What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books

My guest on this episode is Zilla Jones. Zilla’s writing has won the Journey Prize and been shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Her debut novel, The World So Wide, was published in April 2025 by Cormorant Books. The Winnipeg Free Press said that “Jones’ novel is a gift and a magnificent read that will leave readers crying for an encore.”

Zilla and I talk about the role opera singing has played in her life and in her creative work, about the very first story she ever wrote—at the age of 3, in crayon—and about exploring the complexities of social and historical issues through fiction, something she is rarely able to do in her day job as a lawyer.

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 Chantal Braganza. Chantal is the deputy editor at Chatelaine. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Hazlitt, The Hairpin, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, Fashion Magazine, and Maisonneuve, among others. Her debut book is Story of Your Mother, published in 2025 by Strange Light. The Globe and Mail called it “an expansive hybrid of memoir and essay exploring identity, labour and care, which manages to be both intellectually rigorous and compulsively readable.”

Chantal and I talk about some of the realities of her former life as a busy freelance writer, about struggling to complete a memoir about things that were happening in her life, while those things were still happening, and about her recent World Cup-induced obsession with soccer—which she is totally not going to write a book about. Maybe.

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 Russell Smith. Russell is the author of multiple novels and collections of short fiction, as well as one non-fiction book. His work has been nominated for the Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award, the Rogers/Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Trillium Prize, the Chapters/Books In Canada First Novel Award, the City of Toronto Book Prize, and the Danuta Gleed Award. He is the editor of three story anthologies, and works as an acquiring editor for Dundurn Press. His most recent novel, Self Care, was published by Biblioasis in 2025. Kirkus Reviews called it “an uncomfortable, disturbing, and timely examination of relationships between men and women.”

Russell and I talk about the infamous and possibly apocryphal pitch letter that accompanied his very first novel, about how his very strong opinions as a writer and reader inform his work as an acquiring editor, and about the ways he feels the Canadian book world has sabotaged itself.

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 Elliott Gish. Elliott is a writer and librarian whose work has appeared in the Baltimore Review, Dark Matter, Grain, and the New Quarterly. Her debut novel, Grey Dog, was published by ECW Press in 2024. In a starred review of the novel, Publishers Weekly said “Gish’s prose is as sharp as a scalpel.”

Elliott and I talk about the impact a very nerdy-sounding historical summer camp had on her imagination, about why she’s not into writing horror stories set in the era of cellphones, and about why she’s both excited and a little concerned that her second novel will have far fewer horror elements than her first.

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 Jason Schneider. Jason has written for Exclaim!, the Globe & Mail, the Toronto Star, Paste, American Songwriter, Relix, Shindig and many other media outlets. His books include Whispering Pines: the Northern Roots of American Music, The Longest Suicide: The Authorized Biography of Art Bergmann, and the novel 3,000 Miles. He is the co-author of Have Not Been The Same: the CanRock Renaissance 1985-1995. His most recent two books are That Gun in Your Hand: The Strange Saga of ‘Hey Joe’ and Popular Music’s History of Violence, published by Anvil Press, and the novel The City Knows, published by Montag Press. Both books were published in 2025.

Jason and I talk about how he ended up publishing two books, in two different genres, in the same year, about turning a COVID-era deep dive into a single song into an entire book, and about how he is once again working on two books at once, in two different genres.

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.