PodCastle is a weekly fantasy podcast producing audio performances of fantasy short fiction, including all the sub-genres of fantasy, such as magical realism, urban fantasy, slipstream, high fantasy, and dark fantasy. Escape Artists launched PodCastle on 1 April 2008, with Rachel Swirsky as founding editor and Ann Leckie as assistant editor. Swirsky left in 2010 to focus on her own writing. Editors Anna Schwind and Dave Thompson stepped down at the end of March 2015; while Leckie served as associate editor.
Starting in 2015, Rachael K. Jones and Graeme Dunlop shared editing and hosting duties, along with regular guest host M. K. Hobson. In May of 2016, Rachael stepped down as co-editor and Jen R. Albert joined Graeme as the new co-editor. In January 2017, Graeme left the co-editor position and Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali took his place until January 2019. C. L. Clark then served as co-editor alongside Jen, along with assistant editor and host Summer Fletcher.
In 2021 the co-editor title passed to Eleanor R. Wood and Shingai Njeri Kagunda, who now helm the flying castle along with assistant editor Sofia Barker and host Matt Dovey.
PodCastle has released hundreds of stories, whose authors include Peter S. Beagle, Natalia Theodoridou, Jeff VanderMeer, N.K. Jemisin, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor, Scott Lynch and Ken Liu. We pay our authors and narrators, but we will always be 100% free for you. We are supported through listener donations and sponsorship, so if you like what you hear, please consider sponsoring us via Patreon or PayPal!
PodCastle is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You can find us on social media at Facebook and Twitter, or join the discussion at our fan forums. Visit our Wikia for a sortable list of episodes and more information. General comments or questions can be sent to podcastle@escapeartists.net
PodCastle won the British Fantasy Award in 2020 and the Academy of Podcasters Award in 2017. PodCastle has also been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Ignyte Award, the Aurora Award, and the World Fantasy Award.
PodCastle is a production of the Escape Artists Podcast Network. Be sure to check out our sister shows: Cast of Wonders for the best in YA fiction, PseudoPod for horror, and Escape Pod for science fiction.