Stuart McLean

Stuart McLean is a best-selling author, award-winning journalist and humorist, and host of CBC Radio program The Vinyl Cafe. Stuart began his broadcasting career making radio documentaries for CBC Radio's Sunday Morning. In 1979 he won an ACTRA award for Best Radio Documentary for his contribution to the program's coverage of the Jonestown massacre.

Following Sunday Morning, Stuart spent seven years as a regular columnist and guest host on CBC's Morningside. His book, The Morningside World of Stuart McLean, was a Canadian bestseller and a finalist in the 1990 City of Toronto Book Awards.

Stuart has also written Welcome Home: Travels in Small Town Canada, and edited the collection When We Were Young. Welcome Home was chosen by the Canadian Authors' Association as the best non-fiction book of 1993.

Stuart's books Stories from the Vinyl Cafe, Home from the Vinyl Cafe, Vinyl Cafe Unplugged, Vinyl Cafe Diaries, Dave Cooks the Turkey, Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe and Extreme Vinyl Cafe have all been Canadian bestsellers. Vinyl Cafe Diaries was awarded the Canadian Authors' Association Jubilee Award in 2004. Stuart is also a three-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for Home from the Vinyl Cafe, Vinyl Cafe Unplugged and, most recently, Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe.
Vinyl Cafe books have also been published in the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.

Stuart is a professor emeritus at Ryerson University in Toronto and former director of the broadcast division of the School of Journalism. In 1993 Trent University named him the first Rooke Fellow for Teaching, Writing and Research. He has also been honored by: Nipissing University (EdD(H)); University of Windsor (Lld) and Trent University (DLH). Stuart served as Honorary Colonel of the 8th Air Maintenance Squadron at 8 Wing, Trenton from 2005 to 2008.

Since 1998 Stuart has toured with the Vinyl Cafe to theatres across Canada and the United States, playing towns from St. John's, Newfoundland to Whitehorse in the Yukon; from Bangor, Maine to Seattle, Washington.

Close to one million people listen to The Vinyl Cafe every weekend on CBC Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio and on a growing number of Public Radio stations in the United States. The program is also broadcast on an occasional basis on the BBC.

• Stories from the Vinyl Café

  Stuart McLean incorporates the Vinyl Café characters and storylines into his speeches. The Vinyl Café chronicles the misadventures of Dave, the owner of the "Vinyl Cafe", the world's smallest record store, where the motto is "We may not be big, but we're small." The show also features Dave's wife, Morley, their two children, Sam and Stephanie and assorted friends and neighbours. Stuart may tailor his talks to specific groups and convention themes when requested.

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  October 2010

  The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks

  Selected from 15 years of radio-show archives and re-edited by the author, this onderfully eclectic essay collection gives a glimpse into the thoughtful mind at work behind The Vinyl Cafe. From meditations on peacekeeping to praise for the toothpick, The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks runs the gamut from considered argument to light-hearted opinion. Whether McLean is visiting a forgotten corner of the Canadian Shield, a big-city doughnut factory, or Sir John A. Macdonald's gravesite, his observations are absorbing, unexpected, and original. With thought-provoking proposals about the world we live in and introductions to the people he meets in his extensive travels across our country, The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks is informed by McLean's intimate relationship with Canada and Canadians. Yet the collection is also an intriguing look at the writer himself--his past, his present, and his vision of the future. Sometimes funny, often wise, and always entertaining, The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks is sure to provide a wealth of reading pleasure that fans will return to again and again.

  
  
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  September 2009

  Stories From the Vinyl Cafe

  The collection features Canada's much-loved fictional family: Dave, Morley, Stephanie and Sam. Stories from the Vinyl Cafe also introduces a host of other wonderfully imagined characters, such as Margaret Dwyer, a suburban housewife who startles herself by shoplifting a pepperoni sausage, and Flora Perriton, who is consumed with thoughts of lost opportunities when an old friend passes away. Then there's Ed, who-overcome by the death of his favourite rock star-embarks on a pilgrimage to New York City to meet the singer's widow.

  
  
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  September 2009

  Extreme Vinyl Cafe

  If you ask them, Dave and Morley's friends will tell you that no matter how long you've known people, they can still surprise you. After all, no one expects to see a grown man dive into the trunk of his car to chase a rat. And despite what they may claim, few people are actually prepared to have their backyard, never mind their twelve-year-old son, shoot to stardom on YouTube's Most Watched Videos. In Extreme Vinyl Cafe bestselling author Stuart McLean regales us with the wild impulses, and extreme behaviours of Canada's favourite characters at the Vinyl Cafe.

  
  
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  October 2007

  Secrets From the Vinyl Cafe

  Every family has its secrets.When you commit acts of arson during Christmas dinner, attempt to start a life of crime by shoplifting a lipstick, or sink your false teeth into the forbidden pleasure of corn on the cob, it's hard to come clean. But Stuart McLean has got the goods on Dave and his family.Morley, for example, is reluctant to talk about her beauty parlour betrayal and that other man in her life-Mathieu-while Dave tries to avoid mentioning his assault on an innocent dentist. These are the things they wouldn't tell you themselves: lies, white and otherwise, aliases, double lives, and all manner of petty crimes and everyday transgressions. These are the Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe.

  
  
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  October 2007

  Vinyl Cafe Diaries

  The Vinyl Cafe Diaries exposes the answers to intriguing questions in never-before-told (well, okay, told on the radio) stories of strange secrets, odd dreams, high hopes, and, of course, hilarious misadventures. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

  
  
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  October 2006

  Vinyl Cafe Unplugged

  Dave and Morley would no doubt tell you that life is what you make it. Unfortunately for them, that means a compilation tape of mistakes, miscues, misunderstandings and muddle. That's not to say there is anything particularly unusual about the family and friends at the Vinyl Cafe. Like the rest of us, Dave, Morley, Stephanie and Sam are just doing their best to respond to the challenges of modern life. After all, who hasn't started a small home fix-it job only to set fire to walls and destroy whole rooms? Who wouldn't try to toilet-train a cat? Who hasn't created mass hysteria and utter pandemonium at a school concert? Who hasn't lost an aging relative while visiting our nation's capital?

  
  
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  April 2005

  Home From the Vinyl Café