Free Library Podcast: Recent Episodes
Free Library of Philadelphia
The Free Library Podcast is an easy way to participate in the author events and lectures that take place at the Parkway Central Library. Visit Author Events to find upcoming events.
The Author Events Series presents Jaap de Roode | Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves REGISTER Ages before the dawn of modern medicine, wild animals were harnessing the power of nature's pharmacy to heal themselves. Doctors by Nature reveals what researchers are now learning about the medical wonders of the animal world. In this visionary book, Jaap de Roode argues that we have underestimated the healing potential of nature for too long and shows how the study of self-medicating animals could impact the practice of human medicine. Drawing on illuminating interviews with leading scientists from around the globe as well as his own pioneering research on monarch butterflies, de Roode demonstrates how animals of all kinds--from ants to apes, from bees to bears, and from cats to caterpillars--use various forms of medicine to treat their own ailments and those of their relatives. We meet apes that swallow leaves to dislodge worms, sparrows that use cigarette butts to repel parasites, and bees that incorporate sticky resin into their hives to combat pathogens. De Roode asks whether these astonishing behaviors are learned or innate and explains why, now more than ever, we need to apply the lessons from medicating animals--it can pave the way for healthier livestock, more sustainable habitats for wild pollinators, and a host of other benefits. Doctors by Nature takes readers into a realm often thought to be the exclusive domain of humans, exploring how scientists are turning to the medical knowledge of the animal kingdom to improve agriculture, create better lives for our pets, and develop new pharmaceutical drugs. Jaap de Roode is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Biology at Emory University, where he is director of the Infectious Diseases across Scales Training Program, which trains graduate students in interdisciplinary science to study and control infectious disease. The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 4/22/2025)
The Author Events Series presents Katie Kitamura | Audition: A Novel REGISTER In Conversation with Adam Dalva One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. An exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love. Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She's an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He's attractive, troubling, young-young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day – partner, parent, creator, muse – and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately. Taut and hypnotic, Audition is Katie Kitamura at her virtuosic best. Katie Kitamura is the author of four previous novels, most recently A Separation and Intimacies, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for a Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature, a Lannan fellowship, and many other honors, and her work has been translated into twenty-one languages. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University. Adam Dalva's writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Review of Books. He serves on the board of the National Book Critics Circle and is a Contributing Fiction Editor of The Yale Review. The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 4/9/2025)
The Author Events Series presents Dr. Anthony Fauci | On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT! In Conversation with Dave Davies Anthony Fauci is arguably the most famous - and most revered - doctor in the world today. His role guiding America sanely and calmly through Covid (and through the torrents of Trump) earned him the trust of millions during one of the most terrifying periods in modern American history, but this was only the most recent of the global epidemics in which Dr. Fauci played a major role. His crucial role in researching HIV and bringing AIDS into sympathetic public view and his leadership in navigating the Ebola, SARS, West Nile, and anthrax crises, make him truly an American hero. His memoir reaches back to his boyhood in Brooklyn, New York, and carries through decades of caring for critically ill patients, navigating the whirlpools of Washington politics, and behind-the-scenes advising and negotiating with seven presidents on key issues from global AIDS relief to infectious disease preparedness at home. ON CALL will be an inspiration for readers who admire and are grateful to him and for those who want to emulate him in public service. He is the embodiment of "speaking truth to power," with dignity and results. Dave Davies is a regular contributor and guest host for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. In addition to his work on Fresh Air, Davies spent more than three decades covering city government and state and local politics in Philadelphia, for WHYY-FM, KYW Newsradio and the Philadelphia Daily News. Davies is a graduate of the University of Texas. The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 4/3/2025)
The Author Events Series presents Maria Shriver | I Am Maria REGISTER In Conversation with Dr. Martha Beck Special Guests: Bob Roth & Kate Baer Please join us in celebrating Maria Shriver's I Am Maria: My Reflections and Poems on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home. A book like no other, I Am Maria weaves Shriver's hard-earned wisdom with her own deeply personal poetry. I Am Maria reminds readers there is strength and love on the other side of all of our hardest days. Maria will be joined in conversation by Martha Beck, and the evening will feature meditation, music, and intimate discussions about life's defining moments-the heartbreaks that shape us, the healing that transforms us, and the journey back to ourselves. Drawing from her own life experiences, I Am Maria tells the story of how Maria emerged from heartbreak and uncertainty-universal moments in every life lived fully-with renewed clarity and strength. The poems in this collection speak to timeless themes of love, loss, longing, and healing, offering readers a comforting reminder that hope can be found even after the most difficult moments. Maria's legacy is built on social impact, deep empathy, and a profound understanding of human connection. Through her leadership, activism, and media presence, she continues to inspire and uplift others. Now, with the release of I Am Maria, she offers these deeply personal poems as a guide for those navigating their own life journeys. Through her intimate reflections, Maria invites readers to shed self-criticism, embrace every part of themselves, and discover the profound healing that comes with forgiveness and self-compassion. The book encourages readers to rediscover poetry as a tool for self-exploration, paving the way to uncover a deeper version of themselves. Maria Shriver is a mother and grandmother, a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning journalist and producer. She is the author of seven New York Times bestselling books, the former First Lady of California, an NBC News Special Anchor, founder of Shriver Media, The Women's Alzheimer's Movement, co-founder of the brain health brand MOSH, and the publisher of The Open Field. When she's not thinking or writing, she can be found hanging with her kids and grandkids. Dr. Martha Beck, PhD, is a bestselling author, coach, and speaker. She has spent a lifetime offering powerful, practical, and entertaining teachings that help people improve every aspect of their lives. Oprah Winfrey has called her ''one of the smartest women I know.'' The founder of Wayfinder Life Coach Training, Martha is a passionate and engaging speaker, and her teachings are very popular for their unique blend of science, spirituality, and humor. The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. All tickets come with a copy of the book! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 4/2/2025)
The Author Events Series presents Laurie Woolever | Care and Feeding: A Memoir REGISTER In Conversation with Reem Kassis In this moving, hilarious, and insightful memoir, Laurie Woolever traces her path from a small-town childhood to working at revered restaurants and food publications, alternately bolstered and overshadowed by two of the most powerful men in the business. But there's more to the story than the two bold-faced names on her resume: Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain. Behind the scenes, Laurie's life is frequently chaotic, an often pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and wryly self-deprecating, Laurie attempts to carve her own space as a woman in this world that is by turns toxic and intoxicating. Laurie seeks to try it all--from a seedy Atlantic City strip club to the Park Hyatt Tokyo, from a hippie vegetarian co-op to the legendary El Bulli--while balancing her consuming work with her sometimes ambivalent relationship to marriage and motherhood. As the food world careens toward an overdue reckoning and Laurie's mentors face their own high-profile descents, she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs and how to hold on to the parts of her life's work that she truly values: care and feeding. Laurie Woolever has written about food and travel for the New York Times, GQ, Saveur, and many others. Reem Kassis is a Palestinian writer and author of the best-selling and award-winning cookbooks The Palestinian Table (2017) and The Arabesque Table (2021) and the children's book We Are Palestinian (2023). Her writing regularly appears in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post in addition to various news outlets, magazines and academic journals. She grew up in Jerusalem, then obtained her undergraduate and MBA degrees from UPenn and Wharton and her MSc in social psychology from the London School of Economics. She now lives in the Philadelphia area with her husband and three daughters. The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 3/18/2025)
The Author Events Series presents Fawn Weaver | Love & Whiskey: The Remarkable True Story of Jack Daniel, His Master Distiller Nearest Green, and the Improbable Rise of Uncle Nearest REGISTER In Conversation with Michelle Miller Embark on a captivating journey with Love & Whiskey. New York Times bestselling author Fawn Weaver unveils the hidden narrative behind one of America's most iconic whiskey brands. This book is a vibrant exploration set in the present day, delving into the life and legacy of Nearest Green, the African American distilling genius who played a pivotal role in the creation of the whiskey that bears Jack Daniel's name. Set against the backdrop of Lynchburg, Tennessee, this narrative weaves together a thrilling blend of personal discovery, historical investigation, and the revelation of a story long overshadowed by time. Through extensive research, personal interviews, and the uncovering of long-buried documents, Weaver brings to light not only the remarkable bond between Nearest Green and Jack Daniel but also Daniel's concerted efforts during his lifetime to ensure Green's legacy would not be forgotten. This deep respect for his teacher, mentor, and friend was mirrored in Jack's dedication to ensuring that the stories and achievements of Nearest Green's descendants, who continued the tradition of working side by side with Jack and his descendants, would also not be forgotten. Love & Whiskey is more than just a recounting of historical facts; it's a live journey into the heart of storytelling, where every discovery adds a layer to the rich tapestry of American history. Weaver's pursuit highlights the importance of acknowledging those who have shaped our cultural landscape; yet remained in the shadows. As Weaver intertwines her present-day quest with the historical threads of Green and Daniel's lives, she not only pays homage to their legacy but also spearheads the creation of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey. This endeavor has not only brought Nearest Green's name to the forefront of the whiskey industry but has also set new records, symbolizing a step forward in recognizing and celebrating African American contributions to the spirit world. Love & Whiskey invites readers to witness a story of enduring friendship, resilience, and the impact of giving credit where it's long overdue. It's an inspiring tale of how uncovering the past can forge new paths and how the spirit of whiskey has connected lives across generations. Join Fawn Weaver on this extraordinary adventure, as she navigates through the layers of history, friendship, and the unbreakable bonds formed by the legacy of America's native spirit, ensuring the stories of Nearest Green and his descendants live on in the heart of American culture. The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 3/19/2025)
The Author Events Series presents Chris Hayes | The Sirens' Call REGISTER In Conversation with Kate Shaw We all feel it--the distraction, the loss of focus, the addictive focus on the wrong things for too long. We bump into the zombies on their phones in the street, and sometimes they're us. We stare in pity at the four people at the table in the restaurant, all on their phones, and then we feel the buzz in our pocket. Something has changed utterly: for most of human history, the boundary between public and private has been clear, at least in theory. Now, as Chris Hayes writes, "With the help of a few tech firms, we basically tore it down in about a decade." Hayes argues that we are in the midst of an epoch-defining transition whose only parallel is what happened to labor in the nineteenth century: attention has become a commodified resource extracted from us, and from which we are increasingly alienated. The Sirens' Call is the big-picture vision we urgently need to offer clarity and guidance. Because there is a breaking point. Sirens are designed to compel us, and now they are going off in our bedrooms and kitchens at all hours of the day and night, doing the bidding of vast empires, the most valuable companies in history, built on harvesting human attention. As Hayes writes, "Now our deepest neurological structures, human evolutionary inheritances, and social impulses are in a habitat designed to prey upon, to cultivate, distort, or destroy that which most fundamentally makes us human." The Sirens' Call is the book that snaps everything into a single holistic framework so that we can wrest back control of our lives, our politics, and our future. Chris Hayes is the Emmy Award-winning host of All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC and the New York Times bestselling author of A Colony in a Nation and Twilight of the Elites. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and children. Kate Shaw is a Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where she teaches and writes about the presidency, the law of democracy, the Supreme Court, and reproductive rights and justice. Her scholarly writing has appeared, among other places, in the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Northwestern University Law Review, and her popular writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic. She co-hosts the Supreme Court podcast Strict Scrutiny and is a Contributing Opinion Writer with the New York Times. The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Extra copies of the books will be available for purchase at the library on event night. All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 3/3/2025)
The Author Events Series presents Marlene Daut | The First and Last King of Haiti REGISTER In Conversation with Grace Sanders Johnson Slave, revolutionary, traitor, king, and suicide, Henry Christophe was, in his time, popular and famous the world over. Born in 1767 to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to gain their freedom from France. Yet in an incredible twist of fate, Christophe ended up fighting with Napoleon's forces against the very enslaved men and women he had once fought alongside. Later, reuniting with those he had betrayed, he offered to lead them and made himself their king. But it all came to a sudden and tragic end when Christophe--after nine years of his rule as King Henry I--shot himself in the heart, some say with a silver bullet. Why did Christophe turn his back on Toussaint Louverture and the very revolution with which his name is so indelibly associated? How did it come to pass that Christophe found himself accused of participating in the plot to assassinate Haiti's first ruler, Dessalines? What caused Haiti to eventually split into two countries, one ruled by Christophe in the north, who made himself king, the other led by President Pétion in the south? The First and Last King of Haiti is a riveting story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval. Marlene Daut is Professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale University. She teaches courses in anglophone, francophone Caribbean, African American, and French Colonial and historical studies. Grace L. Sanders Johnson is a historian, visual artist, and associate professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of study include modern Caribbean history, transnational feminisms, oral history, and environmental humanities. Her most recent work can be found in several journals including Her most recent work can be found in several journals including Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International (2024), Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism (2023), Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism (2022), American Anthropologist (2022), and Caribbean Review of Gender Studies (2018). Sanders Johnson is the author of White Gloves, Black Nation: Women, Citizenship, and Political Wayfaring in Haiti (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) which won the 2023 Haitian Studies Association Best Book Award, and honorable mention for the 2024 Mary Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women's and/or Gender History from the Organization of American Historians; White Gloves, Black Nation is also one of the top 5 finalist for the 2024 African American Intellectual History Pauli Murray Book Prize and Choice Journal's 2024 list of Outstanding Academic Titles. The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 2/13/2025)
The Author Events Series presents Brian Kelly | How to Win at Travel REGISTER In Conversation with Haley Sacks In How to Win at Travel, Brian Kelly shares his greatest tips and strategies to experience the world in ways you never thought possible. This comprehensive guide is a road map with all of the knowledge and tools you need to become an expert traveler. Get practical advice on a range of topics, including how to find the cheapest flights; effectively leverage airline, hotel, and credit card loyalty programs; conquer your fear of flying; beat jet lag; and score free flights and upgrades. Kelly also covers the ins and outs of travel insurance and getting the right credit cards to make your travel more affordable and enjoyable. He discusses the art of dealing with travel mishaps, speaks to the technology you need to manage modern travel, and shares ideas for pinpointing the best destination for you. Whether you're a young adult traveling solo, a road warrior business traveler, a growing family looking for new experiences, or a retiree ready to explore the world, reach for this guide to plan an unforgettable trip. Easy to read, informative, and inspirational, How to Win at Travel is the definitive travel guide for your next adventure, no matter how big or small. The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 2/3/2025)
The Author Events Series presents Judy Giesberg & Lee Hawkins | Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families AND I Am Nobody's Slave: How Uncovering My Family's History Set Me Free REGISTER In Conversation with Cherri Gregg Judith Giesberg draws on the archive that she founded--containing almost five thousand letters and advertisements placed by members of the Freedom Generation--to compile these stories in a narrative form for the first time. Her in-depth research turned up additional information about the writers, their families, and their enslavers. With this critical context, she recounts the moving stories of the people who placed the advertisements, the loved ones they tried to find, and the outcome of their quests to reunite. This story underscores the cruelest horror of slavery--the forced breakup of families--and the resilience and determination of the formerly enslaved. Thoughtful, heart-wrenching, and illuminating, Last Seen finally gives this lesser-known aspect of slavery the attention it deserves. I Am Nobody's Slave tells the story of one Black family's pursuit of the American Dream through the impacts of systemic racism and racial violence. This book examines how trauma from enslavement and Jim Crow shaped their outlook on thriving in America, influenced each generation, and how they succeeded despite these challenges. To their suburban Minnesotan neighbors, the Hawkinses were an ideal American family, embodying strength and success. However, behind closed doors, they faced the legacy of enslavement and apartheid. Lee Hawkins, Sr. often exhibited rage, leaving his children anxious and curious about his protective view of the world. Thirty years later, his son uncovered the reasons for his father's anxiety and occasional violence. Through research, he discovered violent deaths in his family for every generation since slavery, mostly due to white-on-Black murders, and how white enslavers impacted the family's customs. Hawkins explores the role of racism-triggered childhood trauma and chronic stress in shortening his ancestors' lives, using genetic testing, reporting, and historical data to craft a moving family portrait. This book shows how genealogical research can educate and heal Americans of all races, revealing through their story the story of America--a journey of struggle, resilience, and the heavy cost of ultimate success. The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 2/6/2025)
The Author Events Series presents Juan Williams | New Prize for These Eyes REGISTER In Conversation with Marsha Levick In New Prize for These Eyes, award-winning author Juan Williams shines a light on this historic, new movement. Who are its heroes? Where is it headed? What fires, furies, and frustrations distinguish it from its predecessor? In the 20th century, Black activists and their white allies called for equal rights and an end to segregation. They appealed to the Declaration of Independence's defiant assertion that "all men are created equal." They prioritized legal battles in the courtroom and legislative victories in Congress. Today's movement is dealing with new realities. Demographic changes have placed progressive whites in a new role among the largest, youngest population of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians in the nation's history. The new generation is social media savvy, and they have an agenda fueled by discontent with systemic racism and the persistent scourge of police brutality. Today's activists are making history in a new economic and cultural landscape, and they are using a new set of tools and strategies to do so. Williams brilliantly traces the arc of this new civil rights era, from Obama to Charlottesville to January 6th and a Confederate flag in the Capitol. An essential read for activists, historians, and anyone passionate about America's future, New Prize for These Eyes is more than a recounting of history. It is a forward-looking call to action, urging Americans to get in touch with the progress made and hurdles yet to be overcome. Juan Williams is a prizewinning journalist and historian. He is the author of the bestselling civil rights history Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954-1965, which accompanied the PBS series of the same name. He also wrote the landmark biography of the first African American on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, as well as the New York Times bestsellers Enough and Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate. Williams worked for The Washington Post as a celebrated national political correspondent, White House correspondent, and editorial writer. His NPR talk show took ratings to a new high. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Ebony. He is currently senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a columnist for The Hill. The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 1/28/2025)
The Author Events Series presents Uché Blackstock | Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine REGISTER In Conversation with Dr. Joel Bervell The rousing, captivating story of a Black physician, her career in medicine, and the deep inequities that still exist in the U.S. healthcare system. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organization of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats tend to their patients and neighbors, host community health fairs, cure ills, and save lives. What Dr. Uché Blackstock did not understand as a child--or learn about at Harvard Medical School, where she and her sister had followed in their mother's footsteps, making them the first Black mother-daughter legacies from the school--were the profound and long-standing systemic inequities that mean just 2 percent of all U.S. physicians today are Black women; the racist practices and policies that ensure Black Americans have far worse health outcomes than any other group in the country; and the flawed system that endangers the well-being of communities like theirs. As an ER physician, and later as a professor in academic medicine, Dr. Blackstock became profoundly aware of the systemic barriers that Black patients and physicians continue to face. Legacy is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare. At once a searing indictment of our healthcare system, a generational family memoir, and a call to action, Legacy is Dr. Blackstock's odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician--to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 1/22/2025)
The Author Events Series presents Caroline Eden | Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels REGISTER In Conversation with Jonathan Deutsch From the author of Red Sands, a New Yorker "Best Cookbook of the Year," a cozy, thoughtful memoir recalling food and travel in Eastern Europe and Central Asia from a basement Edinburgh kitchen, featuring a delicious recipe at the end of each chapter. A welcoming refuge with its tempting pantry, shelves of books, and inquisitive dog, Caroline Eden's basement Edinburgh kitchen offers her comfort away from the road. Join her as she cooks recipes from her travels, reflects on past adventures, and contemplates the kitchen's unique ability to tell human stories. This is a hauntingly honest, and at times heartbreaking, memoir with the smell, taste, and preparation of food at its heart. From late night baking as a route back to Ukraine to capturing the beauty of Uzbek porcelain, and from the troublesome nature of food and art in Poland to the magic of cloudberries, Cold Kitchen celebrates the importance of curiosity and of feeling at home in the world. Caroline Eden is a writer, book critic, and the award-winning author of Red Sands: Reportage and Recipes through Central Asia, from Hinterland to Heartland, a New Yorker Book of the Year; Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes-Through Darkness and Light; and Samarkand: Recipes and Stories from Central Asia & the Caucasus. She has travelled extensively to countries such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, and Bangladesh, documenting her experiences across multiple publications including Financial Times, the Guardian, and the Times Literary Supplement, as well as on BBC Radio 4's "From Our Own Correspondent." She lives in Edinburgh. Jonathan Deutsch, Ph.D., CHE, CRC is Professor and Vice Chair of Health Sciences, which encompasses Culinary, Food, Nutrition, Exercise and Health Sciences at Drexel University. He is the Founding Program Director of Drexel's Food Innovation and Entrepreneurship Programs. He is past President of the Upcycled Food Foundation and previously was the inaugural James Beard Foundation Impact Fellow, leading a national curriculum effort on food waste reduction for chefs and culinary educators. He was named a Food Waste Warrior by Foodtank. Before moving to Drexel, Deutsch built the culinary arts program at Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York (CUNY) and the Ph.D. concentration in food studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and School of Public Health. At Drexel, he directs the Drexel Food Lab, a culinary innovation and food product research and development lab focused on solving real world food system problems in the areas of sustainability, health promotion, and inclusive dining. He is the co-author or -editor of eight books. A classically trained chef, Deutsch worked in a variety of settings including product development, small luxury inns and restaurants. When not in the kitchen, he can be found behind his tuba. The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 1/16/2025)
