An Interview with Colm Tóibín
I first came across the work of Colm Tóibín when I was doing a special series on Ireland for Writers & Company some thirty years ago, and I’ve admired him ever since. At the time, he was one of the . . .
Tag Archives: interview
A Conversation with Claire Messud
On May 14, 2024, at the Toronto Reference Library, I spoke to Claire Messud about her new novel, This Strange Eventful History. To prepare, I watched some of her interviews. I wondered what kinds of questions she asked when . . .
Monica Vitti Revisited: A Conversation with Joanna Biggs
Joanna Biggs’s essay “Smarrimento,” featured in the winter 2025 issue of Brick, opens with a description of Monica Vitti’s sleepy eyes, her ruffling hands, her perfectly sculpted hair—hair so animate it literally “feels.” Visual enchantment is an entry point—for . . .
Unseen Scripts: A Conversation with Dionne Brand
The following conversation took place at the Toronto Reference Library on September 11, 2024, to celebrate the release of Dionne Brand’s Salvage: Readings from the Wreck.
David Chariandy: You describe Salvage as a kind of forensics of how . . .
Beyond the Five Senses: In Conversation with Natalie Diaz
Throughout his career, Paul Holdengräber has chronicled the times we live in by interviewing artists who broaden our sense of creative life. This work continued through the start of the pandemic with The Quarantine Tapes, which he hosted for . . .
An Interview with Claire Keegan
A version of this conversation was broadcast on CBC Radio One’s Writers & Company on April 24, 2022, produced by Sandra Rabinovitch.
I first encountered the writing of Claire Keegan when I met her at a literary festival in Victoria . . .
Episode 3: Jennifer Baichwal
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch is Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky’s third collaboration, following Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013). Exploring humankind’s impact on the planet in visually stunning but often devastating portraits, The Anthropocene Project spans a . . .
Episode 2: Eden Robinson
When Eden Robinson first started writing, she thought grim and gritty stories were the key to being taken seriously. In this episode of Brick Podcast, she reflects on how, amidst gluten intolerance and hot flashes, goofiness has crept back into . . .
Was the Twentieth Century a Mistake?
A Conversation with Werner Herzog
Featured Brickseller: Book City
Earlier this month, our correspondent Rachel Gerry chatted with Ian Donker, owner of Toronto’s Book City, about literary localism, selling what you love, and more. Read their conversation below.
Brick: Could you tell us a little bit about Book . . .
Featured Brickseller: Atlantic News
Earlier this month, our East Coast correspondent, Rachel Gerry, caught up with Atlantic News owner Michele Gerard to talk about independent publishing, lit-mag love, and more. Read a transcription of their conversation below.
Brick: Could you tell us a . . .
An Interview with James Salter
An excerpt
Featured Brickseller: McNally Jackson Books
On a recent visit to New York City, Brick’s Kristen Scott took a short stroll down Prince Street in Lower Manhattan to the buzzing independent bookstore McNally Jackson. She toured the upper and lower levels—wandering through the classic literature, . . .
Featured Brickseller: London Review Bookshop
We’re chuffed to feature the London Review Bookshop in our latest Brickseller interview. Located in London’s Bloomsbury, the shop boasts more than twenty thousand genre-spanning titles befitting the LRB, which opened its namesake store in 2003. Over email, bookseller . . .
An Interview with Anne Carson
I’ve admired Canadian poet, essayist, Greek and Latin scholar, and librettist, Anne Carson for a long time now. I think I first heard about her as a professor of classics at McGill University who was writing amazing stuff, starting with . . .
An Interview with Richard Sennett
Richard Sennett draws on ethnography, history, and social theory to develop his ideas about how we make sense of our environment—the cities we live in and the work that engages us. As Jenny Turner wrote in the Guardian, “for . . .
An Interview with Seamus Heaney
An excerpt
Featured Brickseller: Quimby’s Bookstore
On a trip to Chicago a few years ago, Brick’s designer, Mark Byk, discovered a very cool independent bookstore in Wicker Park. He brought Quimby’s to our attention, and in a short while, Brick found a home on their . . .
An Interview with Tsitsi Dangarembga
*Note: In this 2013 interview, Tsitsi Dangarembga discusses a book called Chronicle of an Indomitable Daughter which was later published as This Mournable Body, shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.
In 1988, at the age of twenty-eight, Tsitsi Dangarembga published . . .
Featured Brickseller: Aye-Aye Books
Thanks to our international distributor, Central Books, Brick is now showing up in exciting, new-to-us bookstores around the world. And thanks to some dedicated readers, every so often we get a glimpse into these travels. A photograph of Brick 90 . . .