What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books

My guest on this episode is Gabrielle Drolet. Gabrielle is a journalist, essayist, and cartoonist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Globe and Mail, New York Times, The Walrus, VICE, Teen Vogue, and more. Her essays on disability have been nominated for a Digital Publishing Award and won gold at the Canadian Online Publishing Awards. Her first book, Look Ma, No Hands: A Chronic Pain Memoir, was published by McClelland & Stewart in 2025, and was a finalist for a 2026 Lambda Literary Award. Journalist Sarah Hagi called the book “a remarkable debut from an incredible voice.”

Gabrielle and I talk about some of the more ethically dubious gigs she has taken on as a freelance writer, about writing using voice-to-text software, and how that has changed her style, and about her worries that next book, which is not a memoir, might have less of a hook in comparison with 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 Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross. Jacquelyn’s fiction, poetry, essays, and art criticism have appeared in BOMB, C Mag, The Ex-Puritan, Fence, Mousse, and elsewhere. In addition, She is an editor at The Capilano Review. Her debut book, The Longest Way to Eat a Melon, was published by Sarabande Books in 2025. The New York Times called it "a collection of short stories each more satirical and surreal than the last."

Jacquelyn and I talk about her book ending up in a New York Times trend piece, about turning self-consciousness from an obstacle to her writing into one of its central themes, and about how her approach to writing has been changed by becoming a parent.

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 Miriam Toews. Miriam is the author of the internationally acclaimed and bestselling novels Fight Night, Women Talking, All My Puny Sorrows, Irma Voth, The Flying Troutmans, A Complicated Kindness, A Boy of Good Breeding, and Summer of My Amazing Luck, and the memoir, Swing Low: A Life. She is the winner of numerous awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction, the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award. Several of her novels have been made into feature films, including All My Puny Sorrows and the Oscar-winning Women Talking. Her most recent book is the bestselling memoir A Truce That Is Not Peace, published by Knopf Canada in 2025. That book was a finalist For The Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize For Nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award For Autobiography, and was named a best book the year by TIME, The Globe and Mail, the CBC, The New Yorker, The Guardian and more. Author Paula Hawkins called it “beautiful, hilarious, devastating.”

Miriam and I talk about the early days of her writing career, about how she thinks every new book she completes is her last, and about how she got to hold the Oscar for Women Talking for only about five seconds.

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 Ira Wells. Ira’s work has appeared in The Guardian, The New Republic, The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, Literary Review of Canada, Los Angeles Review of Books, and many other publications. His books include Fighting Words: Polemics and Social Change in Literary Naturalism and Norman Jewison: A Director’s Life. His most recent book is On Book Banning: Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy, published by Biblioasis in 2025. That book is a finalist for the 2026 Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. Quill & Quire called it “a testament to the life-altering power of books and ideas.”

Ira and I talk about the sense of cultural fear and helplessness that seems to be behind the resurgence of book banning, about how his book was inspired, not by a conservative drive to ban books, but by a so-called “library audit” at a school in the heart of progressive Toronto, and about his return to biography for his next book project.

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 Meredith Hambrock. Meredith’s debut book was the novel Other People’s Secrets. She has been a finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize and worked extensively in television, most recently in the writers’ room for the Canadian Screen Award–winning sitcom Corner Gas Animated. Her most recent book is She’s a Lamb!, published by ECW Press in 2025. Booklist called the novel “a dive into the mind of a deeply delusional woman,” and said it is “audacious and darkly funny.”

Meredith and I talk about her habit of deleting entire manuscripts (not permanently) while they are in progress, about her love of dark comedy and her resistance to sticking to the rules of genre, and about her next book, which has a narrative hook so good, she had to make sure nobody else had thought of it already.

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.