SOLD OUT The Author Events Series presents Melissa Fitzgerald & Mary McCormack | What's Next: A Backstage Pass to the West Wing REGISTER WHAT'S NEXT: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service (Dutton; on sale August 13, 2024), by cast members Melissa Fitzgerald (aka Assistant to the Press Secretary Carol Fitzpatrick) and Mary McCormack (aka Deputy National Security Advisor Kate Harper), features a foreword by creator Aaron Sorkin and an introduction by Allison Janney (aka White House press secretary and later WH chief of staff C.J. Cregg). The book offers an exclusive behind-the-scenes look into The West Wing's creation and legacy, with a particular emphasis on the show's commitment to service that was embodied not only in the cast members' devotion to different causes, which is still ongoing, but also with the strong bonds of friendship and feeling of family that made being part of the show so special and that still endure to this day Melissa Fitzgerald is an actor, producer, and social justice advocate. As an actor, Melissa is best known for her seven-year role as Carol on the award-winning television series The West Wing. While in Hollywood, Melissa cofounded Voices in Harmony, a mentoring program that uses theater to work with historically underserved teens. In 2013, Melissa left Hollywood to champion justice system reform at All Rise, where she is at the forefront of engaging the public in the expansion of treatment courts and advancing justice system responses for individuals impacted by substance use and mental health disorders. Mary McCormack is an actor, producer, and activist. A Tony-nominated Broadway actress, she is known for a diversity of roles across film, television, and theater. Mary is an outspoken advocate for a whole host of causes, from social justice and women's rights to veterans' issues and criminal justice reform. She lives in Los Angeles. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 9/11/2024)
The Author Events Series presents Carrie Rickey | A Complicated Passion, The Life and Work of Agnès Varda REGISTER In conversation with Gary Kramer Born in Los Angeles, Carrie Rickey is an award-winning film critic, art critic, and film historian. She was the film critic at the Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty-five years and has also written for Artforum, Art in America, Film Comment, the New York Times, the Village Voice, and Politico. She has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in Philadelphia. A Complicated Passion, The Life and Work of Agnès Varda is the first major biography of the storied French filmmaker, who was hailed by Martin Scorsese as ''one of the Gods of cinema.'' Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any female filmmaker, Agnès Varda (1928 – 2019) wrote and directed some of the most acclaimed films of her era, from her tour de force Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), a classic of modernist cinema, to the beloved documentary The Gleaners and I (2000) four decades later. She helped to define the French New Wave, inspired an entire generation of filmmakers, and was recognized with major awards at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festivals, as well as an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards. In this lively biography, former Philadelphia Inquirer film critic Carrie Rickey explores the ''complicated passions'' that informed Varda's charmed life and indelible work. Rickey traces Varda's three remarkable careers - as still photographer, as filmmaker, and as installation artist. She explains how Varda was a pioneer in blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, using the latest digital technology and carving a path for women in the movie industry. She demonstrates how Varda was years ahead of her time in addressing sexism, abortion, labor exploitation, immigrant rights, and race relations with candor and incisiveness. She makes clear Varda's impact on contemporary figures like Ava DuVernay, Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins, the Safdie brothers, and Martin Scorsese, who called her one of the Gods of cinema. And she delves into Varda's incredibly rich social life with figures such as Harrison Ford, Jean-Luc Godard, Jim Morrison, Susan Sontag, and Andy Warhol, and her nearly forty-year marriage to the celebrated director Jacques Demy. A Complicated Passion is the vibrant biography that Varda, regarded by many as the greatest female filmmaker of all time, has long deserved. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 9/16/2024)
The Author Events Series presents Francis Collins | The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust REGISTER In conversation with Kathleen Hall Jamieson In The Road to Wisdom, Francis Collins reminds us of the four core sources of judgement and clear thinking: truth, science, faith, and trust. Drawing on his work from the Human Genome Project and heading the National Institutes of Health, as well as on ethics, philosophy, and Christian theology, Collins makes a robust, thoughtful case for each of these sources--their reliability, and their limits. Ultimately, he shows how they work together, not separately--and certainly not in conflict. It is only when we relink these four foundations of wisdom that we can begin to discern the best path forward in life. Thoughtful, accessible, winsome, and deeply wise, The Road to Wisdom leads us beyond current animosities to surer footing. Here is the moral, philosophical, and scientific framework with which to address the problems of our time--including distrust of public health, partisanship, racism, response to climate change, and threats to our democracy--but also to guide us in our daily lives. This is a book that will repay many readings, and resolve dilemmas that we all face every day. Francis S. Collins is a physician and geneticist. His groundbreaking work has led to the discovery of the cause of cystic fibrosis, among other diseases. In 1993 he was appointed director of the international Human Genome Project, which successfully sequenced all 3 billion letters of our DNA. He went on to serve three Presidents as the Director of the National Institutes of Health. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night Ticket price includes processing fees The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 9/26/2024)
The Author Events Series presents Paola Mendoza | Solis: A Companion to Sanctuary REGISTER In conversation with AJ Hikes From the authors of Sanctuary comes a haunting near-future companion tale about undocumented immigrants subjected to deadly experiments in a government labor camp and the four courageous rebels who set into place a daring plan to liberate them. Paola Mendoza is a proud immigrant from Colombia. She is an award-winning filmmaker, best-selling author and has organized some of the largest and most impactful cultural and political movements in the past decade, including the Women's March, Families Belong Together & Trans Prom. She uses art to disrupt and disarm, to change our thinking, and to advance movements for immigrants, reproductive justice and the LGBTQ community. Her work has been supported by The Ford Foundation, Just Films, Pop Culture Collaborative, Opportunity Agenda, and Race Forward, among many others. She co-authored the New York Times bestseller Together We Rise: Behind the Scenes at the Protest Heard Around the World. Her YA novel, Sanctuary, was a critical darling and is currently being adapted into a motion picture. Her most recent YA title, SOLIS (the sequel to Sanctuary), will be released in the Fall. Paola's work has been published in The New York Times, USA Today, Huffington Post, Glamour, InStyle, Elle and Teen Vogue. Her films Igualada, Entre Nos, On the Outs & Free Like the Birds have garnered international and critical acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival just to name a few. Paola is a founder of The Resistance Revival Chorus, The Meteor and The Soze Agency.. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! (recorded 10/10/2024)
From the critically acclaimed artist, designer, and author of the bestsellers The Principles of Uncertainty, My Favorite Things, and Women Holding Things comes a moving meditation in words and pictures on remorse, joy, ancestry, and memory. REGISTER In Conversation with Alex Conner Maira Kalman's most autobiographical and intimate work to date, Still Life with Remorse is a beautiful, four-color collection combining deeply personal stories and 50 striking full-color paintings in the vein of her and Alex Kalman's acclaimed Women Holding Things. Tracing her family's story from her grandfather's birth in Belarus and emigration to Tel Aviv--where she was born--Maira considers her unique family history, illuminating the complex relationship between recollection, regret, happiness, and heritage. The vibrant original art accompanying these autobiographical pieces are mostly still lifes and interiors which serve as counterpoints to her powerful words. In addition to vignettes exploring her Israeli and Jewish roots, Kalman includes short stories about other great artists, writers, and composers, including Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka, Gustav Mahler, and Robert Schumann. Through these narratives, Kalman uses her signature wit and tenderness to reveal how family history plays an influential role in all of our work, lives, and perspectives. A feat of visual storytelling and vulnerability, Still Life with Remorse explores the profound hidden in the quotidian, and illuminates the powerful universal truths in our most personal family stories. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! (recorded 10/29/2024)
The Author Events Series presents Andre Robert Lee | A Conversation with the Documentary Filmmaker and Author REGISTER In Conversation with Cherri Gregg André Robert Lee most recently served as the Executive Producer of Notes From America With Kai Wright. The show is broadcast from WNYC, the largest public radio station in America. André was the driving force behind the show's expansion from 80 NPR stations to over 120 stations. André was tasked with reshaping and redesigning the live radio show. He is also a Film Maker, Keynote Speaker, Consultant, Writer, and Educator. André has committed his entire career to building an army of change agents. His process includes Many Things; New York City Public Schools, The Ford Foundation, Miramax Films, Urbanworld, Film Movement, Diana Ross, BET, Universal, PBS, HBO, Sundance, Picturehouse, and Dreamworks. André directed and produced The Prep School Negro and served as producer on the documentary I'm Not Racist...Am I? André created The Election Effects Project for Paramount TV. André told the story of incarcerated youth in Richmond with the award-winning film Virtually Free. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 11/6/2024)
The Author Events Series presents The Intertextual Self: New Approaches to the Memoir REGISTER Memoirists most often focus on the authenticity of their own voice and experience, and how best to render on the page the intersection of memory and current insight. This traditional approach creates engaging and compelling personal narratives – singular texts of the self. But a new approach seems to be emerging, one in which writers grapple with other texts that have informed their experiences, shaped their thinking, and served as lenses through which to interpret their own lives. This event features three highly accomplished and daring authors who have taken this approach to their memoirs, highlighting how they absorbed other texts and made them integral to telling their own stories. Authors Chris Campanioni (A and B and Also Nothing, 2nd Ed.), Tyler Mills (The Bomb Cloud), and Leah Souffrant (Entanglements) represent a new generation of writers who have turned to an even wider range of texts to help them identify, craft, and share their own stories. Each of their strikingly original memoirs also include visual art created by the authors. Chris Campanioni was born in Manhattan in 1985 and grew up in a very nineties New Jersey. His research connecting media studies with studies of migration has been awarded a Mellon Foundation fellowship and the Calder Prize and his writing has received the International Latino Book Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Academy of American Poets College Prize. He lives in Brooklyn. Leah Souffrant is a writer and artist committed to interdisciplinary practice. She is the author of Entanglements: Threads woven from history, memory, and the body (Unbound Edition Press 2023) and Plain Burned Things: A Poetics of the Unsayable (Collection Clinamen, PULG Liège 2017). The range of Souffrant's work involves poetics, visual studies and art, translation, and critical work in literature, feminist theory, and performance. With Abby Paige, she is a founding member of the LeAB Iteration Lab for theater art and performance. Her awards include the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry and her scholarship was recognized by the Center for the Study of Women & Society. Souffrant's poetry has been a finalist for the National Poetry Award. She keeps an art studio in Brooklyn and teaches writing at New York University. Born in Chicago, Tyler Mills (she/her) is the author of City Scattered (Snowbound Chapbook Award, Tupelo Press 2022), Hawk Parable (Akron Poetry Prize, University of Akron Press 2019), Tongue Lyre (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, Southern Illinois University Press 2013), and co-author with Kendra DeColo of Low Budget Movie (Diode Editions Chapbook Prize, Diode Editions 2021). Her memoir, The Bomb Cloud, received a Literature Grant from the Café Royal Foundation NYC. A poet and essayist, her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New Republic, The Believer, and Poetry, and her essays in AGNI, Brevity, Copper Nickel, River Teeth, and The Rumpus. She lived and taught in New Mexico four years, most recently serving as the Burke Scholar for the Doel Reed Center for the Arts in Taos, NM, and now teaches for Sarah Lawrence College's Writing Institute and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night. (recorded 12/5/2024)
