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Bookends with Mattea Roach • Listen on Fountain

Bookends with Mattea Roach

CBC

Show • 183 episodes

When the book ends, the conversation begins. Mattea Roach speaks with writers who have something to say about their work, the world and our place in it. You’ll always walk away with big questions to ponder and new books to read.

Why this comics legend is just getting startedEpisode • Sep 17

Who was the woman Kafka loved?Episode • Sep 14

Reliving the soundtrack of the 2000sEpisode • Sep 10

Why this Pulitzer Prize winner is done with writing booksEpisode • Sep 7

Bookends Bonus: Death, sex, money … and podcasting?Episode • Sep 3

Bookends Highlights: Why we never shut up about our literary prizesEpisode • Aug 31

Bookends Bonus: What do you see in the mirror?Episode • Aug 24

Bookends Bonus: Redefining what counts as a Canadian literary classic from CommotionEpisode • Aug 17

Bernardine Evaristo: In conversation with Eleanor WachtelEpisode • Aug 10

Bookends Highlights: The language of comics with 5 masters of the craftEpisode • Jul 20

Bookends Bonus: Cartoonist and writer Gabrielle Drolet on Q with Tom PowerEpisode • Jul 14

3 writers on finding their voices — and the power of personal storiesEpisode • Jun 22

What makes Montreal a transgender city?Episode • Jun 18

Weaving a story of family trauma and celebrating the beauty in survivalEpisode • Jun 15

For Indigenous players, ice hockey is a ceremony of its ownEpisode • Jun 11

Taylor Jenkins Reid is among the stars — on and off the pageEpisode • Jun 8

Alison Bechdel on making money and seeing Fun Home in a new lightEpisode • Jun 4

David A. Robertson puts stories at the heart of reconciliationEpisode • Jun 1

An opera singer gives voice to the Grenadian revolutionEpisode • May 28

When young men murder, what can we learn?Episode • May 25

Music, sex and finding the soundtrack to queer joyEpisode • May 21

Weightlifting made Casey Johnston stronger — in muscle and mindEpisode • May 18

Fans asked for another happy ending — Carley Fortune deliveredEpisode • May 14

Bookends Introduces | Understood: Who Broke the InternetEpisode • May 12

Ocean Vuong finds beauty in a fast food shiftEpisode • May 11

Writing about catastrophe gives Madeleine Thien courageEpisode • May 7

Fighting for an unlawful love in UgandaEpisode • May 4

NOT CLICKBAIT! She stole her dead twin sister’s identity!?Episode • Apr 30

What if your dreams could land you in jail?Episode • Apr 27

Meet the winner of the 2025 CBC Short Story PrizeEpisode • Apr 23

Why you can’t forget your first loveEpisode • Apr 20

Why growing up is so hard — and why Canadians are so funnyEpisode • Apr 16

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s triumphant return to fictionEpisode • Apr 13

Scaachi Koul calls herself a professional ex-wifeEpisode • Apr 9

Yes, tuberculosis is still a thing — John Green tells us whyEpisode • Apr 6

Mapping the stories of Uganda’s abducted childrenEpisode • Apr 2

Kate Bush spins a magical story on her album Hounds of LoveEpisode • Mar 30

Curtis Sittenfeld is fascinated by fameEpisode • Mar 26

Emma Donoghue boards a train destined for disasterEpisode • Mar 23

Why Heather O’Neill believes in magicEpisode • Mar 19

Getting to know Canada’s king of suspenseEpisode • Mar 16

How Frida Kahlo and Sylvia Plath inspired a novel about chronic painEpisode • Mar 12

We can still avoid a tech dystopia — here’s howEpisode • Mar 9

In the Caribbean, secret lives come at a costEpisode • Mar 5

Pitbull, Scarface and a whale walk into a bookEpisode • Mar 2

Emily Austin: Would life be easier as a rat? And other ways to escape adulthoodEpisode • Feb 26

Nnedi Okorafor: Bringing a writer to life in Death of the AuthorEpisode • Feb 23

Jack Wang: Reimagining the lost stories of Chinese Canadians during WWIIEpisode • Feb 19

Helen Phillips: In a world run by AI, what makes us human?Episode • Feb 16

Daniel Aleman: Loneliness inspired a novel about a Grindr date gone fatally wrongEpisode • Feb 12

Kate Gies: Reclaiming her body after years of medical traumaEpisode • Feb 9

Emma Knight: 'Bad' mothers make good stories — and are more true-to-lifeEpisode • Feb 5

