We’ve made it to another Season Finale! Thank you for coming with me on this podcasting journey this year, and helping me reach the milestones of 24 episodes, 3.8K downloads (and counting), one whole sponsored episode, and so many great conversations both on and off the pod. A year ago, this project was just a distant dream that I was almost too terrified to realize, but I made the leap, here we are, and if you’ve enjoyed it all even half as much as I have, we’re all pretty lucky.
I’m looking forward to launching BOOKSPO Season 3 in the spring, but in the meantime I’m trying to figure out ways to be compensated for my work on the project, and if you’ve been a fan of the pod this year, there are some ways you can help. First, if you’re not a paid subscriber to my Substack, please consider upgrading. My paid subscriptions are literally as cheap as Substack will permit, but the income means a lot to me and will enable me to sustain this project. You’ll also get access to my essays every month! (Paid subscribers will also get access to A VERY SPECIAL BOOKSPO BONUS episode dropping one week from today!). Second, do you know anyone who might want to reach an awesome audience of sharp-minded, literary-inclined Canadians (simply the BEST demographic) as a podcast sponsor? I’m thinking literary festivals, indie booksellers, small presses, subscription boxes, bookishly-minded entrepreneurs (are you a bibliotherapist?), writing programs, or any kind of literary booster? If this is you or someone you know, get in touch and we can hatch some plans.
And now for our show….
It’s such a pleasure to conclude the second season of BOOKSPO with Andrew Forbes, whose latest release is also his sixth book AND his debut novel, THE DIAPAUSE. Our conversation comes complete with a defintion of the word “diapause” (although biologists among us might know it already), as well as a glimpse behind the curtain to reveal what elements of Per Petterson’s OUT STEALING HORSES were on Andrew’s mind as he began writing the book in August 2020, imagining possibilities for the future amidst the terrifying unknown of the Covid-19 Pandemic. The initial draft of the book was actually a novella, but Andrew’s editor encouraged him to expand the story, to show his readers what happens next. Bonus content: a shout out to the very good people at Peterborough’s Take Cover Books.
Andrew tells me about the creative connections between his book and Petterson’s, some deliberate, others less so, which is all part of the process of creation. Both books, he explains, end up being about the ways in which we struggle to understand that people we’re supposed to be closest to, our parents in particular. And that childhood sense of mystery (and wonder!) is integral to his protagonist Gabriel’s sense of himself and the world during that strange and oddly idyllic sumer of 2020, although life for him would never be quite so simple again. Andrew also talks about the challenges of writing into “the moving target” that is the future, which made it difficult for him to know when to stop and understand just when his work was done.
When ten-year-old Gabriel and his parents retire to his late grandfather’s disused cabin to wait out a pandemic, the big, dangerous world seems very far away, and Gabriel enjoys the freest summer of his young life. But tensions begin to surface, testing the family unit, and resulting in consequences that he will spend his life attempting to unravel.
Spanning nearly a half-century, The Diapause is a literary-speculative-fiction novel about the near future, family, isolation, heartbreak, climate change, how we keep each other safe, and all the things we don’t know about the people we know best. Part White Fang, part Station Eleven, The Diapause is a novel about how the things we seek are often the things we didn’t know we’d lost.
ANDREW FORBES is the author of the story collections Lands and Forests (Invisible Publishing, 2019) and What You Need (2015), which was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and named a finalist for the Trillium Book Prize. He is also the author of The Utility of Boredom: Baseball Essays (2016) and The Only Way Is the Steady Way: Essays on Baseball, Ichiro, and How We Watch the Game (2021). Forbes lives in Peterborough, Ontario.
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