How I Wrote This

How I Wrote This

Pamela Hensley talks with acclaimed authors about their lives and the events that shaped their work.

Episodes

March 26, 2025 1 min

An introduction to Season 3 of the podcast, this time featuring authors based in Brooklyn, New York, USA

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Promotional support from the Quebec Writers’ Federation

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March 18, 2025 54 mins

Adelle Waldman is the author of two novels: Help Wanted, published in 2024, and The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. which was named one of the year’s best books in 2013 by The New Yorker, The Economist, The New Republic, NPR, Slate, Bookforum, The Guardian and others. In this illuminating conversation that took place shortly after the US election, Adelle talks about the j...

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March 11, 2025 41 mins

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March 4, 2025 51 mins

Joseph O’Neill has written a family history and five novels including This is the Life, The Breezes, Netherland (which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award), The Dog (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize) and most recently, Godwin. He also writes political reviews and essays as well as short stori...

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Hilary Leichter is the author of two novels and a lecturer at Columbia University. In this bonus content, listen to her reading from her latest, Terrace Stories.

For an in-depth conversation with Hilary, see Episode 3.

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February 18, 2025 57 mins

Hilary Leichter’s debut novel Temporary, tells the story of a woman’s adventures in the gig economy,  something with which she has years of experience. Now a lecturer at Columbia University, she talks about the precariousness of temp work, the desire for permanence, and how time is an engine that drives fiction. In Terrace Story, her most recent novel, she returns...

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Daniel Allen Cox is the author of five books. In this bonus content, listen to him reading from his memoir, I Felt the End Before It Came For an in-depth conversation with Daniel, see Episode 2.

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February 4, 2025 61 mins

Since 2008, Daniel Allen Cox has published four novels and a memoir-in-essays. He was a finalist for the 2023 Grand Prix du livre de Montréal for his memoir, I Felt It Before the End Came: Memoirs of a Queer ex-Jehovah’s Witness, a nominee for a National Magazine Award for his essay “You Can’t Blame Movers for Everything Broken”, and a contributor to bot...

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Jennifer Egan is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of seven books. In this bonus content, listen to her reading from her latest novel, The Candy House. For an in-depth conversation with Jennifer, see Episode 1.

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January 21, 2025 60 mins

Jennifer Egan is the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist of A Visit from the Goon Squad and the author of six other books as well as many nonfiction articles including a year-long series about homelessness in New York. Her 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction while her latest, The Candy House, was named one of...

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Introductions to the longlisted titles, readings by their authors, and insights into how these books were made.

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November 8, 2024 49 mins

The 2024 Giller Prize shortlist was announced on October 9 and five books and authors remain. Four of the shortlisted authors join Pamela to read excerpts from their books and tell her more about them: Eric Chacour (What I Know About You), Deepa Rajagopalan (Peacocks of Instagram), Conor Kerr (Prairie Edge), and Anne Fleming (Curiosities). 

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November 2, 2024 39 mins

We’re working our way through the finalists for the 2024 Giller Prize. In Episode 2 of this three-episode series, we hear from: Claire Messud (This Strange Eventful History), Jane Urquhart (In Winter I Get Up at Night), Corinna Chong (Bad Land), and Shashi Bhat (Death by a Thousand Cuts).

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November 1, 2024 33 mins

The 2024 Giller longlist celebrates the best in Canadian fiction. Twelve titles were selected from 112 books published between Oct.1. 2023 and Aug. 16, 2024. In this mini-series, which is a departure from our usual format, you’ll hear readings from the nominated books and brief conversations with their authors. In this first episode, Pamela is joined by: Caroline Adderson (A Way to be Happy), katherena vermette (real ones), and Log...

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July 1, 2024 1 min

An introduction to Season 2 of the literary podcast about authors, their books, and the story behind their stories. This season takes place in Berlin.

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Promotional support from the Quebec Writers’ Federation

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June 11, 2024 58 mins

Sheana Lambert has published two collections of short stories, The Falling Woman and Oh, my darling and two novels, RadianceandPetra and been nominated for literary prizes including  the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Danuta Gleed Award, and the Frank O'Connor Award for the Short Story. A Canadian with German heritage, she talks about echoes from the past and how the artistic legacy of her great-grandfather, grandfat...

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June 4, 2024 50 secs

Wiebke von Carolsfeld grew up in Berlin, studied book binding in Cologne, and apprenticed at the publisher Kiepenheuer & Witch shortly after they’d acquired the rights to The Satanic Verses. When she emigrated to Toronto, for language reasons, she shifted her aspirations to film. Her first project resulted in a nomination for Best Editing at the Genies for the film Eisenstein. &nbs...

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May 28, 2024 54 mins

Behzad Karim Khani is an author whose explosive debut novel Hund, Wulf, Schakal (Dog, Wolf, Jackal) tells a story of violence on the streets of Berlin, and the lives of two immigrant brothers from Iran. It’s a book that elicited rave reviews such as this one in the Suddeutschezeitung: “Sentences you’d want to frame…simply a great work of literature.”

Behzad was a boy in Tehran when the Iran / Iraq war ended. With his family, he left...

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May 21, 2024 52 mins

Jenny Erpenbeck is one of Germany’s most celebrated authors. She’s written four novels that have been translated into English, a memoir, several short stories, plays, and a few librettos, including the one she finished just before she spoke.

Jenny writes about growing up in East Berlin and how her experience of the German Democratic Repub...

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