Read Minnesota Books: How Podcasting Opened a New Path for Book Coverage
The cold sting of you’re-not-good-enough failure led to my first podcasting project. In 2017, when my friend Katie Curler auditioned for a podcast and didn’t get the part, her rejection became my audio good fortune. She redirected her disappointment into an independently produced podcast that reviewed children’s media and—lucky me!—I got invited along as the Monica to her Dax. For eight years, we co-hosted biweekly conversations about our favorite television shows and movies made for our kids.
As our kids grew up, our enthusiasm for Disney and Mr. Beast waned, and we ended our podcast in early 2025. In place of chatting about cartoons and YouTube, I planned to use the extra time to focus on my freelance writing career. I’ve written for literary magazines, websites, newsletters, and print magazines about a variety of topics, but my favorite subject is books. To me, there’s almost nothing better than early access to an Advanced Reader Copy and a publishing deadline to let the world know your critical opinion about a forthcoming book. But just as I gained more time to write about books, major media outlets were shuttering review opportunities. Even before The Washington Post killed its books desk, the Minnesota Star Tribune quietly quit hiring freelance book reviewers and shrunk its Books portion of the Sunday Variety section from splashy multi-page spreads to just a single page.
As I scrolled through the cells of the spreadsheet I use to track my pitching and submitting efforts, my book review rows were a depressing sludge of feedback like “we’ll pass,” “not right for our current needs,” and empty-celled ghost rejections where the editor didn’t bother to respond. I know that rejection is a part of the writing life, but my book review rejections didn’t feel personal. They felt existential. Editors weren’t passing on my pitches because they weren’t punchy or timely enough; editors passed because book lovers are in the middle of a literal machine-made assault on literature.
Nothing about the reduction in book coverage makes sense to me. And, because I’m writing a Loft blog post for writers and reading enthusiasts, I’m sure nothing about the reduction in book coverage makes sense to this targeted audience, either. Who among us Lofties does not enjoy a pithy 800-word preview of a novel? Or an interview with a non-fiction writer about their obsessively researched new book? Or a round-up of reads to gift for an upcoming holiday, or take to the beach, or enjoy on a bum weather day? It’s us! We do! Writers know that human-authored books are the very antidote to the automated, artificial thought agenda being pushed by the most influential technology companies at this weird, tenuous moment in history.
Earlier this year, I was a sad, sun-starved book reviewer wallowing in my rejection spreadsheet, and I was also feeling more Minnesotan than American during the worst of the Operation Metro Surge federal occupation. As my despair over dwindling book coverage combined with my home state pride, I remembered how my friend Katie had dusted herself off after that audition disappointment in 2017 and used her rejection to create a years-long, satisfying audio project. While AI firms influenced how mainstream publications cover the printed word, I needed to find a new medium. I decided that a self-produced, geographically specific podcast would be the perfect way for me to contribute to the literary community and express my book love.
In short, I created the podcast of my dreams. I chose a simple, declarative sentence title: Read Minnesota Books. Each episode opens with a guest author reading a small excerpt from their new book, followed by a brief introduction or personal story about my connection to the author and their work. Then, I get to the meat of the episode, where I grill my guest about their published project, their writing process, and their favorite Minnesota writers. In my opinion, most author interview podcasts are too long, so I keep my questions focused. Every episode clocks in under a half an hour, which is the perfect length for taking a writing break and consuming a little audio inspiration from a published author.
Podcasting about Minnesota books lets me cover more books than I would if I were only writing reviews. It’s helping me read more widely, too. I’ve recently finished a collection of abecedarian poetry, a memoir-in-essays, a popular economics explainer told through a Taylor Swiftian lens, Christian historical fiction, and a queer fairy romance. Minnesota books contain multitudes—a diversity of thought that our would-be AI overlords couldn’t possibly hallucinate, and that book-coverage-destroying editorial boards seem to be trying to hide from us.
Read Minnesota Books is channeling my North Star State pride and book coverage despair into a productive project. Now, I get to control my own reading destiny and be the arbiter. I decide what books to cover and who to invite. In giving authors an opportunity to promote their new work, I created a space in my freelance career where I’m hearing “yes” a lot more often than “we’ll pass.”
You can subscribe and listen to Read Minnesota Books wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you have a rejection-fueled podcast dream of your own, register for my April 18 workshop “Podcasting for Writers” at the Loft at Open Book in Minneapolis from 10am - 2pm.