Getting Lit with Linda

Anyone who knows Linda also knows that she has a very passionate love-hate relationship with the city of Montreal. While one some days, she is bursting with pride for all that is wonderful about the city, on other days, she is less enthusiastic. But she’s not alone in her ardour, as the litany of authors who have been featuring Montreal in their work highlights—from Louise Penny's Grey Wolf (Minotaur Books) to Lee Lai's award-winning Cannon (Drawn & Quarterly), Montreal is a city that people love to write about. In this episode, Linda chats with another such author – Arjun Basu – about his novel The Reeds (ECW Press) – and how Montreal is featured, somewhat unobtrusively as part of the plot but also as another character in this novel. The four main characters, each perspective advancing the plot, are what Basu refers as “Four Equals One”—but Linda adds Montreal to that list.

Want to know more about this novel? Check out this review in Montreal Review of Books.

Producer: Linda Morra; Associate Producer; Maia Harris; Music by Raphael Krux

In this episode, Linda interviews Lee Lai about Cannon, the graphic novel for which Lai was shortlisted for the Carol Shields Prize (the only author on the shortlist with a Canadian connection).The friendship between the protagonist of the same name (Cannon) and Trish puts the very definition of their relationship to the test, complicated in part because Cannon is trying to be responsible to everyone around her—and the net result is that Cannon fails to advocate for herself.

Lai refers to Love in a F** Up World by the activist and educator Dean Spade, which Linda picked up after the interview. She was fascinated by Spade's question: How do we build lasting and effective resistance movements, if we are not even examining the ethical foundations of relationships like friendship? That’s the question that Lee Lai takes up. Lai isn’t dismissive or casual about friendship—it isn’t “just friendship” in that sense, but rather friendship that is fair, ethical, democratic.

In this episode, Linda interviews the Métis writer, Brittany Penner about her memoir, Children Like Us (Random House Canada). It's elegantly written and carefully crafted, and, in spite of the book’s length, Linda just couldn't put it down. Linda and Brittany discuss her childhood, the Sixties Scoop (14:32), Brittany's story around being adopted into a Mennonite family (19:10), and the medical system, in Saskatchewan and Quebec, and across Canada.

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.