The Lit Hub Podcast

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 holiday tradition is cemented: Jonny Diamond reads "A Visit From St. Nicholas" by Clement-Clarke Moore! Happy end-of-year, welcome Yule, see you in 2026—may it be better and brighter than 2025! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 together this ambitious Small Press list! (If you want to participate in the 2026 Small Press list, more details at Miriam's site here!) A very happy holidays to all of you from all of us — what a great year in reading, and what an even better year we've got coming up in 2026! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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, why they're switching it up this year with a Kevin Wilson-curated "12 Days of Stories" instead, and Drew fully geeks out about it. Then, Brittany Allen, Calvin Kasulke, and Olivia Rutigliano join Drew to acknowledge the passing of the great Tom Stoppard, playwright and screenwriter extraordinaire. Come for the stories of their first Stoppard experiences, stay for the heartwarming musing about Stoppard's impact on their lives! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 something pretty local like WaveFarm and WGXC and Northern Spy Reading Series in the Hudson Valley or something national like Authors Against Book Bans. Our first guest this week is from the former (it's our own Jonny Diamond reading from George Orwell as part of last week's "Fall of Freedom" programming across the country) and our second guest is from the latter (Maggie Tokuda-Hall, one of the national leaders of AABB). It's always the right time to support the organizations across the country that do good work, but it's the end-of-year giving season and if you've got the scratch to help out, you could do a lot worse than an organization like Authors Against Book Bans — so donate! And if you've got a bit left after that, become a Lit Hub member, so we don't ever have to do a full-on pledge drive episode (although maybe we will someday, for fun)... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 should all be following.) Anyway, in the spirit of celebration, James Folta and Oliver Scialdone drop in to talk about the latest Literary Bracket ("What Was Literary Twitter?", running now through next Tuesday) and to eulogize those heady days of Lit Twit. Then, Peter Coviello chats with Drew about his piece for the site "Maybe Don't Talk to the New York Times about Zohran Mamdani" and expounds on why it is we need to be much more wary of the things elite institutions are trying to sell us.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.