Brendan McLeod does solo stuff, and plays with the band The Fugitives. His novel The Convictions of Leonard McKinley won the Three Day Novel Contest and is published and available for sale. He’s also part of the “kids group for adults” Awesome Face. He gigs a whole bunch.

Supertramp songs mentioned in the interview include the one in the embedded clip to the left there - Goodbye Stranger, Downstream, Rudy and Crime of the Century. Their best known album is Breakfast in America, which features The Logical Song and Take the Long Way Home.

A tidbit from Sharon Olds’ Wikipedia entry is that she declined Laura Bush’s invitation to the Washington Book Festival with an open letter published in The Nation, concluding with the lines: So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.

Ernest Hemingway wrote novels, stories and newspaper articles.  He won the Nobel Prize in 1954. He committed suicide in 1961. The novel Brendan mentions in the interview is

The Sun Also Rises. Other famous ones are A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea.

Basketball is a popular game in the US and Canada, and is has its own professional league.  Some people play it exceptionally well.