Kate Cayley

My guest on this episode is Kate Cayley. Kate has published two short story collections and three collections of poetry. She has won the Trillium Book Award, the Mitchell Prize for Poetry, and an O. Henry Prize, and been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, among other awards. She has also served as a playwright in residence with Tarragon Theatre. Her most recent book is the novel Property, published by Coach House Books in 2025. That novel was short-listed for the Foreword INDIES prize for literary fiction, and for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, presented in partnership with The Walrus. Publishers Weekly called Property ”an unflinching tale of a community’s fragile bonds.”

Kate and I talk about the surprise and pleasure of an award nomination coming many months after a book is published, about what her novel owes to the rats in her neighbourhood, and about the strangeness of being a debut novelist, six books into her career.

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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