Creative PR

Stuart McLean, host of CBC Radio program The Vinyl Cafe, is a best-selling author, award-winning journalist and humorist.

Named CBC’s Best Program of the Year in 2006, and Best Network Music and Performance Weekly Program in 2005, 2006 and 2007,  The Vinyl Cafe is a mix of music and spoken word.  Humorous fiction and short, whimsical essays paired with performances from both up-and-coming and established singer-songwriters.  Many of the shows are recorded live in front of an audience.

More than 700,000 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.

On the shows popularity in the U.S., Stuart says, “The Vinyl Cafe has been on the air in the United States for nearly three years now, and if you believe the ratings, it is doing pretty well  … which makes me feel happy … to think we have something to say to the people who live in the United States.

I have long thought that there is a big conversation that should be happening between Canadians and Americans – a conversation that, for too long, has been left to politicians and business people. So I am happy to be part of that conversation, happy that people are listening and that the languages we are speaking are the universal and historical languages of stories and music.”

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 and Secrets from the 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.

In 2005, Home from the Vinyl Cafe was published in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, followed, in 2006, by Vinyl Cafe Unplugged. Also in 2006, Home from the Vinyl Cafe was published in hardcover in the USA.

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.