The Decibel - Margaret Atwood and Michael Crummey on ‘The Art of the Story’

Episode Date: February 22, 2026

A conversation between two acclaimed Canadian authors – Margaret Atwood and Michael Crummey on ‘The Art of the Story’. A live discussion about writing, reading, what makes Canadian authors unique and the publishing landscape. Atwood is one of Canada’s most celebrated writers, recently published Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts. Crummey is the author of numerous short stories, poetry and novels, his most recent work being The Adversary. This recording was from a live event at The Globe and Mail headquarters in Toronto on Dec.1, 2025, as part of celebrations for The Globe 100, an annual list of the most notable reads. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, it's Cheryl. Today we're bringing you a special Sunday episode on the decibel feed. In celebration of the Globe 100, which is the annual list of notable reads, the Globe and Mail held a conversation between two acclaimed Canadian authors, Margaret Atwood and Michael Crummy. Atwood is one of Canada's most celebrated writers, winner of the Giller Prize, the Booker Prize, an author of works like Aalius Grace, The Handmaid's Tale, and Oryx and Crake. Michael Crummy is a poet and author of novels,

like Galore and The Adversary. In this conversation you're about to hear, they talk about the art of the story. This was in front of a live audience at the Globe and Mail's Toronto headquarters from December. The Globe's arts editor, Judith Pereira, hosted and moderated. Hope you enjoy it. And now for our next conversation with Margaret Atwood and Michael Crummy. I first met Margaret in 2019 when I became books editor. And one of the first things she asked, me was, what are you going to do to promote Canadian books and Canadian publishing and how do we do that? And I said to her, you know, I'd like to do a book club. I think that would be a great way for us to get people, our readers involved. And she said, sure, what can I do? And so she did that first book

club with Barbara Gowdy. And it was just a fantastic, fantastic experience. And we got a ton of people who came here for an event. But unfortunately, the pandemic intervened. And so we put it on pause. This year, the Globe 100 archive, we did a lot of work on that. And I knew that I wanted to do something special for it. And so I once again contacted Margaret, and she said, what can I do? And I said, I'd like to have an event. Now, you guys know Margaret as this amazing Booker Prize, Prize-winning, Giller Prize-winning, amazing author, Ailius Grace, the Matt Adam trilogy, which is my personal favorite. But she's also a real friend of Canadian publishing and Canadian authors,

and so I'm really, really glad that she's able to come here today to help us promote the Globe 100 and this database. Both Margaret and Michael have been on this list several times for the years, as I just mentioned, Ailius Grace, the Matt Adam trilogy, the Testaments, and of course this year, the memoir. Last year, the adversary, the innocence, Sweetland. So both of them have been on the list several years, and I'm delighted to have them on stage with me. Welcome, Michael and Margaret. Well, thank you again for coming tonight, but I'm just going to start off this first question,

and then they're really going to take it away from there, because you don't really need to hear from me. you want to hear them talk. So I'm just going to start off with Canadian publishing, why it matters, Canadian authors, Canadian books, and then I'm just going to let you guys go on, and I'm just going to sit quietly here

and listen to what you have to say. Well, I'd be happy to jump into that, but I do feel like the nonfiction clowns over here. Yeah, go ahead. Talk about the nonfiction clowns. Through the gauntlet down at the start. And I have a personal stake in that. this because my wife Holly is here and she's a non-fiction writer and so I would like to hear from

somebody who's done both about which is harder go ahead margaret think about that very start before you land I don't think it is it's not on is it on yeah it's on okay um well I think that entirely depends on the book you're writing you know so sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't if it doesn't work you throw it out that's a good answer There you go, Ian. Yeah, so it's easier when it's working, and it's harder when it's not working. Do you have a sense of which one doesn't work most?

I have no sense of that, and I think it would entirely depend on the individual writer. Because some people, whatever they do, it doesn't work. She was looking at me very intently. I was not looking at you. I was not looking at you, And I'll take this opportunity to say that I think the adversary is terrific. Thank you so much.

