Deep beneath the asphalt streets of New York City lurks a breed of creature that’s haunted the subway’s subterranean labyrinth for over a century. No, it’s not sewer alligators or radioactive rats. Instead, we’re speaking of…bookworms. And documentarian Uli Beutter Cohen has been on the hunt to capture their travels.

In 2014, Uli founded the viral Instagram account Subway Book Review, which documents her conversations with subway riders about the books they’re reading. After spending nearly a decade exploring the literary landscape of the underground, Uli has learned: “Readers will tell you what's coming in culture.” Now she’s compiled 170 of her favorite bibliophile encounters in her first book, Between the Lines: Stories from the Underground, which features conversations about books with notable authors like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Min Jin Lee, Roxane Gay, and more. In his debut episode as a guest host, Book Dreams producer Gianfranco Lentini sits down with Uli to discuss her experiences and to consider…what does it mean to belong in a city of 8 million people?

Subway Book Review has been featured on TV, in print, and online by New York Magazine, Esquire, Forbes Women, Glamour, Bustle, Vogue, The Guardian, Refinery 29, The Atlantic, BBC and more. Uli’s interview work and writing about human connection and belonging has been published by The Washington Post, Here Magazine, The Creative Independent, and HuffPost. Today, contributors to Subway Book Review are reporting from 20 cities around the world.

Find us on Twitter (@bookdreamspod) and Instagram (@bookdreamspodcast), or email us at [email protected].

We encourage you to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter for information about our episodes, guests, and more.

Book Dreams is a part of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.

Since you’re listening to Book Dreams, we’d like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows about literature, writing, and storytelling like Storybound and The History of Literature.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices