Cid Brunet is a former stripper and emerging writer who spent a decade working in clubs across Canada under the name Michelle.  This Is My Real Name: A Stripper's Memoir is a candid, searing memoir of working 10 years in the sex trade, a personal guide of the strip club circuit by someone who knows it well.  Brunet’s crisp dialogue puts you in the dressing room, the VIP lounge, on the pole, or in the middle of a mental collapse.  It describes a subculture of humanity, at once a gladiators’ pit, a hypnotic and intimate sexual emporium, the set of the movie Norma Rae, or an episode of Cheers.  We spoke to Brunet from their home in Montreal. Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice the nonprofit sector.Support the show

Shakil Choudhury, is an award-winning educator and consultant with more than 20 years of international experience in the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion. He’s worked with thousands of organizational leaders across sectors in Canada and the United States to, as he says, “help them improve their equity outcomes.”  His new book, Deep Diversity: A compassionate scientific approach to achieving racial justice has been called “a highly significant contribution to the struggle against racism in our society” and “a moving, powerful look at how to address issues of both ‘head’ and ‘heart’ in engaging in diversity conversations that promise real and lasting change.” We spoke to him from his home in Toronto.   Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice the nonprofit sector.Support the show

A contemporary multi-media storyteller, Drew Hayden Taylor has written more than 30 books and screen plays, and scores of columns and essays. He’s a theatre performer and director, actively expanding the boundaries of Indigenous literature.  His most recent novel Chasing Painted Horses was published in 2019 and named one of the year’s best books of fiction.  This year he has written the forward What Comes from the Spirit: Selected Work from Richard Wagamese and written the forward and an essay in the 4th in his edited collections of the Me series called Me Tomorrow.  And he's got  more up his sleeve.Taylor’s writing is—as is the man himself—engaging, funny, and resonant. And he joins us today from his vacation in Cabo. Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice the nonprofit sector. Support the show

An anthology of stories written by Black fundraisers working in the United States and Canada  has laid bare the underlying racism in the philanthropic sector.  The editors and contributors of Collecting Courage: Joy Pain Freedom Love have been on the virtual book tour circuit talking about racism, community, and best the way forward. And today we’re stepping back from talking about the contents of the book to talk to the editors and contributors to about how the writing of the book has affected them personally.  Today we welcome:Birgit Smith Burton from Atlanta, GeorgiaNiambi Martin-John from Mississauga, OntarioMarva Wisdom from Guelph, OntarioKishshana Palmer from Queens, New YorkNaimah Bilal from Cincinnati, OhioChristal M. Cherry from Union City, AtlantaNneka Allen from Abbottsford, BCCamila Pereira from Toronto, OntarioNicole Salmon from Brampton, OntarioTalking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here.   Support the show

The countdown to Christmas has begun and, for many Christians, so has the annual debate about the true meaning of the holiday. The legacy of Indian Residential Schools coupled with  weaponization of the words of Christ by the evangelical right wing leaves Christianity in a crisis.  The words of its founder, born in Bethlehem two centuries ago, are used are more often used nowadays to justify the very ideals He preached against . Our guest today, The Reverend Michael Coren, is a columnist, broadcaster, and ordained cleric in the Anglican Church of Canada.  His 18th book The Rebel Christ has just been released. In the book, Coren makes the argument for Christ as a rebel, a radical, and a revolutionary. We talk to him today about the rebel Jesus, and how the Christian world has strayed. Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here. Support the show

Cindy Wagman began her nonprofit career as a fundraising manager in a women’s shelter.  Since that time, she’s been Development Director for the Canadian Women’s Foundation, The Kensington Foundation, Rotman School of Management, and Campaign Director for the Hot Docs Film Festival. For the past six and a half years, she’s headed up her own consultancy, The Good Partnership, which focuses on developing the fundraising potential of small nonprofits.  She hosts The Small Nonprofit, Canada’s #1 podcast for charities and now she’s consolidated her ideas in a new book, Raise It! The Reluctant Fundraiser’s Guide to Raising Money without Selling your Soul. Cindy joins us today from her home in Toronto.    Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here.    Support the show

Madeleine Shaw is a multiple award-winning social entrepreneur with more than twenty-five years of experience launching ventures with a social change agenda. At age 25, she founded Aisle, a privately held business whose sustainable menstrual care products are now sold in more than 40 countries worldwide. She’s established the charity United Girls of the World Society, and G Day, a national rite of passage celebration series for adolescent girls. In 2017 she launched Nestworks, a family-friendly co-working. Whether you're a nonprofit start-up, charity start-up, or something in between, Madeleine Shaw is all about incorporating the ideas of social and environmental benefit into your operating principles. Now she’s written a book, The Greater Good: Social Entrepreneurship for Everyday People Who Want to Change the World, and Madeleine Shaw joins us today from her home near Vancouver. Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here. Support the show

