Literary Podcasters Best of 2016 (and Most Anticipated in 2017)

We love books and we love podcasts, so it’s a treat when the two mix. From bookclubs for your ears to literary criticism, audio storytelling to author interviews and intimate chats about words and life, we love a good binge-listen over the holidays. As we reflect on the past year and gear up for 2017, we’ve exchanged emails with some of our favorite literary podcasters to find out what they’re looking forward to in 2017, along with some of their favorite books, cultural moments and podcasts of 2016. Prepare to add significantly to your TBR pile…

[And of course, we mustn’t fail to mention our own podcast, A Phone Call from Paul, in which the inimitable Paul Holdengraber telephones a literary friend and sees what they’re up to. Check it out!]

Angela Ledgerwood from Lit Up

For new listeners… Tell us what they can expect of your podcast, in a few words.
It’s a casual and candid chat with some of the world’s most provocative writers about their lives, the relationships that shape us all, and the writing life.

Which book are you most looking forward to in 2017?
The Idiot by Elif Batuman.

What has been your favorite read this year?
Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing With Feathers.

And which has been your favorite cultural moment this year?
Instead of a single moment, I’d say it’s been a year of observing the grace and dignity of President Obama and Michelle. Alec Baldwin’s Trump impressions on SNL were incredible but now anything Trump-related fills me with anxiety.

Let’s make a little chain… What podcast would you recommend, other than yours?
Desert Island Discs by Kirsty Young.

And which podcast episode have you most enjoyed recording in 2016?
That’s almost impossible to answer. If I have to I’d say it’s a tie between Stephanie Danler, Siri Hustvedt and Julia Baird.

What’s your favorite book of all time?
Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Katy Waldman from Slate’s Audio Book Club

Tell potential new listeners what they can expect of your podcast, in a few words.
Critics argue passionately (but from a place of love) about the books on everyone’s minds.

Which book(s) are you most looking forward to in 2017?
The Idiot by Elif Batuman and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders.

What has been your favorite read this year?
I loved a lot of books this year! I tried to describe a few of them here. Could have easily included Nadja Spiegelman on family narratives and my brilliant colleague Jessica Winter’s debut, Break in Case of Emergency. And then—this didn’t come out this year—but I finally read Are You My Mother?, by Alison Bechdel, and was blown away.

And what has been your favorite cultural moment this year?
Hmm. Not sure this is a discrete moment, but: even though thinking about all the women who wore pantsuits to vote—and, more broadly, the progressive coalition that flourished behind Hillary Clinton—makes me deeply sad right now, I think Democrats’ articulation of their vision, with all the attendant pushes for diversity in the arts, and all of the writers and musicians and actors who came out to stand against Trump, was one of the most inspiring cultural experiences of 2016. Hope we can keep it up.

Which podcast would you recommend, other than yours?
Can it be another Slate podcast? Our culture gabfest is awesome. Also pretty obsessed with 2 Dope Queens and Nerdette.

And which podcast episode have you most enjoyed in 2016?
I can’t pick a favorite, but I really liked the Vulture TV podcast’s discussion of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and the depiction of trauma on television. Also Invisibilia’s whole second season was great.

David Naimon from Between the Covers

Tell us what new listeners can expect of your podcast, in a few words.
The podcast is centered around conversations about an author’s latest work and the craft of writing it. But what I think makes the show distinctive is that I try to highlight writing that crosses or blurs genres, writing that travels the space between essay and poetry, fiction and nonfiction, poetry and fiction, or which borrows elements from one or the other in inventive ways. I also try to juxtapose episodes with authors who probably don’t share much of a readership. So if you love the futuristic worlds of Neal Stephenson you may discover to your surprise that you also love Mary Ruefle, or at least enjoy being dropped down into a world that seems alien to you and looking around. Lastly, I’d say that I’m actively trying to cultivate a diversity of perspectives on the show. Whether it be gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, or diversity in the forms and subcultures of literature represented, it’s an ongoing process and aspiration to cultivate a varied roster of guests on Between the Covers.

What book(s) are you most looking forward to in 2017?
Two that come immediately to mind are Layli Long Soldier’s poetry collection Whereas and Kiese Laymon’s novel And So On. Fingers crossed they will tour through Portland so I can have them on the show. And like so many people, I can’t wait for George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo, the long-awaited first novel from one of my favorite short story writers.

