I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts lately. I don’t usually listen to podcasts because I’m more of a visual person than an audio person. Recently though, I’ve needed something to listen to while doing repetitive tasks at work. Podcasts turned out to be a great solution. That 30-60 minute length is perfect for blocking out parts of my day and I can switch between a lot of topics. I’ve been listening to a variety of podcasts about coding/programming, design and (of course) writing.

These are the writing podcasts I’ve listened to and found the most engaging or relevant. Most of them have been going for years so there’s lots of episodes and content to choose from.

PODCASTS
The Writing University
The few episodes I’ve listened to have been hit or miss. The episodes are created from recorded presentations given at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. The presenters are authors. They aren’t always good at public speaking, but enough of them teach classes or workshops and know how to engage an audience that most are pretty good. There’s a variety of interesting topics, so it might be worth taking a look at the episodes and finding some that sound relevant to you.

Writer Files
I started listening to this one because there are episodes in which the host interviews his friend the neuroscientist about writing, the brain and productivity. I don’t know much about neuroscience, but talking about the creative brain is always interesting. Many of the episodes are relatively informal interviews with published authors or others in the publishing industry. Interview podcasts like this seem to be standard fare, but this is the one I enjoy most. There was a good episode on producing audiobooks, as well.

Writers on Writing
This is another interview based podcast. I prefer the Writer Files, but there’s a few authors I want to hear from in some of this podcast’s episodes.

Writership
I am hooked on this one! Writers send in the beginning pages of their story/novels and the two hosts offer feedback and advice. First they read the submission out loud and then they offer high level feedback on the show. More specific feedback is offered in marked-up documents on the episode web page. This is so helpful because it’s so specific. They discuss concrete examples of what might be working and what might need improvement. I started at the beginning, but it looks as if some later episodes don’t feature a submission and the number of releases has slowed considerably.

BONUS
Mythology
This one’s new so I’ve already binged my way through everything they’ve put out so far. It isn’t actually about writing, but I’m recommending it because I love mythology. Mythology is storytelling and is foundational in literature across history. So this makes sense in a list of writing podcasts, yes? Yes!

Anyone else listen to any good writing, reading, or storytelling podcasts?