The Author Events Series presents Lori Ginzberg | Tangled Journeys REGISTER In conversation with Tamala Edwards In 1830 Richard Walpole Cogdell, a husband, father, and bank clerk in Charleston, South Carolina, purchased a fifteen-year-old enslaved girl, Sarah Martha Sanders. Before her death in 1850, she bore nine of his children, five of whom reached adulthood. In 1857, Cogdell and his enslaved children moved to Philadelphia, where he bought them a house and where they became, virtually overnight, part of the African American middle class. An ambitious historical narrative about the Sanders family, Tangled Journeys tells a multigenerational, multiracial story that is both traumatic and prosaic while forcing us to confront what was unseen, unheard, and undocumented in the archives, and thereby inviting us into the process of American history making itself. Lori D. Ginzberg is Professor Emeritus of History and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University, as well as the author of several books, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life and Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman's Rights in Antebellum New York. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 11/14/2024)
Congregation Rodeph Shalom 615 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19123 Enter at 1339 Green Street, Philadelphia, PA 19123 The Author Events Series presents Malcolm Gladwell | Revenge of the Tipping Point REGISTER In conversation with Michelle Miller In Malcolm Gladwell's newsest book, he visits the phenomenon of social epidemics and examines the ways in which we have learned to tinker with and shape the spread of ideas, viruses, and trends-sometimes with great success, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers - The Tipping Point, Blink,Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. He is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, an audio content company that produces the podcasts Revisionist History, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood, and Broken Record, where he, Rick Rubin, and Bruce Headlam interview musicians across a wide range of genres. Gladwell has been included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list and touted as one of Foreign Policy's Top Global Thinkers. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Ticket price includes book with purchase and processing fees The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 10/24/2024)
The Author Events Series presents Bill Clinton | Citizen: My Life After the White House REGISTER In Conversation with Jonathan Capehart A powerful, candid, and richly detailed memoir from an American icon, revealing what life looks like after the presidency: triumphs, tribulations, and all. On January 20, 2001, after nearly thirty years in politics--eight of them as president of the United States--Bill Clinton was suddenly a private citizen. Only fifty-four years old, full of energy and ideas, he wanted to make meaningful use of his skills, his relationships with world leaders, and all he'd learned in a lifetime of politics, but how? Just days after leaving the White House, the call came to aid victims of a devastating earthquake in India, and Clinton hit the ground running. Over the next two decades, he would create an enduring legacy of public service and advocacy work, from Indonesia to Louisiana, Northern Ireland to South Africa, and in the process reimagine philanthropy and redefine the impact a former president could have on the world. Citizen is Clinton's front-row, first-person chronicle of his postpresidential years and the most significant events of the twenty-first century, including 9/11 and the runup to the Iraq War, the Haiti earthquake, the Great Recession, the January 6 insurrection, and the enduring culture wars of our times. With clarity and compassion, he also weighs in on the unprecedented challenges brought on by a global pandemic, ongoing income inequality, a steadily warming planet, and authoritarian forces dedicated to weakening democracy. Yet Citizen is more than a political memoir. These pages capture Clinton in a rare and unforgettable light: not only as a celebrated former president and a foundation leader, but as a father, grandfather, and husband. He recounts his support for Hillary Clinton during her time as senator, secretary of state, and presidential candidate, and shares the frustration and pain of the 2016 election. In this landmark publication, the highly anticipated follow-up to the best-selling My Life, Clinton pens an illuminating account of American democracy on a global stage, offering a frank reflection on the past and, with it, a fearless embrace of our future. Citizen is a self-portrait of equal parts eloquence, insight, and candor, a testament to one man's unwavering commitment to family and nation. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jonathan Capehart is host of ''The Saturday Show with Jonathan Capehart'' and ''The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart'' which air Saturday's and Sunday's, respectively, at 6pm ET on MSNBC. Capehart was deputy editorial page editor of the New York Daily News (2002 to 2004) and served on its editorial board from 1993 to 2000. In 1999, his editorial campaign to save the Apollo Theater earned him and the board the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing. Capehart left the Daily News in July 2000 to become the national affairs columnist at Bloomberg News, and took leave from this position in February 2001 to serve as a policy adviser to Michael Bloomberg in his first successful campaign for New York City Mayor. His memoir will be published by Twelve Books in January 2025. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! (recorded 11/20/2024)
In conversation with author and Pennsylvania State Senator, Nikil Saval In The Hollow Parties, Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld present a comprehensive history of the rise of American mass party politics through the Jacksonian era up through the years of Barack Obama to the presidency of Donald Trump. They posit that today's Democrat and Republican parties, at once overbearing and ineffectual, have emerged from the interplay of multiple party traditions that reach back to the founding, and they offer a vision for how these groups might fulfill their promise. An associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, Daniel Schlozman studies political parties, American political development, social movements, and political history. He is the author of When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History, a member of the Scholars Strategy Network, and a trustee of the Maryland Center for Economic Policy. Sam Rosenfeld is an associate professor of political science at Colgate University, where he researches party politics and American political development. He is the author of The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era, and his writing has also appeared in The American Prospect, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Vox, among many other places. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 5/21/2024)
In conversation with Wil Haygood Paul Hendrickson's books include Sons of Mississippi, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934–1961, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War, a National Book Award finalist. A creative writing teacher at the University of Pennsylvania for more than 25 years and a feature writer at The Washington Post for the two decades before that, he is the recipient of writing fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lyndhurst Foundation, among other institutions. In Fighting the Night, Hendrickson tells the story of his father's World War II service as a nighttime fighter pilot and the sacrifices he, his family, and his generation made on behalf of their country. Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Wil Haygood has, over a storied 30-year career, worked at the Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and as a globetrotting investigative reporter. He is most famous for his 2008 Washington Post article, ''A Butler Well Served by This Election,'' about the White House steward who bore witness to some of 20th century America's most notable events and figures. He later expanded the article into a bestselling book that was adapted into the critically acclaimed film The Butler, starring Forest Whitaker. Haygood is also the author of Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World and popular biographies of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Sugar Ray Robinson, Thurgood Marshall, and Sammy Davis, Jr. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 5/16/2024)
Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6abc Action News morning edition. ABC News' Chief Anchor, the host of This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and co-anchor of Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos joined the network in 1997 as an analyst for This Week. He previously served in the Clinton administration as the senior advisor to the president for policy and strategy. His book All Too Human, a political memoir about his time on the campaign trail and in the White House, was a no. 1 New York Times bestseller. A member of the board of directors at the Michael J. Fox Foundation and former Rhodes Scholar, Stephanopoulos' many honors include three Emmy Awards, a DuPont Award, three Murrow Awards, and two Cronkite Awards. In The Situation Room, he offers an insider's perspective on the highly restricted space in which 12 presidents have made their most critical, history-changing decisions. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 5/17/2024)
In conversation with Laura McGrath, Assistant Professor of English at Temple University ''Among our greatest contemporary writers'' (The Miami Herald), Claire Messud is the author of The Emperor's Children, a cutting portrait of life among Manhattan's junior intelligentsia that was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Her other acclaimed and bestselling novels include When the World Was Steady, The Hunters, The Last Life, The Woman Upstairs, and The Burning Girl. A PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, the recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships, and the winner of the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Messud teaches writing at Harvard University. Named one of the most anticipated books of 2024 by The Guardian, Oprah Daily, and New York magazine, This Strange Eventful History follows the seven-decade arc of an itinerant French Algerian colonial family born on the wrong side of history and forced to reckon with their interpersonal and larger political legacies. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 5/15/2024)
''His generation's most gifted writer of love's complicated, contradictory power'' (Los Angeles Times), Colm Tóibín is the author of an impressive list of novels, short stories, essays, plays, poetry, and criticism. His novels The Master, The Testament of Mary, and Brooklyn were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and the last was adapted into a popular BAFTA Award-winning film of the same name. The Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, Tóibín earned an Irish PEN Award and was named the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022–2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland, among scores of other honors. Set 20 years after the events of the international bestseller Brooklyn, Long Island finds the enigmatic émigré protagonist of that book alone in her marriage and facing the travails of middle age and unfulfilled dreams. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 5/13/2024)
In conversation with Annie Duke An ''unflappable and genial point-person'' (The New York Times), Jen Psaki served as the thirty-fourth White House Press Secretary under President Biden until May 2022. Currently the host of MSNBC's Sunday afternoon and Monday evening program, Inside with Jen Psaki, she spent the previous twenty years in public service. This includes stints as White House Communications Director under President Obama, as the spokesperson for the State Department under then Secretary of State John Kerry, work on three presidential campaigns, and numerous other campaign and communication roles. In Say More, Psaki employs her trademark wit and clearheaded analysis to reveal the surprising lessons she learned in the press room and from America's top leaders. Annie Duke is the bestselling author of Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away and Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts. A former professional poker player, she won a World Series of Poker bracelet and is the only woman to have won the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions. She currently works with First Round Capital Partners, a seed stage venture fund, and teaches executive education at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2023 she completed her PhD in cognitive psychology. Duke is also the co-founder of The Alliance for Decision Education, a nonprofit whose mission is to improve lives by empowering students through decision skills education. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 5/10/2024)