Dr. Sara Florence Davidson is an educator, author, and assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Her brand-new children’s book, Jigging for Halibut with Tsinii on which she collaborated with her father, is a simple story of a young man who goes fishing with his grandfather and returns in the evening, but one that illustrates the Haida-based teaching approach she gleaned from listening to her father’s many stories. She dove into that approach—called sk’ad’a in Haida—in a 2018 book, Potlach as Pedagogy, upon which she also collaborated with her father. In it she describes the principles of teaching and learning, through the framework of Haida knowledge.  She has written widely and uniquely on decolonizing education and integrating Indigenous knowledge into education. She joins us from her home in British Columbia. Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here. Support the show

Dr. Lucy Bernholz is Senior Research Scholar and Director of the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford University.  For the past 12 years, she has been the force behind the annual Philanthropy and Digital Civil Society Blueprint monograph series. This week her new book, How we give now: A philanthropic guide for the rest of us, has been released. For the book, Bernholz conducted research on what she calls the “givingscape” to discover that giving money—a modern definition of philanthropy—misses a large swath of what people are doing to make the world a better place.  Her simple question “how do you give?” provides a flurry of answers that shakes our transactional definition of philanthropy to its core.  Lucy Bernholz joins us from her office at Stanford University.   Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here. Support the show

The prevalence of anti-Black racism and its many faces, from racial profiling to police brutality, in North America is indisputable. What we know less about is how our schools reinforce rather than erode racism, teaching a one-dimensional, tokenistic curricula portraying Black people, and work to erase the lived experiences of Black youth, in effect erasing Black youth themselves.Habiba Cooper Diallo wrote about in the journal she kept while attending high school in Halifax, documenting it all in real time—the systemic racism, microaggressions, stereotypes and outright racism she experienced in Canada’s education system. A finalist in the 2020 Bristol Short Story Prize, the 2019 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition and the 2018 London Book Fair Pitch Competition, Habiba Cooper Diallo joins us now from her home in Halifax. Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here.   Support the show

Our very special guest today is F. Warren McFarlan, Professor Emeritus and former Senior Associate Dean of External Relations at Harvard Business School, who has 40 years of active nonprofit experience.Among his many and varied accomplishments, he helped set up Harvard’s School International Senior Management Program in Switzerland in 1973 and was Co-Director of Case Development at the School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University in Beijing. He is the author of 18 books on topics ranging from Seizing the IT advantage in China to Joining a nonprofit Board: What you need to know.  He's chaired numerous nonprofit boards, annual funds, and capital campaigns. Earlier this year, he wrote his second book on social enterprise, Effective Fundraising: The Trustee’s Role and Beyond, published by John Wiley. Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here. Support the show

A righteous ask is a funding request grounded in a community need that is well aligned with the funder’s mission and put forth by a well-respected nonprofit in pursuit of impact rather than dollars, writes Barbara Floersch in her new book You Have a Hammer: Building Grant Proposals for Social Change. Floersch has more than 40 years’ experience in nonprofit administration, grant management and nonprofit consulting. In the U.S., she’s raised millions of dollars from federal state and local governments, as well as from public and private foundations. She was a regular writer for The Grantsmanship Center News and contributes to The NonProfit Times. In 2015, she updated and expanded Norton Kiritz’s seminal work, Grantsmanship: Program Planning & Proposal Writing, originally published in 1972.  We talked to her from her home just outside Montpelier, Vermont.Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here.  Support the show

David Macfarlane, one of Canada’s most celebrated writers, has just released his latest book.Likeness: Fathers, sons, a portrait is a told through a portrait of Macfarlane by Canadian artist John Hartman set against the backdrop of Hamilton, Ontario where Macfarlane grew up. The painting, measuring five feet by five and a half feet, that has ended up in Macfarlane's living room.  As it looms over the room and rivets his gaze, Macfarlane’s mind explores his past—growing up in the boom times of Hamilton in the sixties, his present—dominated by his son’s treatment for leukemia and his future—dare he think of it all—is an achingly sad prospect as his son gets progressively sicker.  We’re thrilled to have David Macfarlane speaking with us from his home in downtown Toronto. Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here.  Support the show

Today, we get behind the process of covering a major news story. For the past two years, award-winning journalist Marcus Gee has been writing about what some call the “other” pandemic—deaths from opioid overdose.  He’s talked to and written about medical practitioners, opioid users, and the family and friends they sometimes leave behind. We ask him how he goes about covering the story, why he started to report on it in the first place, what he’s found and if he see reasons for hope. Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here. Support the show

