MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . “This isn’t exactly ideal, where he wants to make Gracie Mansion a home for the cats. Gracie Mansion is the magnificent home of Fiorello La Guardia and the great mayors, [like] Rudy Giuliani." - Donald Trump, in response to Curtis Sliwa's NYC Republican mayoral bid This morning, Curtis Sliwa's six cats issued an extensive typewritte...

This podcast is a presentation of ⁠ The Meow Library ⁠ . "Doug, Doug Doug Doug Doug Doug. Doug Doug Doug. Doug." - Douglas Scott Wreden, ⁠Doug: A DougDoug Story⁠ (2025) "Meow, Meow Meow Meow Meow. Meow Meow Meow. Meow." - Sam Austen, ⁠Meow: A Novel⁠ (2022) Both Meow: A Novel (Sam Austen, 2022) and Doug: A DougDoug Story (Douglas Scott Wreden, 2025) are often described as “books...

This podcast is a presentation of ⁠ The Meow Library ⁠ . The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025 has been awarded to the Hungarian author ⁠László Krasznahorkai⁠ , “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art," the Swiss Academy announced in a press release this morning. To further reaffirm the power of art, we expound on the impl...

"My prayers are my poems are my prayers." - Matthew McConaughey, Poems and Prayers And now, some prayers for your cat. This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . Matthew McConaughey's Poems and Prayers is available from Penguin Random House and wherever books are sold.

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . Max Lawton’s translation of Schattenfroh represents not merely a feat of linguistic dexterity, but an act of transubstantiation: he renders into English a text whose very atmosphere seems to resist Anglophone sensibilities, and does so with an elegance that preserves both its rigor and its strange vitality. His choices are never pedantic, never...

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . In this week's podcast, Archimedes, the sole feline presence in R.F. Kuang's Katabasis , accuses the author of having cut many of his scenes in response to "anti-feline sentiment" at the HarperCollins office. "One notices an unusual dearth of cats for a 560-page magical-realist novel," he begins. "This is in resp...

“Words are parasites of reality, which have become so engorged with reality’s blood so as to seem, to that ugly French nothing-master’—he grinned—‘like the only real thing, but they are nothing more than a mirage.” — Jordan Castro, Muscle Man Jordan Castro ’s efforts toward an “embodied literature” continue in his sophomore novel, Muscle Man , a claustrophobic, mortifying, and bizarrely liberating...

"Poetry is not useful.” — David Duchovny, Poet In today’s podcast, The Meow Library is proud to present a selection of poems from David Duchovny’s upcoming poetry collection, About Time , read for your cat. This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel . David Duchovny’s About Time is available for preorder from Akashic Books.

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . According to a recent Independent article by Lydia Spencer-Elliott, the elusive " literary man "--long thought extinct--has become further threatened by an ingeniously camouflaged obligate predator, the "performative male reader." While by all appearances a "literary man," the "performative male reader" ( Homo librispretentious ) is in fact anyt...

In a new Harper's piece , Tao Lin traces his recent interests in autism, spirituality, and self-healing to his 4-year relationship with a special-needs cat, Nini, whose ailments and special charm adumbrate the fullness of the human experience--in this world and beyond. This week's podcast translates Lin's must-read essay into language worthy of its subject. This podcast is a presentati...

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . The University of Chicago’s Humanities Department is poised to become one of the largest and most visible casualties of President Trump’s recent defunding of the NEA, with its language departments particularly imperiled. The departments for comparative literature, Germanic studies, Slavic languages and literatures, and South American languages a...

“Consciousness stands in the way of a good life. …the feline mind is one and undivided. Pain is suffered and forgotten, and the joy of life returns.”  – John Gray, Feline Philosophy  Rebecca Van Laer’s Cat (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) packs nine lives of feline wisdom into a slim but satisfying volume. One of these lives is serene, domesticated: a diaristic jaunt through the anxieties, hopes, and o...

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. Luke Bateman, former rugby player and Bachelor star turned BookTok darling, recently scored a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster imprint Atria Books—despite having no prior publishing experience. This deal has set BookTok ablaze with controversy, with critics calling out the publishing industry’s bias toward privilege and celebrity. Yet Bate...