In conversation with Karen Heller, former national features writer and current contributor for The Washington Post, formerly a metro and features columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in commentary. A journalist at The New York Times for more than 25 years, Frank Bruni has been the paper's Rome bureau chief, head restaurant critic, White House correspondent, and staff writer for its Sunday magazine, among other positions. In 2011 he became the Times' first openly gay op-ed columnist. His bestselling books include Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush; Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater; Where You Go is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania; and The Beauty of Dusk, a memoir about adjusting to suddenly losing sight in his right eye. Also currently a professor of public policy at Duke University and the writer of a popular weekly Times newsletter, Bruni formerly worked as a Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer for the Detroit Free Press. In The Age of Grievance, he examines the ways in which the blame game has come to define American politics and culture. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 5/9/2024)
In conversation with award winning broadcaster and journalist, Tracey Matisak. ''America's most compelling popular historian'' (The Christian Science Monitor), Erik Larson is the bestselling author of eight critically acclaimed books, including The Splendid and the Vile, a chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz; In the Garden of Beasts, the story of the first American ambassador to Nazi Germany; The Devil in the White City, a history of the serial killer who stalked attendees of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago; and Dead Wake, the tale of the 1915 sinking of the RMS Lusitania. A former features writer for The Wall Street Journal and a contributing writer for Time magazine, he has contributed articles to The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper's, among other publications. In The Demon of Unrest, Larson delves into the five pivotal months preceding the Civil War to expose the controversies, crises, and personalities that led America into its bloodiest war.Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 5/5/2024)
Featuring: Lydia Abarça, Sheila Rohan, Marcia Sells, Karlya Shelton, and Khadija Tariyan (daughter of Gayle McKinney Griffith) In conversation with Shelly Power, The Dr. Carolyn Newsom Executive Director, Philadelphia Ballet Karen Valby's The Swans of Harlem tells the remarkable and-until now-rarely written about true story of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, a trailblazing troupe of Black men and women who performed some of ballet's most iconic works for the such audiences as the Queen of England, the White House, and Stevie Wonder. This history focuses on five foundational members of the group and their enduring bond, including Lydia Abarça, the first Black prima ballerina with a major international dance company, the first Black ballerina on the cover of Dance magazine, and an Essence cover star; and her equally accomplished friends, Gayle McKinney, Sheila Rohan, Marcia Sells, and Karlya Shelton. Valby is a frequent contributor to Vanity Fair, and has also published work in The New York Times, O Magazine, Glamour, Fast Company, and EW, where she spent fifteen years writing about culture. Shelly Power brings to Philadelphia Ballet, formerly Pennsylvania Ballet, her experiences in various artistic and executive leadership roles at Prix de Lausanne in Switzerland and Houston Ballet Academy. Since joining Philadelphia Ballet in 2018, Ms. Power has restructured the organization's administrative functions with new, innovative partnerships, with the goal of promoting that ballet is for everyone. Ms. Power received a Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies, with a focus on business, psychology, and fine arts from the University of Houston. She furthered her education at Rice University's Leadership Institute for Non-Profit Executives and Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management's Advanced Certification in Non-Profit Management. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 5/2/2024)
In conversation with Dr. Jason Karlawish In partnership with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society The clinical consulting director of support groups at The CaringKind (formerly The Alzheimer's Association), Dasha Kiper has an MA in clinical psychology from Columbia University. For the past decade she has worked with dementia patients, counseled caregivers, led support groups, trained and supervised mental health professionals, and counseled former caregivers who now lead support groups. Informed by her work as both a counselor and work as a caregiver herself, Travelers to Unimaginable Lands employs a wide range of compassionate stories to combat the myth of the so-called perfect caregiver. These ''moving and often surprising'' (The Wall Street Journal) case histories meld science and storytelling to show that caregivers don't just witness cognitive decline in their loved ones with dementia-they are its invisible victims. Dr. Jason Karlawish is the author of The Problem of Alzheimer's: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It. A Professor of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Health Policy, and Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, he is Co-Director of the Penn Memory Center, where he cares for patients. He also serves on the board of directors for The Greenwall Foundation, a grant-based organization dedicated to expanding bioethics knowledge. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Forbes, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among other places. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/30/2024)
In conversation with Beth Kephart A ''master of illusion, and one of the best storytellers around'' (NPR), Amy Tan is the author of the beloved novels The Joy Luck Club, a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, for which she also co-wrote the film adaptation screenplay; The Kitchen God's Wife; The Hundred Secret Senses, and The Valley of Amazement. Her prolific body of work also includes the memoir Where the Past Begins, several other novels and works of nonfiction, two children's books, and essays and stories that appeared in scores of periodicals and anthologies. In The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Tan pecks out a thoughtful ode to birding and the hidden beauty that lives around us, nested together with her own soaring illustrations. Renowned for her ability ''to generalize from her personal experience to the greater human one'' (The Washington Post), Beth Kephart is the author of more than 30 books across a wide range of genres, including poetry, young adult fiction, and, most notably, the memoir. These works include the award-winning how-to-guide Handling the Truth; A Slant of Sun, a National Book Award finalist; Love, an ode to all things Philly; and Wife | Daughter | Self, an interlocking essay collection about her various identities. A writing professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the co-founder of Junction workshops, she is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a Pew Fellowship, and the Speakeasy Poetry Prize, among other honors. Her latest book is an illustrated memoir, My Life In Paper. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/29/2024)
In 2006, Bakari Sellers defeated a twenty-six-year incumbent State Representative to become the youngest member of the South Carolina state legislature and the youngest African American elected official in the nation. The state's 2014 Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, he currently heads the strategic communication and public affairs team at the Strom Law Firm in Columbia, South Carolina and works as a CNN political analyst. Recently named to TIME's ''40 Under 40'' list, he is the author of the New York Times bestseller My Vanishing Country, a memoir and historical analysis of the lives of America's often-overlooked black working-class, and hosts the Bakari Sellers Podcast, a twice-weekly show that addresses a variety of cultural and political topics. In The Moment, Sellers examines the politics and policies that most affect the future of Black Americans, including inequities in education, healthcare, and policing. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/25/2024)
In conversation with Robert E. Hamilton, Head of Eurasia Research - Eurasia Program, Foreign Policy Research Institute Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Endowed Lecture The White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times, David E. Sanger has been a member of three Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist teams, including in 2017 for international reporting. His bestselling books include The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power; Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power; and The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age, which was adapted into an award-winning HBO documentary. Sanger is also a regular contributor to CNN and teaches national security policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In New Cold Wars, he offers an in-depth account of the United States' high-stakes struggles against two very dissimilar adversaries-Xi Jinping's China and Vladimir Putin's Russia. Colonel (Retired) Robert E. Hamilton, Ph.D., is the Head of Research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Eurasia Program and an Associate Professor of Eurasian Studies at the U.S. Army War College. In a 30-year career in the U.S. Army, spent primarily as an Eurasian Foreign Area Officer, he served overseas in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Germany, Belarus, Qatar, Afghanistan, the Republic of Georgia, Pakistan and Kuwait. He is the author of numerous articles and monographs on conflict and security issues, focusing principally on the former Soviet Union and the Balkans. He is a graduate of the German Armed Forces Staff College and the U.S. Army War College and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Military Academy, a Master's Degree in Contemporary Russian Studies and a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from the University of Virginia. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/18/2024)
In conversation with Patrick Behrer, Research Economist, Development Economics, World Bank How the subtle but significant consequences of a hotter planet have already begun-from lower test scores to higher crime rates-and how we might tackle them today. In Slow Burn, R. Jisung Park draws upon vast amounts of raw data and novel economics to examine the consequences of climate change on an astonishing array of social groups and institutions. An assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, environmental and labor economist he holds positions in the School of Social Policy and Practice and the Wharton School of Business. He has spent more than a decade investigating and writing about economic inequalities and outcomes created by climate change. A Rhodes Scholar, a research affiliate at the Institute of Labor Economics, and a faculty fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, Park has consulted with such organizations as the World Bank and the New York City Departments of Education and Health. Patrick Behrer is an Economist in the Sustainability and Infrastructure team of the World Bank's Development Research Group. Behrer's work focuses on the economics of air pollution, climate change, and climate adaptation. His work has focused on the impacts of air pollution and climate change on human capital formation and the relationship between agriculture and air pollution. His work leverages big data from online and administrative sources and recent advances in satellite remote sensing technology. Prior to joining the World Bank in 2021, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in 2020 from Harvard University in Public Policy. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/17/2024)
Dennis Yi Tenen is an associate professor of English at Columbia University, where he also serves as co-director of the Center for Comparative Media. Affiliated with Columbia's Data Science Institute, he is a former fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and worked as a Microsoft engineer in the Windows group, where he wrote code that runs on millions of personal computers around the world. His articles, which span topics ranging from literary theory to computational narratology, can be found in such journals as Amodern, New Literary History, and boundary2. In Literary Theory for Robots, Tenen takes readers on a centuries-spanning trip through automation to explore the relationship between writers and emerging technologies. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/11/2024)
In conversation with award-winning journalist and broadcaster Tracey Matisak Acclaimed for her study of the intersections of pop music, contemporary Black U.S. culture, and sex and gender, sociologist Tricia Rose is the author of Longing to Tell, The Hip Hop Wars, and, most notably, Black Noise, which is considered a foundational text for the academic study of hip hop. She is the Chancellor's Professor of Africana Studies and the director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University, and she has presented seminars and workshops on a wide range of topics to scholarly and general audiences. The recipient of grants and fellowships from the Mellon, the Robert Wood Johnson, the Ford, and the Rockefeller Foundations, Rose has been widely profiled and featured on several national media outlets. In Metaracism, she presents a definitive map of the vast and often obscured practices, policies, and beliefs that proliferate systemic racism in the United States. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/10/2024)
