The Lit Hub Podcast

It was foretold... and now it is here! Yes, that's right: some audio most-anticipated action, featuring some Lit Hub staffers on books that they're super-duper excited about for the back half of 2026. Hope you're all having a nice summer! Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2026, Part Two ( Lit Hub ) "The End of Reading is Here" by Rose Horowitch ( The Atlantic ) The Lit Hub Podcast is a productio...

Tomorrow is Independent Bookstore Day! (If you're listening to this on release day, anyway.) So, in the spirit of heading out to support your local indie(s), we have a very indie-forward episode for you this month. First, Philomena Polefrone from the ABA stops by to explain HR 7661 (the national book ban bill) and why supporting indie bookstores and libraries is more important now than it has ever...

Slop-pocalypse now! Oh yes, folks, the AI nonsense continues to accelerate and Drew has some feelings about it and why you (yes you!) should also be a stick in the mud about it. Then, Sara Yasin joins James Folta to talk about launching The Key , the new lit magazine produced by the Palestine Festival of Literature. Calvin Kasulke also drops by to chat with Drew about Lit Hub's post-Pamela-Paul-co...

It's the end of February already! Thank goodness! Drew's reporting in from Pittsburgh, at the annual conference hosted by the American Booksellers Association, and boy oh boy do we have a lot of bookish goodness for you, including... * the weirdness of early-year reading * a conversation between Lit Hub's Brittany Allen and Colette Delawalla (CEO of Stand Up for Science) about the Trump Administra...

When we launched The Lit Hub Podcast in 2024, we promised you a weekly dive into the behind-the-scenes of the literary world—and what a series of weeks it has been! But 2026 looks a lot different than 2024, in so many ways, and so we're going to try something new. Starting this month (February!) we're shifting the podcast release schedule to monthly, on the last Friday of the month.  It'll be...

No episode this week, in solidarity with what we genuinely hope will be something approaching an actual widespread general strike. May you get up to some good trouble—take care of your neighbors, be good to one another! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

This week, Nick Ripatrazone joins Drew to talk about how generative AI is taking away the very dignity of life and why the process is the point of art-making. Then, Aaron Tracy stops by for a chat about his new show, The Secret World of Roald Dahl , and what it has been like to revisit the beloved childhood author as a grown-up. Also, golly it's a weird bad time still! It's okay if you're having a...

Happy new year! Or, at least, happy new year-of-books! To kick off the year, which is due to be a truly colossal one on the reading front, members of the Lit Hub staff are here to bring you some choice excerpts from our 300+ title Most Anticipated list ! SO MANY BOOKS! (oh hey also: fuck ICE, xoxo)  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19...

Squeaking in one more episode for the year, and we promise it's a real treat! Kat Abughazaleh (Democratic candidate for the IL-09) talks with Lit Hub's James Folta about why, if elected, she wants to be sworn in on Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower and the absolute joys of reading science-fiction, particularly (but also very much not limited to) Becky Chambers and Pierce Brown. Then, a holi...

It's the end of the year! Which means: best-of lists, abounding. Maybe you've seen our Favorite Books of 2025 list, or our Best (Old) Books We Read in 2025 list, or the 100 Notable Small Press Books of 2025 list spearheaded by Miriam Gershow? Whether or not you've combed the lists, we've got some staff here to share some of their favorite reads from 2025 and then a chat with Miriam about putting t...

It's the holiday season! The season of advent! And if you're listening to this, then you probably need a Short Story Advent Calendar in your life. Enter Michael Hingston and Natalie Olsen, proprietors of Hingston & Olsen, the very cool Canadian small press that does (among other neat projects) just such an advent calendar! They stop by to chat about the origins of the project and the press, wh...

It's a Thanksgiving-week episode, which means—hey, we're thankful for you! Thanks for listening to the show, thanks for being a part of the Lit Hub community and the bookish community and the community that (hopefully?) gives a damn about leaving the world at least a little better than you found it. We're also thankful for the great arts organizations that support our communities, whether that's s...