What has been your favorite read this year?
In poetry, Tyehimba Jess’s Olio is the collection that stuck with me more than any other. People often think “difficult” and “inaccessible” when they hear the word experimental. And Olio is by far the most experimental book in any genre that I’ve read in 2016, the most formally daring and innovative. But if you were to ask me what the most emotionally engaged, heart-centered, broken open, and politically relevant book I read in 2016 it would also be Olio.

Proxies by Brian Blanchfield is the most memorable essay collection I read this year. This series of seemingly random meditations (e.g. On Sardines, On Housesitting, On Man Roulette) is organized in the order that Brian wrote them and thus we the readers find ourselves discovering the subterranean connections and progressions across one essay to the next. He wrote Proxies with two constraints: 1) to rely only on memory, denying himself access to outside sources and 2) to continue to write any given essay until he himself felt unsettled, until he felt implicated in a meaningful way in the exploration of the topic at hand. Like Olio, Proxies is inventive, erudite and deeply moving.

My favorite novel of the year was Seeing Red by the Chilean writer Lina Meruane. It is a story about a woman who goes suddenly blind that is nevertheless an incredibly visual read. The prose, the syntax pulses with life and color. The sentences spill over with anger, nastiness, love and desperation. It is her first book translated into English. And I’m hoping Deep Vellum will translate them all. I’ll definitely be first in line to read them if they do.

What has been your favorite cultural moment this year?
The gathering of 300 Native American tribes at Standing Rock to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. It’s heartening to see their coordinated determination, their vision on behalf of all of us.

Who has been your favorite guest ever on your own podcast? And your most surreal moment?
I can’t pick a favorite honestly though I definitely have to pinch myself when sitting across from someone like Ursula K. Le Guin or Lorrie Moore or Claudia Rankine. The Mary Gaitskill interview was probably the most surreal. If she didn’t like a question, she not only didn’t respond to it, but didn’t acknowledge it had been asked at all. Thanks to the wonders of editing, however, you probably can’t tell anything is unusual if you listen to the interview.

Which podcast would you recommend, other than yours?
Brian Blanchfield, in partnership with the University of Arizona Poetry Center and KXCI radio in Tucson, hosts the incredible show Speedway and Swan. Every two weeks Brian and a rotating co-host read poems and play music. I’m addicted to this program and have listened to each episode multiple times. I always finish an episode feeling more equipped to face the world.

And which podcast episode have you most enjoyed in 2016?
Seamus Heaney’s hilarious meditation on bogs at the beginning of episode 29 of Speedway and Swan is priceless.

What is your favorite book of all time?
You probably realize by now that I have trouble with the ‘favorite’ questions. I don’t have one favorite book but some of the most memorable ones for me include Mrs. Dalloway, Middlemarch, Magic Mountain, Pale Fire, 2666, and Don Quixote.

Catherine Burns, artistic director of The Moth

Tell us what they can expect of your podcast, in a few words.
The Moth is all about people from a wide variety of backgrounds taking the stage to tell true, personal stories without notes in front of a live audience. In the coming months, we’ll feature stories from the actor John Turturro, a Sudanese refugee (who happens to be one of the funniest women I’ve ever met), and an astronaut who admits to being afraid of heights.

Which books are you most looking forward to in 2017?
The Price of Illusion by Joan Juliet Buck. Joan is a many-time Moth storyteller, and one of the most thoroughly original and hilarious people I have ever known. She is the only American to ever be the editor-in-chief of Paris Vogue. Her memoir is sure to be a dazzling account of life jumping between the creative inner circles of London, Paris and New York, but knowing Joan it will also be completely accessible to non-fashionistas such as myself.

What has been your favorite read this year?
In nonfiction, Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise. Krista has spent years interviewing the most soulful and intelligent minds of our time for her radio show On Being. The best of what she’s learned can be found in this gorgeous volume. I can’t think of a book more relevant to where we are right now in history. In fiction, Miss Jane by Brad Watson. Inspired by the true story of his own great aunt, Watson explores the life of Miss Jane Chisolm, born in rural, early 20th-century Mississippi with a genital birth defect that stands in the way of the central “uses” for a woman in that time and place—namely, sex and marriage. Jane’s humor and humanity won me over—I wanted her to jump out of the pages of the book and be friends with me.

