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Winter's Wonderland
Michael Winter interviewed by Catherine Bush (Audio)

Michael Winter's The Architects Are Here, infamously "serialized" on facebook.com, and now available at a reputable bookstore near you, is garnering much critical acclaim -- not to mention a spot on the 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. Architects follows Gabriel English, a character (and authorial alter ego) Winter fans will recognize from previous work, on a winding, impossible, slightly-futuristic road-trip from Toronto back to Corner Brook, Newfoundland.

Michael's long-time literary fascination with the fine line between truth and lie, where fiction plays with memoir, was something that interested us here at Bookninja, so we sent novelist-provocateur Catherine Bush to interview him in Toronto. The two get at the nitty-gritty of truth and lies, how language use influences the way a text is read, the writer's development and the mutability of dialogue.

[Spoiler Alert: plot details revealed at around 26 minutes...You can skip about two minutes of interview to be sure you miss it, if you feel strongly about it.]

Michael Winter Interview
(33:43) (7.9mb)
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Michael Winter has written three novels and two collections of short stories. His most recent book, The Architects Are Here, was longlisted for this year's Giller Prize. His previous novel, The Big Why, was chosen by the Globe and Mail as one of the Top 100 books for 2004, and it was an editor's pick for amazon.ca's 25 literary books of the year worldwide. It was also shortlisted for the Trillium Award and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Winter's first novel, This All Happened, won the inaugural Winterset Award and was nominated for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His fiction has won the CBC Literary Prize and appeared in the Walrus, enRoute, and other magazines. His stories have been anthologized in this year's Penguin Canadian Short Stories, in Best Canadian Stories, and been broadcast nationally on CBC Radio. Michael Winter grew up in Newfoundland and now lives in Toronto where he is an adjunct professor with the University of Toronto's creative writing program. He has been on faculty with the Banff May Studios, has taught with the University of New Orleans summer program in Spain, is an instructor at the Guelph Humber College, and been a juror for the Giller Prize.

Catherine Bush is the author of three internationally published novels, Minus Time, The Rules of Engagement, and Claire’s Head, has been short-listed for some things and not for others. She lives in Toronto.
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