The Reading Culture
Episodes
The Reading Culture: Yearbook 2025
23 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Three years strong, y’all! We’re back with our favorite tradition: The Reading Culture Yearbook. As we close out 2025, we’ve gathered superlati...
No Wasted Sunshine: Sophie Blackall on the Meaning of Home
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“When we are making books, we are making little homes for our readers that they can return to hopefully again and again and again, just as we return...
Joy to the People: Mychal Threets Live from AASL
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“The library is where I felt, I'm safe here. I have friends in Encyclopedia Brown, Junie B. Jones, Amelia Bedelia, Stanley Yelnats, and all these va...
Expanding Woman: Nic Stone on Forgiveness and the Freedom to Change
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“It's important that my perspective stays flexible because my perspective could need updating, it could need to be changed based on new information....
You Can't Just Move On: Erin Entrada Kelly on Limbo
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“It’s that old expression that I love, which is ‘wherever you go, there you are.’ So you never really get out of the limbo, because the limbo ...
Tender Heart: Kate DiCamillo on Awe and Grief
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“This is what awe always does: it’s the zoom out. All of a sudden, you can see how tiny and insignificant you are, and you plug into that bigger t...
I Love You, Man: Jason Reynolds on Masculinity
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"I don’t want to be whatever version of masculinity y’all keep telling me I have to be. Why are all the benchmarks violent and aggressive? I don’...
Under My Thumb: Brian Selznick on Control
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“When you're a kid, you have so little control over things. To be the big entity controlling the smaller entity, whether it's dolls or [toy] soldier...
The Unchosen Ones: Victoria Aveyard on Fairness in Fantasy
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
”Why are some people treated differently? Why are some people chosen ones for no particular reason? And why do some people get to have that extra sh...
Unintentional Monsters: Tiffany D. Jackson on Real Horrors and Core Memories
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Whenever I think of people who have gone through something, I'm always like, but they were human before this. Before they were monsters, they were ...
Becky, Obviously: Becky Albertalli on Bullies, Bodies and Breaking Through
06 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“There were kind of always like two simultaneous stories happening with my coming out. One was the realization and breaking through some of that den...
*ICYMI* Cool To Be You: Kwame Alexander On Authenticity
23 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we revisit our episode with Kwame Alexander while we take a quick summer break!Kwame Alexander recently interviewed the esteemed and now fo...
Our Job is to Live: Jasmine Warga on Belonging and Radical Hope
09 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"We all need to have radical hope. I have my really hopeless days too, but… it’s such a privilege to get to live and to survive. Our job is to liv...
Slow Reveal: Gayle Forman on Friends, Flaws, and Finding Immortality
25 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Those moments of connection when you can have them with people who seem so different from you on the outside, I really do think that it braids a le...
Stories Left Untold: Ibi Zoboi on Secrets Lost and Found
11 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“As my own mother is aging, she's telling me … before I take this to my grave, here is something you should know. So the secrets are coming out. A...
Touched for the Very First Time: Soman Chainani on Books That Turn Scrollers into Readers
28 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“I tell kids that books are not there to torment you. The author has to get you in the first ten pages. If they do not, they fail, because a book is...
Mixtape: Mychal Threets Lays Out His Life in Books
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"I think all of us had the experience after reading the book of looking in maybe our grandparents' wardrobe, our parents' wardrobe, and like knocking ...
Good Luck, They’re Yours: Sharon Draper on Giving Students Room to Read
30 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“And I think that’s what reading is… It’s a personal interpretation of the story, and it may not be the same as somebody else's. That’s the ...
We Contain Multitudes: Debbie Levy on the Dangers of Reductionist Thinking
19 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"It's very rare for a person to just be one thing. Most issues, most things that matter, are not so black and white." – Debbie LevyWe all want to be...
Art Against the Machine: Aida Salazar on Writing for the Resistance
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“I lean on my community. I lean on the power of the pen. I lean on remembering who my ancestors are and what they endured, the colonization that the...
In the Heights: Jerry Craft Subverts Expectations
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Their white classmates can read Harry Potter and relate to going to Hogwarts and flying on brooms. But a Black kid can't aspire to go to Paris, whi...
Porch Stories: Jewell Parker Rhodes on Ghosts, History, and Staying Open to Love
05 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“For every child that thinks something is wrong with them, my books are saying, ‘be you, even if others can’t see you. The people who don’t se...
