The trailer is here for the new season of The Cosmic Library! This five-episode season concerns a subject both smaller and vaster than any massive book, and that subject is: short stories in the United States.

You’ll hear how short stories exceed their own brevity and meld with a reader’s mind; you’ll hear about the history of the short story across continents; you’ll hear how stories are edited at The New Yorker; and you’ll hear a thrilling reading of the cosmically bewildering “Wakefield,” a classic story by Nathaniel Hawthorne in which this guy moves next door and hides out for twenty years.Guests include The New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman, Oxford scholar Andrew Kahn, Washington Post critic Becca Rothfeld, the novelist (and writer of short stories) Justin Taylor, and the actor Max Gordon Moore. Find it at Lit Hub or wherever you go for podcasts—new episodes will be released weekly, starting April 24th.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices