Article by Clare Katyal
Photos by Stephen Makin
A new podcast is taking Carnegie Mellon by storm. Creative writing junior Dylan Courtney started the Booked podcast earlier last September. She was passionate about creating a platform where students from all different majors take time to talk about books. She wanted to give English students, in particular, a space to make themselves known, especially since they sometimes get lost in the crowd at a school with such a wide range of disciplines.
“I mean, we have superstars here, and I feel like they’re just not recognized enough, compared to some of the drama students, or, you know, the STEM students.” Dylan hoped the podcast would give humanities students “that foundational platform to speak their mind and share their intellectual thoughts with us.”
Dylan loved running the podcast, but between schoolwork and extracurriculars, she wanted some help. One night, while she was hanging out with Hannah Schager (junior in literature and culture) and Sam Mahler (junior in literature and culture, creative writing, and film and visual media), she shared how she was very passionate about the podcast, but she wasn’t passionate about hosting it.
“And both of them just looked at each other, then they looked at me, and they were just like, ‘we will host it,’” Dylan said. “It was the best decision ever, because I immediately rebranded the entire thing to kind of fit them and our fun aesthetic.”
Hannah was particularly interested in using the podcast as a way to connect Carnegie Mellon students, since the English program is notably small. “[It’s] important to find people on campus who are interested in this type of stuff, who aren’t only the English majors, because every single English major knows each other,” she said. She hopes the podcast will unite all students across campus through their love of reading.
“I think [we want to carve] out a space for English people, but also kind of [be] more interdisciplinary, like connecting people from a lot of different places who are passionate about reading and literature and all types of things that we talk about on the pod.”
The CMU Booked Podcast recently posted their 10th episode, where they reviewed “All Fours” by Miranda July. They are approaching 400 monthly listeners on Spotify. Dylan is very proud of how far the podcast has come since she started it earlier this year. “[F]or a podcast that started maybe three months ago at a university that’s not, you know, known for its English program, we’re pretty proud of that.”
The podcast tries not to be too “book-clubby” and does not tell listeners what books they’re talking about each week ahead of time. Rather, they hope the podcast gives readers a place to collect their thoughts after finishing a book and hear some other varied opinions about a book. They also want to use their platform to highlight the small authors in the industry who often go unnoticed by bigger critics.
Perhaps the hardest part of the process for the three friends is deciding which book to read each week. “We all read very diverse genres,” Dylan shared. Whereas she started with reading fantasy, Hannah prefers darker stories, while Sam enjoys familial and romance ones. Dylan’s favorite book they have read on the podcast so far is “No Country for Old Men” by Cormac McCarthy. Hannah’s favorite book they’ve discussed is “The Great Alone” by Kristin Hannah, and Sam’s favorite is “Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan. They have a combined spreadsheet where they input books from their personal to-be-read lists, allowing them to have many possible book options for each week.
As for the future, Dylan says the podcast plans to take a month off once school ends, and then resume. They intend to expand even more in their senior year and, hopefully, have some authors on as guests, too. Once they graduate, they hope more Carnegie Mellon book lovers will take over the podcast. They plan to start a blog this summer with book reviews and more information about the hosts and the podcast.
For now, fans can tune into next week’s upcoming episode, where the hosts discuss “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin. Or, they can binge past episodes for some insightful chats about compelling books. For opinionated readers, the hosts welcome requests to be a guest on the podcast and encourage students to reach out through their Instagram, @cmubooked.
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