Broadcaster, musician and writer Christa Couture hosting The Next Chapter's summer season
The season starts on July 6 and runs until Labour Day weekend
A broadcaster, musician and nonfiction writer, Christa Couture is known for hosting the accessible travel show Postcards From, writing her powerful memoir How to Lose Everything, producing a series of short animated films with the same name and her award-winning music career.
Now, she's taking her talents to The Next Chapter, where she'll be hosting the summer season.
"I'm really excited about the lineup of books that we've planned," the Toronto-based Couture told CBC Books in an interview.
"I love that with the summer vibe we're going to get into some beach reads, some romance hits, a graphic novel — the stuff that I imagine sitting on the beach or in my backyard or taking with me on a walk to the park."
The season starts on July 6 and will include interviews about Catherine Mack's hilarious murder mystery Every Time I Go On Vacation Someone Dies, Anton Treuer's Ojibway thriller Where Wolves Don't Die, Shashi Bhat's sharply funny short story collection Death By A Thousand Cuts and Sarah Henstra's The Lost Tarot, a novel about art and deception.
"I'm just looking forward to reading more than I usually do," said Couture. "And then the absolute gift of getting to talk to the authors — because how often do you put down a book and wish you could ask them a question?"
Couture has always been a book lover: she traces her passion for storytelling back to Grade 3, when her teacher Mrs. Foot would choose two students to sit beside her while she would read to the class.
'It was such an honour and thrill sitting next to her while she was reading," she said. "She was just one of those magical teachers who made every story so exciting and we all looked forward to being read to everyday by her."
She's carried this appreciation for the power of stories into her adulthood, going through reading phases of all different genres, from mysteries to literary fiction, and even writing her own memoir, How to Lose Everything.
In How to Lose Everything, she shares her journey coping with the losses she's experienced throughout her life: her leg was amputated, her first child died when he was one day old, her second child died as a baby after a heart transplant, her marriage ended in divorce and a thyroidectomy threatened her music career.
But through it all, she has found hope, joy and love and maintains a perspective filled with compassion and understanding — qualities that she will bring to The Next Chapter's summer season.
"All of my experience, like as a musician, as a touring performer or whatever, all these weird jobs I've had bring a curiosity and an empathy and an adaptability," she said.
"It means that I can usually find an 'in' with someone. And I love finding that 'in' and then seeing where that leads, with meeting strangers and making a connection with them."
The Next Chapter airs every Saturday at 2 p.m. ET and Monday at 1 p.m. ET on CBC Radio, CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.
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