Ted Blades in Conversation with Heather O’Neill and Arizona O’Neill (Sandy Cove Hall)

Ted Blades is a retired journalist and longest-serving host of CBC Radio’s afternoon show, “On The Go”. Three-time finalist at the New York Festivals International Radio Competition and Gold Medal winner in 2015 for best interview. Winner of the inaugural Atlantic Journalism Award for best podcast, in 2017. He is happy to be back for Winterset 2025!

Heather O’Neill is a novelist, short-story writer, and essayist. Her most recent novel is The Capital of Dreams. Her previous works include When We Lost Our Heads, which was a #1 national bestseller and a finalist for the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal; The Lonely Hearts Hotel, which won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and CBC’s Canada Reads; and Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, and Daydreams of Angels, which were shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize two years in a row. O‘Neill has also won CBC’s Canada Reads and the Danuta Gleed Award. Born and raised in Montreal, she lives there today.

Arizona O’Neill is a Montreal-based author and illustrator. She is the author of Est-ce qu’un artiste peut être heureux?, a collection of graphic interviews, and the illustrator of Nelly Arcan’s L’enfant dans le miroir. Her comics have appeared in Hazlitt, Exclaim!, the Montreal Gazette, and mRb. She has created animated videos for many outlets, including the CBC. A regular contributor to Radio-Canada’s Il restera toujours la culture, she is one half of the Bookstagram page @ONeillReads. She is currently working on a graphic memoir.