The 14 Best Literature Podcasts (2026)

David Naimon is probably the best literary interviewer working in podcasting right now. Between The Covers, produced in partnership with Milkweed Editions and Tin House, features long-form conversations with fiction writers, poets, and nonfiction authors that regularly stretch past ninety minutes. This is not a show for people who want quick writing tips. It is for readers and writers who want to sit inside a conversation about language, form, and why certain books matter.

Naimon prepares obsessively for each interview, and it shows. His guests have included Pulitzer winners, National Book Award finalists, and international literary figures. He asks the kinds of questions that make writers pause and think, not just recite their usual press tour answers. The show also features a mini-series called Crafting with Ursula, where contemporary writers discuss their own practice alongside the work of Ursula K. Le Guin. That series alone is worth the subscription.

With over 300 episodes and a 4.8-star rating from nearly 500 reviews, Between The Covers has earned its reputation as one of the most intellectually serious literary podcasts around. Recent guests have ranged from memoirists to experimental poets to graphic artists. If you care about the art of writing, not just the mechanics, this show will challenge you to think harder about your own work. Episodes drop every couple of weeks, and each one rewards close listening.

The London Review of Books is one of those publications that people either read devotedly or pretend to have read, and their podcast captures exactly why it inspires that kind of loyalty. Hosted by Thomas Jones and Malin Hay, with James Butler handling the fortnightly On Politics segment, the show delivers weekly conversations that move fluidly between literature, politics, history, and cultural criticism. One episode might cover Don Quixote, the next the politics of asylum in Britain, the next a deep read of Dickens.

With 430 episodes in the archive, there's a massive back catalog to explore. The LRB Podcast benefits from access to the magazine's roster of contributors, which means the guests tend to be serious thinkers who actually have something to say rather than people doing the standard book tour circuit. Recent episodes have tackled everything from Jessica Mitford's activism to the AI market bubble to Palestinian photography. The political content is unapologetically left-leaning, which will either appeal to you or not. Audio quality can be inconsistent, and some episodes feel more focused than others, but the best installments are genuinely brilliant. The companion Close Readings series offers deeper literary analysis for subscribers. At 4.5 stars from 257 ratings, this sits comfortably among the most intellectually ambitious literary podcasts available. If you want your book talk served alongside real-world engagement, the LRB delivers.

Carrie Plitt, a literary agent, and Octavia Bright, a writer and academic, have been co-hosting Literary Friction since 2015, and their decade-long friendship gives the show a warmth and intellectual chemistry that feels earned rather than performed. Each monthly episode centers on a theme -- novellas, masculinity, race, translation -- and weaves together author interviews, curated book recommendations, and the kind of freewheeling literary discussion that makes you want to grab a notebook.

Episodes run about 45 to 60 minutes, and the hosts balance cerebral analysis with genuine casualness. One reviewer put it well: it sounds like two knowledgeable friends arguing about books at a pub, except the friends happen to work in publishing and academia. The show also features musical interludes and shorter minisodes between the main episodes. After a brief hiatus, the podcast returned in late 2025, which longtime listeners greeted with relief.

With 158 episodes and a 4.8-star rating from 184 reviews, Literary Friction has built a devoted audience over its ten-year run. The thematic structure sets it apart from most book podcasts, which tend to organize around individual titles or release dates. By approaching literature through ideas rather than just new releases, Plitt and Bright surface connections between books that a straightforward review show would miss. The London-based perspective also provides a welcome counterpoint to the American-dominated book podcast scene. If you want literary conversation that feels both smart and companionable, this show has been delivering that combination for a decade.

Charlotte Shane and Jo Livingstone started Reading Writers in 2024, and in just a couple of years it has become one of the freshest voices in literary podcasting. The format is simple but effective: each episode begins with the two hosts catching up on what they've been reading lately, then a guest writer joins to talk passionately about a book that matters to them. The guest picks are often surprising and always specific, which keeps things from ever feeling like a generic recommendation show.

Recent guests have included Hanif Abdurraqib discussing Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place, Torrey Peters on a book about plant intelligence, and Jamie Hood making a case for Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. Season 3 brought a partnership with Bookforum Magazine, which has sharpened the show's critical edge. Shane and Livingstone are both working writers with distinct tastes, and they're not afraid to disagree with each other or push back on a guest's take. That honesty gives the show a texture that more established podcasts sometimes lose over time. With 34 episodes across three seasons and a 4.8-star rating, Reading Writers is still building its audience, but the people who've found it tend to become devoted listeners. It's the kind of podcast where you finish an episode and immediately add three books to your reading list. Hosted on Acast with Patreon support available for those who want more.

Heather Ordover has been serializing classic literature one chapter at a time since 2006, making CraftLit one of the longest-running book podcasts in existence. The concept is brilliantly practical: each week, Ordover provides some historical and literary context, then reads the next chapter of whatever book the show is currently working through. Right now that's Elizabeth Gaskell's Mr. Harrison's Confessions, but the archive stretches back through Jane Eyre, The Count of Monte Cristo, A Tale of Two Cities, and Mark Twain's Joan of Arc recollections, among many others.

The "Craft" in CraftLit refers to the show's dual audience of book lovers and fiber arts enthusiasts. Knitters, embroiderers, and crocheters make up a significant chunk of the listenership, and there's a crafting community dimension that gives the show a cozy, participatory feel. Listener voicemails and monthly book parties add to the book club atmosphere. With 844 episodes across 26 seasons, the back catalog is enormous. Ordover was featured on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday and hit Apple's What's Hot list, so this isn't some obscure corner of the internet. The show has real reach. Her reading style is clear and engaging, and the contextual notes before each chapter help you appreciate details you'd otherwise miss. Rated 4.7 stars from 426 ratings, CraftLit is perfect for anyone who wants to actually read the classics but keeps getting stuck on page twelve. Letting Ordover guide you through, chapter by chapter, week by week, turns intimidating books into manageable pleasures.

Angelina Stanford and poet Thomas Banks co-host The Literary Life Podcast with a guiding belief that stories will save the world. That might sound lofty, but the show backs it up with genuinely thoughtful discussions of classic literature that focus on the skill of reading well. This isn't a current releases show. Stanford and Banks work through canonical texts like Brave New World, Dracula, and Moliere's Don Juan, treating each one as a living document rather than a dusty assignment.

The show has a distinct intellectual tradition running through it, drawing on classical education and the liberal arts in a way that feels organic rather than rigid. Stanford is the primary voice, and she's a compelling teacher who clearly loves this material. Banks brings a poet's ear to the conversations, and occasional co-host Cindy Rollins adds the perspective of a lifelong reader. Guests like Tolkien scholar Michael Drout and literary academics Jason Baxter and Vigen Guroian round out the roster. With 314 episodes released weekly, the archive covers an impressive range of literature, from fairy tales and children's books to dense philosophical novels and poetry. The 4.7-star rating from over 1,100 reviews reflects a dedicated audience, many of whom come from homeschooling and classical education backgrounds. But you don't need that context to appreciate what the show does well: it makes old books feel urgent and necessary, and it assumes its listeners are smart enough to keep up.

Brooklyn Public Library's podcast takes a unique angle on literary conversation by asking a deceptively rich question: what are people borrowing from the library, and what does that tell us about who we are? Borrowed and Returned combines author interviews, narrative storytelling, and cultural history to explore how books have shaped American life. The guest list is genuinely impressive for an institutional podcast: Art Spiegelman, N.K. Jemisin, Molly Crabapple, and Reginald Dwayne Betts have all appeared.

The show has evolved through several distinct series. The original Borrowed episodes tackled library stories during crises, homelessness, and urban upheaval. Borrowed and Banned, a ten-episode run from late 2023, focused on censorship and book challenges, featuring students, librarians, teachers, and writers affected by banning efforts. The current incarnation, launched in mid-2025, returns to the broader theme of literary history and cultural impact, covering books like Silent Spring, Parable of the Sower, and the history of Black libraries in America. With 119 episodes and a 4.7-star rating from 191 reviews, the show has found a loyal audience that appreciates its blend of the personal and the political. Transcripts and additional resources are available on the BPL website. If you've ever loved a library, or if you believe that what a community reads reveals something essential about it, this podcast will feel like home.

Andy Miller and John Mitchinson have been rescuing books from obscurity since 2015, and over 260 episodes later, Backlisted remains one of the most rewarding literary podcasts out there. Each biweekly episode runs about an hour and focuses on a single book that deserves more attention than it currently gets -- think forgotten mid-century novels, overlooked short story collections, and works by authors who fell out of fashion decades ago.

The format is deceptively simple. Andy and John invite a guest (often a writer, critic, or publisher) to champion a particular title, and the conversation unfolds naturally from there. What makes the show genuinely special is the chemistry between the two hosts. Andy brings a slightly more irreverent energy while John, co-founder of Unbound publishing, offers deep industry knowledge. They disagree openly, crack jokes, and occasionally go off on tangents that somehow always circle back to something illuminating about literature.

Recent episodes have covered C.S. Lewis, William Golding, Iris Murdoch, and Leonora Carrington -- a range that gives you a sense of their taste. They are not snobs about it, though. The show treats a pulpy thriller from the 1930s with the same curiosity it gives a Booker winner. With a 4.7 rating from over 570 reviews on Apple Podcasts, the audience clearly appreciates that approach. If your TBR pile needs some genuinely unexpected additions, Backlisted will keep you supplied for years.

