If you’re like me, maybe you don’t need another steam of ingestible content. Maybe you’re looking for a detox, a beach vacation, a new brand of coffee. You might be surprised to hear it, but all of these things go with one of the literary podcasts on this list like wine with cheese. Or beer with potato chips. In fact, I’m here to tell you that this list contains, at the very least, one absolutely indispensable podcast for every would-be writer, overworked book lover, published author, high school poet, and retired librarian. Because sometimes it’s not about catching up on the newest news or the hottest debut, sometimes it’s about taking a bath with a cup of tea on a Sunday morning and listening to famous writers laugh about their MFA students while going nuts about their favorite short story writers (see if you can guess which podcast that is). Sometimes it’s about taking a plane across the Atlantic just to visit a bookstore and pretend it’s still 1922 and Ulysses is all the rage.
The thing is, the book life is about a lot of things and these podcasts cover every single one. Personally, I am not often found without earbuds in my ears–perhaps that is the content warning these podcasts need. Dive into the book-chatter, but don’t go overboard!
If you like being behind the literary scenes…
Otherppl with Brad Listi
If there’s an oddball moment in the life of an author you love, they’re probably talking about it on Otherppl with Brad Listi. Brad Listi, the author of Be Brief and Tell Them Everything and founder of the now defunct, Nervous Breakdown literary magazine, has been talking with contemporary authors about their book sales, writing processes, and just about every other aspect of their lives for over a decade. There’s nearly 1000 interviews and counting, with new episodes dropping multiple times a week.
If you wish you could read all the languages…
Asymptote Podcast
Complimenting Asymptote Journal, a stalwart of the international literary landscape, Vincent Hostak’s new podcast brings dispatches from all over the world. Here, translators and authors outside the anglosphere gather to discuss marginalized languages and literary traditions, the art of translation, and work from Asymptote’s quarterly issues.
If you love short fiction…
The Lonely Voice
This short, short-story-centric podcast takes its name from Frank O’Connor’s definitive study of the form, The Lonely Voice. Throw in cohost Peter Orner, acclaimed short story writer, novelist, and chair of creative writing at Dartmouth College, and you get, for my money, an unparalleled gateway into the world of short fiction. Together with writing professor Yvette Benavides, each episode is a passionate, banterfilled guide to a single story. From Checkhov to Lucia Berlin to Gina Berriault and beyond, the hosts read sections of the text aloud, analyze themes, craft, and so on, tell their own stories about teaching writing or finding a beloved author, and generally bask in the glory of the short story.
If it’s all a question of taste to you…
The Critic and Her Publics
Hosted before a live audience by Merve Emre, author of Paraliterary, this limited series is all about the ever-present, ever-divisive corner of the literary world known as criticism. What is good, what is bad, and who gets to decide? Thankfully, The Critic and Her Publics is not (only) as academic as all that. Each episode invites a contemporary critic to talk about what they do and how they get there, then asks them to perform an act of spontaneous criticism on a surprise object: from Barbie dolls to photographs, we listen to the critics talk through their critical process and make a judgment on the spot. It’s a stimulating mashup of performance art, fun, and high criticism.
If you’ve got your nose to the grindstone…
The Secret Library Podcast
That manuscript sitting on your desk, the one you’ve loved and crafted for years? The Secret Library Podcast rolls up its sleeves and gets down to the nitty gritty of actually publishing it. What is the business of books? What does publishing look like these days? How does a writer even get paid? Host Caroline Donahue, self proclaimed “Book Witch” and author of Writing Through Fear, brings on guests to touch on what might be literature’s biggest taboo–the financials.
The name is in the title…
PW Comics World: More To Come
This weekly podcast is for comic lovers of all stripes. A revolving cast of Publishers Weekly hosts bring the latest in all things comic/manga/graphic novel/memoir, etc. And when I say all things, I really mean it. Episodes are dedicated to festivals, the Marvel Universe, interviews with acquiring editors and imprint leaders, illustrators, and (my personal favorite) Frank Miller!
For the poets and poetry-heads among us…
The New Yorker: Poetry
The New Yorker: Poetry podcast has an enviable archive of poets reading and talking about poets. They’ve been going at it since late-2013, reliably putting out one episode a month, and in that time the show has quietly built a unique sort of library, bringing major voices in contemporary poetry in to speak about 20th classics and each other. I love Kevin Young on John Berryman; John Ashbery on Charles Simic; Evie Shockley on Rita Dove…and so on. These are pairings you can’t make up! Over the years the episodes have, thankfully, gotten longer–stretching from ten minute teasers into thirty and forty minute conversations. Kevin Young, and Paul Muldoon before him, are the best hosts one could ask for–generous, knowledgeable, and giant literary voices in their own right. This is a poet’s podcast gold.