Scratching the Surface: Vashti Harrison on Going Past Skin Deep
22 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Every time I read “Big” at a school, obviously I’m there to speak to kids about the story, and I hope they’re all connecting with it, but a...
Indomitable: Yamile Saied Méndez on Puberty, Dictatorship, and Brave Women
08 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Life is a wheel and humanity has been through countless cycles of ups and downs. The things that seem so dire now won't be this dire forever. Event...
The Reading Culture: Yearbook 2024
23 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s official. Two years in a row makes it a tradition. The Reading Culture Yearbook is here. It’s the year-end celebratory episode where we loo...
We Are Always Rising: Andrea Davis Pinkney Spreads Stories and Hope
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“I am saying: reader, we're going on a journey. You are going to come with me and then I'm pulling them gently into the narrative. And then again, i...
Revisit - Hero of the Anti-Heroes: Gregory Maguire on the Value of Second Chances
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We revisit our episode with Gregory Maguire.******"That's really all we are obliged to do for those we call our enemies. We are obliged to see them as...
Tiny Spaces: Mac Barnett on Why Kids Are Better Than Adults at Reading Picture Books
12 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“I think kids are actually generally a better audience for literary fiction, for art, for ambitious storytelling that asks the reader to do work. An...
Keep Me Out of It: Eliot Schrefer on the Costs and Benefits of Self-Erasure
29 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“I think it caused me to get over some of the sort of narcissistic impulses in my writing and not make it about me and impressing, but instead about...
A Quiet House: Katherine Marsh on Why We Need to Turn Down the Noise
15 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“The two most important things you can do as a writer are to make people wonder what will happen next and to understand why it matters. - Katherine ...
Rebel With Claws: Zoraida Córdova on the Pleasures of Nonconformity
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“Why am I fighting this? Like, why am I fighting the thing that I want to write? For who? For like a teacher that I haven't seen in five years or te...
Always in the Room: Elizabeth Acevedo on Ancestors, Neighbors, and Secret Mentors
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“I cannot do an interview without talking about who I come from as it pertains to the writers who have influenced my work because their fingerprints...
Worthy of Protecting: Ari Tison Faces Down Monsters With Words
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“I talked about how I didn't process things in my journals. Well, in poetry, I did. All of a sudden, it was cracking that door open.” - Ari TisonW...
Surreal Talk: A.S. King on Validating Teen Trauma
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“I see my job as trying to soothe the trauma that teenagers don't know they have yet because everybody's so busy telling them that they don't.” - ...
Natural Resources: Katherine Applegate on the Wisdom and Solace of Animals
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“I think it has to do with powerlessness, and with the kind of hierarchy that kids endure every day, where these grown ups are not making sense, and...
Revisit - Mixed Feelings: Matt de la Peña on Balancing Being Stoic and Sensitive
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We revisit our episode with Matt de la Peña.****"Kids are growing up in an interesting time and they're led to believe that if we don't feel happy, w...
Revisit - Ignorance Isn’t Bliss: Sabaa Tahir on the Need to Bear Witness
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We revisit our episode with Sabaa Tahir.******"This is happening in our world and at the very least you can bear witness to it. That's literally the a...
You Are Flawed, You Are Messy, You Are Loved: Shannon Hale on Hope and Heroines
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"I feel like it was this little miracle that in some areas of my life, I'm shutting myself up and shutting myself down. But with my writing, I was alw...
Unstoppable Force, Movable Object: Dhonielle Clayton on Levering Children's Books Into the 21st Century
11 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"I'm not a person that's like, let's throw out the classics. It's, let's move forward. Let's disrupt the canon. Some of these universal themes, some o...
Summon the Tiger: Minh Lê Blurs the Boundaries
28 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"That barrier between what is “real” and what is not, when that's more fluid, I think it's that's where the fun of fiction comes in. Especially wh...
Twilight Zone: Julie Murphy on Self-Doubt and Self-Love
14 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"I've found that the books that have resonated with me the most are books where your body is incidental, but it's still something that you can never l...
Filling in the Blanks: Cece Bell on the Comedy of the Absurd
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"...the reader's mind is filling in the blanks in between those panels and as a lip reader, that's what I do. I fill in the blanks. I'm trying to piec...
Hero of the Anti-Heroes: Gregory Maguire on the Value of Second Chances
16 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"That's really all we are obliged to do for those we call our enemies. We are obliged to see them as humans, and then we behave the way we will. We ar...
