Hi folks! Today’s show features poet, author, Gordon Hill Press editor, physician etc. etc. Shane Neilson. He’s here to talk about both the poetry collab The Suspect We (with Roxanna Bennett) and his new memoir, Saving. Check it out.
Shane Neilson
E153 with LEO DRAGTOE, SHANE NEILSON (ABLE HAMILTON) and LAURA KOOJI
Hey folks!
More poetry this week! First, we talk to AbleHamilton Poetry Festival participant, poet, and musician Leo Dragtoe (with a cameo appearance by festival organizer Shane Neilson). After that we speak with poet Laura Kooji about her collection No Rainbow. Both amazing people and amazing talents (who managed to get into the studio in person, which means they both got to read on the show, too!) Hope you dig our conversations.
E151 with SHANE NEILSON and GREGORY BETTS
Hey all!
Two big changes this week. First, Get Lit will now be available in real podcast form. So, if listening here isn’t working for you and you prefer to dig it via other platforms, you can check it out on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. So they’ve told me. It might take a day or two…their timeslines are kinda funky. Found it on Stitcher though 😀 For now I’m putting recent shows but I’ll be upping all my past shows too.
Second, I’m not hosting this week! Guest host Shane Neilson (physician, editor, poet, writer, sage) interviews Gregory Betts, co-editor of Avant Canada: Poets, Prophets, Revolutionaries. Tune in and enjoy!
E108 with DAVID SMALL
CONGRATS to the winners of the Hamilton Literary Awards! Our winners are
Poetry: Shane Neilson, Dysphoria
Non-Fiction: Daniel Coleman, Yardwork
Fiction: Pasha Malla, Fugue States
Kerry Schooley Award: Daniel Coleman, Yardwork
Check out our interviews with these fine folk in the links. Congrats to all the nominees as well! We had a full house and it was a fun, inspiring time for all of us.
Today’s feature interview is with David Small, award-winning children’s author and graphic novelist. His first graphic novel, Stitches, was a huge success and his newest should be as well. Home After Dark is wonderful, I encourage you to pick it up. Enjoy our interview!
E103 with PHILLIP CRYMBLE and ROBERT MOORE
Hey all!
Just a short while back, Hamilton hosted the first-ever AbleHamilton Poetry Festival. I’ve been ill so I didn’t get to attend, but luckily a few of their out-of-town guests – namely poets Robert Moore and Phillip Crymble – managed to make it out to the studios to talk about it. They did some readings as well. Hope you enjoy!
GET LIT 45 with CHRIS PANNELL (LitLive) and SHANE NEILSON
A few weeks ago I took to the Hivemind (read: Facebook) to ask peoples’ advice on how I should proceed on writing the new novel (which I now have under the working title “River, Diverted” but I dunno…”Diverted” is a weird word and the comma is possibly pretentious)(River is my main character, BTW). Everyone and their dogs agreed, write all of the words and sort it out later. I grudgingly agree – “grudgingly” because it means a rough draft could be years in the making.
Structure is a difficult thing. Unless you’re starting at A and going to B, with little backstory, it’s easy to get bogged down. My story takes place in the present but the past is a huge element of the plot, to the point where it is almost a separate timeline – but this was a surefire way to end up with a 1,000 page (read: unpublishable) novel.
Enter this here radio show/podcast. I read about a book a week in order to stay on top of interviews, and recently I read This Side of Sad (Goose Lane) by Karen Smythe. It’s a book with no present tense to speak of, and no traditional plot to speak of…and it works incredibly well. The narrator remembers her past in short sections, paragraphs a half-page long or less, presented in an order that seems random but, of course, was probably painstakingly assembled (I’ll find out when I interview her). Her structure may have cracked this story open for me, giving me a way to illuminate important moments without dedicating entire chapters to them.
The takeaway is, writers – keep reading!
Two guests today. First up, Chris Pannell, a Hamilton writer who is part of the LitLive committee. We discuss LitLive, a long-standing reading series in Hamilton (and I’ll be making my LitLive debut this coming Sunday, Oct 1, so if you’re around, come on by! 7:30 pm at the Staircase Theatre.
We also speak with poet Shane Neilson about writing, his career, and his remarkable collection Dysphoria. Hope you enjoy the conversations.