Bookends with Mattea Roach, CBC's new author interview show, to premiere this fall
The program will premiere on Sept. 8 on CBC Radio and as a podcast
"Any job that involves a lot of reading and writing … I just don't want to be a doctor."
That's what Mattea Roach wrote when asked what their dream job would be in elementary school — and it's not that far off from what they're up to now.
The Jeopardy! superchamp and Canada Reads 2023 winner will be hosting CBC's newest show, Bookends with Mattea Roach, starting on Sept. 8, 2024.
Guided by Roach's thoughtful curiosity and broad knowledge, Bookends will dive deep into each writer's work and situate it in the broader context of history and the current world. Roach isn't afraid to ask the tough questions and promises that listeners will walk away with food for thought and exciting new books to read.
Bookends will feature conversations with some of the big-name authors and rising stars from Canada and around the world. Authors featured in the first season will include Heather O'Neill, Kaveh Akbar, Sloane Crosley, Casey McQuiston, Morgan Talty, Alison McCreesh, Corinna Chong, Teresa Wong, V. V. Ganeshananthan, Alan Hollinghurst and David Huebert.
"I'm excited to have the opportunity to do more interviews than I've been doing, to talk to more authors, to read more and to hopefully learn a lot on the job," Roach told CBC Books.
The show's title, Bookends with Mattea Roach, was chosen both for its simplicity and its dual meaning, said Roach. Just as physical bookends are "something that's on the outside of the actual pieces of work," the conversations on the show will also cover more than what's on the page.
"We're not just going to be summarizing the plot [...] or giving you stuff that you can read in the book and find out for yourself. We're of course going to touch on that, but we're hoping that it's going to be a bit more expansive, go beyond the text."
From Jeopardy! Stage to CBC studio
Roach first dazzled the public with their 23-game winning streak on Jeopardy! in 2022, becoming a fan favourite thanks to their impressive knowledge, charming wit and genuine and disarming personality.
Over the course of their run, they won $560,983 U.S. (approx. $768,872 Cdn) — and at 23, they were the youngest-ever contestant to reach that total. This was also the longest-ever winning streak held by a Canadian.
Following this record-breaking run, Roach has since appeared as a contestant on the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions and Jeopardy! Masters.
They credit the "listening element" and paying attention to the world around them as a strategy that helped them achieve such success on the show, a transferable skill for their new gig as host of Bookends.
Roach also picked up some valuable interviewing techniques from hosting The Backbench, a political podcast featuring panels with people involved and informed on current affairs.
"I have to kind of be able to pick up on, 'Oh, that's just like a weird unexpected thing that the guest said. I feel like I want to ask more about that,'" said Roach.
From this experience moderating, they've learned to be ready for those moments that surprise them as an interviewer and go where the interview takes them.
Lifelong reader
Born and raised in Nova Scotia, Roach was introduced to books from a young age. For as long as they can remember, their parents read to them.
Roach soon branched out to independent reading at age three and since then, reading has always been a favourite pastime — both as a way to immerse themself in different worlds and learn something new.
Roach said that while they loved fiction as a kid, they were also drawn to looking at atlases and learning about the geography of different countries.
As a teenager, however, they almost completely veered away from fiction, using reading as a practical tool to gain knowledge to use for competitive debating, or later, in university, to expand on the courses they were taking.
Now, they strive for an equal balance of fiction and nonfiction.
"I'm definitely a character-driven sort of person when I am looking for books to read," they said. "I enjoy nonfiction that has a good sense of story and arc to it."
Winning Canada Reads 2023
Roach's appreciation of character-driven nonfiction, specifically memoir, led them to champion Kate Beaton's Ducks and win Canada Reads 2023 — an experience that they plan to take with them as the host of Bookends.
"One really big thing Canada Reads did for me was it forced me to open my mind a little bit to genres that I maybe wouldn't gravitate towards," they said.
When they were on the show, one of the other contenders was Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a gothic horror novel with elements of magic realism about a young woman in 1950s Mexico.
"It's totally not the sort of thing I would normally pick up, but I had to read it because it was my job. I had to be able to talk about it," said Roach.
"I was so surprised at how much I liked it."
"That was a really positive experience to have before going into [Bookends] because, I think, in large part the sorts of people that we talk to, the sorts of books that we feature, are going to be guided by my taste and preferences. But I realized I had been boxing myself in too much before."
With that newfound openness, Roach is excited to get Bookends on the airwaves and partake in meaningful conversations with authors.
"Writing a book is such a very personal and vulnerable thing to do," they said. "You've put so many hours and so much love, probably, into that product."
"As an interviewer, I want to feel like I'm doing justice to the work. I want to be able to show through whatever questions I ask that I engaged with this in a way that the author can feel good about."
Bookends with Mattea Roach will air on CBC Radio One on Sundays at 1 p.m. (1:30 p.m. NT, 3 p.m. PT) starting Sept. 8. It will also be available on CBC Listen, wherever you get your podcasts and on the CBC Arts YouTube channel.
Bookends will take over the Writers & Company podcast feeds, so subscribe on Chartable or check out CBC Listen to never miss an episode.
To learn more about Roach, tune into Q on Aug. 28 and Writers & Company on Sept. 1.
