The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale
THE BIBLIO FILE is a podcast about "the book," and an inquiry into the wider world of book culture. Hosted by Nigel Beale it features wide ranging, long-form conversations with authors, poets, book publishers, booksellers, book editors, book collectors, book makers, book scholars, book critics, book designers, book publicists, literary agents and many others inside the book trade and out - from writer to reader.
- Update frequency
- every 7 days
- Average duration
- 45 minutes
- Episodes
- 598
- Years Active
- 2006 - 2025
Jack Rabinovitch on The Giller Prize and how to Pick the Best Novels
Jack Rabinovitch is a philanthropist best known for founding the annual Scotia Bank Giller Prize (named after his late wife, Doris Giller, a former literary columnist and editor at the Toronto Star) …
Leslie Morris on Collecting the New Directions imprint
Leslie Morris is Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts at Houghton Library, Harvard University in Cambridge MA and an expert on the New Directions publishing house. I met with her to talk about pub…
David R. Godine on the history and collecting, of his publishing house
Publisher and book collector David R. Godine is the founder and president of a small, independent, eponymous publishing house, located in Boston, Massachusetts. It produces between twenty and thirty …
Tim Inkster on the Porcupine's Quill
Elke and Tim Inkster have made an important and enduring contribution to Canadian literature. In 1974 they founded The Porcupine’s Quill (PQL), a publishing house based in Erin, Ontario. Renowned for…
Mark Samuels Lasner on Collecting The Bodley Head
Collector, bibliographer, and typographer Mark Samuels Lasner is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Delaware Library and a recognized authority on the literature and art of the late Victoria…
Prof. David Staines on Northrop Frye and Evaluative Criticism
Prof. David Staines is a Canadian literary critic, university professor (English at the University of Ottawa), writer, and editor. He specializes in three literatures: medieval, Victorian and Canadi…
Bob Fleck on Oak Knoll Books and Press
Richard Holloway on the Monster and the Saint
Richard Holloway is a Scottish writer/broadcaster and former Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church who was educated at Kelham Theological College and the Union Theological Seminary, Ne…
Adam Thorpe on his novel Hodd, and the Real Robin Hood
Poet, playwright and novelist Adam Thorpe was born in Paris in 1956 and grew up in India, Cameroon and England. After graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1979, he started a theatre company a…
Carmine Starnino on his poetry collection This Way Out
"Good reviewing," writes Carmine Starnino in the not-to-be-missed introduction to his A Lover’s Quarrel Essays and Reviews, "... reviewing that believes in literary failure – is invaluable because by…
Allen and Pat Ahearn on Book Collecting
"The Quill & Brush was established in 1976 as an outgrowth of a part-time business run by Allen and Patricia Ahearn who started collecting and cataloging books in the early 1960s. The Ahearns have ov…
Nicholson Baker on the Future of the Book
Nicholson Baker is an American writer of fiction and non-fiction. As a novelist he often focuses on describing the minute physical detail of our surroundings, straws and escalators for example, writi…
A.L. Kennedy on how to be Funny
Writer/comedian A. L. Kennedy lives and works in Glasgow and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2003 she was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists…
Marie Korey on the History of the Book #5
A small college cannot hope to have a large library, but if it sets to work along the right lines it may aspire to the possession of a fine one… A book may be a thing of beauty, and an example of a g…
Robert Fulford on Book Reviewing
"Robert Fulford is a Toronto author, journalist, broadcaster, and editor. He writes a weekly column for The National Post and is a frequent contributor to Toronto Life, Canadian Art, and CBC radio an…
Prof Kevin Gilmartin on Critic William Hazlitt
Kevin Gilmartin is a professor of English at California Institute of Technology, and visiting professor at the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at York University in England. He is the author o…
Richard Coxford on Fine Press Books: History and Collecting
Richard Coxford is the former proprietor of Bytown Bookshop in Ottawa, Canada. He has been collecting fine/press books for many years. We talk here about their history, and the joys and challenges of…
Richard Landon: On Collecting Rare Books
Richard Landon is Director of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and Professor of English. He has taught courses on aspects of the history of the book and bibliography for many years in the Universi…
Copyright Expert Bill Patry on Orphans and Pirates
In 1841 Thomas Babington Macaulay observed that “it is good that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the…