets, and about the odd and interesting places that promoting a book about sailing has taken her. 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.

    31 min
  2. Guy Vanderhaeghe

    OCT 6

    Guy Vanderhaeghe

    My guest on this episode is Guy Vanderhaeghe. Guy is a three-time winner of the Governor’s-General Award for his collections of short stories, Man Descending and Daddy Lenin, and for his novel, The Englishman’s Boy, which was also shortlisted for the Giller Prize and The International Dublin Literary Award. His novel The Last Crossing was a winner of the CBC’s Canada Reads Competition. He has also received the Timothy Findley Prize, the Harbourfront Literary Prize, and the Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Prize, all given for a body of work. Guy’s most recent novel, August into Winter, won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction and the Glengarry Book Award and was shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust Atwood Gibson Fiction Prize. His most recent book, the essay collection Because Someone Asked Me To, was published in 2024 by Thistledown Press. That book won Book of the Year and the Non-Fiction Award at the 2025 Saskatchewan Book Awards. Shelagh Rogers, former host of the CBC’s “The Next Chapter”, said that “reading this volume, I felt all my circuitry light up like a flash of fireflies, as Nadine Gordimer would say. I’m just so glad somebody asked him to.”   Guy and I talk about some critical advice he got from author Margaret Laurence when he first started as a writer, the enormous shifts that have happened in the Canadian literary scene since those early days, and why his most recent novel might be his last. 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.

    25 min
  3. Peter Counter

    SEP 29

    Peter Counter

    My guest on this episode is Peter Counter. Peter is an author and culture critic whose first book was the essay collection Be Scared of Everything, and his non-fiction has appeared in The Walrus, Motherboard, Art of the Title, Electric Literature, and the anthology Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church. Peter’s most recent book is the memoir How to Restore a Timeline: On Violence and Memory, published by House of Anansi Press in 2023. Author and actor John Hodgman – he was the PC in those Apple vs PC commercials, fyi - called the book “a brilliant, humorous, heartbreaking examination of how certain events break our lives apart, and what we do with the pieces.”   Peter and I talk about what it’s like to be a culture critic in 2025, about the various forms his memoir took over the decade or so he was writing it and trying to get it published, and about my own envy over him getting John Hodgman to blurb his book. 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.

    28 min
  4. Rachel Giese

    SEP 22

    Rachel Giese

    My guest on this episode is Rachel Giese. Rachel is an author and the deputy national editor at The Globe and Mail. Her writing has appeared in The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, NewYorker.com, Toronto Life, Today's Parent, Hazlitt and RealLife.com. Her book Boys: What it Means to Become a Man, published in 2018 by HarperCollins Canada, was a bestseller, won the Writers’ Trust of Canada Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and was named one of the Globe and Mail’s 100 Favourite Books of the year. The Toronto Star said that “Boys gives us hope that busting apart ‘The Man Box’ will ultimately lead to fuller, more rewarding lives not just for boys, but for all of us.” Rachel and I talk about publishing a somewhat hopeful book about men and masculinity right before Donald Trump became president for the first time, about her related wish that she could publish an updated version of Boys every year, and about how her conception of what constitutes good writing relates to her favourite kind of vintage alarm clock. 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.

    34 min
  5. Sean Michaels

    SEP 15

    Sean Michaels

    My guest on this episode is Sean Michaels. Sean is the author of the novels Us Conductors, which won the Giller Prize and the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize, and The Wagers. His non-fiction has appeared in the Globe and Mail, The Guardian, Pitchfork and The New Yorker, and he is the founder of the pioneering music blog Said the Gramophone. His most recent novel is Do You Remember Being Born? published by Random House Canada in 2023 and a finalist for the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize. The New York Times called it “a charming and refreshingly non-dystopian meditation on the duality of literary creation.”   Sean and I talk about his complicated feelings on the collision of AI and literature, given that his most recent novel is about that very thing and even contains passages written by AI, about wanting to change his approach with each book, and about the approach he took to writing his next one, a novel for young readers. 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.

    30 min
  6. Jon Klassen

    SEP 8

    Jon Klassen

    My guest on this episode is Jon Klassen. Jon is the creator of beloved, bestselling and award-winning “hat” serious of picture books: I Want My Hat Back, This Is Not My Hat, and We Found a Hat, in addition to The Rock from the Sky, and The Skull. He has also worked as an illustrator for many other authors’ books, as well as for feature animated films, music videos, and editorial pieces. His most recent book(s) are a series of board books, Your Forest, Your Farm, and Your Island. In its review of the series, the Wall Street Journal said that “[Klassen] has kept the dry humor but skipped the darkness, and the result is pure delight.”   Jon and I talk about his childhood belief that inanimate objects have feelings, about the book of his that is not only his favourite, but which he believes only got published because of the success of the hat series, and about our shared love of children’s author William Steig—and our shared dislike of the films based on Steig’s most famous book, Shrek! 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.

    27 min
  7. Chelene Knight

    SEP 1

    Chelene Knight

    My guest on this episode is Chelene Knight. Chelene is the author of the collection Braided Skin, the memoir Dear Current Occupant, which won the Vancouver Book Award, the novel Junie, which also won the Vancouver Book Award, and the self-help memoir Let It Go. Chelene’s most recent book is Safekeeping: A Writer’s Guided Journal for Launching a Book with Love, published by House of Anansi in early 2025. Author Kai Thomas called it “current, comprehensive, and full of care.”   Chelene and I talk about the expectations she had about the life of a writer when she published her first book, about how she has learned to be intentional in her decision-making and not chase every opportunity that comes her way as a writer, and about the ideas that may end up driving her next book, a potential novel. 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.

    28 min
  8. Jason Logan

    AUG 25

    Jason Logan

    My guest on this episode is Jason Logan. Jason is an artist, graphic designer, and ink maker, and the founder of the Toronto Ink Company. He is the author of the books If We Ever Break Up, This Is My Book, iGeneration, Festus, and Make Ink: A Forager's Guide to Natural Inkmaking. He is the subject of the 2022 documentary The Colour of Ink, which premiered at that year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Jason’s most recent book is How to Be a Color Wizard: Forage and Experiment with Natural Art Making, published by MIT Kids Books in 2024. Kirkus Reviews called the book “practical, imaginative, magical fun.” Jason and I talk about the missing letter U in the title of his most recent book, about learnig to write books after one early draft actually put his wife to sleep, and about how he has embraced the recognition that  comes with being the central subject of a feature documentary. 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.

    30 min
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About

In each episode of What Happened Next, author Nathan Whitlock interviews other authors about what happens when a new book isn’t new anymore, and it’s time to write another one. This podcast is presented in partnership with The Walrus.https://thewalrus.ca/podcasts/what-happened-next/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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