Praised for her ''darkly funny and painfully sharp'' (Los Angeles Times) fiction, Lydia Millet is the author of the novel A Children's Bible, shortlisted for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top 10 book of 2020; the story collection Love in Infant Monkeys, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and the novel Dinosaurs, a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her other honors include awards from PEN Center USA and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a longtime editor and staff writer at the Center for Biological Diversity. We Loved It All, named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Oprah Daily and Literary Hub, is a memoir that ponders the richness of the human experience amidst the environmental calamities that threaten life on Earth. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/9/2024)
Barbara Gohn Day Memorial Lecture In conversation with Rebeca L. Hey-Colón, Professor of Latinx Studies, Temple University Awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Obama in 2013, poet, essayist, and fiction writer Julia Alvarez is renowned for her lyrical, poignant, politically insightful books. These many works include How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, which details the lives of four sisters before and after their exile from the Dominican Republic; In the Time of the Butterflies, a million-copy bestseller that was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program; and Afterlife, a novel that explores the notion of keeping faith with our fellow humans in a broken world. Alvarez's many awards include the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature, a Latina Leader Award in Literature from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, and the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature. In The Cemetery of Untold Stories, Alvarez explores the very nature of storytelling in the tale of a fiction writer who finds that her buried untold stories have taken on lives of their own. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/4/2024)
In conversation with award-winning journalist and broadcaster, Tracey Matisak Introduced by State Rep. Donna Bullock Stacey Abrams is the Ronald W. Walters Endowed Chair for Race and Black Politics at Howard University. After serving eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives-seven as minority leader-she became the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, where she won more votes than any Democrat in the state's history. Dedicated to civic engagement, she is the creator of multiple nonprofit organizations devoted to democracy protection, voting rights, and effective public policy. Abrams has also co-founded successful companies, including a financial services firm, an energy and infrastructure consulting firm, and a media company, Sage Works Productions, Inc. Her books include the New York Times nonfiction bestsellers Lead from the Outside and Our Time Is Now, and a thriller, titled While Justice Sleeps. Her latest thriller, Rogue Justice, follows the continuing intrigues of While Justice Sleeps' protagonist, Supreme Court law clerk Avery Keene, as she unravels a conspiracy involving a slew of federal judges. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/5/2024)
''A fountain of observations'' (The Boston Globe), Sloane Crosley is the author of three New York Times bestselling essay collections, How Did You Get This Number, Look Alive Out There, and I Was Told There'd Be Cake, which was a finalist for the 2009 Thurber Prize for American Humor. Exploring various aspects of life's disappointments, morality, and modern love, her novels Cult Classic and The Clasp were named best books of the year by numerous publications. Crosley is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, a former editor of The Best American Travel Writing series, and her other work has appeared in The New York Times, Bon Appetit, The Village Voice, McSweeney's, Vice, and Smithsonian. In Grief Is for People, she offers an elegiac examination of loss in the aftermath of her close friend's death by suicide. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/3/2024)
In conversation with Herman Beavers M. Nzadi Keita is the author of the poetry collection Brief Evidence of Heaven, a finalist for the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Prize that explored the life of Anna Murray Douglass, Frederick Douglass' first wife. Her other poems and essays have appeared in such publications as A Face to Meet the Faces: A Persona Poetry Anthology, Killens Review of Arts and Letters, and Poet Lore. She formerly taught creative writing, American literature, and Africana studies at Ursinus College, and was an adviser to the award-winning documentary BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez and to Mural Arts Philadelphia. Keita's latest collection of poetry, Migration Letters, is a reflection on Black working-class identity and culture from the 1960s to now. A professor of English and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Herman Beavers teaches 20th Century and Contemporary African American literature and poetry writing. He is the author of the scholarly monograph Geography and the Political Imaginary in the Novels of Toni Morrison, the poetry chapbook Obsidian Blues, and his poems have appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Versadelphia, and The American Arts Quarterly, among other publications. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/2/2024)
Pine Tree Foundation Endowed Lecture Fareed Zakaria is the host of CNN's flagship domestic and international affairs program Fareed Zakaria GPS, which has aired around the world since its debut in 2008. Also a weekly columnist for the Washington Post, he formerly served as editor of Newsweek International, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, a Time magazine columnist, an analyst for ABC News, and the host of PBS's Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria. He is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, The Post-American World, The Future of Freedom, and In Defense of a Liberal Education. In Age of Revolutions, Zakaria melds historical study with contemporary analysis to map the ways in which societal upheavals and political paradigm shifts define our current culture of polarization. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 3/28/2024)
In conversation with Airea Dee Matthews Hanif Abdurraqib is the author of A Little Devil in America, a sweeping look at Black music, art, and culture that won the Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burns Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. His other works include the essay collection They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, which was named a best book of 2017 by Esquire, the Chicago Tribune, and NPR, among other outlets; Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award and Kirkus Prize finalist; and the poetry collection A Fortune for Your Disaster, winner of the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. His other essays, poems, and criticism have been published in a wide array of media. In There's Always This Year, Abdurraqib offers an emotional and historical meditation on basketball-who makes it, who we think should be successful in the game, and the very notion of role models. Airea D. Matthews is the 2022–23 Philadelphia Poet Laureate and directs the poetry program at Bryn Mawr College. Her collection Simulcra won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Best American Poets, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, and VQR, among other journals. Matthews' other honors include a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, a 2020 Pew Fellowship, and the 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Her latest work, Bread and Circus, addresses themes of income inequality, commodification, and conventional economic theories through poetry, prose, and imagery. The book was nominated for an LA Times Poetry Book Prize. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 3/27/2024)
Rahul Mehta's debut poetry collection, Feeding the Ghosts, explores the solace to be found in the everyday beauty sometimes overshadowed by larger calamity, as well as the author's identities, relationships, and culture. Also the author of the novel No Other World and the short story collection Quarantine, Mehta has contributed work to an array of publications, including the Kenyon Review, The Sun, the Massachusetts Review, and the New York Times Magazine. A creative writing teacher at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and named to Out magazine's 2011 ''Out 100'' list of inspiring individuals, they have earned a Lambda Literary Award and an Asian American Literary Award. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 3/26/2024)
In conversation with Jo Piazza Acclaimed for her ''knack for writing beautiful stories that speak to the anxiety of forging a new road for oneself'' (Bustle), Rebecca Serle is the New York Times bestselling author of One Italian Summer, In Five Years, The Dinner List, and the young adult novels The Edge of Falling and When You Were Mine. Serle also adapted her YA book series Famous in Love into a hit television series of the same name and her book When You Were Mine was the basis of the 2022 film Rosaline. A tale of romantic aspiration and exasperation, Expiration Dates is a novel in which for each potential partner she meets, a woman magically receives a slip of paper that lists his name and the amount of time that they will be together. Jo Piazza is the international bestselling author of twelve books, including the Good Morning America Book Club pick We Are Not Like Them with Christine Pride. She's also the host of the critically acclaimed Under the Influence podcast. Her work has been featured in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Her new book is The Sicilian Inheritance. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 3/25/2024)
In conversation with Lexy Bloom ''A delicious new Gilded Age family drama-almost a satire-set in the leafy enclaves of Brooklyn Heights'' (Vogue), Jenny Jackson's Pineapple Street tells the story of three women navigating the shoals of forbidden love, gender expectations, family money, and too much tennis. A New York Times bestseller and a Good Morning America Book Club Pick, it was named a best book of 2023 by numerous publications and media outlets, including Time, NPR, Town & Country, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, and the BBC. A vice president and executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf, Jackson is a graduate of Williams College and the Columbia Publishing Course. Lexy Bloom is Editorial Director at Knopf Cooks and Senior Editor at Alfred A. Knopf, where she works with writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Haruki Murakami, Orhan Pamuk, Deb Perelman, Hetty McKinnon, Bill Buford, and many more Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 3/21/2024)
In conversation with author and Pennsylvania State Senator, Nikil Saval In Solidarity, Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix offer a comprehensive look at not just the popular and ethereal idea of solidarity, but how it can be used by political organizing movements to affect real societal change. Also a lively history of such movements from Ancient Roman revolts to Occupy Wall Street and BLM, it reveals the nuts-and-bolts methods through which solidarity is built and sustained. Leah Hunt-Hendrix earned a PhD in Religion, Ethics, and Politics from Princeton University, where she wrote her dissertation on the Ethics of Solidarity. In 2012 she co-founded Solidaire, a nationwide network of philanthropists who fund progressive movements; and in 2017, she co-founded Way to Win, an organization devoted to electoral strategy. A Senior Advisor at the American Economic Liberties Project and a member of the Board of Directors of the Solutions Project, she is an advisor to her family foundation, the Sister Fund. The cofounder of the Debt Collective, a union of debtors, Astra Taylor is the director of several documentaries and the author of The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart, Democracy May Not Exist But We'll Miss It When It's Gone, and The People's Platform, winner of an American Book Award. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and n+1, among other publications. She sits on the editorial board of Hammer & Hope and is an advisor to Lux Magazine. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 3/19/2024)
In conversation with Kim Kelly A labor journalist who regularly contributes to In These Times magazine and The Guardian, Hamilton Nolan has written about inequality, politics, and class war for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Gawker, and Splinter, among other publications. He also regularly contributes articles about boxing to Defector. A member of the Writers Guild of America, East, Hamilton led the 2015 effort to unionize Gawker Media, where he was the longest-serving writer in the organization's history. In The Hammer, he offers a comprehensive overview of the contemporary American labor movement and highlights specific actions and organizations where politics and workers combine to affect change. Kim Kelly has worked as a labor columnist for Teen Vogue since 2018, and her writing on labor, class, and politics has appeared in The New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Esquire, among other places. Also a video correspondent for More Perfect Union, The Real News Network, and Means TV, she formerly served as the heavy metal editor at VICE's ''Noisey'' imprint. She was an original member of the VICE union, is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World's Freelance Journalists Union, and is a member and elected councilperson for the Writers Guild of America, East. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 3/18/2024)