This dark, dark, sinister, Jacobian drama. And has anybody actually identified why it's called the adversary? I have. But I feel like I might be alone in that. You're not alone. Oh, okay. All right. Let me guess.

I think it's called the adversary for two reasons. Number one, there's this conflict between two people, each of whom is the other's adversary. But in addition to that, the adversary was the name for the devil in the Bible and Christian history in general. Am I right? Yes, you are absolutely right.

Five points for Margaret. It's interesting. people have asked me why it's not called the adversaries. Well, that's why. And that's why. Yeah, there's only one. Yes. And also, I feel like, I know you're here to listen to her.

But I also felt like... We like listening to you, too. For each character in the book... And you ask you about that in a minute. For each character in the book, it does feel like, and I think for all of us, there's something we want more than anything else that we would be in danger of,

betraying ourselves for. Yeah. And so for everybody in the book, their adversaries themselves. Of course. Well, it's the devil within us. The devil within. There you go. Yes, education in English literature

does come in handy. Yes. At moments like that. Well, the other thing I'd like to ask you, Michael, is rumors have been around for some years that you did a very, accurate and funny imitation of me in your past.

Would you like to address that? Not really. I do remember while I was doing it saying to my wife that I'm gonna, I'm a dead man. This is really gonna come back. Give us some of the highlights.

Well, so Holly and I were working for Adventure Canada, who you have spent a lot of time working for. Yeah. It's an Ontario outfit that does small ship cruises to mostly northern locations. Very northern. Very northern. And also they do a circumnavigation of Newfoundland every year.

Yeah, and that's a great trip, which we both did about 10 times. And the Adventure Canada people are a little bit crazy. And so they do, they like to dress up and do crazy. events and one event was I'm not was a Canada Day or something it was to it was a costume competition you're not gonna get out of it that way you had to dress up as your favorite Canadian yes and they had this room where they were it was just full it was like mr. dress up's tickle trunk on speed and I was just digging I had no idea what I was gonna do and I was digging through and I found this curly black wig

and as soon as I saw it I was like that that's it and I got a blouse and a diaphanous scarf and then people went up in turn to the microphone to explain who they were and I went up to the microphone

and they just shouted it out I didn't say a word it was like Margaret Atwood! So but for the five o'clock shadow apparently I look quite a bit like you.

I'm not sure about that, Michael, but what did you say? I didn't say anything at that point because everybody guessed. Yes, but then what did you say? They tried to... What was your official title in the Hamey's Tale for your cameo? You were stern? Oh, I didn't have an actual title, but I was one about Lydia's sidekicks. Okay, so maybe it was an...

Alias Grace. What was... Oh, disagreeable woman. Disagreable woman. So they tried to give me, I think it was second or third place. Oh. And I put on my best disagreeable woman, Margaret Appwood. Yes. And I refused absolutely.

Well, good for you. Second or third was not good enough. So that was it. That was the whole thing. What are you holding back? That was totally it. That was totally it. There is a picture.

Yeah. Oh, well, I would love to see that picture. Yeah, I'll have to send that to you. Give me the picture and I'll put it up online. I was thinking that I might try to find somebody who knows how to do such things and do a cover of your memoir with my picture of you. No, then you wouldn't be a dead man. But I'll lend you the pink gloves if you really want.

Okay, sorry for wasting your time with this. Yes. I was going to try to direct you guys back to talking books. Yeah, right. I've been wanting to know that for a long time. And now I've got a rather feeble explanation. Yeah. Well, I mean, the importance of Canadian publishing. Oh, yes, that.