And what has been your favorite cultural moment this year?
Seeing Aung San Suu Kyi become the effective leader of Myanmar. She spent more than 20 years in jail for standing up to a brutal dictator. I didn’t think I’d see her release in my lifetime, much less get to finally take her rightful place as part of the leadership of the country. My heart has been full watching her finally get a chance to lead her people.

Which podcast would you recommend, other than yours?
I adore The Memory Palace podcast, which is hosted by the brilliant Nate DiMeo. Each episode takes you into a specific time in the past, often as if you are a person living in that time. I first got hooked on an episode about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. I knew a lot about the building of this iconic bridge, and honestly didn’t think there was much more I could learn. I was wrong. Nate pulled me into the perils and challenges of that construction site in a completely fresh way. I felt like I was there, deep under the water, digging through the muck.

And which podcast episode have you most enjoyed in 2016?
It would have to be a tie between Tracy Clayton and Heben Nigatu interviewing Hillary Clinton for Another Round and Krista Tippett talking to Tiffany Shlain for On Being. Tracy and Heben’s interview of Clinton brought out her sense of humor and fierceness in a way that no other interview I’ve ever heard with Clinton ever has—I loved it. And I was so inspired listening to Tiffany, the founder of the Webbies, aka “the Oscars of the internet” talk about reframing technology as an expression of the best of what humanity is capable, with all the complexity that entails.

Which is your favorite book of all time?
In nonfiction: Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup. Kate is the Chaplain to the Maine Game Wardens, so she’s the one waiting with you if your child is lost in the woods. Her book will break your heart, but also make you laugh out loud over and over. If I could buy everyone I love one book and force them to read it, it would be this one, which is ultimately about how to hold space for people during difficult times. In fiction: The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Tartt won the Pulitzer Prize two years ago, for The Goldfinch, but my heart will always belong to The Secret History, her 1992 debut which tells the story of a group of classics students who murder their classmate and then cover it up (I’m not giving anything away—the first line of the book is, “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”—the genius of the book is that it’s all about the why and how, not the who and what.)

The staff at The Organist

For new listeners… Tell us what they can expect of your podcast, in a few words.
If there is an intersection between pop music, linguistics, acoustic architecture, and the study of the human sensorium, then The Organist podcast is the gray sedan idling absentmindedly at the green light. This season we’ll feature segments on Paul Bowles’s Moroccan field recordings, a cultural history of the tape recorder, new audio fiction by top-shelf writers, and the chance to listen along in real time as our host slowly goes blind.

Which books are you most looking forward to in 2017?
The Explainers and The Explorers by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah: the debut collection by the celebrated essayist (and Believer contributor) that examines 21st-century America within the context of what it means to be black, brave, and self-defined.

The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead by Chanelle Benz: A first-time collection of formally experimental short stories thematically linked with “lives across history marked by violence and longing.”

Becoming Leonardo by Mike Lankford: A jazz drummer writing on Da Vinci!

The Inkblots by Damion Searls: The first biography of Hermann Rorschach by a brilliant writer and translator. (Bonus: do an image search for “Hermann Rorschach” and then marvel at how strangely hot he was)

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge: A new novel from one of our favorite writers explores a new angle on the life of HP Lovecraft: “a horror story without magic or monsters.”

What has been your favorite read this year?
Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture by Jace Clayton: New music writing that opens up a series of boxes to find—inside the geopolitics, inside the global econ, inside the much-needed endorsement deals, inside the new technology—a dance party inside a teen rec center. A book that finds fascination in the contradictions each step of the way.

Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?: Stories by Kathleen Collins. A long-lost manuscript by the late filmmaker, composed of hybrid shorts that reflect the writer’s cinematic eye and interest in black women’s intellectual subjectivity.

The Tale of Shikanoko by Lian Hearn is a four-part medieval Japanese fantasy series written by a scholar of ancient texts. Spare, refreshing prose and dark sorcery.

Who has been your favorite guest ever on your own podcast?
Christopher Knowles, an extraordinary poet who suffered brain damage in the womb, was a subject who required the interviewer, our executive producer Ross Simonini, to unlearn his approach to interviewing.

Which podcast would you recommend, other than yours?

For lovers of philosophy: The Partially Examined Life

For lovers of poetic ranting: Plant Liker by Steve Roggenbuck

For lovers of Kanye: Watching the Throne

For lovers: Why Oh Why?

