Getting Lit with Linda

Announcing our seventh season! We will be somewhat delayed this year, with a start date in the late spring, but we haven't forgotten about you, our dear listeners or authors - we will begin very soon! For now, some of our future guests - specialists of the life and literature of author, Jane Rule - Marilyn Schuster (the godmother of Jane Rule Studies!), Cate Sandilands, and Amber Dean - and the team at Getting Lit With Linda would like to share their best wishes for Happy International Women's Day!

We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts for their support. Producer & Host: Linda Morra; Associate Producer: Maia Harris; Music: Raphael Krux.

Why should we pay attention to scars or scar tissue? After the original injury heals and its pain recedes, should we ignore what’s left behind? In this episode, Linda mulls over these questions while considering Madeleine Thien's "Alchemy," from her collection, Simple Recipes. Don't know Thien's work? Check out her award-winning novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing (which Linda discussed in Season 1, Episode 3) and her most recent novel, The Book of Records. She also offers her best wishes for the new year, in this, the last episode of Season 6 (2025).

In this episode, Linda reflects on how boxes are at times about imposed limitations. "Don’t box me in," you might argue – or let’s try to think outside the box (because we can’t stand the way things have been otherwise going. It’s time for a change). And it is this -- thinking and living outside the lines (and boxes) -- that Susan Swan’s wonderful new memoir, Big Girls Don’t Cry: A Memoir About Taking Up Space (HarperCollijns), compels us to do, to locate our sense of dignity and agency, to find our sense of self-worth.

Linda drove up to Hudson to interview the journalist, Brian Stewart, about his memoir, On the Ground: My Life as a Foreign Correspondent -- a perfect book for this year's theme, Getting Lit Goes Global. Stewart was, for decades, one of Canada’s most prominent television journalists, acclaimed for his foreign coverage for both CBC’s The National and The Journal. He worked in 10 war zones, hosted the CBC foreign affairs show Worldview, and interviewed many of the historic figures of his time. In this interview and in his book, Stewart speaks of the urgency of having journalists on the ground to bear witness to what is happening across the globe and of having journalists as moral witnesses, reminding audiences of the costs globally of famine and war and environmental disaster, of the need for greater political accountability.