That. Yes. Important to whom, I guess you would say, to Canadians. To Canadians. To Canadians. To Canadians. and I guess just at this moment in time, this year where we've had so much turmoil,

not just in the industry, in the publishing industry, but across the arts and culture sector. Or just in politics in general. Yes. Because everything influences everything else. Absolutely. Yes. Well, Canadian publishing is just part of a much larger ecosystem,

and that would involve possibilities for writers. So my generation was told if you want to be a real writer you've got to leave Canada. So creating the ecosystem in which such people can exist

starting, so the writer is the sort of primary resource without writers then no publishing. But then of course you need bookstores where you can sell these things I won't say you need libraries

Don't you just love people to say to you I'm waiting for your book at the library But libraries are very important If not to writers exactly per se They're very important to readers And again, without readers, no writers So these two things are joined at the hip It's chicken and egg

and Canadian publishing ideally, or publishing in Canada serves as the way of making public that's why it's called publishing and making available to readers

stuff that writers have written and what you say to young writers as writing exists in the gift economy which has quite different rules from the money economy but

then the piece of writing has to pass through the valley of the shadow of commerce until it emerges on the other side and becomes a gift again for those who take to it. So I also say, so writing is you put the message in the bottle and you heave it into the ocean. Sometimes it just sinks. Sometimes it floats to shore. Someone comes along, picks up the bottle, opens it, and can't read the message because it's in an unknown language. Someone else comes along, opens the bottle,

reads the message, but doesn't like the message, throws it back into the sea. And a third person comes along who finds the bottle, takes out the message, reads the message, and says, this is a message for me.

So that's when it turns back into the gift economy. And publishing, is part of that process. Yes, it exists in the money economy, but it also exists in the gift economy because their job is to take something that is a gift and transform it into a gift

on the other side of the money economy. And if you think that it's just stark commercial considerations that are behind publishing, you're quite wrong, as we all know. Publishers, in an ideal world, publish at least some books because they love them. It's true that they have to publish other books that will help them meet the bottom line. But those books are supporting the ones that are not necessarily going to make a profit.

So it's all connected. And Jack McClellan paused to offer a little prayer to Jack McClellan. He is to say there's books and there's books. coobs. And coobs look like books, but they're not really books. For instance, this one, he said, kicking a doorstopper in his office. So he would publish, you know,

beautiful flower arrangement and knitting for amateurs and things like that that he thought he could sell. Those have been impacted by the internet because you know yourself that you look up your knitting patterns largely on online. So those kinds of books have kind of

disappeared, but others have taken their place. Books about lobster, no. I like lobsters. Yes. Publishing is such a crazy industry and it reminds me in some ways of farming and

fishing because it does seem like there's a perpetual crisis. Oh, for sure. And I always try to remind people when they talk about things, how bad things are in publishing, of stories that I've heard from Mordecai Richler about the fact that when he started writing, there were two bookstores in Canada. Like two that sold only books. That was the reason they existed.

Yeah, the rest were colds. And when I was reading your memoir, I was struck again by that sans-s, of the absence around you as you were starting out. Can you talk a little bit about that? Oh, endlessly, dear. That's why you're here. Yeah, so let's take the year 1960 as a starting point. The University of Toronto quarterly every year in the summer

published a round-up review of every Canadian book that had been published that year for the whole year. So as I recall, sixth year was it 61, there were five. Five books written by Canadians and published by Canadian publishers. That's in English, Canada, but the situation was similar in Quebec. So our generation would be told,

go to New York, go to London, and they would be told, go to Paris, if you want to actually be an artist or writer or anything like that. So that was in 60. All of the institutions that you see around you today came in either in the 50s or in the 60s and sometimes in the 70s.

So that was nature of pores a vacuum because there was so much of nothing. People invented it. They invented what was going to go into that nothing. So you were wondering why there wasn't this sort of swashbuckling feeling in Canadian publishing that there was then. A lot of those guys involved were vets. They'd been in World War II, and Jack had been the captain of a Corvette. And that's how he ran the publishing company.

There's a torpedo. You got to dodge it. Full speed ahead. like that. And he and Hugh Cain, who's Sean Cain's father, who might know him. They were both in McClellan and Stewart,

and they used to both, because he was a vet too, they were both like that. And they ended each of their conversations with G-F-Y, which young Sean didn't know what that meant for years. But it was completely from being, from being vets. And Pierre Burton and Farley Moet.

They're all of that generation, which was to hell with you. You know, I'm going to do what I'm doing. And if you don't like it, middle finger to you. Right. Yeah, so they were like that. And I think people have become more polite.