Simple Thing, Felt: Nina LaCour on Unwrapping a Moment
02 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"I spend a lot of time trying to hope that I'll remember little things and how a certain simple thing felt. … Writing is one way of trying to capt...
The World As It Should Be: LeUyen Pham Illustrates an Ideal
19 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"There's something very lovely about feeling like, well, it's not my name, and it's not me, it's just the books.” - LeUyen PhamTo listen to LeUyen P...
If Your Heart Breaks, It’s Working: Nicola Yoon on Love and Other Risky Behaviors
05 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"Love is risky. Love always ends. Should you do it anyway?” - Nicola YoonLove is a feeling that never exists solely on its own, and those likely com...
The Blackest Book Ever: Derrick Barnes on Writing Unapologetically
20 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"I'm putting every single ounce of who I am into every single book that I write, so y'all know to expect the blackest books you have ever read from yo...
Rabbit Holes: Brandy Colbert on Deep Research and Deep Characters
06 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"I'm a bad liar. So I'm just like, I'm really good at telling the truth.” - Brandy ColbertGoing down internet rabbit holes and discovering everyth...
The One and Only John: Mr. Schu Turns His Heart Inside Out
23 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"Books can be the perfect prescriptions to let us know that we're going to be okay.” - John SchuJohn Schu’s entire life has been shaped by books...
A Gut Punch and a Hug: Mark Oshiro on Practicing Vulnerability
10 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"It's practice. Vulnerability is practice. It is learning that you can do things and say things that seem scary, but ultimately know th...
The Reading Culture: Yearbook 2023
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With the 2023 year coming to a close (our first full year in production!), we wanted to celebrate. And what better way to do that than high school yea...
The Things We Know: Oge Mora on Finding the Magic in the Everyday
12 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"It's not like I haven't experienced pain or tragedy or grief in my life, and it's not like I want to deny that. I don't think that that's the entiret...
Visibility Cloak: Hena Khan on Commonality Over Conformity
28 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"There's these universal truths [...] specific details, but universal feelings and universal experiences that people hopefully can relate to. And that...
A Good Guest: Daniel Nayeri on the Obligations of a Storyteller
14 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"Don't follow your dreams if that's the only thing you're doing. Ask yourself, what will make you most useful? What will make you most, in terms of a ...
Revisit - The Gift of Fear: Lamar Giles on How Horror Helps Kids Cope
31 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We revisit our Halloween special episode with Lamar Giles.******On Today's Show"The fear is like the ramp on the roller coaster. It's that build-up of...
Family Ties: Dan Santat on Childhood, Parenthood, and Finding Himself
17 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"It (TV) was my junk food, but also it was my in with the kids to be able to talk about pop culture, to know all the little nuances and...
Inner Section: Kacen Callender on Trauma, Healing, and Magic
03 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"I think that has a lot to do with why I was so interested in writing for children. It's like, I was trying to heal. I was trying to he...
Cool To Be You: Kwame Alexander On Authenticity
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"I'm just being real. I'm telling my story. I think Nikki Giovanni calls it dancing naked on the floor. I am unafraid and I'm doing my ...
Here, Extrapolated: Neal Shusterman on The Art of World Building
05 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"I think it comes down to caring about the characters. When you care about the characters, you care about the world that they live in.”...
Negative Space: Jon Klassen on Restraint
22 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"That's still my trick too, never tell them how they're feeling. Never begin to even show how they're feeling. They'll get it anyway. Y...
Revisit - The Heart of the Story: Karina Yan Glaser Talks Empathy in Writing
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Grace Lin (The Year of the Dog, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon) shares her thoughts on the value art provides to those who experience it and those ...
Revisit - Voice Through Verse: Renée Watson on Poetry as Empowerment
25 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We revisit our episode with Renée Watson.****On Today's Show"There's just something about literally raising your voice and letting these words come o...
Big Summer Reading Giveaway!
24 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Exciting news! We are hosting a big summer reading giveaway in which you can choose any three titles by any three authors who have been on our podcast...
The Fire Inside: Jacqueline Woodson Carries the Torch
11 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"For me, in the fiction, it is so much about keeping that continuum going, that someone's going to come along after me and tell a story...