This podcast is a production of The Meow Library . Ocean Vuong’s poetic voice, marked by tender precision and aching vulnerability, speaks in layered silences and elliptical truths—not unlike a cat who only says “meow.” At first glance, the comparison may seem irreverent, but it unveils a profound aesthetic parallel. Like the cat’s single utterance, Vuong’s work often circles a limited lexicon to...

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . This week’s podcast is the first in an ongoing Literary RPG series immersing you and your cat in Neural Whisker Relay , an alternate universe where Egypt is the world’s leading power and cats its apex technologists. Will you and your cat forge a bond strong enough to ensure world domination, or will this world of paranoia and eldritch technologi...

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . On a recent March morning, the Simon & Schuster video team is huddled in the best-sellers corner of McNally Jackson, taping its upcoming web series, Bookstore Blitz. Sean Manning, the flagship imprint’s new publisher, supervises from the sidelines. The concept of the show is simple: Guests get $100 and five minutes for a bookstore shopping s...

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . Krysten Ritter's Retreat can be purchased here . In Krysten Ritter’s Retreat , a novel ostensibly about grifting, murder, and the fractured self, we find not merely a narrative of deception but an ontological crisis wrapped in the velvet paw of postmodern performativity. To fully grasp the layered artifice of Liz Dawson — alias Elizabeth Has...

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . Sophie Kemp's Paradise Logic can be purchased here . What makes a novel worthy of publication? This is a question being honed in on by Simon and Schuster’s rising star Sean Manning , who trafficks in personas — both of new authors and untapped audiences. And nowhere is persona as consubstantial with substance than in Sophie Kemp’ s wildly ch...

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . On February 22nd, 2025 -- International Cat Day -- fans of Vestia Zeta were treated to a heartfelt reading of Sam Austen's Meow: A Novel during an unprecedented livestream that left little doubt as to the Vtuber's true species (she is a cat ). You can watch the complete reading here, or tune into this podcast for the author's reflect...

“To read—and announce oneself as having read—literature in translation is to be tasteful and intelligent, a latter-day cosmopolitan in an age of blighted provincialism.” — Federico Perelmuter, "Against High Brodernism" (Los Angeles Review of Books, 22 Feb. 2025) In his discursive review of László Krasznahorkai’s Herscht 07769 (New Directions, 2024), critic Federico Perelmuter identifies a strain o...

Have I told you I can’t read contemporary novels anymore? I think it’s because I know too many of the people who write them. I see them all the time at festivals, drinking red wine and talking about who’s publishing who in New York. … Why do they pretend to be obsessed with death and grief and fascism—when really they’re obsessed with whether their latest book will be reviewed in the New York Time...

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . Miranda July's All Fours is available for purchase here . Miranda July’s All Fours is, at first glance, a piercing exploration of a middle-aged woman’s sexual and existential awakening. But look closer—squint, perhaps, as though sizing up a mouse—and you’ll see that this is not simply a book about one woman’s journey. It is, in fact, a book...

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . The release of the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown has revived interest in Dylan's obscure 1971 "prose poetry collection," Tarantula . A Dadaist stream-of-consciousness that sits somewhere between Joyce and an early AI phishing bot, Tarantula has been widely dismissed, but has enjoyed a critical resurgence in recent years. In this podcast, w...

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . Controversy surrounding the state of American literacy has stirred following Christopher Nolan's announcement of his Odyssey adaptation , with many prominent social media users having ⁠ no clue what The Odyssey is⁠ . TikToker and Twitch streamer ⁠@hzjoe03⁠ says: The way people are acting around this book is insane. So what if people don’t know w...

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library . "Houllebecq is considered a great contemporary author, and one cannot be said to be keeping abreast of contemporary literature without reading his work." - Karl Ove Knausgaard, The New York Times Book Review This blurb, from the jacket of the American edition of Michel Houellebecq's Submission , has been making the rounds on Twitter, with Knausg...