Imani Perry: Tracing blue through Black American lifeEpisode • Feb 2

Chris Ware: Inside the sketchbooks of a comics masterEpisode • Jan 26

Amy Lin: Widowed at 31, she looks for the beauty in griefEpisode • Jan 22

Rumaan Alam: How would you spend a billion dollars?Episode • Jan 19

Rachel Robb: Exploring reconciliation and the natural worldEpisode • Jan 15

Judith Butler: Breaking down why people fear genderEpisode • Jan 12

Zoe Whittall: Why heartbreak is a valid form of griefEpisode • Jan 8

Adrian Tomine: Answering his readers’ burning questionsEpisode • Jan 5

Bookends: Highlights from 2024Episode • Dec 29, 2024

Samantha Harvey: In conversation with Eleanor WachtelEpisode • Dec 22, 2024

Bryan Lee O’Malley: 20 years of Scott PilgrimEpisode • Dec 18, 2024

Nita Prose: The Maid series returns with a Christmas twistEpisode • Dec 15, 2024

Charles Burns: Why the comics icon keeps returning to teenage angstEpisode • Dec 11, 2024

Pasha Malla: Parodying a wellness resort with horror and humourEpisode • Dec 8, 2024

Sarah Leavitt: Illustrating grief too wide for wordsEpisode • Dec 4, 2024

Nalo Hopkinson: How Caribbean folktales inspired her fantastical novel, Blackheart ManEpisode • Dec 1, 2024

Leslie Jamison: Capturing Peggy Guggenheim in fiction and honouring a friend's dreamEpisode • Nov 27, 2024

Teresa Wong: Illustrating her family's past — in all its ordinary and epic momentsEpisode • Nov 24, 2024

Paula Hawkins: Exploring the dark side of the art world in new thriller The Blue HourEpisode • Nov 20, 2024

Anne Fleming: Why her latest novel is a gender-bending tale of witchcraft and forbidden loveEpisode • Nov 17, 2024

Eric Chacour: Exploring the power of familial expectations and forbidden loveEpisode • Nov 13, 2024

Rachel Kushner: In Booker Prize finalist Creation Lake, an agent provocateur faces deep questions about how to liveEpisode • Nov 10, 2024

Alan Hollinghurst: Coming of age in Britain and writing through the gay gazeEpisode • Nov 6, 2024

Fawn Parker: Blending her own grief with fiction in new novel Hi, It’s MeEpisode • Nov 3, 2024

Erica McKeen: Using horror and surrealism to explore grief, care and love in new novel Cicada SummerEpisode • Oct 30, 2024

Jeff VanderMeer: How his blockbuster Southern Reach series reflects our own fight against climate changeEpisode • Oct 27, 2024

V.V. Ganeshananthan: Exploring the complexity of Sri Lanka's civil war in her prize-winning novel, Brotherless NightEpisode • Oct 23, 2024

Corinna Chong: Uncovering long buried truths against the backdrop of Alberta's BadlandsEpisode • Oct 20, 2024

Jenny Heijun Wills: Sharing her journey of transracial adoption and self-discovery in her moving essay collectionEpisode • Oct 16, 2024

Matt Haig: A surprise inheritance, a magical island and why he's embracing hope — in fiction and lifeEpisode • Oct 13, 2024

Aldona Dziedziejko: Poetic reflections on land and loss wins 2024 CBC Nonfiction PrizeEpisode • Oct 9, 2024

Casey McQuiston: Celebrating queer love and joy and navigating the future of romanceEpisode • Oct 6, 2024

Tanya Talaga: Searching for her great-great grandmother — a story of family, truth and survivalEpisode • Sep 29, 2024

Alison McCreesh: Exploring the magic and nuance of life in the North in her latest graphic novelEpisode • Sep 25, 2024

Aysegul Savas: Finding home in foreignness and capturing the uncertainty of early adulthoodEpisode • Sep 22, 2024

Sloane Crosley: Losing her best friend and sharing her grief with the worldEpisode • Sep 18, 2024

David Huebert: Exploring the complexity of our relationship with oil through fictionEpisode • Sep 15, 2024

Heather O'Neill: How motherhood and artistry intersect in the bestselling writer's life and workEpisode • Sep 11, 2024

Kaveh Akbar: Finding meaning in sobriety and writing his bestseller, Martyr!Episode • Sep 8, 2024

Introducing Bookends with Mattea RoachEpisode • Sep 6, 2024

Madeleine Thien interviews Eleanor Wachtel on the final Writers & Company episodeEpisode • Sep 1, 2024

Ali Smith on ghost stories, activism and the cyclical nature of timeEpisode • Aug 25, 2024

Peter Eisenman on pushing the bounds of modern architecture and transforming influenceEpisode • Aug 18, 2024

Danzy Senna's darkly comic take on racial identityEpisode • Aug 11, 2024

Francine du Plessix Gray on growing up the daughter of a great Russian beautyEpisode • Aug 4, 2024

Prolific and daring author Joyce Carol Oates on her childhood, widowhood and concerns about American societyEpisode • Jul 28, 2024

