Getting Lit With Linda

It's Mother's Day - and, while Linda considers how the mother is represented in several books (specifically Rachel Deustch (6:30), Boum (5:50; 6:55), and Mary Thaler (5:47), in their respective works, The Mother, Jellyfish, and Ulfhildr), she turns her attention to the figure of the stepmother, inspired in part by her conversation with the authors of La Belle-Mère/The Stepmother (L'Hexagone) by Rachel McCrum and Amélie Prévost (8:10) while she was at the Imagination Literary Festival (held at the Morrin Centre in Quebec City, 5:33).Some promised links and other sources of discussion or references:etymology of stepmother (in conversation with Maia Harris, 3:55)The Cole Foundation Prize for Translation (Quebec Writers' Federation 7:58)Charles Dickens' David Copperfield and Great Expectations (1:07, 1:30)Stepmothers and Grimm's fairy tales (3:03)Host & Writer: Linda Morra; Associate Producer: Maia Harris; Music: Raphael Krux.

In this episode, Linda speaks with the award-winning CBC journalist of As it Happens, Carol Off, about her new (and fifth!) book, At a Loss for Words: Conversation in an Age of Rage (Listeners, keep your eye out: A new edition of Off's book will be available in the fall!). Published in 2024, Off wrote the book as a "cautionary tale," as she observes in this interview - and, since then, some important political moments have evolved across the American and Canadian border. The book examines how key words, including freedom, democracy and truth, are being hijacked and weaponized in order to diminish liberal democracy. Linda and Carol speak about Roe v. Wade, the Bathhouse Raids, the outbreak of AIDS, women's rights, Judith Butler, the 2024 American election, Christopher Ruso and the "Strong and Free" organization, Hannah Arendt (25:20), Stephen Colbert's "Truthiness," the results of the 2025 Canadian election, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (29.09).Carol Off reminds us - we are not entitled to our own facts (34:24), and we need to question everything (31:20).

As a result of Zilla Jones’ The World So Wide, slated for publication with Cormorant Books on April 26, 2025, Linda reflects on opera (specifically Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino) – historically an elitist art form, but one that Felicity Alexander, the protagonist of Jones’ novel, in part challenges and overcomes through the very successes of her career. The trajectory of that career takes a darker turn when she finds herself in Grenada during the 1983 American invasion of that country – not an untimely revisioning of history in view of the current American political situation (27:40; 28:50).Linda also speaks about Verdi’s La forza del destino with Renata Tibaldi as Leonore and her father's love for opera (2:15), before she turns to the interview with Zilla Jones to speak about the following:Opera’s potential as an artform vs. its polarizing, and its elitism as art form (3:20; 12:30)Arts vs. politics (13:30)Sara Ahmed’s What’s the Use? (5:00; 6:15)Of what use is art in a time like this? (6:00; 31:45)Shani Mootoo (Season 3, Episode 6, 6:00)Decolonization and racial politics (12:15)The novel as a colonial construct (16:15)Dionne Brand, Salvaging the Wreck (16:03)Robinson Crusoe (16:15)Felicity as mixed-race heroine (17:30; 33:20)Kathleen Battle (18:46; 19:00)Grenada (history of, 20:45, and its “Revo,” 23:10; Red Sky Revolution, 23.20)Jones' research for the novel (24:35)The history of the Panama Canal (27:40)Toni Morrison (31:50)Gender and racialized motherhood (34:10)Felicity (naming of) (39:30)

In this first episode of Season 6 of Getting Lit With Linda, the host – Linda Morra – begins with a few important announcements: GLWL is now being supported by the Canada Council for the Arts! With that support, we have a "special" season that we're calling GETTING LIT GOES GLOBAL. It means we are emphasizing books or topics that take on international proportions or have international repercussions.Getting Lit With Linda will now also feature an annual prize – more of that in future episodes. And we have a new team on board, featuring Maia Harris (Associate Producer), James Healey (Sound Producer), Aki Barabadi (Marketing Consultant), and Raphael Krux (Music).Linda begins her discussion with a consideration of Martha Nussbaum’s Anger and Forgiveness, to mull over what to do with our anger (and specifically feminist anger, 21:00). Her guest, Andrea Warner points the way in her fresh and accessible book, We Oughta Know. Warner tells us what we should know, but don’t – that is, she tells us about how much the women she is examining – Celine Dion, Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette, and Sarah McLachlan -- did to work past gendered biases in the music industry to achieve international fame. Warner reminds us that we need to understand and confront not just misogyny (18:00), and the male gaze (19:00), but also internalized misogyny (16:20), and that we ought to know is how to develop solidarity and love for all of us. And, even when we mess up, we need to remember we are all works in progress (16:40).Andrea Warner has her own podcast, Pop This!, and has published other books, including The Time of My Life, and Rise Up and Sing: Power, Protest, and Activism in Music. We also speak about the following:Sabrina Carpenter's Christmas special, A Nonsense Christmas Lisa Whittington Hill's Girls Interrupted: How Pop Culture is Failing Women (Vehicule Press) and gender inequality in music representation (15:00)Miss Piggy's anger (22.50)Celine Dion's VERY AWESOME CANARY YELLOW POWER SUIT

Happy International Women's Day - this is our Teaser for Season 6, in which a special guest joins Linda Morra to share our International Women's Day wishes with you, the listeners of Getting Lit With Linda!

n this 78th episode and the final one of season 5, Linda offers the “Nine Days of Christmas” with nine different book recommendations for the holidays. Who makes the cut? Well, we could say you need to listen to find out, but we want you to find the books easily, so here they are with their links:Alice Zorn’s Colours in her Hands (Freehand Books), Téa Mutonji’s Shut Up You’re Pretty (VS Books, Arsenal), Katherena Vermette’s Real Ones (Hamish Hamilton), Ian Williams', What I Mean to Say (Anansi), Sarah Polley's Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory (Penguin), Suzette Mayr’s The Sleeping Car Porter (Coach House Press), Derek Webster’s National Animal (Véhicule Press), Sue Goyette's A Different Species of Breathing (WLUP),and Bart Vautour’s The Truth About Facts (Invisible Publishing)Other References:Tanis MacDonaldErin Wunker, Season 61Judith ScottThe entire team at Geting Lit With Linda wishes you a wonderful, restful holiday - we will be back in the New Year with some important developments! Stay tuned! 

Linda writes an open letter to Ivan Coyote, in response to their book, Care Of: Letters, Connections, and Cures (published by McClelland & Stewart during the pandemic). This important volume of letters is extraordinary and, while we're no longer in the throes of a pandemic, it remains as relevant as ever. With references to WB Yeat's poem "The Second Coming" and an article by Anna Russell that appeared in The New Yorker, this episode highlights the vital contribution this book makes - and it's more than just a pineapple.

In this episode, Linda converses with Jenny Haysom (2.48) about her novel Keep (published by Anansi). Featuring three main characters, the narrative is driven by the conflict that emerges when Harriet, an elderly poet, is diagnosed with the onset of dementia and must face selling her house -- and the two home stagers, Eleanor and Jacob, tasked with emptying it of its contents. Both Eleanor and Jacob are drawn into Harriet's world and the questions around what we keep, what we throw away, and what we value and why. It becomes clear why Haysom refers to this Victorian-esque novel as "a ghost story without ghosts."The discussion also turns toward Haysom's literary debut as a poet and her collection Dividing the Wayside (4.15, published by Palimpsest Press) and the difference between writing poetry and writing novels (4.32).