Sylvia Olsen’s most recent book Unravelling Canada: A Knitting Odyssey begins to untangle the messy business of Canadian history through a journey of knitting that takes her to 40 communities across the country. From the history of quintessential Cowichan sweaters made by Coast Salish knitters and Newfoundland Outport Nursing and Industrial Association (NONIA) to modern-day yarn mills in New Brunswick and Alberta, Unravelling Canada, Olsen’s 20th book, is a discovery of an everchanging landscape, covering themes ranging from personal identity and cultural appropriation to “boyfriend” sweaters.  Olsen married into the Tsartlip First Nation near Victoria, BC, and developed relationships with Coast Salish knitters through her family’s sweater shop.  Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here. Support the show

The news that the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation had located the undocumented remains of 215 children on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School run by the Catholic Church broke late on Thursday, May 27.  The news spread across the world like wildfire. And since then, the Roman Catholic Church has come under intense criticism for their continued refusal to apologize and account for their role in running close to three quarters of Canada’s residential schools. The Reverend Michael Coren is a columnist, broadcaster, and an ordained cleric in the Anglican Church of Canada. His 18th book will be released this fall.  He wrote about the grim findings in Kamloops for iPolitics on May 28. We talk to him today about how religious leaders in the Catholic church can square their current refusal to confess and atone for their actions with the tenets of the church and the teachings of Jesus Christ.Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here. Support the show

The deplorable state of so many of the country’s long term care facilities was fully revealed by the coronavirus pandemic.  At the end of September 2020, close to 10,000 people had died from the coronavirus. More than 80% of them were elderly people living in long-term care facilities. The conditions were so bad that, in Ontario and Quebec, the Canadian military was called upon to help mitigate the disaster.  The conditions they found were appalling. And their experience demonstrated that, despite numerous studies, coroners’ reports, and inquests over the past two decades, our institutional care of the elderly is often unspeakably inhumane. Canada’s award-winning health reporter André Picard has just written a book about it called Neglected No More: The Urgent Need to Improve the Lives of Canada's Elders in the Wake of a Pandemic, which expertly lays out what can and must be done to improve the state of care for our elders. We are delighted to have him with us today for this episode of Talking UP. Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here. Support the show

Many Canadians were pulled from the brink of poverty when the federal government instituted the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, which provided a form of basic income.  It was inconceivable until it happened.  Yet, political thinkers for the four centuries have advocate that wealth should be for society, not individuals.  In their new book, The Case for Basic Income: Freedom, Security, Justice, Jamie Swift, and Elaine Power make the argument for a basic income guarantee as Canada is face with a growing wealth gap.  The book is deeply personal, featuring compelling stories from participants of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot that ran from 2017 to 2019. It amplifies the every-growing chorus of people who—amid precarious employment, increasing automation, stagnant wages, and climate change—argue for a fair share for everyone. It comes at a time when many Canadians are trying to imagine a more equitable future.  Jamie Swift is the author, most recently, of The Vimy Trap: Or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War (with McMaster historian Ian McKay), finalist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. Elaine Power is an associate professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies and head of the Department of Gender Studies at Queen’s University. She is a founding member of the Kingston Action Group for a Basic Income Guarantee.Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity, and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here.  Support the show

Katherena Vermette is a Métis writer from Treaty 1 Territory in Manitoba. Her first book North End Love Songs won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. Her novel The Break won 2017 Amazon.ca First Novel Award. In 2017, she began a series of graphic novels, A Girl Called Echo,  with illustrator Scott Henderson and colourist Donovan Yaciuk. Volume 1 isThe Pemican Wars, Volume 2 is Red River Resistance and  Volume 3, Northwest Resistance.  Volume 4, Road Allowance Era, the last volume in the series was published on April 27.  We talked to Vermette about the story of Echo as a messenger of Métis history and about what brought her to life.Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here. Support the show

David Love raised his first dollar for nature in 1969.  In the past 50 years that he’s been an active fundraiser—much of that time with the World Wildlife Federation Canada—he’s raised many millions more.  In 2013, he was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Association of Fundraising Professionals.Now, David’s written a book called Green Green: Reflections on 51 years of Raising Money for Nature. Talking UP is an interview show dedicated to writers, journalists and authors working on issues of social justice, equity and the nonprofit sector. Guests talk about their reporting and research, what drives their work, and what’s important to them. Listeners will have the opportunity to widen their lens, develop their understanding and figure out where we might go from here. Support the show