My guest on this episode is Valérie Bah. Valérie is a multidisciplinary Québécois artist, filmmaker, documentarian, photographer, and writer whose first book was the collection The Rage Letters, translated from the French and published by Metonymy Press. Valérie’s most recent book is their first novel (and first book in English) Subterrane. That book was published by Véhicule Press in 2024 and was the winner of the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. The Montreal Review of Books said that Subterrane “hums with high-context, sublingual information, the kind that resists total comprehension joyfully and exactingly.”

Valérie and I talk about the surreal experience of winning the Amazon First Novel Award (including the timely consumption of edibles), about how they feel at home in multiple artistic mediums and practices at once, and about their recurring lottery-winning fantasies, which involve a very particular make of car.

This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.

Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.

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