Marie-Joseé Poission joins us to talk about her novel, Blood Bound: Unlacing Secret Ties, published by Guernica Editions. In the novel, successful Montreal communications executive Lou Ashby travels to Paris to trace her ancestry. There, she meets Geoffrey, an academic with a national museum, who is entrusted with finding the story behind a blood-stained gown found in the walls of a palace. Together, they solve the mystery behind the dress and Lou’s ancestry, and shatter historical certainty about one of France’s major female figures, Madame de Pompadour.

Marie-Josée Poisson has been writing since she was a young girl. Before becoming a full-time novelist, she held senior communications roles at TV5 Monde and the École supérieure de ballet du Québec, follow by five years as editor-in-chief of Le Magazine de la Place des arts. Blood Bound is the first novel in Poission’s trilogy to be translated into English. It's published by Guernica Editions.

More on the author's website, bloodhound.ca

André Narbonne is a scholar, a poet, the author of four books, and also the publisher of Conspiracy Press, based in Windsor, Ontario. His short fiction has been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories, won the FreeFall Literary Contest, the David Adams Richards Prize, and the Atlantic Writing Contest. His first collection of short fiction, Twelve Miles to Midnight, was shortlisted for the 2017 Danuta Gleed Literary Award. His first novel, Lucien & Olivia, was longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Those Are Pearls is published by Palimpsest Press.

https://palimpsestpress.ca/books/those-are-pearls-andre-narbonne/

In this episode of The Reading List, Canadian author Sean Paul Bedell shares his inspiration drawn his paramedic life and a short excerpt from his novel The Shoebox.

Author Sean Paul Bedell's second book, Shoebox, is published by Now or Never Publishing. In this gritty, emotional novel, Steve Lewis, a dedicated paramedic, faces the emotional aftermath of a fatal accident that casts a shadow over his commitment to saving lives. As Steve grapples with the high stakes of his job and community scrutiny, each life he saves rekindles his passion for his work. The novel explores the human spirit’s capacity for healing.

Sean’s previous novel is Somewhere There’s Music. He has been writing and publishing for more than 30 years. A longtime paramedic and captain with the fire service, he lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

JENNIFER LOVEGROVE is the author of the Giller Prize–longlisted novel Watch How We Walk, as well as three poetry collections: Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes (longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award), I Should Never Have Fired the Sentinel, and The Dagger Between Her Teeth. Her latest poetry collection is The Tinder Sonnets, published by Book*hug Press in Spring 2026. Jennifer LoveGrove divides her time between downtown Toronto and Squirrel Creek Retreat in rural Ontario.

https://bookhugpress.ca/shop/author/jennifer-lovegrove/the-tinder-sonnets-by-jennifer-lovegrove/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_LoveGrove

Don Gillmor is the author of To the River, which won the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction. He is the author of five novels, Cherry Beach, Breaking and Entering, Long Change, Mount Pleasant, and Kanata; a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People’s History; and nine books for children, two of which were nominated for the Governor General’s Award. He was a senior editor at The Walrus, and his journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, GQ, Saturday Night, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. He has won twelve National Magazine Awards and numerous other honours. He lives in Toronto. His latest book is Cherry Beach, published by Biblioasis in 2026.

https://www.biblioasis.com/author/gillmor-don/

Fartumo Kusow is a high school English teacher, novelist, podcaster, activist, and mother of five who lives in Windsor, Ontario. Born in Somalia, Fartumo immigrated to Canada in 1991, at the start of the civil war, with fluency in Somali and Arabic but not English, and went on to earn two degrees. Fartumo Kusow first appeared on this podcast in 2020, chatting about her second novel which was her debut novel in English, Tale of a Boon’s Wife. She’s here with us today to discuss her new novel, Winter of My Spring, published by Spark Press in March 2026.

https://fartumokusow.com/

https://gosparkpress.com/portfolio/fartumo-kusow/

This episode is an excerpt of a longer interview with Jim Johnstone.

Jim Johnstone is a Toronto-based poet, editor, and critic. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, including The Chemical Life, which was shortlisted for the 2018 ReLit Award. Johnstone has also won several awards, including the Bliss Carman Poetry Award, a CBC Literary Award, the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, the Robin Blaser Award, and Poetry's Editors Prize for Book Reviewing. Currently, he curates the Anstruther Books imprint at Windsor’s Palimpsest Press, where he published The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry. His most recent books are Bait & Switch, a collection of reviews, essays and conversations on poetry, and a collection of poems, The King of Terrors.
Bait and Switch was published by Porcupine’s Quill. The King of Terrors was published by Coach House Books.

Poetry Magazine Summer 2025

Jim Daniels has authored more than thirty collections of poetry, seven collections of fiction, and one collection of essays, and has written four produced screenplays. He has also edited or co-edited six anthologies, most recently RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music. He is a recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and two from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His books have won four Michigan Notable Books awards, the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, the Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry, the Tillie Olsen Creative Writing Award, the Milton Kessler Award, and three gold medals in the Independent Publisher Book Awards, among others, and his films have won awards in film festivals around the world. His work has been published in The Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize volumes. He has read his poetry on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, and his poems were frequently featured on Keillor’s Writer's Almanac. Poet laureates Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, and Tracy K. Smith all showcased his writing as part of their work to bring poetry to average Americans. During his long career, he has warmed up for singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams at the Three Rivers Arts Festival, read poems at a Jamestown Jammers AA baseball game, had his poem “Factory Love” displayed on a race car, and sent poetry into space as part of the Moon Arts Project. A native of Detroit, he lives in Pittsburgh, where he is the Baker University Professor Emeritus of English at Carnegie Mellon University. He currently teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.

Author Jim Daniels spoke at Marshall District Library as part of the 2026 #MiNotableBks author tour and was also honored as the 2025-2026 #MiAuthorAward recipient. Special thanks to MDL for hosting and to the Library of Michigan Foundation for their support of both programs. Visit www.Michigan.gov/NotableBooks and www.Michigan.gov/MiAuthorAwardfor more details on each program.

An Ignorance of Trees: A Memoir in Essays was published in August 2025 by Cornerstone Press and won a Michigan Notable Book Award in 2026.

This was his fifth Michigan Notable Book Award: two in poetry, one in fiction, one in nonfiction, and one for editing (RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music.

More info on the Michigan Author Award at link above.

https://msupress.org/9781611865745/late-invocation-for-magic/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Daniels

Writers mentioned: Andrew Collard, Dustin M. Hoffman, R.S. Deneen