If you love literary landmarks…
The Shakespeare and Company Interview
A live interview podcast straight from one of the world’s most famous bookshops! Having lived (briefly) in Shakespeare and Company, I can attest that each of the podcast’s hundreds of episode capture the warm, book-filled ambience of the small upstairs room where writers like Viet Thanh Nguyen and Annie Ernaux have sat for intimate conversations with Adam Biles, the podcast’s exceedingly well read host. And for everyone who still likes their literary chatter on paper, some of these interviews have recently been collected and published in The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews.
As a bonus, Shakespeare and Company also released a limited podcast on the 100th anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses in 2022 called Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses. A few pages at a time, a hundred different writers, comedians, actors and artist folks read the unabridged text of that mammoth tome.
If you’re running the contemporary lit treadmill…
LARB Radio Hour
As fresh and varied as LARB’s print coverage of all things literature, the journal’s weekly podcast brings on authors at all stages of their careers to speak about, and read from, their most recent projects. From week to week, the show hosts memoirists, nonfiction writers, poets, and the odd novelist as well. Kate Wolf, Medaya Ocher, and Eric Newman, the revolving slate of LARB editor-hosts make this an invaluable source for keeping abreast of contemporary literature and digging into the thinking that generates it.
If no one will start a book club with you…
Book Fight
Over the course of two decades, Barrelhouse has tentacled outwards from a print journal into a literary organization that publishes online and in the real world, an indie book publisher, and a podcast. The latter is called Bookfight, a spontaneous bookclub-cum-weekly show conducted by editors Tom McAllister and Mike Ingram. Each week, a writer guest preselects a book that all three read and then discuss on the podcast. The resulting conversations are not academic, long-winded diatribes–although Tom and Mike are both university professors–they’re freewheeling, laugh-filled chats that mix up life and literary craft with everything else. To wrap up each episode, the guest is asked a series of lightning round questions–“name a book you have often pretended to have read” is my favorite, but, of course there’s “name one writer, living or dead, who you would like to face in a fight.”
For all the isolated writers out there looking for a guide…
#AmWriting
A triumvirate of best-selling authors, NYT usual suspects, and a book coach talk and laugh through the minutiae of craft, the business of getting published, and all the small miseries of being a writer…that sounds like an MFA doesn’t it? #AmWriting has an episode for just about everything and every episode doubles as a small little sanctuary for the embattled, blocked-ridden writers among us to shelter in. KJ, Jennie, and Sarina are level-headed, sincere, and joyous companions to muddle through the writing with.
If you need a carrot and a stick…
Writing Excuses
For writers by writers–that’s the marketing and it’s true. Writing Excuses is a long-lived podcast that brings together a new ensemble of writer-hosts for each season. There are roundtable discussions on craft, the writing life, success, failure, and the inbetweens of it all. Occasional author interviews highlight full time writers and writers who only get to put pen to paper in their down time. At its core, this show is made by people who get what it means to try to write a book, any kind of book, and make a living at it too. Together with #AmWriting, these two shows are one stop shop for every writing-related question under the sun.
If you need your weekly used bookstore fix…
Backlisted
This is the podcasting arm of Unbound, a UK-based publisher that’s made a name by using a crowdfunded model to select and produce new titles. Their audience literally chooses what they release. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that Backlisted takes recommendations for books to be featured on the show, but that’s only one of the show’s features. Backlisted is one of the few podcasts that is dedicated to ordinary old books, not forthcoming titles, not new releases, the books discussed here are old, great, and sometimes forgotten. It’s the podcast equivalent of browsing a used bookshop. Weekly episodes invite a writer (or other literary personality) to come on with Unbound cofounder John Mitchinson and writer/editor Andy Miller (of The Year of Reading Dangerously fame) to discuss a beloved book of their choice. It would be hopeless to try and outline the range of books that get discussed here–episodes highlight writing in translation (Natalia Ginzburg, Dostoyevsky, and on and on), Middle English epics (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), canonical English authors (E.M. Forester), and even a few American titles. My personal favorite is an “American Books Special,” what can I say?
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