In January 2013, the Globe and Mail restructured their books section. Longtime literary journalists Martin Levin and Jack Kirchoff took assignments elsewhere in the paper, and Jared Bland was hired away from his job as poetry editor at House of Anansi Press. Longtime Globe journalist, Lisan Jutras was named deputy editor of Globe Books. Since then, the section has been remade, with much more multi-media, and a greater focus on longer form pieces than one might normally see in a daily paper.

John Degen visited Jared Bland at an apartment in the Kensington market section of Toronto on a warm sunny day in the middle of May. They were joined by Hal Niedzviecki, editor of Write magazine, and you will hear Hal’s voice as well every now and again during the interview. The current issue of Write magazine contains a short transcription of some of this conversation.

As editor and publisher, working for Doubleday, Macmillan, publishing his own imprint, Douglas Gibson Books, and finally taking the top job at McClelland & Stewart. Gibson has worked directly with three Prime Ministers on their memoirs, convinced Alice Munro that short fiction might just be her thing, and braved the ire of the formidable Mavis Gallant.

Gibson's 2011 memoir, Stories About Storytellers (ECW Press), collects his reminiscences about the many fascinating, intimidating and brilliant writers who passed through his office. Over the course of his career, Gibson traveled across his adopted country, seeing more of Canada than most of us who were born here ever will.

These days, Gibson spends much of his time traveling the country again - this time to present a stage show based on the stories in this book. The book is well enough known, having received excellent reviews in the Canadian media, and some of the stories in it have already become legends. My hope for this interview was to get behind the stories a bit, and find out more about Doug Gibson himself.

Doug Gibson joined me in the board room of The Writers' Union of Canada and the Writers' Trust of Canada, two organizations that have been around in the world of Canadian books not quite as long as Gibson himself. We spent a delightful couple of hours chatting, and I've carved that recording down to a solid hour. I hope you enjoy the podcast. I certainly enjoyed producing it.

Regular listeners of The Book Room know that when I load a reading from the previous interview, the next interview is not far away. Stay tuned for Book Room #16, an interview with legendary Canadian publisher and editor, Douglas Gibson.

Every Wolf's Howl is a moving, somewhat painful memoir of Barry's relationship with a wolf-dog named Lupus, a wild animal who, through some mysterious and inexplicable tolerance for human company, lived with Barry during a period of great financial and emotional trouble. As circumstances conspired to take much of tangible value away from Barry, his wild companion taught him how to let go without regret.

I drove through a late fall snowstorm to speak with Barry in his beautiful home in North Bay. The trip took me past Canada's vast Algonquin Park, home to a large population of wolves.

You know what it means when The Book Room loads a reading. That's right... a new interview is one the way. Stay tuned for the yuletide edition of The Book Room with North Bay, Ontario author Barry Grills

Amy Jones is the author of the 2009 Metcalf-Rooke Award-winning collection short fiction, What Boys Like, and other stories (Biblioasis). She lives and works in Thunder Bay, and I caught up with her there in October when I was in town doing some outreach for the Ontario Arts Council.

We talk about drinking in graveyards, urban bears, and dreams of escape. Enjoy.

The Book Room is back, with Canadian poet, novelist, short story writer, blogger, list-maker, writing instructor, editor, aaaand readings hoster, Stuart Ross. As we discuss a little bit in the interview, I really don't know how long it's been that Stu has been in my consciousness. It seems to me like he's sort of just always been there, from the very first day I decided to take books seriously.

Stuart edits his own imprint, a stuart ross book, at Toronto's Mansfield Press, and his many, many books are like a tour of Canada's better literary presses. A regular at Toronto literary events, Stuart has recently taken his talents to Cobourg, Ontario where he occasionally feels a bit isolated but enjoys the fresh air and apples.

We talk about his beginnings as a writer and street-pusher of literature, his near-obsessive love for Kim Novak, his abiding nostalgia, and his first (solo) novel.

Conan was mentioned in the very first episode of this podcast - perhaps not in the most complimentary way - and he requested an opportunity to sit in the Book Room himself and respond to what he considered spurious allegations about his editing practices. This interview was also requested by at least two regular listeners of the podcast, so how could I avoid it? I couldn't. Here it is.

