The big question: are we living in a literary golden age or a post-literate society ??? On this week’s episode we’re doing something a little different to our usual bookish chats, and we’re breaking down a couple of intriguing Substack essays on the combined subject of literature and society. Our primary references include ‘Ignore the pessimists – we are living through a literary golden age’ by Henry Oliver versus ‘The dawn of the post-literate society’ by James Marriott. From the simultaneous (...
Dec 13, 2025•32 min
S6 E6: Join us in conversation with Gregory Grosvenor, writer, author, teacher and fellow only child. We talk about Greg’s early inspirations in writing, from growing up in Germany, supportive parents, and an early conviction to write. We then delve into a myriad of topics including Greg’s experience as a creative writing teacher, his past as an alcoholic, and of course, his debut novel, Second Pocket First , full of quirky characters, bucolic Vermont scenery, great outfits, and some good old fa...
Nov 26, 2025•37 min•Season 6Ep. 9
In this episode we talk to Laura Goode, author, essayist, poet, screen writer, and educator, about her latest book, Pitch Craft . Pitch Craft is all about the art of presenting yourself as a person and a writer, but our conversation doesn’t just end there. From talking about the quirks and perks of being an only child to the magic of female friendship, this is a conversation that explores the hidden side of writing – the part which is less about the writing itself than it is about connecting wit...
Nov 12, 2025•45 min
S6E4: While the days are getting shorter and the temperatures are dropping lower, being indoors is looking a lot more cozy. In other words, it's the perfect season to get back to reading! Not only is autumn THE season for reading, but there are so many sub-genres that perfectly compliment the moody weather and spooky atmosphere of fall. Tune in to hear our recommendations for witchy and gothic reads, to cozy, dark academia, and just plain dark. We also spend some time reviewing lists compiled by...
Oct 29, 2025•31 min•Season 6Ep. 4
S6E3: Settle in for a cozy and long overdue catch up with us! Life has been busy lately and it’s time for the two of us to debrief the start of the fall season, the back-to-school rush, and all the changes that have come with it. From moving countries, starting new jobs, solo trips, and all the little things, we had a lot to chat about. And of course, being us, somehow everything relates back to books and bookish things. What can we say – being a booklover (read, Literary It Girl) is a lifestyle...
Oct 01, 2025•24 min•Season 6Ep. 3
S6E2: If you love books, like really love books, you’ve probably dreamed of opening your own bookstore – we definitely have! Well, in this episode we’re getting ALL THE TEA on running a bookstore from Jamie Fortin, owner of Friends to Lovers, a romance bookstore in Alexandria, VA. From building a community to overcoming challenges (like a fire that almost shut her down before day 1!) and having fun with it all, Jamie has created a thriving business that proves that independent bookstores are her...
Sep 10, 2025•45 min•Season 6Ep. 2
S6E1: Season 6 of the Hot Girls Read podcast has officially begun! We are opening the season by chatting with Kailu Yu: author, travel writer, and former pop star. Kaila’s recently released book, Fetishized, is a collection of essays that explore Kaila’s first hand experience of the fetishization of Asian women in the US during the early ‘00s. Not only do we cover everything from ABGs, import modelling, the fetishization of robots, and the current reality of racism towards Asians in the United S...
Aug 27, 2025•47 min•Season 6Ep. 1
Tune in for our interview with software engineer and author, Liz Shipton. With her upcoming release Dot Slash Magic , we cover a multitude of topics: the consequences of AI and its effect on the publishing industry, Liz’s writing inspiration, her journey as an author and viral presence on Booktok, and much more! We end with a debate about the enemies to lovers trope: is it simply a marketing ploy or is it really a key hingepoint of a plot? Listen and find out!
Aug 13, 2025•33 min
Temperatures are rising on the Hot Girls Read podcast! It’s the middle of summer making it the perfect time to serve up some hot girl summer reading recommendations. Whether you’re on a beachside holiday or trying to stay cool at home, this is a must-listen episode showcasing a variety of reads to keep you company during the heat. Organized by fiction, non-fiction, and fantasy, tune in for everything from steamy scenes and unhinged characters to short, sweltering stories. Reading List: Beach Rea...
Jul 30, 2025•27 min
We have another exciting author interview, this time with debut sci-fi/fantasy writer Mina Brower! Mina is an author, mother, and lawyer, and not only do we talk about the inspiration behind her book, A God of Moonlight and Stardust , but we also find out how Mina got started as a writer and balances her creative practices with being a partner at her law firm and a new mother. At the end of the conversation, Mina gives us a teaser for her next book, An Heir of Darkness and Ruin , coming out July...
Jul 16, 2025•35 min
This week’s short story is a bit of a longer story that we have broken down into a couple of parts for you guys! In Part I, we talk about our journey starting the very famous creativity course, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. We discuss where we are in the course, how we’re faring, what we’re liking, what we’re struggling with, and more! If you have ever thought about starting The Artist’s Way , are currently working through it, or have heard about it but aren’t sure what it’s all about, you ...
Jul 02, 2025•17 min
This week’s short story is a bit of a longer story that we have broken down into a couple of parts for you guys! In Part I, we talk about our journey starting the very famous creativity course, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. We discuss where we are in the course, how we’re faring, what we’re liking, what we’re struggling with, and more! If you have ever thought about starting The Artist’s Way , are currently working through it, or have heard about it but aren’t sure what it’s all about, you ...
Jul 02, 2025•30 min
Is romantasy dead? That’s the question we try to answer on our latest Short Stories episode. Ayesha gets the ball rolling by giving her thoughts on recent romantasy read, QuickSilver, and what booktok’s take is on Silver Elite . This leads us to question what exactly romantasy means these days and why all of the sudden it seems like newly published romantasy books are giving us…well, nothing. No plot, only vibes (if even that). After airing our many grievances with the genre, we try to end with ...
Jun 04, 2025•33 min
Let’s welcome our featured guest poet Aimee Donnell! Originally from Northern Ireland, Aimee is a York-based poet who recently released her debut poetry collection We Are All Creatures of Struggle . We chat with Aimee about her inspirations, her journey as a writer, her writing process, and more! At the end of the episode, Aimee leaves us with a beautiful reading of one of her favorite poems in the collection and some sneak peeks into her upcoming works! Follow Aimee on Instagram @awriternamed_a...
May 21, 2025•32 min
For this latest episode, we spend time interviewing guest author Nehemiah Russell! Local to the DMV (or DC area for you non-locals), Nehemiah is the author and illustrator of Codename , a manga style comic book set in a dystopian world where a teenager’s future is determined by their assigned codename. We talk to Nehemiah about his journey as an artist and writer, his storyboarding process, the importance of identity, and much more! We left our conversation feeling inspired not only by the story...
May 07, 2025•32 min
Our latest short stories episode is a pot-pourri of bookish updates in our lives, from attending bookstore launches and book club meetings to a live book haul and reading anecdotes. We’ve been lost in the bookish sauce recently and we wanted to share with you!
Apr 23, 2025•22 min
In this episode of Short Stories we are joined by special guest Miles Spencer, adventurer, tech investor, and co-author of ‘A Line in the Sand.’ We talk with Miles about the inspirations behind his story, the underlying message he hopes to share, the writing process, and best of all, his escapades across the Middle East! Having grown up in Saudi Arabia, we particularly enjoyed talking to Miles about his adventures in the Kingdom, and hearing his perspective on certain issues that hit close to ho...
Apr 09, 2025•32 min
In this Short Stories episode, we are delving into the behind-the-scenes of our podcast journey! We discuss the birth of our podcast idea, managing everything from editing to marketing, and balancing it with our personal and professional lives. To end, we reflect on the podcast’s challenges, growth, and our hopes for future episodes. 00:54 Full Moon Reflections and Tarot Readings 04:42 Podcast Journey and Friendship 08:35 Starting the Podcast: The Origin Story 11:18 Podcast Growth and Future Pla...
Mar 26, 2025•23 min
From “It Girl” celebrity book clubs to sneaky senators and questionable government bills, this episode of Short Stories is all about who gets to influence the books that we read. With the new wave of celebrity book clubs popping up, it looks like reading itself, and particularly the types of books we read, is becoming a status symbol. On the other hand, representatives in Oklahoma are trying to clamp down on the distribution and even creation of romance books (of the spicy variety). Why is every...
Mar 12, 2025•29 min
For our third short stories episode, we have something a little different (and super exciting) to share with you guys: our first guest interview with poet Caitlin Kent-Halliday! We talk with Caitlin about her writing process, inspirations, our favourite poems in her collection, and much more. We hope you enjoy this heartfelt conversation with Caitlin about her debut poetry collection 'Peace of Mind' as much as we did. To find out more about Caitlin and her poetry, you can visit her website at ww...