You know, they've become more risk-averse to a certain extent. And also, in those days, there wasn't very much to lose. So then you took risks and you invented things and you fooled around with ideas because... Right. So in a lot of cases,

people created their own publishing companies. Yeah, they created publishing companies. They created magazines and ultimately, not ultimately, but next we created the Writers' Union because nobody knew what a contract was. They didn't know what was supposed to be in it. that they didn't have anybody to ask.

The poets never expected to make any money anyway, but there were some novelists scattered across Canada who'd never met each other and really didn't know how to go about this thing. There weren't any agents as such in Canada at that time. So there's nobody who could go to and say, is this what I'm supposed to, what does this mean? I'm old enough to remember

when agents in Canada became a thing. Yeah. Because they weren't around when I first started. None at all. Yeah. And I had Stephen Heighton from Kingston. Oh, yeah. He was a friend of mine.

Yes. And he kept telling me, he kept trying to give me the number of his agent. He said, you know, you should really call her up. And at the time, I was writing poetry and an occasional short story. And I said, Steve, 15% of nothing is nothing. Like, no agent is going to look at me. but that was that was what

early 90s I think mid 90s that was just that was just when it became a thing to look for an agent before you look for a publisher in Canada so those of us have been older generation eventually got

agents but they weren't in Canada no that's right and you had to explain Canada to them you know and say well here's what you need to know about Canada huh Where's that? You guys are just, I mean, you both started with poetry.

You're both poets. Can we talk a little bit about poetry and being novelists and the two art forms and how those two speak to each other and where sort of how that's. Well, let's go back to the 60s and economies of scale. So in the 60s, it was hard to publish a novel in Canada unless you had a British or an American country. publisher because there weren't enough readers initially. And if they did become aware of your

Canadian novel, they would say either, well, of course, it's just really second-rate American or British, or they would say, why aren't you in New York? You know, if you're any good, why aren't you in New York like that? So it was hard to publish novels in the 60s, but it was easier to publish poetry because it was shorter and cheaper. So this is in the early stages of being a poet. You could do it in your cellar, which a lot of people did, including me, except I did it in John Robert Colombo's cellar. He had a flatbed press on which I could hand set.

But some people used mimio machines, get stateners, cold type had just been invented then. and they published their own books. It was also the beginning of the reading in public movement, which hadn't been there in 1950 and was there in 1960. So City Lights books door in San Francisco, reading out loud, the venue here was called the Bohemian Embassy, and all of that eventually turned into the Harbor Front International Writers Festival,

now the Toronto International Writers Festival, which was the first freestanding authors festival in the world. Ooh. So poetry was what we did in the 60s because it was what we could publish. And that's always something to be considered. Having grown up in the Marshall McLuhan age, we're always thinking of what is the means of publication.

You know, what is the technology involved? and can it interface with readers or recipients or whatever it might be. So, yeah, poetry. There is a moment in your memoir, though, where you talk about, I think you were walking across a field. Yeah, but I was 16. What did I know then? Okay, but so for those of you haven't read the memoir, you say something came to you as you were walking across that field. And when you started walking across the field, you weren't a writer. and when you finished walking across the film you were a writer.

That's the process of writing, but not the process of publication. But was it poetry that you had in your head? And was that... It was, but I had been writing other things for school, of course. But in those days, we didn't write fiction or even poetry. We wrote essays, and that is all we wrote for school. So were you always... Was it always in your head?

to write fiction? No, not at all. Once you started publishing? No. Oh, you mean from the age of 16? Well, or from the Circle Game. Oh, that was much later? Yeah. Yeah, I'd already been writing fiction and publishing short stories, and I had written, by the time the Circle Game came out,

I had written a happily never published novel. Thank you, God. Yeah, but... There were big names in poetry in the 60s for that reason, because there weren't any big names in novels. Or there were a couple, Mordecai and Margaret Lawrence, I would say, both of whom had published outside the country to begin with. Right.

