Merry Wanderer of the Night + TIME

Literary Podcasts or Radio Shows

I've recently started listening to a lot of talk radio and literary podcasts. I thought it was important to do a post showcasing these shows because they provide a lot of great insights into the literary world and really round out my blogging ideas.

By far my favorite literary podcast is Books on the Nightstand. This weekly podcast is hosted by Michael Kindness and Ann Kingman. They both work in the publishing industry, but this podcast isn't full of fancy lingo I can't understand. It's actually very easy on my ears and the podcasts are relatively short because I honestly don't have a lot of free hours to listen to podcasts. On average the podcasts are about twenty-five minutes long. There is usually some kind of book topic, this past week it was cookbooks, and then Ann and Michael each suggest a book and talk a little bit about it. Ann and Michael have great chemistry and their podcast is informative as well as fun to listen to. I subscribe to this podcast through iTunes but you can also download the podcast on their website.

Another great podcast is the New Yorker's monthly fiction podcast. This podcast features an author reading a story by another author and then there is a discussion about the story and why they chose the story they did. This podcast has introduced me to a few writers I would not have otherwise heard of and this is another short one. It's only once a month and about thirty minutes long. Very easy to keep up with!

NPR Books isn't my favorite podcast but I listen to it pretty frequently. It's fairly short, about twenty minutes, and features, reviews, news, and interviews. It's an enjoyable podcast but it doesn't feel as friendly to me as Books on the Nightstand does.

The next podcast isn't exactly a lit show but it is a show about book bloggers. Linus's Blanket's Nicole hosts That's How I Blog, a weekly podcast about blogging books. This is a great podcast that has given me ideas on how I would like to change my blog, and Nicole asks some great questions! It's always interesting and there is also some discussion of books (obviously, what else can you expect from book bloggers) in each episode. You can download these podcasts on Blog Talk Radio.

I'm probably a little biased on this one, but the University of Iowa's radio station has two great literary radio shows. One is the newer Not Your Literati which is hosted by my two pals Pierce and Mackenzie. This show talks about what is up on the undergraduate literary scene every Sunday. There is another show on Tuesdays called The Lit Show, which I sadly don't get to hear very often. You can listen to these shows even if you don't live in Iowa City. You can find the schedule on KRUI's website and download the stream for your music player. Both of these shows are one hour long.

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Literary Podcasts or Radio Shows + TIME