My guest on this episode is Su Chang. Su’s debut novel is The Immortal Woman, published by House of Anansi Press earlier this year. Publishers Weekly called the novel “a cathartic account of a family buffeted by the winds of modern Chinese history.”Su and I talk about the cultural and political realities that cause to very deliberate in her writing, about why her father, who was himself a writer, urged her not to follow in his footsteps, and about why she has chosen not to participate in any public-facing events to promote her 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.
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Niko Stratis
My guest on this episode is Niko Stratis. Niko’s writing has appeared in Xtra, Catapult, Spin, Paste, The Walrus, and more. She is the co-editor of the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology 2 Trans 2 Furious and its follow-up, Sex Change and the City. Her debut book, The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman, was published by the University of Texas Press earlier this year. Publishers Weekly called it a “stirring collection focused on the music that inspired the author to embrace her trans identity” and a “poignant ode to musicʼs power to change lives.” Niko and I talk about the roots of her intense connections to music, about the online chuds who have not been happy with a trans author writing about their favourite artists and bands, and about her novel-in-progress, which began life, like those award-winning anthologies, as kind of a joke.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.
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Chelsea Wakelyn
My guest on this episode is Chelsea Wakelyn. Chelsea is a musician and author whose debut novel, What Remains of Elsie Jane, was published by Dundurn Press in 2023 and was a finalist for the Foreword Indies award. Author Emily Austin called the novel “a poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, weird, and heartbreaking window into being bereft and being in love.” Chelsea and I talk about losing track, in her twenties, of her initial plan to become a writer, about the enormous losses that finally drove her to write her first novel, and about the sick cosmic joke of losing another partner to cancer right after publishing a novel based on her real-life grief.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.
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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.
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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.
About What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books
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.
Listen to What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books, Old School with Shilo Brooks and many other podcasts from around the world with the radio.net app
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