Eight hundred episodes in and Overdue still has that same best-friend-on-the-couch energy it started with back in 2013. Hosts Andrew Cunningham and Craig Getting pick a book each week -- sometimes a canonical classic, sometimes a goofy children's series, sometimes a manga -- and one of them summarizes it while both riff on what makes it interesting, weird, or important.

The comedy element is strong here. Andrew and Craig deliberately mispronounce names, go on wild tangents, and treat Dostoevsky with roughly the same enthusiasm as The Baby-Sitters Club (they literally have a spinoff series about that). But the humor never comes at the expense of the books themselves. Underneath the goofiness, both hosts are genuinely curious readers who pick up on thematic details that would satisfy a lit professor.

Produced through the Headgum network, the show maintains a biweekly schedule with episodes typically running 60 to 90 minutes. Recent coverage has included Interior Chinatown, Tuesdays with Morrie, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics. That mix is the whole appeal -- you never know what is coming next. The show holds a 4.6 rating across more than 2,200 reviews on Apple Podcasts. Fair warning: the ad breaks can be a bit much, and the plot summary sections sometimes run long. But if you want a podcast that makes reading feel like the most fun hobby in the world, Overdue delivers consistently.

Benjamin McEvoy does not do surface-level book talk. Hardcore Literature is exactly what the name promises -- thorough, passionate, sometimes two-hour-long explorations of the biggest names in the Western canon. Shakespeare, Homer, Tolstoy, Kafka, Nietzsche. These are the kinds of writers McEvoy tackles, and he brings the sort of infectious intensity that makes you want to immediately pick up Thus Spoke Zarathustra after listening.

The format is solo narration for the most part. McEvoy reads passages aloud, provides historical context, breaks down literary techniques, and shares his own strong reactions to the material. His delivery is articulate without being stuffy -- he clearly cares deeply about these texts and that enthusiasm carries the long episodes. A recent run through Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra shows his range across both prose and drama.

With 90 episodes and a 4.8 rating from over 530 reviews, the show has built a dedicated following. McEvoy also releases annual reading schedules and episodes about building better reading habits, which gives the podcast a book-club feel despite being a one-man operation. There is a Patreon community for bonus content and discussion. If you have ever wanted someone to walk you through the great books with the energy of a passionate professor who actually enjoys teaching, this is your show. It demands attention but rewards it generously.

Caroline Crampton turned her obsession with Golden Age detective fiction into one of the most well-researched literary podcasts around. Shedunnit explores the world of classic mystery writing -- Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and their contemporaries -- but through a lens that goes far beyond whodunit plot summaries.

Each episode picks a specific angle. One might examine how divorce law shaped mystery plots in the 1920s. Another looks at the role of servants in country house murders. A third traces the history of forensic science through detective fiction. Crampton is a journalist by training, and it shows -- the research is meticulous, the storytelling is tight, and episodes run a focused 25 to 55 minutes. She also hosts a Green Penguin Book Club series where she reads through specific novels with guest experts, which adds a communal reading dimension.

The show has 196 episodes and an impressive 4.9 rating from over 700 reviews on Apple Podcasts. Listeners consistently praise how Crampton reveals unexpected connections between detective fiction and social history. The biweekly release schedule gives you time to actually read the books being discussed, which is a nice touch. Even if you have never picked up a Golden Age mystery, Shedunnit makes the genre feel vital and surprisingly relevant to understanding how society worked (and sometimes failed to work) in the early twentieth century.

Three hosts with serious critical chops sit down biweekly to talk about genre literature, and the results are consistently excellent. Cameron Kunzelman, Michael Lutz, and Austin Walker -- the latter known from Waypoint and Friends at the Table -- bring academic knowledge without academic stuffiness to their discussions of fantasy, horror, science fiction, and comics.

The current big project is a full read-through of Tolkien, starting with The Hobbit and now working through The Fellowship of the Ring chapter by chapter. But the back catalog is wildly varied: Alan Moore's From Hell, Junji Ito's horror manga, Promethea, Saga of the Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta. They treat comics and graphic novels with the same analytical rigor as prose fiction, which feels refreshing in a literary podcast space that often ignores visual storytelling entirely.

With 74 episodes and a remarkable 4.9 rating from over 510 reviews, Shelved By Genre has built a loyal audience fast. Episodes run on the longer side and the discussions get genuinely technical -- expect talk about narrative structure, genre conventions, and the historical context that shaped specific works. Multiple listeners credit the show with getting them back into reading after years away. The Ranged Touch Patreon offers bonus episodes including commentary on film adaptations. This is the podcast for readers who love genre fiction and want to think harder about why it works.