In his novels “A Brief History of Seven Killings” and “Black Leopard, Red Wolf,” Marlon James frequently conjures lost and forgotten voices. As one of the hosts of “Marlon and Jake Read Dead People,” a new podcast whose first two episodes will be available Monday, he does something similar with the spoken word. In the audio series from Riverhead Books, James and Jake Morrissey, his editor, strive to breathe life into the literature of the past.

The podcast is an outgrowth, both hosts said, of discussions that they’ve been having for years. “People kept walking in on me and Jake having arguments about books,” James said in an interview. “The thing they noticed was that we were always arguing about no-longer-living authors as if they just wrote a book last week.”

“Marlon and Jake Read Dead People” has retained this spirit. Despite its focus on the work of dead authors, it’s a far cry from stodgy academic discourse. Morrissey likened its tone to two friends “sitting at a bar talking about their favorite football teams over beers.”

For James, this irreverent approach avoids the pitfalls associated with both sides of the ever-churning debate about the status of the literary canon. “Too often the canon means ‘these books are untouchable and let’s talk about them in that way,’” he said. “People fought about ‘Moby-Dick’ in the 1800s. Why can’t we fight about it now?”