Amitava Kumar on India, the U.S. and the indelible imprint of the immigrant experienceEpisode • Jul 21, 2024

Edna O'Brien: from Ireland's outcast to celebrated iconEpisode • Jul 14, 2024

Laurie Anderson on language, story and losing her archives to Hurricane SandyEpisode • Jul 7, 2024

Tony Kushner on his evolution as a storyteller, from Angels in America to The Intelligent Homosexual's GuideEpisode • Jun 30, 2024

Claire Messud on the stories and secrets of a French Algerian family in The Last LifeEpisode • Jun 23, 2024

Biographer Nicholas Murray reflects on Kafka's life — this month is the 100th anniversary of his deathEpisode • Jun 16, 2024

Jenny Erpenbeck, winner of the International Booker Prize 2024, on The End of Days and personal transformationsEpisode • Jun 9, 2024

Hari Kunzru on race, politics and the bluesEpisode • Jun 2, 2024

How using her imagination saved Scottish author Jackie KayEpisode • May 26, 2024

Alice Munro on writing about life, love, sex and secretsEpisode • May 19, 2024

Chance, fate and fiction: looking back at American novelist and filmmaker Paul AusterEpisode • May 12, 2024

Looking back on American sculptor Richard Serra and how he became the Man of SteelEpisode • May 5, 2024

Poet Raymond Antrobus on hearing, seeing and grieving through verseEpisode • Apr 28, 2024

Colm Toibin on the unspoken and powerful dynamics between mothers and sonsEpisode • Apr 21, 2024

Alice Oswald on poetry, nature and the shedding of identityEpisode • Apr 14, 2024

The beautiful, melancholy world of Anita DesaiEpisode • Apr 7, 2024

James Runcie on the beauty, sorrow and genius of Johann Sebastian BachEpisode • Mar 31, 2024

How Hisham Matar's writing reflects life under dictatorship and the pain of his father's abductionEpisode • Mar 24, 2024

Irish writers Michael Collins, Claire Keegan, Colum McCann and Nuala O'Faolain reflect on home and awayEpisode • Mar 17, 2024

Catherine Lacey imagines a character without race or gender in her novel, PewEpisode • Mar 10, 2024

Martin Amis on The Zone of Interest and Primo Levi’s unshakeable influenceEpisode • Mar 3, 2024

James McBride on the complicated history of race in the United StatesEpisode • Feb 25, 2024

How writer and scholar Anne Carson used elegy to piece together fragments of her late brotherEpisode • Feb 18, 2024

Xiaolu Guo traces her unlikely journey from a rural Chinese fishing village to life in London as a writerEpisode • Feb 11, 2024

The incomparable Philip Roth: looking back on his life in fictionEpisode • Feb 4, 2024

Alain Mabanckou on his profound connection to the Republic of the CongoEpisode • Jan 28, 2024

The enduring magic of The Little Prince: with Stacy Schiff, Mark Osborne and Éric DupontEpisode • Jan 21, 2024

Elizabeth Jane Howard looks back on learning, love and her marriage to Kingsley AmisEpisode • Jan 14, 2024

How fighting for Indigenous rights shaped Alexis Wright as a storytellerEpisode • Jan 7, 2024

Dionne Brand, Margaret Drabble, Deborah Eisenberg & Andrew O'Hagan reflect on life and writingEpisode • Dec 31, 2023

Nobel Prize-winner Seamus Heaney on the place of politics in poetryEpisode • Dec 24, 2023

How writing helped Lore Segal survive a traumatic wartime childhoodEpisode • Dec 17, 2023

A virtuoso of the short story, Lydia Davis's work is surprising and memorableEpisode • Dec 10, 2023

In her prizewinning fiction, Sigrid Nunez deals with life — and death — with empathy and witEpisode • Dec 3, 2023

Looking back at A.S. Byatt, the celebrated English novelist and imaginative intellectualEpisode • Nov 26, 2023

Nora Krug asks tough questions about her German family's wartime pastEpisode • Nov 19, 2023

Vietnam veteran Tim O'Brien on fictionalizing his war storiesEpisode • Nov 12, 2023

Jesmyn Ward on exploring the stories of America's SouthEpisode • Nov 5, 2023

Jeanette Winterson brings humour and understanding to a fraught childhoodEpisode • Oct 29, 2023

How John Grisham turned his passion for justice into bestselling legal thrillersEpisode • Oct 22, 2023

Viet Thanh Nguyen on redefining what it means to be a refugeeEpisode • Oct 15, 2023

Anne Enright on her Booker-winning novel, The Gathering, and how Canada helped make her a writerEpisode • Oct 8, 2023

Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin on her legendary career and the power of storytellingEpisode • Oct 1, 2023

Chinese writer Yan Ge finds solace in creating literary worldsEpisode • Sep 24, 2023

Novelist Sebastian Barry explores the personal stories behind Ireland's political historyEpisode • Sep 17, 2023

Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland examines moral choice in an immoral worldEpisode • Sep 10, 2023

Zadie Smith on writing, family and her addiction to readingEpisode • Sep 3, 2023

John le Carré on his legacy as a spy-turned-novelistEpisode • Aug 27, 2023

Oliver Sacks on how an unconventional childhood shaped his love of scienceEpisode • Aug 20, 2023

Toni Morrison on family bonds, race and coping with personal tragedyEpisode • Aug 13, 2023

Acclaimed poet Mark Strand was known for meditative, spare verse that was anything but simpleEpisode • Aug 6, 2023

Julian Barnes on love, loss and Russian composer Dmitri ShostakovichEpisode • Jul 30, 2023

How two young women captured the voices of literary greats and became audiobook pioneersEpisode • Jul 23, 2023

Award-winning author Edwidge Danticat on family, migration and the beauty of her home country, HaitiEpisode • Jul 16, 2023

Britain’s literary power couple Margaret Drabble and Michael Holroyd turn the lens on their own livesEpisode • Jul 9, 2023

A family affair: remembering the personal side of Martin Amis and his father, KingsleyEpisode • Jul 2, 2023

Celebrating Writers & Company: 33 years of exceptional interviews with the incomparable Eleanor WachtelEpisode • Jun 25, 2023

Leila Slimani fuses imagination and memory in novels inspired by her French Moroccan familyEpisode • Jun 18, 2023

For prize-winning poet and novelist Michael Ondaatje, every book is an act of discoveryEpisode • Jun 11, 2023

US poet laureate Ada Limón celebrates nature, family and human connection in The Hurting KindEpisode • Jun 4, 2023

From Antarctica to Zanzibar – Sara Wheeler on 40 years of adventure in her new book, Glowing StillEpisode • May 28, 2023

Maestro Daniel Barenboim on his life in music — and its role in bringing cultures togetherEpisode • May 21, 2023

Serbian British writer Vesna Goldsworthy on reimagining Anna KareninaEpisode • May 14, 2023

Max Porter blurs the line between dream and reality in his compelling, inventive fictionEpisode • May 7, 2023

Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Shields brought a fresh perspective to the lives of womenEpisode • Apr 30, 2023

Ukraine’s Andrey Kurkov on shock, optimism and the resilience of ordinary peopleEpisode • Apr 23, 2023

Malcolm Gladwell on his Jamaican roots, growing up in rural Ontario and why ‘being first’ is overratedEpisode • Apr 16, 2023

Vikram Seth on family, home and the unlikely love story of his great aunt and uncleEpisode • Apr 9, 2023

Sarah Bakewell on the enduring influence of humanist thought – from the Renaissance to todayEpisode • Apr 2, 2023

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀'s politically charged fiction paints an intimate portrait of contemporary Nigerian lifeEpisode • Mar 26, 2023

Ayad Akhtar examines the soul of America through his own family's story in Homeland ElegiesEpisode • Mar 19, 2023

Elizabeth McCracken’s fictional portrait of her own remarkable mother is warm, witty and wiseEpisode • Mar 12, 2023

Booker winner Eleanor Catton’s new novel, Birnam Wood, is a moral thriller for our timesEpisode • Mar 5, 2023

Yiyun Li’s new novel, The Book of Goose, is a beguiling tale of childhood imagination, hunger and memoryEpisode • Feb 26, 2023

Zimbabwe's Petina Gappah casts new light on David Livingstone's search for the source of the NileEpisode • Feb 19, 2023

Nothing is as it seems in Scottish novelist Graeme Macrae Burnet’s inventive, genre-defying fictionEpisode • Feb 12, 2023

World-renowned South African artist William Kentridge on his wide-ranging, politically engaged workEpisode • Feb 5, 2023

Kapka Kassabova on the untold stories of Bulgaria's haunted borderlandEpisode • Jan 29, 2023

The tragic loss of a close friend became the impetus for Hua Hsu’s acclaimed memoir, Stay TrueEpisode • Jan 22, 2023

Amy Liptrot on how she forged a new story in the wild landscape of the Orkney IslandsEpisode • Jan 15, 2023

From Kolkata to Mumbai, London to Berlin – Amit Chaudhuri’s fiction travels off the beaten pathEpisode • Jan 8, 2023

Fran Lebowitz shares her observations on contemporary life with unfiltered wit and wisdomEpisode • Jan 1, 2023

Tracy K. Smith on life, death, poetry and outer spaceEpisode • Dec 25, 2022

Marie Kreutzer’s film Corsage is a fascinating portrait of a 19th-century icon, Empress Elisabeth of AustriaEpisode • Dec 18, 2022

Cleopatra beyond the myth: Francine Prose revisits the life of Egypt’s legendary queenEpisode • Dec 11, 2022

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