So like that. So Jack, again, full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, put out a collection of Irving Lighten and then sent Irving around to sort of yell at people to give poetry readings. and Al Purdy followed shortly after. But I would say it was Irving and Leonard Cohen who took that sort of Beatnik

reading a loud scene and took it public. It's interesting when I was reading your memoir. I mean, I grew up in a world that was completely different in terms of what was available publishing-wise, but I grew up in Newfoundland. That'll do it. Yeah, in some ways I felt like My experience was somewhat similar.

Very similar, yeah. Because there was no publishing world in Newfoundland. And so I was finding all of these fantastic Canadian writers. I remember discovering Timothy Finley and Al Purdy and Margaret Lawrence and yourself and on and on and on. But to me, that felt like finding writers from the States or Europe. That's how, that gap felt just as wide to me. And I remember there was a little magazine in St. John's called Ticolace. I remember that?

Yeah. And my grand ambition when I started writing it was all poetry. Poetry was what I started with and was all I wanted to write at first. And why was poetry, so what drew you to poetry? Well, that's what claimed me at the time. I didn't, there was no sense that I had fiction in me, that I could sit down and write stories in that way, but I wanted to write poems that made people feel the way the poems I was reading made me feel. And my grand ambition was to have something published in Ticolace,

because that's all that seemed possible. Sure. That was all that was available to me, really. So that's what I wanted, too. I wanted to be published in something called the Canadian Forum, now extinct, but was known to be hospitable to new writers. So that was the bar. It got higher later on. Yeah. Well, I think the importance of the Canadian publishing industry to get back to it to like the ecosystem of the publishing world that allows books to move from that gift world that you and I live in most of the time through the capitalist system. That ecosystem.

and they all sizes of it, like from the large multinationals, right on down to running the goat press that operates out of a tiny little shop in Torskove, Newfoundland. The best publish... Children's publishing in this country is fabulous. And if you want to look at some of the best, most innovative publishers, it's in children's publishing.

And one of these is Running the Goat in Tors Cove. And, God, they're amazing. Yeah. And having all of those things out there and for younger people coming up to see those as things, oh, actually, that's a possibility for me, changes the writing landscape. Like in Newfoundland now, I cannot keep up with the writers coming out of Newfoundland, let alone in Canada. You know, it's, I mean, I don't know how the Globe 100, you describe the process a little bit,

but it's kind of like that. there's so much of it and so much of it is so good um that it just feels like a real i feel really lucky to have been born after you and your cohorts did so much work to create to create that world for me to grow up in you know well we weren't doing it specifically for you i'm happy to take the scraps that fall off the table that's fine but it is kind of it does open up so many avenues for people just in terms of making them making people feel like I mean I grew up in a tiny mining town in central Newfoundland born in 65 like there were no Newfoundland writers Cassie Brown

and death on the eyes and Harold Horwood and Harold Horwood but nobody knew who he was I had never heard of him until I became a writer so the thought that a kid from Buckens could actually be a writer seemed like I wrote in secret for years because it seemed like such a ridiculous ambition to have. Because there was nothing around me to say that that was a real possibility. Yes, there's nothing around me either, but apparently I blurted it right out. I did not write in secret like you, possibly because nobody would have accused me of being a sissy. Yes, I lived in an all-mail res at Memorial University.

I had to keep the poetry writing on the down low in those days. was a somewhat suspect. I did that in graduate school, but only because it wasn't respectable. Right. Yeah. So, yes, yes, what tortured childhoods we had. How do you go from sort of that writing and scribbling and then deciding, you know what, this draft is good? This draft is something I want to put out there in the world.

