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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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. 

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We're heading towards the end of the year, inexorably and completely — but it ain't over yet! There's still reading time, certainly... but there's also still creativity time. Anna Hogeland drops by to talk about her recent piece, "Creating Without Inhibition: In Praise of Making Bad Art" and then Celia Mattison tells Drew all about the burgeoning trend of sheep on book covers, which she covered in her aptly titled piece: "What's With All the Sheep on Book Covers?" Plus: Ryan Chapman calls in about this year's Booker Prize winner!

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The world is ending... the world is ending... but if the world is ending, that means it hasn't ended yet. 

After seeing The Seat of Our Pants at The Public Theater (running thru at least the end of the month!), it's never been clearer that Thornton Wilder is America's great under-appreciated literary trickster. His keen playful writing combines magical realism, genre-busting humor, literary zip—and there are few people better suited to adapting Wilder than Ethan Lipton. He joins us this week alongside Jeremy McCarter, Wilder's literary executor, for a look into the man's genius, this play's still-vital themes, and why human art will always be the best thing about humanity.

Speaking of humanity: contracts! Aron Solomon explains some of his recent piece, "Writers Beware: On the Dangerous Fine Print of Creative Contract Law" — and then Dayna Totorici of n+1 calls in to tease this year's Bookmatch quiz! (It's open now, you should do it, you should let Drew know what books you got.)

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It's Halloween! Drew's favorite holiday! And so in lieu of a proper episode this week, here's Drew reading Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" — hope that's a treat and not a trick!

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Having done this show for a full year, it means we have some traditions now—and the first one we ever set up, really, was having Ryan Chapman (The Audacity, Riots I Have Known) to join Drew for a chat about the year's Booker Prize shortlist in advance of his big piece forthcoming in the Winter Issue of the Sewanee Review (SUBSCRIBE!)... so, that's basically this episode! They did it again, again recorded live at Rough Draft Bar & Books in Kingston, NY. Tune in for their predictions on the winner, their feelings about the year in fiction, their feelings about the Booker jury's feelings about the year in fiction, and ambient coffee-shop ASMR in the background! Plus, a voicemail from Nicole Brinkley about why we should bring back the mass-market paperback.

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Would spooky season be complete with some Stephen King? Constant reader, I submit to you: no.

This week, Caroline Bicks—the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine—stops by to talk about the power of Stephen King's writing, whether read on the page or read aloud, and why he and Shakespeare have a whole lot in common. Consider it a sneak peek into Monsters in the Archives, her book about diving into Stephen King's archives that's out next spring.

Then, Jaime Green joins Drew to shed some light on the mysterious nature (pun intended) of being Series Editor for The Best American Science & Nature Writing—because the next round of Best American titles comes out next Tuesday! Still no horror, or romance, but a boy can dream.

Plus, at the top of the show, some shout-outs to the watery and the vampiric, the two trends Drew is noticing this October in spooky reading, best summed up by the perfectly-titled Vampires at Sea.

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What evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows, but so too does Thomas Pynchon, we're pretty sure.

This week, we're celebrating the latest from Pynchon with Devin Thomas O'Shea ("Thomas Pynchon Has Been Warning Us About American Fascism the Whole Time") and a wide-ranging conversation about the man's keen eye on American darkness—but before that, our own Oliver Scialdone drops by to chat splatterpunk and why oozy body horror deserves your attention. (Also, if you want to read Oliver's full essay about splatter, you might want to become a member...) Then, to wrap things up, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (Terry Dactyl) calls in to suggest some ways we might all get better at supporting one another and why feeling jealousy might be the right moment to get excited instead. 

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Spooky season is upon us! It's Drew's favorite month and he's got a whole stack of Hallow-reads to keep him company — which has him in generally good spirits (buhdumtshhh) about the future.

This week, Hillary Brenhouse stops in to talk about launching ELASTIC, a new print magazine dedicated to psychedelic art and literature. Then, beloved illustrator Jon Klassen talks with Drew live at Rough Draft about the art of board books, why we should talk to kids about death, and letting go of projects that don't work. It's a fun one!

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