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Eye Weekly’s Pop Fiction book club discusses John McNally’s After the Workshop, a novel about a star MFA student reduced to working as a media escort for visiting authors. Come on — you wish you’d had the idea first.

Ohhh, this makes me want to read that book.

I just returned from a booksellers’ fair in Victoria, where I met all sorts of interesting people whose passion for books humbled me. I also had the opportunity to talk to some other writers about what they’ve been working on, and I’m really looking forward to reading their forthcoming books. In no particular order, here are some of the ones I’m excited about:

• Darwin’s Bastards edited by Zsuzsi Gartner: “From recent Trillium Award–winner Pasha Malla’s hilarious take on the apocalypse, where Prince is the only man left alive, to newcomer Matthew Trafford’s brilliant triptych about the fallout from the cloning of Jesus Christ, to iconoclast Sheila Heti’s meditative romp about beleaguered physicists and Oracle of Delphi-like BlackBerrys, Darwin’s Bastards is a fast-moving, thought-provoking reading extravaganza.”
• In the Fabled East by Adam Lewis Schroeder: “Bridging history from 1890s Aix-en-Provence to American involvement in 1950s Vietnam, In the Fabled East is a rich and sensual depiction of Southeast Asia, charting the loss of innocence of both individuals and the world at large. Echoing Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad, this is historical fiction written with wisdom and panache.”
• Nice Recovery by Susan Juby: “Nice Recovery is the story of why I started drinking at thirteen, what I loved about it, what it did for me, and ultimately, what it took away. Drugs are part of my story, but for me they were a bit like the bacon-wrapped scallop appetizer before a steak dinner. They made everything a little fancier and more fun, but booze was always my main course.”
• Secret untitled project by Robert J. Wiersema: “I have to finish it now. I have a pub date.”