Love & Defiance Podcast

In today’s episode I’ll be speaking with Sumaya Matin who worked on her memoir with Shyam Selvadurai. Titled The Shaytan Bride, it was published in 2021 by Dundurn Press and it is an account of Sumaiya’s immigration to Canada from Bangladesh as a young girl, her attempts to reconcile her Muslim faith with secular Canadian society and the patriarchal strictures placed on Muslim girls and women from within their own community which culminates, for Sumaiya, in an attempted forced marriage.

This season of Love and Defiance is written and produced by David Bezmozgis, and produced and edited by Evan Gravelle.

Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next year with more students and more remarkable stories from the Humber School for Writers.

In this episode, I speak with Craig Shreve about his novel The African Samurai, a fictionalized account of the tragic and heroic life of Yasuke, an African slave and warrior who became the first non-Japanese samurai.

This season of Love and Defiance is written and produced by David Bezmozgis, and produced and edited by Evan Gravelle.

In this episode I speak with Shivani Howe about her novel-in-progress, Land’s Breath. Set at a yoga retreat in the interior of British Columbia, Land’s Breath is a story informed by what Shivani describes as chakra psychology and yoga ecology.

This season of Love and Defiance is written and produced by David Bezmozgis, and produced and edited by Evan Gravelle.

Our first episode of Season 4 comes from conversations at the Black Box Sessions at the Toronto International Festival of Authors with students from the Humber School for Writers. Our first guest is Kim Echlin. Kim's novels include Elephant Winter, and Dagmar's Daughter. Our second guest is Vicky Chen who has published a book of nonfiction and three plays. We finish off with Arzu Yildiz, a writer and journalist from Turkey. 

This season of Love and Defiance is written and produced by David Bezmozgis, and produced and edited by Evan Gravelle.

Aaron Berhane talks about founding the first independent newspaper in Eritrea, and how he survived when a dictatorship came for him.

Onder Deligosz talks about escaping a military coup in Turkey, and how, even in exile, he's using writing to give a voice to his country.

On this episode of Love and Defiance, we talk with Nina Levitt about sexuality, espionage, and the women who used secrecy to survive the world and win a war.

Gillian Grant talks about surviving cancer with the support of her family, the help of Western medicine, and the unexpected generosity and grace of Indigenous healers.

David Bezmozgis speaks with Gabriel Munro, editor and producer of Love & Defiance, and a student in the Humber Broadcasting-Radio program, about podcasting, audio storytelling and his personal connection to writing.

David Albertyn talks about using personal experience to find his voice, and how to prepare for a new kind of challenge – success. 

Tendisai Cromwell explores how to write about faith, dual identities, and where to draw the line between piousness and piety.

Colin Buchanan talks about his novel which takes us from personal heartbreak and institutionalization into the hidden heart of the deep South.

David Bezmozgis speaks with Jillian Stirk about her experience as a young diplomat in Warsaw during the Solidarity movement and how the letters she wrote home to her parents formed the basis of her novel, Small Ironies.