Feb 26, 2025•27 min
In this episode of Short Stories, we continue the conversation around "Onyx Storm" as we discuss the controversial social media discourse surrounding it. In the second half of the episode we talk about the drama surrounding author Neil Gaiman’s sexual misconduct allegations which leads to further questions about other problematic authors.
Feb 12, 2025•27 min
Welcome to Short Stories with the Hot Girls Read Podcast! In addition to our regular seasons that include longer episodes, we are coming to you hot with some shorter segments that will cover bookish news and recent updates. In our first episode of Short Stories, we talk about the US Tiktok ban, how booktok dealt with it, and the highly anticipated fantasy read, “Onyx Storm.” Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hotgirlsreadpodcast Check out our website: https://hotgirlsreadpodcast.c...
Jan 29, 2025•24 min
Part II of our 2024 Wrapped starts off exactly where we left off in Part I and we get straight into our top Non-fiction reads of the year. We continue on to our most memorable books across the categories of Poetry, Overhyped Booktok Books, Unexpected Top Read, Cozy Read, Spicy Read, and last but not least, or top read of 2024! After all the fun of delving into the books that have accompanied us throughout 2024, we end the episode talking about our reading plans for the end of the year and what 2...
Dec 20, 2024•34 min
After our short and sweet season 5, we’ve decided to end the year with one last episode: our 2024 wrapped! We had ambitious goals for this episode, namely sharing our top books of the year across 12 different categories and ending with our top read of the year. So in typical fashion, we went on for so long that we had to break the episode into two parts. In Part I of our 2024 Wrapped, we start out by dissecting our reading habits and trends over the past year, which seemed to differ quite a bit!...
Dec 20, 2024•46 min
S5E6: For our final episode of the season, we chose a topic recommended by one of our listeners: interracial romance reads. The Romance genre is a refuge for many readers – it offers lighthearted storylines with plenty of passion and intrigue that are easy to escape into, as we have done countless times. However, the genre can be found lacking in its offer of interracial relationships. We decided to delve further into the world of interracial romance, and tasked ourselves with finding and readin...
Aug 02, 2024•59 min
S5E5: Greek Mythology retellings have always been popular, most memorably during our middle school days, but never have they seemed more widespread than they are right now. Greek retellings fill up the ‘New In’ shelves and people just can’t get enough of them – us included! In this episode we not only talk about the Greek myths and retellings we’ve read and loved (or didn’t love), but we also get into what drew us to Greek myths in the first place, as well as the differences we see among retelli...
Jul 26, 2024•51 min•Season 5Ep. 5
S5E4: Continuing our book club tradition, in this episode we discuss our latest buddy read: Rebecca Kuang’s “Yellow Face,” one of the most popular fiction books from 2023. As usual, we share our ratings and conduct a deep dive into the characters, the writing, and our overall thoughts. “Yellow Face” was an eye-opening, and perhaps controversial, read for two people who are interested in and linked to the world of books, writing, and publishing. Needless to say, we had a lot to say about this one...
Jul 19, 2024•1 hr 16 min
S5E3: This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about online bookish communities (see Season 2 Episode 4, The One Where We Talk About Booktok Parts 1 & 2), but this time we’re turning our eyes to Bookstagram. From blowing up during the COVID lockdown to now influencing the publishing industry and international book charts, Bookstagram is an ever-growing and powerful community, for better, and sometimes, for worse. Ayesha shares her own experience of building a bookstagram account and then we di...
Jul 12, 2024•46 min•Season 5Ep. 3
S5E2: Why is reading about relatable characters so fun? Why is it so frustrating when a character feels completely unrelatable? Is character relatability actually important to us as readers? Can fantasy characters still be realistic? These are some of the questions we delve into during this episode about unrelatable book characters. To begin, we go down a rabbit hole of discovering the differences between realistic vs. relatable/unrealistic vs. unrelatable when it comes to analyzing book charact...
Jul 05, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Season 5Ep. 2
S5E1: Kicking off Season 5, we talk about how to get back into reading! Almost everyone has experienced reading slumps of some sort. Whether you used to love reading when you were younger but can’t find the time or energy these days, are not as consistent a reader as you wish to be, or simply don’t know where to start when it comes to finding a new book, we’ve got you covered! Even as self-proclaimed bookworms, we too have endured our fair share of reading slumps, and in this conversation we lay...
Jun 28, 2024•47 min•Season 5Ep. 1