In conversation with Airea Dee Matthews Referred to by Nick Cave as ''exquisitely crafted fire bombs of incandescent rage,'' Nam Le's 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem is a debut collection of verse that both honors and shatters the tropes of diasporic literature. Le is also the author of The Boat, a short story collection that takes readers to such places as New York City, Tehran, his birth country of Vietnam, and Australia, where he was raised and now lives. Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award, and a Pushcart Prize, this work has been widely anthologized, translated, and taught. Le has also contributed writing to a wide array of publications, including Zoetrope, The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Bomb, Boston Review, and One Story. Airea Dee Matthews is the 2022–23 Philadelphia Poet Laureate and directs the poetry program at Bryn Mawr College. Her collection Simulcra won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Best American Poets, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, and VQR, among other journals. Matthews' other honors include a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, a 2020 Pew Fellowship, and the 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Her latest work, Bread and Circus, addresses themes of income inequality, commodification, and conventional economic theories through poetry, prose, and imagery. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 3/14/2024)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6abc Action News morning edition. Tamron Hall is the Emmy Award-winning host and executive producer of the eponymous program Tamron Hall, ABC Disney's second longest running nationally syndicated talk show. Also the host of Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall on Investigation Discovery, she formerly served as an anchor for Today, the host of MSNBC Live with Tamron Hall, and a national news correspondent for NBC. While at NBC, she earned a 2015 Edward R. Murrow Award for her reportage on domestic abuse. Hall also partnered with Safe Horizon to launch The Tamron Renate Fund, which aids victims and families affected by domestic violence. A sequel to her 2022 bestselling crime fiction novel As the Wicked Watch, Watch Where They Hide follows intrepid journalist Jordan Manning as she uncovers the truth about a missing young mother. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 3/15/2024)
In conversation with Shantrelle Lewis Morgan Parker won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Magical Negro, a poetry collection that ponders the nuances of Black American womanhood. She is also the author of the young adult novel Who Put This Song On? and the poetry collections Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night and There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé. A Cave Canem graduate fellow, the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and the winner of a Pushcart Prize, Parker is the creator/co-curator of the Poets With Attitude reading series and is a member of The Other Black Girl Collective. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues, including The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, Best American Poetry, a Broadway playbill, and two Common albums. In You Get What You Pay For, she charts the generational and historical difficulties, traumas, and beauty of existing as a Black woman. Shantrelle P. Lewis is a multi-hyphen creative and scholar who accesses multiple disciplines to help elucidate African Diasporic history, aesthetics, culture and spirituality. After premiering at BlackStar Film Festival, her critically acclaimed directorial debut, In Our Mothers' Gardens, was released on Netflix via Ava Duvernay's Array. Her book, Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style, was published by Aperture in 2017. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, LA Times, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, NPR, BBC, Washington Post, Slate, The New Yorker and the Philadelphia Inquirer. She co-founded Shoppe Black with her husband and fellow Howard alum, Tony Oluwatoyin Lawson. As an initiated Lukumi Sango Priest, hoodooist and New Orleans native, Shantrelle can be found waxing poetic about all things African spirituality online and in person at the Beaucoup Hoodoo Shop, the annual Beaucoup Hoodoo Fest this October and within her community, ATRS Book Club. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 3/13/2024)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6abc Action News morning edition An award-winning journalist who has covered the business of the Internet since 1994, Kara Swisher is the host of the podcast On with Kara Swisher and the cohost of the Pivot podcast with Scott Galloway, both distributed by New York magazine. Also the cofounder and editor-at-large of Recode, host of the Recode Decode podcast, and co-executive producer of the Code conference, she is the author of aol.com and There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere, both of which explored AOL's position as an online cultural and business behemoth. Swisher is a former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and host of its Sway podcast, and has also written for The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, and The Washington Post. A scathing but balanced account of the tech industry and its founders, Burn Book employs Swisher's many decades of experience with Silicon Valley's most important figures, failures, and innovations. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 3/12/2024)
''Packed with richly imagined characters and vivacious prose'' (Esquire), Xochitl Gonzalez's debut novel Olga Dies Dreaming tells a tale of family secrets, Latinx politics in a gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood, and romance set against the backdrop of the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rican history. Winner of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize in Fiction and the New York City Book Award, it was named a best book of 2022 by The Washington Post, NPR, The New York Times, and TIME magazine. Gonzalez's nonfiction has appeared in Vogue, Allure, The Cut, and other periodicals, and her commentary writing for The Atlantic was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A tale of legacy, class, and art, Anita De Monte Laughs Last follows a first-generation Ivy League art student's quest to uncover the work of a brilliant but largely forgotten 1980s-era painter. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 3/11/2024)
In conversation with Tailinh Agoyo Tommy Orange is the author of There There, a novel of ''pure soaring beauty'' (The New York Times) that tells the story of 12 interconnected Native Americans living in Oakland, California. A national bestseller and lauded by scores of publications as one of the best books of 2018, it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the John Leonard Prize, and the American Book Award. There There was also the 2020 One Book One Philadelphia selection. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, Orange teaches in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. In Wandering Stars, he revisits some of the characters from There There and paints new protagonists in America's past as he examines the tragic legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and the country's contemporary war on its indigenous peoples. Tailinh Agoyo is co-founder and director of We Are the Seeds of Culture Trust, a non-profit organization committed to amplifying Indigenous voices through the arts. She also hosts From Here, With a View, a podcast that honors the voices of Indigenous artists and educators, and is a co-founder of Project Antelope, an online marketplace platform developed by Indigenous business leaders for Indigenous artists. Her other work includes the children's book I Will Carry You and the photo collection The Warrior Project. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 3/7/2024)
In conversation with Elisabeth Perez-Luna, contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer and former Executive Producer of Audio Content at WHYY The inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress, Marie Arana is the author of the National Book Award finalist American Chica, a memoir about her childhood in Peru and the United States that was praised for its ''spareness, clarity, and passion for allegory'' (The New York Times Book Review). Her other work includes the novels Cellophane and Lima Nights; a biography of Simon Bolivar that won the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Silver, Sword, and Stone, a narrative history of Latin America; and The Writing Life, a collection of her articles for The Washington Post. In Latinoland, Arana employs hundreds of interviews, a prolific body of research, and her own experiences as a Latina to present an encompassing portrait of America's fastest-growing minority group. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 3/4/2024)
In conversation with Ali Velshi Barbara McQuade is a legal expert for MSNBC and NBC News, and a co-host of the podcast #SistersInLaw. She teaches courses in criminal law, criminal procedure, national security, and data privacy at the University of Michigan Law School. The first woman to serve in her position, from 2010 to 2017 she was the U.S Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. Her early career included work as a sportswriter and copy editor, a judicial law clerk, an associate in private practice, and an assistant U.S. attorney. In Attack from Within, McQuade presents an encompassing examination of the ways in which mass disinformation is damaging democracy, while also offering a practical guide to shoring up the institutions, technology, and policies beset by those with an interest in dividing us. Ali Velshi is an award winning journalist, host of "Velshi" and Chief Correspondent for MSNBC, and a weekly economics contributor to NPR's "Here And Now." He has covered multiple U.S. Midterm and Presidential elections and significant news stories around the globe, including extensive reporting from Israel during the war with Israel and Hamas, Ukraine and across Central and Eastern Europe during the Russian invasion, the Syrian refugee crisis from Turkey and Jordan, and the Iran Nuclear Deal in Tehran. He hosts the "Velshi Banned Book Club on MSNBC, and the "Velshi Banned Book Club" podcast. Velshi is known for his immersive on-the-ground reporting and his interactive discussions with small groups, which form part of his ongoing series, Velshi Across America. He previously worked as an anchor and correspondent for Al Jazeera America and CNN. He has been nominated for multiple Emmy Awards, and is the recipient of two National Headliner Awards and a Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 2/29/2024)
In conversation with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor In Sito, Laurence Ralph explores the murder of San Francisco teen Sito Quiñonez and his family's long-reverberating grief and grace. Ralph, the stepfather of Sito's half-brother, tells this story both as an academic who has studied violence and class, as well as someone enmeshed within this family. His other books include of Renegade Dreams: Living Through Injury in Gangland Chicago and The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence. The Director for the Center on Transnational Policing and a professor at Princeton University, Ralph is a former tenured professor at Harvard University, a Guggenheim Fellow, a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He has also earned fellowships from the Guggenheim National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Ford Foundation. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is the Leon Forrest Professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University. Formerly a professor of African American Studies at Princeton University for eight years, her books include From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, How We Get Free, and Race for Profit, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in history. Taylor has been named one of the hundred most influential African Americans in the United States by The Root and Essence Magazine named her among the top one hundred ''change makers'' in the county. She has been appointed as a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians by the Organization of American Historians. A guest on such outlets as Democracy Now!, The Intercept, and All Things Considered, she has contributed opinion pieces to The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Paris Review, among many other periodicals. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 2/27/2024)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6abc Action News morning edition. Co-promoted by the American Constitution Society The Scott Waugh Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences Division, Professor of Sociology & African American Studies at UCLA, Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter coined the term ''Black Lives Matter.'' His books include Black Citymakers: How The Philadelphia Negro Changed Urban America, The New Black Sociologists, and Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life, coauthored with Zandria F. Robinson. He formerly served as the Inaugural Chair of UCLA's African American Studies Department and President of the Association of Black Sociologists, his research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and Social Science Research Council, and he has appeared across a wide array of print and broadcast media. In Radical Reparations, Hunter ventures beyond the contentious current debate about the country's responsibility for atoning for its earlier sins to lay out an ambitious but practical seven-point compensation plan for Black Americans. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 2/22/2024)