A time of celebration is now upon us: the literary awards year has closed, which means that it's basically gravy from here til the end of the year. That's right, with the National Book Awards this week, we really see the end of the road for 2025 and now we can all just chill out a bit. Right?  Right ?? (plus a shout-out to the Goldsmiths and Cercador Prizes, two lesser-known prizes that you s...

We're heading towards the end of the year, inexorably and completely — but it ain't over yet! There's still reading time, certainly... but there's also still creativity time. Anna Hogeland drops by to talk about her recent piece, "Creating Without Inhibition: In Praise of Making Bad Art" and then Celia Mattison tells Drew all about the burgeoning trend of sheep on book covers, which she cover...

The world is ending... the world is ending... but if the world is ending, that means it hasn't ended yet .  After seeing  The Seat of Our Pants at The Public Theater (running thru at least the end of the month!), it's never been clearer that Thornton Wilder is America's great under-appreciated literary trickster. His keen playful writing combines magical realism, genre-busting humor, lit...

It's Halloween! Drew's favorite holiday! And so in lieu of a proper episode this week, here's Drew reading Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" — hope that's a treat and not a trick! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Having done this show for a full year, it means we have some traditions now—and the first one we ever set up, really, was having Ryan Chapman ( The Audacity, Riots I Have Known ) to join Drew for a chat about the year's Booker Prize shortlist in advance of his big piece forthcoming in the Winter Issue of the Sewanee Review ( SUBSCRIBE! )... so, that's basically this episode! They did it again, aga...

Would spooky season be complete with some Stephen King? Constant reader, I submit to you: no. This week, Caroline Bicks—the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine—stops by to talk about the power of Stephen King's writing, whether read on the page or read aloud, and why he and Shakespeare have a whole lot in common. Consider it a sneak peek into Monsters in the Ar...

What evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows, but so too does Thomas Pynchon, we're pretty sure. This week, we're celebrating the latest from Pynchon with Devin Thomas O'Shea ( "Thomas Pynchon Has Been Warning Us About American Fascism the Whole Time" ) and a wide-ranging conversation about the man's keen eye on American darkness—but before that, our own Oliver Scialdone drops by to chat...

Spooky season is upon us! It's Drew's favorite month and he's got a whole stack of Hallow-reads to keep him company — which has him in generally good spirits (buhdumtshhh) about the future. This week, Hillary Brenhouse stops in to talk about launching ELASTIC , a new print magazine dedicated to psychedelic art and literature. Then, beloved illustrator Jon Klassen talks with Drew live at Rough Draf...

Many of us were told or taught that the internet would be permanent — that the things we post, whether on social media or a blog or even a real-life website like Literary Hub, would last forever. But much of the last decade or so has proved that that's not true! Things can disappear at the blink of an eye — or the flash of a very rich person's temper. Maria Bustillos is no stranger to the dis...

Featuring Gretchen Felker-Martin, Erica Cerulo & Claire Mazur of 831 Stories, and a phone call from Chill Subs! It's a scary time to be speaking up for what we believe in, but these are the times when we must simply speak  even louder in support of the good and just and right. Sometimes, that means calling it like it is when a hatemonger dies and standing firm in the face of ensuing vitri...

Happy birthday to us, it's been a year since we launched The Lit Hub Podcast! Not that you'd know it, because Drew completely forgot and didn't include a word about it in the episode itself. But still, we're proud!! This week, Drew talks to Boris Kachka of The Atlantic about their new travel-writing series " The Writer's Way " (featuring the likes of Lauren Groff visiting Lady Murasaki's Kyoto and...

September means back-to-school! Hooray for learning! Hooray for fall! There's definitely not anything bad or weird going on as relates to education, the weather, spooky season, or anything else... First up this week, Joelle Renstrom talks with Drew about being a teacher in 2025 and her recent essay for the site about Cliffs Notes. Then, Molly Odintz joins Drew to chat with Max Booth III about Ghou...

Superheroes are back, baby! You  will believe a man can fly — but did you know that such things were happening in the decades before Siegel and Schuster created Kal-El in 1938? Joshua Glenn, editor of  Before Superman: Superhumans of the Radium Age and overall series editor of MIT Press's Radium Age Science Fiction series, stops by to tell Drew about the Radium Age of SF and discovering...