Website: manahilbandukwala.com
Thursday 28 July 2022
Manahil Bandukwala
Website: manahilbandukwala.com
Wednesday 20 July 2022
Lara Dolphin
Monday 18 July 2022
Bhupender K Bhardwaj
Thursday 14 July 2022
Patrick Chapman
A book you have given as a gift / recommended to a friend.
A book you have read more than once.
A book that you started but never finished.
A book with personal resonance.
Ed Lyons
What book(s) are you
reading right now?
Monday 11 July 2022
P.W. Bridgman
Canadian writer P.W. Bridgman’s third and fourth
books—Idiolect (poetry) and The Four-Faced Liar (short
fiction)—were published in 2021 by Ekstasis Editions. His writing has appeared
(or is forthcoming) in, among others, Moth Magazine, The Antigonish Review,
Glasgow Review of Books, Grain, The Honest Ulsterman, The Galway
Review, The High Window, The Maynard and Skylight 47.
Bridgman has given live readings in Vancouver, Victoria, Belfast, Dublin,
Glasgow and Melbourne.
Website: www.pwbridgman.ca
Twitter: @PWB_writer1
What
book(s) are you reading right now?
“I love Superstore. I got
so happy I nearly died
at a food court in Honolulu.
Is that enough affect
theory for you? Halfway
through a book gala
I realized my dress
was on backwards.
I am still writing this cliché
Canadian shit. I am writing
dogwood and diaspora
along the lonely shoulders
of Coastal mountains.
Sorry I’m so boring.
Does what sustains me
have to be invasive
as blackberries choking
out native species?
Does it have to come
wrapped in so much
packaging?
Name a book you have given as a gift/recommended to a friend.
“…the heart, believing it will find
what it came for, is one step ahead
of reason…”
Name a book you have read more than once.
Name a book you have started but never finished.
Friday 8 July 2022
rob mclennan
What book(s) are you reading right now?
I’m slowly working my way through Sheila Heti’s new novel, Pure Colour (2022) and Joy Williams’ Honored Guest: stories (2004), as well as rereading Kristjana Gunnars’ The Scent of Light (2022), which is a reissue of her five novellas—The Prowler (1989), Zero Hour (1991), The Substance of Forgetting (1992), The Rose Garden: Reading Marcel Proust (1996) and Night Train to Nykøbing (1998)—in a single volume. After a winter and spring of working on poems (and a flurry of reviews), I’ve been attempting lately to re-enter my still-in-progress novel. In part, I’m hoping to absorb some elements of tone, and of sentence, from those particular prompts as I write. Perhaps I should just go back to Michael Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter (1976), Dany Laferrière’s Why Must a Black Writer Write About Sex? (1994) or even Sheila Watson’s The Double Hook (1959). I mean, with Gunnars’ work already in-hand, perhaps the smart thing would be to return to further of those original early influences I caught during my formative writing years, while attempting to return to long-form prose.
A book you loved reading at a child.
Amid the plethora of Marvel Comics, some of what struck me included the Narnia series of novels by by C.S. Lewis. Between myself and my mother, my paperback set was reread enough times that the bindings simply gave way. At some point, my mother simply absorbed the remaining copies into her own collection, and wouldn’t let me have them.
A book you have given as a gift /
recommended to a friend.
I’ve gone through more than a few copies of Miranda Hill’s Sleeping Funny: stories (2012), and plenty of us are eagerly awaiting her first novel, which is rumoured to be out next year. I’ve also gone through a few copies of Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America (1967), if I ever see a copy second-hand. A while back, I gifted my niece, Emma, a copy of Toronto poet Souvankham Thammavongsa’s award-winning short story debut, How to Pronounce Knife (2020), and more recently, I recommended to my pal (and award-winning Ottawa poet) Stephen Brockwell the book On Autumn Lake: The Collected Essays (2022) by American poet and critic Douglas Crase. It really is a remarkable collection.
The first and last books on your
bookcase/shelf.
To my immediate left (eye-level): Batman: White Knight to Namor: Visionaries, Vol. 1 by John Byrne. To my immediate right (eye-level): William Hawkins, The Madman’s War and Anna Gurton-Wachter’s Utopia Pipe Dream Memory (2019). Various issues of Brick: A Literary Journal, FENCE magazine, The Capilano Review.
A book you have read more than once.
There are plenty of those! More often, it is authors I reread over specific, individual titles. Books by George Bowering, Rosmarie Waldrop, John Newlove, Pattie McCarthy, Susan Howe, Robert Kroetsch, bpNichol. Timothy Findley’s Stones (1988). Stan Dragland’s Journeys Through Bookland and Other Passages (1984). Sarah Manguso’s Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape (2007). Joshua Beckman’s Three Talks (2018). Read and read and re-read. This can be pronounced in present or past-tense, simultaneously. Reed and re-reed, red and re-red.
Wednesday 6 July 2022
Diana Rosen
What book(s) are you reading right now?
I’m apparently a follower of tsunduko, the Japanese concept of collecting piles of books you may, or may not, ever read. But I will! That’s why there are piles from foraging thrift stores, piles of books reserved from the local library, and way too many bought online and in stores.
Nonetheless, I persevere, always dipping into several at once. Right now it’s Jill Bialosky’s riveting autobiographic book of poems, “Asylum” that is both poignant and astonishing in their intimacy; “Practically Vegan” by Nisha Melvani for total inspiration although I still eat animal protein on occasion, and “Sidewalking” by David L. Ulin, a look at his personal walks around that most un-walkable of cities, Los Angeles, where I live. Teetering on the piles are other memoirs, books on writing, and a novel or mystery.
A book you loved reading at a child.
ALL the delights of Ludwig Bemelmans but, in particular, the series of Madeline (my role model), and Babar just because it was so bizarre to read of a talking elephant.
A book you have given as a gift / recommended to a friend.
Not everyone I know is into poetry as I am, but all my friends cook and love to eat, so Nicole Gulotta’s “Eat This Poem” is a fun way to introduce this literary feast.
A book you have read more than once.
I never re-read novels, but do dip back into books of short stories and poems. One book that answers this question and those on one underrated and a book of personal resonance is Gina Berriault’s “Women in Their Beds” which is a masterclass on the short story.
A book with personal resonance.
“Inheritance” by Dani Shapiro had me making countless notes of quotable lines and references to her quest to determine who her father was after a lifetime devotion to a man who turned out not to be her biological father. Shapiro writes relatively short books and yet there’s so much in them that they’re a testament to concision and Elmore Leonard’s admonition to “leave out the stuff people skip over” …This book, in particular, answers both the philosophical and fact-based questions of “who am I?” that Shapiro asks and her concerns about her identity as a Jew particularly resonated with me. I also envied her Aunt Shirley, a woman every family should have for her gentle wisdom.
Return!
If you want to be considered for an interview, drop me a line at colonyink [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk (especially if you have a new product/event to promote). I'll send you ten questions, you pick whichever five you want to answer.
Have a look on the blog for the existing interviews to get a taste of what's expected. Happy reading!