Full disclosure moment: Taddle Creek magazine is funded with a modest grant in the Grants to Periodicals program through the Literature Office at the Ontario Arts Council. As Literature Officer for the OAC, I administer that and other granting programs for Ontario's publishers and writers. Grants are adjudicated by peer assessment panels and juries, and strict conflict of interest policies and procedures are in place to maintain fair assessment. I do not in any way influence assessment.

Westhead's latest work, And Also Sharks (Cormarant Books Inc.) was shortlisted for the 2012 Danuta Gleed Award for short fiction from the Writers Union of Canada.

We talk writing, editing, traveling, author photographing, cover designing - and there is at least one reference to mashed potatoes. Why don't you have a listen?

McGimpsey's latest book is a collection of sixteen line "chubby" sonnets called L'il Bastard (Coach House Books). He has written six other books, including a critical analysis of baseball in American fiction. He is also a sandwich columnist for enRoute magazine.

Pleas enjoy David and I talking in a hotel room, on a sultry, pre-riot evening in Montreal.

My deepest appreciation to Dan Norman, Director of Music at St. Anne's Church for permission to record a bit of choir practice, to the choir members themselves who are always in excellent voice, and to Gary van der Meer, Priest in Charge.

Remember, you can subscribe to The Book Room on iTunes, and find all past episodes on Facebook. As well, if you want to comment on this or any of the interviews, e-mail us at bookroom14@yahoo.com.

I hope you enjoy the podcast.

We talked about her latest collection, Post Apothecary, a meditative novel in verse (in my opinion, anyway) about illness, medical treatment, recovery, and all the ambiguities and uncertainties of those processes.

I hope you enjoy the program.

Robert and I have a shared history of arguing for artists rights even as the Internet and the ease of "sharing" cultural products erodes those rights in the eyes of so many tenured consumer advocates. That means we've both had to wade through some of the ridiculous rhetoric of free culture theory, all the while being targeted for bilious attacks by those who prefer their culture to just magically appear without an industry to create it. My response has been to write increasingly depressed blog postings, but Rob has done something far more valuable for the cultural industries.

Free Ride exposes the lazily-accepted falsehoods and extreme rhetoric of free culture theory (e.g. "copyright threatens democracy"), and tracks the decline of professional culture-making from the early days of Napster right up to the edge of this year's SOPA blackout protests from Google and Wikipedia. For anyone with even a half-formed intention to be a professional artist (or journalist, for that matter), Free Ride is a mandatory read.

Here's a bit more about Mr. Levine, in his own words:

Robert Levine has been covering pop culture, technology, and the awkward dance between them for 15 years. Most recently, he was the executive editor of Billboard, charged with running the influential music business trade magazine. He has also been a features editor at New York magazine and Wired. His first job was at HotWired.com, the Web publication of Wired, where he was hired several months after it sold the first banner ad on the Internet.

His writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, Fortune, Rolling Stone, and the arts and business sections of the New York Times. He has offered commentary on the media business for CNN, CNBC, and VH-1, and spoken at the CMJ music conference and the World Copyright Summit in Brussels. He holds a B.A. in politics from Brandeis and an M.S.J.  from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Emily talks to me about growing up in Toronto's oft-maligned west-end neighbourhood, Parkdale, her earliest memories of stapling, and just how many balloons it takes to lift an anvil off the ground.

I hope you enjoy the program.

Chambers was a natural choice as my first guest. When I think back on my own career writing and publishing in small magazines, reading my work to audiences in bars, applying for grants, not getting grants, applying again... Chambers is always somewhere in the picture. The two of us even went on poetry tour once, hitting several of the better reading series around Ontario, driving many hundreds of kilometers, visiting the graves of other Canadian poets, sleeping on floors and couches.

What many folks might not know about Chris Chambers is that he has a wicked wrist shot in road hockey, and that his employment history is filled with work that has supported and encouraged others in writing and publishing. Chambers was an anchor at Book City on Bloor Street in Toronto for at least a decade, and now travels the country as the primary distributor of small Canadian cultural magazines (for Magazines Canada). If you write fiction or poetry in Canada, Chris Chambers has likely held your writing in his loving hands.