For lovers who then became parents on long drives with story-hungry children squirming in the backseat: The Alien Adventures of Finn Caspian

And which podcast episode have you most enjoyed in 2016?
“Are you Kinesthetically Literate?” on the ReWild Yourself podcast. An interview with Tom Myers, one of the great somatic thinkers around. We also enjoyed Terry Gross’ awkward conversation with Donald Glover.

What is your favorite book of all time?
Miles: The Autobiography by Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe taught us about the importance of the word “motherfucker” in literature.

The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollett: the hilarity, the ribaldry, the stink of 18^th-century England surge off the page into contemporary nostrils!

Carrie Plitt and Octavia Bright of Literary Friction

For new listeners, tell us what they can expect of your podcast, in a few words.
A monthly conversation about books and ideas between two friends, with themes inspired by our author guests ranging from breakfast to corpses. Our aim is to get in-depth interviews and think seriously about literature, but also to be fun, irreverent, and not take ourselves too seriously.

Which books are you most looking forward to in 2017?
Carrie: I’m most looking forward to reading Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. He’s one of the best short story writers working today—his stories are infused with the utmost humanity—and I can’t wait to see what he does in his first novel about Abraham Lincoln, of all people.

Octavia: I’m excited about The City Always Wins by Omar Robert Hamilton—it’s about the Egyptian revolution and everything that sprung from it. So, super relevant, and I always love Hamilton’s prose.

What has been your favorite read this year?

Carrie: The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson.

Octavia: The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride.

What has been your most surreal moment while hosting the podcast?
Hearing Caitlin Doughty, the author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes talk about how fat melts in a crematorium. It didn’t help that we were recording the summer in an incredibly hot and stuffy room. On the plus side, she did say that she would love to perform Octavia’s death rites.

What is your favorite book of all time?
We both hate answering this question, because our answers change every day. So here are our favorite books today:

Octavia: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

Carrie: The End of the Affair by Graham Greene.

What has been your favorite cultural moment of 2016?
The publication of The Good Immigrant. It was a combination of really important, and necessary content about what it means to be BAME in Britain today and also a triumph for non-traditional indie publishing.

Anything else?
One of the podcasts that inspired us from the start is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast with Deborah Treisman. If you haven’t already listened, subscribe immediately! It’s completely wonderful.

Stig Abell from TLS Voices

For new listeners… Tell us what they can expect of your podcast, in a few words.
Two presenters (the lovely Thea Lenarduzzi and me) talk about the best articles and ideas in the TLS with the writers who came up with them. We are a companion to your commute, and hopefully a guide to books and authors who you want to know more about.

Which book(s) are you most looking forward to in 2017?
I am hearing good things about George Saunders’ first proper novel: Lincoln in the Bardo.  Historical fiction and Americana are two of my guilty pleasures, and so this should be fun. It’s the bicentennial of Jane Austen’s death, so I am looking forward to re-reading all of her novels too.

What has been your favorite read this year?
Golden Hill by Francis Spufford and Psmith Journalist by P. G. Wodehouse. I’ve really enjoyed reading the TLS too, as it happens.

And what has been your favorite cultural moment this year?
The all-encompassing, President-Elect-baiting triumph of Hamilton, set to come to the UK in 2017.

This is not exactly a favorite, but I thought the times in which people gathered together to commemorate the deaths of icons (Ali, Bowie, Prince, Cohen) gave some hope in a year where people generally congregated to throw rocks at each other.

Who has been your favorite guest on your own podcast?
I enjoyed talking to Richard Ford (whose novels I have admired for yonks) about how he wouldn’t vote for Trump or Hillary.

And your most surreal moment?
We speak to lots of people in the podcast on Skype. One major author (who I shall not name) did the interview thinking the feed was purely audio. Sadly, it was not, and we sat there staring at his naked body throughout.

What podcast would you recommend, other than yours?
In the literary world, I enjoy the New Yorker Fiction podcast. I also love This American Life.  And, in the realm of American sports (which may be a little niche for your readers), The Bill Simmons Podcast.

What is your favorite book of all time?
Can I have three (four if you include the complete works of Shakespeare)? American Tabloid by James Ellroy, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, and The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway.

Andrew Broussard and CD Hermelin of So Many Damn Books

For new listeners… Tell us what they can expect of your podcast, in a few words.
Drew: Two kinda weird guys who really love books.

