On 4th October Vintage announced the launch of the 'Vintage Podcast', a thirty-minute monthly arts programme, hosted by critic Alex Clark, available to download free from the Vintage Books website and to subscribe to through iTunes.

The 'Vintage Podcast' is designed to give readers a chance to hear some of their favourite authors reading and talking about their latest works. It will also provide an opportunity to hear the publishing world discuss key literary events and cultural ideas.

The launch of the 'Vintage Podcast' is part of Vintage's ongoing commitment to communicate more directly with readers across the UK and internationally. The Vintage website, launched in early 2010, showcases their authors in a lively way by making full use of video content, twitter feeds, blogs, comments and reviews, as well as offering a dedicated social network, the 'Vintage Reading Group'. 

The first 'Vintage Podcast' features:

• Tom McCarthy reacting to the critics' labelling of his Booker-shortlisted work, C as 'experimental' or an 'anti-novel': 'those are just lazy terms used by lazy journalists to describe something that is not middle-brow or sentimental which has become the default mode for most British novels.'
  
• Israeli novelist David Grossman talking about his critically-acclaimed new novel To The End of the Land and the possibility of Israeli-Palestinian peace.
• Tim Parks reading from his memoir Teach Us To Sit Still in which he opens up about his crippling medical condition and the relief he found in the unlikely prescription of meditation.
• Historians Bettany Hughes, author of The Hemlock Cup, and Annelise Freisenbruch, First Ladies of Rome, discussing women in history and women writing history.

Future 'Vintage Podcast' programmes this autumn will include:

• Salman Rushdie on how his new novel, Luka and the Fire of Life, grew out of the reality of his own life and his relationship with his youngest son.
• Howard Marks, the notorious drug-dealer turned writer, talking about working with Rhys Ifans who's playing him in the film adaption of Mr Nice. (Released nationwide on 8 Oct).
• Jonathan Powell, former close adviser to Tony Blair, offering a frank analysis of how power is wielded in the modern world.
• Nigella Lawson sharing her festive tips for a perfect Christmas.
• Audrey Niffenegger, Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes discussing the graphic novel as an art form.