Mixed Feelings: Matt de la Peña on Balancing Being Stoic and Sensitive
27 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"Kids are growing up in an interesting time and they're led to believe that if we don't feel happy, we're doing something wrong. I thin...
Ignorance Isn’t Bliss: Sabaa Tahir on the Need to Bear Witness
13 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"This is happening in our world and at the very least you can bear witness to it. That's literally the absolute least you can do. - Sab...
Recovering Identity: Angeline Boulley Calls for a Reckoning
30 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"I think there's recognition that publishing is better the more voices are heard, and the more diverse those rooms can be as well –th...
Never Empty-Handed: Yuyi Morales on the Stories, the Pain, and the Hope We Carry
16 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In This Episode"It is through these books and through this work that I'm doing that I hope that I can be a worthy companion of [children's] journeys, ...
The Depth of the Universe: M.T. Anderson on the Sneaky Relevance of Sci-fi and Fantasy
02 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show“If you write about the world as it is, there's too much of a danger of it just feeding into our assumption that everything that we l...
Inflection Point: Shadra Strickland Puts the Dash in Author-Illustrator
18 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Creators & Guests Jordan Lloyd Bookey - Host Shadra Strickland - Guest On Today's Show“I remember everything was so shiny. Like the way tha...
Little Windows: Victoria Jamieson on the Underrated Power of Graphic Novels
04 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"I think there's so much you can do. It's so rich because you have words, you have pictures. Sometimes they say the same things, someti...
Lonely Planet: Erin Entrada Kelly on Looking After the Overlooked
21 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"A lot of my books have characters who are lonely, who are trying to figure out their way, who don't feel seen in the world, who don't ...
Screen Play: James Ponti on Writing with a Filmmaker's Eye
07 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"I go to the locations in the books when I can, and I go there and I scout them the same way I scouted them when I was shooting documen...
Eye of the Tiger: Ellen Oh on Rising Up for the Right to Read
21 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's ShowThe author of the “Prophecy” trilogy and “Spirit Hunters” series and the founder of We Need Diverse Books, Ellen Oh is equal pa...
Comfortably Uncomfortable: Nic Stone on the Story Less Told
07 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show" When I sat down and I decided I wanted to start writing, what I started writing was something that bothered me." - Nic StoneAfter Nic...
Oh, the Humanity: Grace Lin on Art and the Human Experience
24 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show" Creating something is not just for people to view, but it's for the creator. It's that idea that when you create, it puts you more in...
Truth From Fiction: Adam Gidwitz on Plato, the Devil, and the BFG
10 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"The world is so complex, right? No theory that anyone has can be accurate because the only accurate model of the world is the world. T...
Revisit - Cultivating Story: Meg Medina on the importance of storytelling in life, writing, and the fight against book bans
27 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"I feel like writers, especially who are wordsmiths, who can name things, tricky things in clear ways ... should be where we put our ef...
They Already Know: Kate DiCamillo on Helping Kids Find Hope in Darkness
13 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"If I've done my job right and put my heart and my fears and my questions on the page, if I've told a story right and well, the reader ...
Voice Through Verse: Renée Watson on Poetry as Empowerment
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"There's just something about literally raising your voice and letting these words come out of you. That's powerful." - Renée WatsonMa...
Voice Training: Zetta Elliott on Reckoning with Your Past and Disrupting the Future
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"When you're a kid, and if you love to read, you love stories, you aren't always aware of the fact that you're being erased from those ...
The Gift of Fear: Lamar Giles on How Horror Helps Kids Cope
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"The fear is like the ramp on the roller coaster. It's that build-up of adrenaline intention that you're having in that moment when tha...
Connecting With Authors: Varian Johnson and Seeing Yourself Beyond the Pages
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"I think it's really important that readers see the people behind the book: the authors, the illustrators, the librarians, the teachers...
The Heart of the Story: Karina Yan Glaser Talks Empathy in Writing
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"Maybe if they haven't been in that situation, they know someone who has, or they have friends who have really struggled with losing lo...
Cultivating Story: Meg Medina on the Importance of Storytelling in Life, Writing, and the Fight Against Book Bans
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Today's Show"I feel like writers, especially who are wordsmiths, who can name things, tricky things in clear ways ... should be where we put our ef...
The Reading Culture: Trailer
17 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In our new podcast, The Reading Culture, host Jordan Lloyd Bookey will bring you along as we connect with diverse authors about their own journeys as ...