Where does that? There's a lot of steps in between. Tell me about them. Well, the draft has to turn into a man. manuscript. And then if you're like me, you've got some trusted people

who aren't in publishing and you let them read it because if they are in publishing, they'll probably let you write the phone book at my age. Margaret, this is terrific. So with

my readers, I like to know only one thing. Did it hold your attention? Okay, then once you've done that, then you might give it to your agent, right? And she will either say, well, same problem with the phone book. Margaret, this is terrific. But then it gets into the hands of the editors at the publishing company, and they're more stringent. Yes, they're much more stringent, especially if you're writing a memoir, and there's three of them, one in the U.S., one in Canada, and one in the U.K., all of whom didn't know or did know different things. So you go through all of that, and then it's something that you might, well, then you

do the copy editor, the last gate out of hell is the copy editor. I'm wondering about earlier on when you were starting out when did that struggle of like deciding this is good, this is not good, and the flip-flop where you in the morning it's brilliant in the afternoon, it's terrible. Was that part of your process? No. Not so much.

But partly. However, all of these moments have been sort of. sort of excruciating self-doubt, doubt that you have been describing. I didn't have a lot of those. I had some, but not to the extent of thinking, well, I'm never going to be a writer. I was the teenager who thought I was going to write true romance magazine short fiction in order to support myself. I got some of it. I read it. You know, the kind of thing I'm talking about. The cover has a girl on the front with a tear coming out of her. and in the background

there's another young girl with a young man and you know the story she stole my boyfriend yes and that's one of the stories you got to pay the rent yeah well that's one of the stories in true romance magazines the other one is

Wuthering Heights of Redux in which you've got two boyfriends one has a motorcycle and the other works in the shoe shop, which is the right choice. The age-old question.

Some of them were like that. Right. There was a moment in the memoir that really struck me and surprised me. We have spent some time together over the last 10 or 15 years. We have. Make of that what you will.

Start a room. It's okay, Holly. Nothing happened. Says her. But when you had gone through a number of rejections before you had published and I think it was for the circle game.

You got the notice. Yeah, I got rejected first go around. But then when you got the contract for it, you lay on the floor in your apartment and were in the depths of despair for about 24 hours. Yeah.

Can you talk about that? Depression, I think, rather than despair. Okay. Can you talk about what that was and where it came from? I've got no idea what it was, but I think it was, okay, now I've committed, you know. Now I'm going to actually have to do it.

Right, but, and that was it? well then after a while you get up off the floor and go about your business right you get hungry you have to pay the rent more craft dinner right i thought the one of the lines was it was is my little book going to change the world no it's not was that part of it um partly but but it's really hard to explain i think it's like be careful what you wish for and then you get it and you open up the box and you thought it was going to be this wonderful twinkly

animated flying fairy and it turns out to be an old shoe. Right. Right. It's certainly, that feels like something that I've experienced and most other writers experience at some point that there's a sense that

there's something so magical about the books that you fell in love with and that made you want to be a writer. And you expect, if you ever put books out into the world, that your experience of that will be somehow similar or will carry some of the same magic. Okay, here's the secret. You've already read it.

Your own book. You're the only person who has. Right. So it can no longer do for you what you hope it will do for a reader. Because not only have you already read it once, you've already read it about eight times because you've had to do all the draft. Yeah, and for me, I think there's also the sense that you're never going to see what your book does out in the world.

You'll never see what your book does out in the world, and that's part of the upside. Right. It's actually part of the upside. As I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate that side of it more. It's a blind toss. It goes out into the world, and writers used to put at the ends of their book

something called an envoy in which they sent the book out into the world and they said goodbye little book may you make new friends and etc and so forth and these envoys can be quite long in complex sometimes if you go back a couple of centuries and follow them along but that's what it is

it's go little book out into the world here's your lunch. Right. Here's your train ticket. Bye-bye. Right. Because wherever the book is going, you are no longer in control of it.

Right. You cannot control what any given reader is going to think about it. You have no idea of where it may travel in the world, what countries it may turn up in, what other people are going to get out of it. Strange moments in which somebody says,

your book changed my life. And you think, What was it like before? That's right. In what way did he? Right. Yeah, I mean, with your book, you know, the adversary, it changed my life. It made me into a serial killer.

