What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books

My guest on this episode is Raymond Biesinger. Raymond is a Montréal-based illustrator, artist, and author whose work has been published in places like Billboard, the Economist, the Globe & Mail, the Guardian, the New Yorker, The Walrus, and more. His debut book was the bestseller 305 Lost Buildings of Canada, which he illustrated and which was written by Alex Bozikovic. His most recent book is 9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off, published by Drawn & Quarterly in 2025. Author Cory Doctorow called the book “a masterclass in how creative workers can transform the endless, low-grade seething about the endless ripoffs of the industry into something productive and even profound.”

Raymond and I talk about his original plan to become a journalist, not an illustrator, about how his most recent book started life essentially as an act of blackmail, and about how having published a book about being ripped off has already helped in encouraging clients to pay him on time.

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 Michelle Berry. Michelle is the author of more than half a dozen novels and three collections of short stories. Her books have been nominated for multiple awards and been optioned for film several times. For five years Berry owned and operated her own independent bookstore in Peterborough, Ontario, called Hunter Street Books. Her most recent two novels, which were both published in 2025 by Turnstone Press under the name MS Berry, are the thrillers The Tenant and Behind the Door. The Seaboard Review of Books called Behind The Door “a riveting experience.”

Michelle and I talk about how border collies are basically writers in dog form, about the culture shock that came with opening her own bookstore, and about the trade-offs that come with writing in a new genre under a pen name.

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 Zilla Jones. Zilla’s writing has won the Journey Prize and been shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Her debut novel, The World So Wide, was published in April 2025 by Cormorant Books. The Winnipeg Free Press said that “Jones’ novel is a gift and a magnificent read that will leave readers crying for an encore.”

Zilla and I talk about the role opera singing has played in her life and in her creative work, about the very first story she ever wrote—at the age of 3, in crayon—and about exploring the complexities of social and historical issues through fiction, something she is rarely able to do in her day job as a lawyer.

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 Chantal Braganza. Chantal is the deputy editor at Chatelaine. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Hazlitt, The Hairpin, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, Fashion Magazine, and Maisonneuve, among others. Her debut book is Story of Your Mother, published in 2025 by Strange Light. The Globe and Mail called it “an expansive hybrid of memoir and essay exploring identity, labour and care, which manages to be both intellectually rigorous and compulsively readable.”

Chantal and I talk about some of the realities of her former life as a busy freelance writer, about struggling to complete a memoir about things that were happening in her life, while those things were still happening, and about her recent World Cup-induced obsession with soccer—which she is totally not going to write a book about. Maybe.

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 Russell Smith. Russell is the author of multiple novels and collections of short fiction, as well as one non-fiction book. His work has been nominated for the Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award, the Rogers/Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Trillium Prize, the Chapters/Books In Canada First Novel Award, the City of Toronto Book Prize, and the Danuta Gleed Award. He is the editor of three story anthologies, and works as an acquiring editor for Dundurn Press. His most recent novel, Self Care, was published by Biblioasis in 2025. Kirkus Reviews called it “an uncomfortable, disturbing, and timely examination of relationships between men and women.”

Russell and I talk about the infamous and possibly apocryphal pitch letter that accompanied his very first novel, about how his very strong opinions as a writer and reader inform his work as an acquiring editor, and about the ways he feels the Canadian book world has sabotaged itself.

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.