Some jobs stick with you long enough to become writing a book of essays about. Alex Boyd worked a bookshop in the 1990s, the same kind of job George Orwell once described in the 1930s, and found that almost nothing about the customers had changed.

His collection, eighteen essays deep, moves through a warehouse job that followed four years of studying English literature, a piece on faith and searching for meaning beyond yourself, and a set of book reviews for titles Alex thinks never got the attention they deserved. He also breaks down what he took from Orwell’s writing on clarity, the instinct to make something small and specific feel universal to any reader.

The conversation lands on something worth sitting with: everyone has a story worth collecting, and the only difference between a good storyteller and a bad one is whether they actually start writing it down.

Topics: essay collection, Alex Boyd author, George Orwell influence, faith and meaning, Canadian writer

GUEST: Alex Boyd | @‌alexboydwriter

Originally aired on2026-07-06