What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books

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.

My guest on this episode is Ethan Lou. Ethan is a journalist whose work has appeared in the Toronto Star, Toronto Life, The Guardian, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. He is the opinion editor for the Globe and Mail’s business section. His first book, Field Notes from a Pandemic, was a finalist for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. His most recent book is Once a Bitcoin Miner: Scandal and Turmoil in the Cryptocurrency Wild West, published by ECW Press in 2021. Publishers Weekly called the book a “roller-coaster ride” and said that “readers interested in an in-the-trenches view of the Bitcoin world will appreciate Lou’s willingness to tell all.”

Ethan and I talk about the current state of crypto culture, about how he ended up publishing two books in very quick succession, and about the going cost of illicit drugs on the dark web.

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 Zalika Reid-Benta. Zalika’s debut book was the story collection Frying Plantain, which won the 2020 Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the 2020 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction. It was also shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award, the Trillium Book Award, the White Pine Award, and the Evergreen Award, and was longlisted for the 2020 Giller Prize. Zalika was the 2019 and 2023 winner of the ByBlacks People’s Choice Award for Best Author. Her most recent book is the novel River Mumma, published in 2023 by Penguin Canada. That book was shortlisted for the 2024 Trillium Book Award. The Walrus said that “amid a crash course in Jamaican folklore, Reid-Benta’s novel takes a gleeful swipe at everything from Toronto’s unreliable transit system to the cult of celebrity.”

Zalika and I talk about her current relationship with Toronto as a city, which features so heavily in her fiction, about her irritation with readers who insist on seeing her work as autobiographical, and about training her agent to accept her chaotic creative process.

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 Giles Blunt. Giles is the author of a dozen books, including the six novels in the Cardinal series, which were made into a long-running TV series. He has won the British Crime Writers Silver Dagger award, the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis award for best novel, and has been twice longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC award. His most recent book is the novel Bad Juilet, published by Dundurn Press in 2025. The Toronto Star called it “captivating and beautifully written,” and “an intriguing tale with the taut pace of a thriller.”

Giles and I talk about the shift from crime writing to historical fiction that Bad Juilet represents, about the notes to himself he will sometimes insert into his manuscripts, indicating his intention to quit writing them, and about why his most recent book has been harder to let go of than anything else he has written.

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 Donna Jones Alward. Donna wrote and published dozens of romance novels before shifting to historical fiction in 2024 with the bestselling novel When the World Fell Silent. Her most recent book is the novel Ship of Dreams, which was published in 2025 by HarperCollins Canada, and was also a national bestseller. Author Jennifer Robson called it “a thoughtful and immersive novel that confirms Alward’s gift for meaningful and character-driven storytelling.”

Donna and talk about the astonishing fast pace with which she published books up until this year, which is the first one of her career in which she has no new books coming out, about that shift from romance to historical fiction, and about the perils inherent in writing a novel about a story everyone feels they already know… such as the sinking of the Titanic.

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.