Christopher: Talking in book titles, the joy of being a reader, ersatz cocktails, and space age easy listening jazz.

Which books are you most looking forward to in 2017?
Christopher: So many! Catherine Lacey’s The Answers, George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo, Edan Lepucki’s Woman No. 17, Alissa Nutting’s Made for Love… and these are before The Millions puts out their Most Anticipated list!

Drew: SO many. All of the above plus John Darnielle’s Universal Harvester, Jeff VanderMeer’s Borne, Joshua Mohr’s Sirens, Tracy Chevalier’s New Boy, the latest Harry Hole thriller from Jo Nesbø…

What has been your favorite read this year?
Drew: Alvaro Enrigue’s Sudden Death. I had so much fun with that book, as though I was playing with it instead of just reading it. Smart, tricky, silly, and it set me down a path of reading a ton of lit-in-translation from authors doing similar stuff who I might not have found otherwise.

Christopher: Emma Cline’s The Girls delivered on hype, which is incredibly difficult to do, and then led me down a satisfying rabbit hole of related reads. But I think my favorite thing this year was my experience reading IT by Stephen King.

What has been your most surreal moment you’ve lived, hosting the podcast?
Drew: Definitely that time I didn’t yet know I had mono and so I don’t remember the entire recording of an episode (won’t tell you which one, though).

Christopher: It’s always a little surreal, to have authors we love over to my apartment. Hannah Pittard brought her sister with her, and it was especially surreal to have her in the other room, listening but not participating, and then reviewing our interactions in the breaks. Always nice to be reminded how thin my walls are.

Which podcasts would you recommend, besides yours?
Drew: I can’t get enough of The Adventure Zone (The McElroy Brothers playing D&D with their dad) and I’ve recently fallen hard for The Orbiting Human Circus of the Air, about a fictional radio show broadcast from a ballroom at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Christopher: I recommend Roderick on the Line, a weekly, nearly unedited friendly phone call between John Roderick and Merlin Mann.

And which podcast episode have you most enjoyed in 2016?
Drew: Brad Whitford talking about “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen” on The West Wing Weekly.

Christopher: Tom Scharpling put together an election night episode of The Best Show that was unbelievable to listen to. Pretending like he was rebroadcasting a lost episode from 2006, he slowly tipped his hand, culminating in a sound collage that responded to the election results in sad, surreal form.

What is your favorite book of all time?
Drew: An impossible question, although it does rotate between a list of ten or so. Right now, it’s probably Laurence Durell’s The Alexandra Quartet.

Christopher: The Secret History by Donna Tartt. She reads the audiobook, which is unmissable.

Steve Wasserman from Read Me Something You Love

For new listeners… Tell us what they can expect of your podcast, in a few words.
Every couple of weeks I take a theme (abandonment, loneliness, exile, guilt, surrender) and read aloud a piece of literature that touches on that theme. Usually it’s a short story, but sometimes it’s poetry or a literary essay. The rest of the show riffs on that theme via the chosen piece either with a guest or in a loose, freely associative way with the podcast listener.

Which books are you most looking forward to in 2017?
I’m interested to see what David Shields is going to pull out of his reality-hungry hat with Other People: Takes & Mistakes. Also Sarah Manguso’s 300 Arguments looks intriguing. What to make of a book of aphorisms in a culture deluged by aphoristic expression?

What has been your favorite read this year?
Waybe Koestenbaum’s Notes On Glaze, Mark Greif’s Against Everything, Emily Witt’s Future Sex, Peter Orner’s Am I Alone Here?, Melissa Holbrook Pierson’s The Secret History of Kindness. Best short story collection for me this year was a throw-up between Greg Jackson’s Prodigals and Enrique Vila-Matas’s Vampire in Love.

Which podcast would you recommend, other than yours?
KCRW’s Bookworm, Slate’s Culture Gabfest, Selected Shorts, Miette’s Bedtime Story podcast. I can’t get enough of The New Yorker Fiction podcast or their Writer’s Voice strand. I wish every literary mag had something in this vein. For poetry and creative nonfiction, I love what Rachel Zucker is doing with Commonplace: Conversations with Poets (and Other People).

And which podcast episode have you most enjoyed in 2016?
Colin Barrett’s reading of Anhedonia, Here I Come for The Writer’s Voice.

What is your favorite book of all time?
Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet (even though I have yet to finish it—he had the same problem).