Slop-pocalypse now! Oh yes, folks, the AI nonsense continues to accelerate and Drew has some feelings about it and why you (yes you!) should also be a stick in the mud about it. Then, Sara Yasin joins James Folta to talk about launching The Key, the new lit magazine produced by the Palestine Festival of Literature. Calvin Kasulke also drops by to chat with Drew about Lit Hub's post-Pamela-Paul-corrective of thirteen book reviews that should have run at the NYTBR during the noted transphobe's tenure. To close it out, Casey Scieszka (author of The Fountain) reads her essay "When the Fountain Runs Dry" and Oliver Scialdone recommends diving into Filthy Loot Press.

IN THIS EP:

* "Horror Novel "Shy Girl" Cancelled Over Suspected AI Use"

* "The People Getting Falsely Accused of Using AI"

* The Key

* "What Was Lost: A Queer Accounting of the New York Times Book Review, 2013-2022"

* "Good-bye Pamela Paul"

* "When the Fountain Runs Dry: On Aging, Immortality, and the Illusion of Everlasting Youth"

* Filthy Loot Press

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It's the end of February already! Thank goodness! Drew's reporting in from Pittsburgh, at the annual conference hosted by the American Booksellers Association, and boy oh boy do we have a lot of bookish goodness for you, including...

* the weirdness of early-year reading

* a conversation between Lit Hub's Brittany Allen and Colette Delawalla (CEO of Stand Up for Science) about the Trump Administration's ongoing attempts to gut NASA's research library

* Drew chatting with bookseller Fisher Nash (of Carmichael's in Louisville KY) about the state of bookselling and the wildness of Winter Institute (the aforementioned conference)

* a voicemail from Adam Colman sharing insights into the new season of The Cosmic Library (hint: it involves Proust!)

* Michael Welch on "What We Lose When Our Independent Bookstores Close"

* and a book recommendation from Lit Hub's James Folta!

See you in March!

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The Lit Hub Podcast is hosted and produced by Drew Broussard

The Lit Hub Podcast theme was written and performed by Dani Lencioni of Evelyn

The Lit Hub Podcast is a production of Literary Hub and a part of the Lit Hub Radio network

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When we launched The Lit Hub Podcast in 2024, we promised you a weekly dive into the behind-the-scenes of the literary world—and what a series of weeks it has been! But 2026 looks a lot different than 2024, in so many ways, and so we're going to try something new. Starting this month (February!) we're shifting the podcast release schedule to monthly, on the last Friday of the month. 

It'll be the same vibe you've come to know and love, but you can expect longer episodes, with more staff voices and in-depth explorations—a monthly, instead of weekly, digest of what's been happening at the site and in the larger book-world. 

Thanks so much for listening so far, and we'll see you at the end of the month!

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No episode this week, in solidarity with what we genuinely hope will be something approaching an actual widespread general strike. May you get up to some good trouble—take care of your neighbors, be good to one another!

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This week, Nick Ripatrazone joins Drew to talk about how generative AI is taking away the very dignity of life and why the process is the point of art-making. Then, Aaron Tracy stops by for a chat about his new show, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, and what it has been like to revisit the beloved childhood author as a grown-up.

Also, golly it's a weird bad time still! It's okay if you're having a hard time with it all, because honestly we are too.

PS: it is time to get the bread & milk!!!

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Happy new year! Or, at least, happy new year-of-books! To kick off the year, which is due to be a truly colossal one on the reading front, members of the Lit Hub staff are here to bring you some choice excerpts from our 300+ title Most Anticipated list! SO MANY BOOKS!

(oh hey also: fuck ICE, xoxo) 

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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!

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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!

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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!

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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)...

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