Writers and Company from CBC Radio

Our podcast this week: Eleanor Wachtel's 1995 conversation with Harold Bloom about "The Western Canon."

Oliver Sacks interview from 2001. During the summer, our weekly podcast will feature some of the best shows from the archives - which haven't been available as a podcast before. This week, Oliver Sacks talks about his memoir, "Uncle Tungsten."

Scotland's Irvine Welsh - "the poet laureate of the chemical generation", as he's sometimes called. His first novel, "Trainspotting", changed the world's view of Edinburgh. Now, he's written a prequel, called "Skagboys".

Malcolm Gladwell, "Geek pop star"? In a delightfully wide-ranging conversation, Eleanor Wachtel and Malcolm Gladwell speak about Gladwell's Jamaican heritage, about his work, and about why you never want to be first in anything.

"Bring Up the Bodies"! with Man Booker Prize-winner Hilary Mantel. She has followed her blockbuster hit, "Wolf Hall" with more on Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII. The new book is called "Bring Up the Bodies".

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the Booker Prize-winning novelist, short story writer, and Oscar-winning screenwriter, is perhaps best known for her long collaboration with Merchant Ivory productions (with director James Ivory and the late producer Ismail Merchant). Together they created movies such as "Howards End", "Room with a View", and "The Remains of the Day".

Our 2005 conversation with the great Mexican writer, Carlos Fuentes - a diplomat, professor and activist, his themes are time, memory and Mexico. Carlos Fuentes has just died at the age of 83.

Toni Morrison Interview: Eleanor Wachtel speaks with the Nobel Prize winning novelist. The New York Times described Morrison as "the nearest thing America has to a national novelist."

A conversation with critically acclaimed Colombian writer, Juan Gabriel Vasquez. Maria Vargas Llosa describes him as "one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature."

Joyce Carol Oates - the prolific American writer, and the winner of this year's Blue Metropolis Grand Prix in an onstage conversation with Eleanor Wachtel. Joyce Carol Oates's latest novel is called "Mudwoman".

Eleanor Wachtel speaks with biographer Hermione Lee about the life and work of Edith Wharton. Born 150 years ago, Wharton is the exemplar of New York's "Gilded Age."

English writer Tessa Hadley talks with Eleanor Wachtel this week. She's had almost as many short stories published in the New Yorker in the last ten years as her hero, Alice Munro

From the International Literary Festival in Beijing- Eleanor Wachtel leads a discussion with Lijia Zhang from China, and Luka Lesson from Australia. Also on the show, an encore presentation of Eleanor Wachtel's 2008 conversation with poet, Xi Chuan

From Beijing, Chan Koonchung. His novel, "The Fat Years" is an astute take on the effects of Chinese politics in everyday life... what one critic describes as "the struggle over the soul of a nation."

Edward St. Aubyn interview: From England, a surprising and quite brilliant novelist, Edward St Aubyn. He's transformed his own painful upbringing into remarkably entertaining fiction.