Featuring Caroline Bicks, Jaime Green, and Drew Broussard

A weekly behind-the-scenes dive into everything interesting, dynamic, strange, and wonderful happening in literary culture—featuring Lit Hub staff, columnists, and special guests! Hosted by Drew Broussard.

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.

The Lit Hub Podcast is a production of Lit Hub Radio and is available wherever you get your podcasts; music by Dani Lencioni of Evelyn; Engineering and production by Stardust House.