I have a... Yes, it is concerning. I have on a couple of occasions had someone say to me, your book was the best book I've ever read. And my first thought is, how many books have you read? Like, was it just that one? It must have been just that one. But that I think was the hardest adjustment for me as a writer to make

was that letting go and making peace with that sense that the book has its own life out there if you're lucky. But it's not part of your life. Well, it will be part of your life in that people come back to you with reactions to it, but it's no longer part of your life in the same way that it was. yes absolutely yeah so it's like that

and that's just what it's like can we ask for some predictions we have questions I'm just like listening to the two of you and I'm like oh this is great but yes I do have questions from the audience so let me go here

this this is from um Jessica this is about the ballet, the Matt Adam Ballet. Why a ballet and how did that come about? Well, Sir Wayne, Sir Wayne of Covent Garden, proposed it before COVID actually. And he was going to be in Toronto and he said, can we meet? So I said, sure. I mean, it sounds wacko to me, but

I've seen it and the book is so yeah I didn't really understand how it was going to be a ballet so go ahead yeah so I said how are you going to do it he said I don't know yet but it won't be

it won't be you know completely like the book well it couldn't be anyway could it it won't be linear he said and I said what are you going to do about the big blue penises.

And he said, we'll think of something. And that's all I knew about it before they actually did it. So he's very private. He won't let anybody in to watch rehearsals. He says it distracts the dancers. So the opening night was the first time I'd ever seen any of it. Oh, wow. So a big surprise for me as well as everybody else.

and you do think when you give people the permission to make other things out of your work you think either this will be terrific in which case it's worthwhile or else it will be a complete flop and we'll never hear of it again so what's the downside you might as well let Wayne McGregor play in your sandbox because he is brilliant well thank you And they're bringing that back again, by the way, in June and also to Covent Garden. Great.

Michael, this is for you from Roma. Newfoundland is such a huge part of your stories. It's such an interesting island with so many interesting sort of, it's an idiosyncrasies. Did you intend the island to be such a character in your book? Is it an organic thing that happens? I think it's pretty organic. I definitely, I mean, I used to be asked on a fairly regular basis if I would consider writing a novel, if I'd ever consider writing a novel not set in Newfoundland.

And I don't know if Toronto writers get that question at all, but I had to think about it because I was being asked. And so my answer was, I probably could, but why would I? Like, I've always said that Newfoundland is the best gift a writer could be given, because it is such an absolutely intrinsically interesting, unique place. And it's, there are enough stories there for a hundred lifetimes of a writer. And also, Newfoundland is the place that made me. So it's also the place that I'm trying to understand as a way of trying to explain myself. to myself to a certain extent.

Yeah, so it's impossible for me to write those books without thinking of the place itself as a huge influence on the people in the story. You know, like it's the geography of the place, the work that was required to make a go of it in that place, all of those things had such a huge impact on who those people were and how they saw the world and how they interact with each other,

that it is kind of the central character of almost everything I've written, I think, the place itself. Okay. This is from Simon. In speaking about the adversary and its central characters who do not travel a conventional redemption arc, you've reflected on the fact that contemporary politics is also full of characters,

such as Donald Trump and Netanyahu, who have caused you to lose, as you've said, the ability to believe that redemption can come over anybody. I'd like to hear from both Michael and Margaret what effect that realization has on your writing, which is supposed to be an optimistic act. Is it? I was going to say, is writing supposed to be an optimistic act?

I think the act of writing is optimistic in that you are believing that this thing you're marks you're making on this piece of paper can jump time and space and communicate with other people and that communicating with other people is a desirable thing to do so there must be something

in other people that is at least worthy of your respect shall we say and you're also believing that whatever you're writing you might possibly finish and that if you finish it it might possibly get published

and that if it gets published it might possibly do well enough to make the publisher want to publish your next book, which is how those things go. Yeah, so apart from content,

it's an inherently optimistic act, but that doesn't mean that the stuff inside it, you know, the people, the actions, the outcomes, doesn't mean that they are necessarily positive because if they were, we wouldn't have Macbeth.

What about you, Michael? Yeah, I think certainly, I think I've come to think of the notion of the traditional notion, which I believed inherently of the character arc of a novel is like when a person goes through certain things, learn certain lessons, is a different person at the end and generally a better person. What have you been reading?

