At Toronto's Harbourfront Centre, Nathan interviewed Ian Hamilton, author of the Ava Lee series, and Steve Urszenyi, author of Perfect Shot. Ian's latest book The Fury of Beijing is (possibly) the last in the series, while Steve's book kicks off the Special Agent Alexandra Martel series.

Live at MOTIVE: Thrills from Start to Finish

Michael spoke with artist, illustrator, and fashion designer, Maurice Vellekoop. Over a career spanning four decades, Vellekoop's work has been published in magazines including The New Yorker, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Fashion, and Cosmopolitan, and he’s the author and illustrator of the books, The World of Gloria Badcock: A Comic for Adults, A Nut at the Opera, and Maurice Vellekoop’s Pin-ups, to name just a few.

His newest book is I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together. It’s a memoir of his childhood and early adulthood in a suburb of Toronto, the youngest of four siblings in a strictly religious household, and it’s about coming out as a gay man at a very particular time in the 1980s.

Spending time with Maurice Vellekoop

We're sweeping up the glitter after awarding the 10th annual Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize to a trio of brilliant authors just a few days ago (more on that to come). We'll be back in your feed with more author interviews soon.

In the meantime...

When Kobo in Conversation hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj aren't reading books and interviewing authors for this show, they're working in the business of selling eBooks, audiobooks, and eReaders. In this episode, Nathan sat Michael down to get his takes on a bunch of book biz news making headlines now.* It's kind of an experiment, and we'll do it again soon—but we'll keep changing it up until we can make it feel right. Thoughts? Questions? Stuff you'd like us to cover? Email Nathan at nmaharaj@kobo.com or drop a comment below if you're listening on YouTube.

Topics covered in this episode:

• What's a publisher, and why doesn't everybody self-publish now?
• Why does it seem like publishers buying each other all the time?
• Why are major players in high finance poking around in the book business so much lately?
• Why are big league publishing executives leaving to create new publishing companies—just to publish books by famous people?
• Costco's not going to sell books anymore: does it matter?
• Post-pandemic peril in Australian bookselling
• The "Spotify for audiobooks" before Spotify decided to be the Spotify for audiobooks

Books mentioned:

• The Trial: The DOJ's Suit to Block Penguin Random House's Acquisition of Simon & Schuster by Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch
• Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
• The works of Ernest Hemingway, published by Scribner

*Michael may have actually staged a one man studio sit-in, and Nathan rolled tape to get him to leave. Accounts differ.

Michael spoke with writer Stephen Maher, author of The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau. Informed by interviews with hundreds of people close to the events covered, as well as Maher's own conversations with Trudeau himself, it’s a portrait of a complex person leading through complex times.

Stephen Maher offers readers a glimpse of The Prince

Nathan spoke with Laura Tamblyn Watts, founder and chief executive of CanAge, Canada’s national seniors’ advocacy organization, and author of Let’s Talk About Aging Parents: A Real-Life Guide to Solving Problems with 27 Essential Conversations, a book about the many hard things facing adults who know their aging parents need to make some decisions—and probably some changes too—but they don’t know where to start.

Laura Tamblyn Watts on 27 essential, and uncomfortable, conversations

Nathan spoke with novelist Anna Julia Stainsby, author of The Afterpains. It’s the story of Rosy, whose grief over the loss of her infant daughter nearly twenty years ago has all but cut her off from her husband and teenage son. And it’s about Isaura, an immigrant from Honduras raising her daughter in Toronto and trying to keep her out of the grip of a centuries-long curse.

Anna Julia Stainsby on ugly truths, isolation, and The Afterpains

Nathan spoke with novelist Shilpi Somaya Gowda, author of the 2012 international bestseller Secret Daughter. Her new book is A Great Country. It’s about the Shah family, recently moved to the well-to-do neighbourhood of Pacific Hills. While Ashok and Priya catch up with friends at a dinner party one Saturday evening, their children are each, separately, experiencing things that will leave their family forever changed.

Shilpi Somaya Gowda, author of A Great Country

Michael spoke with journalist Michael Finkel, author of True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, and The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit as well as numerous articles about extreme places and unlikely people for Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, GQ, and the New York Times Magazine. His latest book The Art Thief is the story of Stéphane Breitwieser, a man whose theft of over 200 artworks from the sleepy museums of central Europe showed a singular obsession for possessing works of art that grab his attention—and the talent to bring them home.

Journalist Michael Finkel on seeing through the eyes of The Art Thief