Dr. Seuss, mostly. But this sense that there has to be a lesson in the book. It's very Victorian. Yes, yeah, I think so. And not true to life to a certain extent. And so I've become less interested in forcing that on a story and allowing a story to be as dark as it needs to. be, you know, as dark as the times that we're living in to a certain extent.

And I also feel like, just to echo that comment, that if I had no optimism whatsoever, I wouldn't be sitting here and I wouldn't have written that book. But I think it's not helpful to pretend that the times were living in or that the people were surrounded by aren't as dark as they seem to be. as well. Could you say that bit again? It's not helpful to pretend that people are better than they are

or that they're worse than they are. Not helpful to pretend that they're better. Oh, that's what I thought you meant. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Yeah. And just to, if I could nuance that a little bit, I think that one of the things I've always done in my books is tried to find something human

and even the worst characters and to see why they are the way they are or something like that. And I think I'm less convinced that every person has that in them, that there is something necessarily good at the heart of all of us or something redemptive possible. And I think that's just what the times are doing to me, personally, you know, and I think the adversary is a reflection of that to a certain extent.

Because it doesn't, well, no, we're not going to talk about the ending. Yeah. So would you say it more closely resembles Macbeth or Richard the Third? Wow. Or possibly the Duchess of Malfi. Possibly the Duchess of Malfi. Yeah, possibly that one, yes. And this is where I admit I haven't read Richard the Third.

It's made for you. I will go to it as soon as I leave this room. Yes, yes, you'll love Richard the third. He comes on at the beginning and tells you how bad he is, and then we just watch him being bad with him. Or get the production from Stratford. It was so good, but yes, you should do that right after this. Well, first you have to sign some books,

then later on. Actually, we're almost, we are actually out of time. It's like counting down. So I'm just, I'm going to ask one final question. Both of you travel quite a bit. Is there a country that Canada should be emulating, should be looking at with policies or Canadian publishing, that really works?

Is there a country that you've seen, wow, this country really works? Canada, what you should be looking at? this country. Is there... Go ahead. Okay. Well, we happen to be in a moment in history in which Canada is looking

pretty good. Comparatively speaking. So there are features of the publishing and book worlds in other countries that we could emulate. But as a place to live, to actually

live in it, yeah it's pretty great that's somewhat different yeah so they have a terrific on-air live book radio show in Germany if that's of any help I'll keep that in mind

they have a lot of book publications and and media broadcasts devoted to books in France really a surprising number and a lot of them have been there for really quite a long time so they're the Devoire, Liberation, things like that are still going

and they have big, big audiences so we can look at that. You know, there's various things we could do that other countries are doing, but what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I don't think I can answer that question, question better than you.

I did... You were just in Ireland. I was just in Ireland, yeah, and there's bookstores everywhere. I also have spent some time in Poland. Yes. And the literary culture there was phenomenal. And I think part of it is paying attention to the ecosystem. So my publisher in Poland for a long time was a young guy

who he was a road engineer and decided he hated that and he'd done some translating courses somehow got a copy of my book galore went to every publisher in Poland and said I think you should pay me to translate this and they were like that's not how this works

so he borrowed some money from his father but also got some government grants and started his own publishing company and the fact that that's possible I think speaks to the strength of the And it's still running. They've published like six or seven of my books over the years. In Poland.

In Poland. So different than Newfoundland, or maybe it's not. Yeah, I mean, that's a question for another time, but it's a weird thing. It's very strange. But I do think that paying attention to the ecosystem here as well, and making it possible for those crazy people to start those things and keep them running is absolutely essential. So there is another thing to add about France.

They have a law that says you can't undercut the price of a book. So wherever they are sold, they are sold for the same price. And that has allowed a lot more bookstores to remain in business. And, of course, that supports publishers. It is antithetical to the, quote, spirit of capitalist competition. But that's what they do, and they have a very flourishing book culture. Well, that brings us to the end of this. Thank you very much to Margaret and to Michael.