In conversation with Zoe Sivak Maura Cheeks is the author of Acts of Forgiveness, a debut novel that imagines a contemporary moment in which our government has approved reparations for Black Americans-but only if they can prove they are the descendants of enslaved people. Based on a feature-length article she produced during a masthead reporting residency at The Atlantic, R. Eric Thomas calls the book a ''generous and empathetic study of burden and inheritance, consequence and regret.'' Cheeks has contributed other writing to a variety of publications, including the Paris Review, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, Tin House, and Lenny Letter. Zoe Sivak is the author of Mademoiselle Revolution, an NPR Best Book of 2022. Zoe advocates for diverse stories and characters in historical fiction, where she strives to explore famous male figures through the lenses of the women beside them--women who could have existed, even if history left them behind. Zoe received her Juris Doctor and masters in public health in Philadelphia, where she continues her work in healthcare and shares a home with her partner, Adam, and two cats. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 2/21/2024)
In conversation with Airea D. Matthews Phillip B. Williams is the author of two acclaimed poetry collections, Thief in the Interior, which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award; and Mutiny, which was a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection and the winner of a 2022 American Book Award. A creative writing professor in New York University's MFA creative writing program, he is the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. A surrealistic epic about the complexities of freedom and the boundaries of love, Ours tells the story of an 1830s-era conjuror who destroys plantations and spirits enslaved people away to a magically concealed community. Airea D. Matthews is the 2022–23 Philadelphia Poet Laureate and directs the poetry program at Bryn Mawr College. Her collection Simulacra won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Best American Poets, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, and VQR, among other journals. Matthews' other honors include a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, a 2020 Pew Fellowship, and the 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Addressing themes of income inequality, commodification, and conventional economic theories, her most recent book Bread and Circus combines poetry, prose, and imagery to tell an intimate story about the author and her family. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 2/20/2024)
In conversation with award-winning journalist and broadcaster Tracey Matisak Screen icon Billy Dee Williams is perhaps best known for his role as Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars movies The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker. His dozens of other film appearances, which date back to the 1950s, include roles in Lady Sings the Blues, Brian's Song, Mahogany, Nighthawks, and too many others to list; his similarly prolific television career includes starring turns, appearances, and cameos in more than 40 dramas, sitcoms, and TV movies; and he has acted in seven acclaimed Broadway plays. His many honors include induction into the Black Filmmaker's Hall of Fame, two NAACP Image Awards, a primetime Emmy nomination, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and recognition from the African-American Film Critics Association. Also a prolific and prize-winning painter, Williams has seen his work displayed in museums and galleries around the world. In What Have We Here, he tells the story of his childhood in 1930s Harlem, his remarkable career, and his triumph over Hollywood racism and typecasting. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 2/17/2024)
In conversation with Bill Marimow ''Perhaps the finest reporter in America'' (The Miami Herald), Calvin Trillin has written more than 400 nonfiction and comic articles for The New Yorker since 1963. His book include U.S. Journal and Killings, collections of his columns from between 1967 and 1982. A former Time columnist and syndicated columnist at The Nation, Trillin wrote and performed two one-man shows, wrote a play that was staged at the American Place Theatre, and has appeared across a wide variety of media outlets. He has also published two comic novels, four books of political verse, and three memoirs, and his humor collection Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin won the Thurber Prize for American Humor in 2012. Replete with his signature empathy and wit, The Lede is a portrait of journalists and their craft constructed through curated articles from his six-decade career. As a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Bill Marimow twice won the Pulitzer Prize for public service. The editor in chief of the Inquirer from 2006 to 2017 and formerly its vice president of strategic development, he also served as vice president of news at National Public Radio and editor in chief of The Baltimore Sun. His other honors include two Silver Gavel Awards from the American Bar Association and two Robert F. Kennedy awards. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 2/15/2024)
In conversation with award-winning journalist and broadcaster, Tracey Matisak Paul Alexander's bestselling and acclaimed biographies include portraits of James Dean, Sylvia Plath, John McCain, and J. D. Salinger, the last of which served as the basis of a documentary that appeared on HBO, PBS, and Netflix. Alexander's nonfiction has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Nation, The Washington Post, and Rolling Stone, as well as numerous literary journals. He is also the author of several stage plays and screenplays. A writing teacher at Hunter College in New York City and a former fellow at the Hoover Institution, he holds memberships at the PEN American Center, the Dramatists Guild, and the Academy of American Poets. In Bitter Crop, the first new biography of Billie Holiday in more than 20 years, Alexander presents a transcendently soaring look at the legendary jazz singer's last year of life. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 2/13/2024)
In conversation with Ellen Yin A New York Times bestselling children's author and illustrator, Grace Lin earned the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, the Theodor Geisel Honor for Ling and Ting, and the Caldecott Honor for A Big Mooncake for Little Star. Her novel When the Sea Turned to Silver was a National Book Award Finalist. Recognized by former President Obama's administration as a Champion of Change for Asian American and Pacific Islander Art and Storytelling, Lin was awarded the Children's Literature Legacy Award from the American Library Association. She also provides commentary for New England Public Radio, book reviews for The New York Times, and she hosts the podcasts kidlitwomen* and Kids Ask Authors. In Chinese Menu, she serves up insights on the history, legends, and myths behind favorite American Chinese dishes. High Street Hospitality Group founder and co-owner Ellen Yin operates some of the country's most acclaimed eateries, including a.kitchen + bar, Fork, High Street Restaurant & Bakery, The Wonton Project, and High Street Hoagies. In 2023 she was named ''Outstanding Restaurateur'' by the James Beard Foundation Awards. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, she is involved with several community-centric organizations, including the Sisterly Love Collective and the Independent Restaurant Coalition, and she sits on the Board of ''The Philadelphia Award.'' Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 2/12/2024)
In conversation with novelist and musician Wesley Stace Paul Lynch won the 2023 Booker Prize for Prophet Song, a ''brilliant, haunting'' and ''crucial book for our current times (The Guardian) that tells the dystopian but plausible tale of a family caught in the clutches of an increasingly authoritarian Ireland. His other novels include Red Sky in Morning, featured on NPR and named a best book of the year by The Irish Times, The Toronto Star, and the Irish Independent; The Black Snow, winner of France's Prix Libr'à Nous for Best Foreign Novel; Grace, winner of the 2018 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year; and Beyond the Sea, published to international acclaim and winner of France's 2022 Prix Gen de Mers. Lynch previously served as chief film critic for Ireland's Sunday Tribune newspaper and regularly contributed film articles to The Sunday Times. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 2/9/2024)
In conversation with Shantrelle Lewis Ruha Benjamin is the author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, a ''galvanizing'' and ''inventive and wide-ranging'' (The Nation) look at how new technologies reinforce social inequities; and Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, a pragmatic yet poetic vision of the ways in which our minor everyday choices can add up to larger societal growth. Also the author of many scholarly publications, she is a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, where she is the founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. Benjamin's writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, The Root, and Vox, among numerous other media outlets. A revelatory call to action, Imagination calls for readers to consider the arena of the mind as a very real space for struggle, interconnectedness, and societal change. Shantrelle P. Lewis is a multi-hyphen creative and scholar who accesses multiple disciplines to help elucidate African Diasporic history, aesthetics, culture and spirituality. After premiering at BlackStar Film Festival, her critically acclaimed directorial debut, In Our Mothers' Gardens, was released on Netflix via Ava Duvernay's Array. Her book, Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style, was published by Aperture in 2017. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, LA Times, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, NPR, BBC, Washington Post, Slate, The New Yorker and the Philadelphia Inquirer. She co-founded Shoppe Black with her husband and fellow Howard alum, Tony Oluwatoyin Lawson. As an initiated Lukumi Sango Priest, hoodooist and New Orleans native, Shantrelle can be found waxing poetic about all things African spirituality online and in person at the Beaucoup Hoodoo Shop, the annual Beaucoup Hoodoo Fest this October and within her community, ATRS Book Club. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 2/7/2024)
In conversation with Jeannine Cook, owner of Harriett's Bookshop and Ida's Books Shayla Lawson is the author of This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope, a ''whip-smart'' (People) essay collection about politics, pop culture, politics, and history. Named one of the most anticipated books of 2020 by numerous periodicals, it was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography and a LAMBDA Literary Award. Also the author of two poetry collections, Lawson has contributed writing to Salon, New York magazine, and ESPN, among other places. They have also earned fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell. In How to Live Free in a Dangerous World, they present a globetrotting essay collection about the need for beauty during tough times, the unexpected wisdom we find when we fall in and out of love, and the transformative power of freedom. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 2/8/2024)
In conversation with Niela Orr A ''hilarious, uncomfortable and compulsively readable story about race and class'' (TIME), Kiley Reid's novel Such a Fun Age tells the story of a young Black babysitter and her well-intentioned but misguided employer. A New York Times bestseller, a Reese's Book Club Pick, and named one of the best books of the year by a slew of publications, it was longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. Reid's other writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, and The Guardian, among other places. She teaches writing at the University of Michigan. A novel about wealth, bad behavior, and indelicacy, Come and Get It tells the story of an ambitious University of Arkansas resident assistant and her tangled relationships with a professor and three boisterous students. Niela Orr is a critic whose work has appeared in The London Review of Books, The Paris Review, and The Believer, among other places. She is a story editor for the New York Times Magazine. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 1/31/2024)
Emily Nagoski is the author of the New York Times bestseller Come as You Are, a self-help manual lauded by critics and readers for its ability to ''offer up hard facts on the science of arousal and desire in a friendly and accessible way'' (The Guardian). With her sister, Amelia Nagoski, she is also the co-author of Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. She earned an MS in counseling and a PhD in health behavior from Indiana University, where she has conducted clinical and research training at the renowned Kinsey Institute. She now teaches sex education and stress education to women across the country. In Come Together, Nagoski employs scientific rigor, compassion, and humor to create a pragmatic and specific guide for maintaining a fulfilling sex life while in a long-term relationship. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 2/1/2024)
Susan Muaddi Darraj won the 2016 American Book Award, the 2016 Arab American Book Award, and was a finalist for the Palestine Book Award for A Curious Land, a collection of linked stories that follows the denizens of a Palestinian West Bank village. She is also the author of a story collection titled The Inheritance of Exile, and Farah Rocks, the first children's book series to feature a Palestinian-American character. A former Ford Fellow and winner of the Maryland State Art Council's Independent Artist Award, she teaches creative writing at Johns Hopkins University. In Behind You Is the Sea, Muaddi Darraj tells the story of three immigrant Palestinian families who experience very disparate versions of contemporary American life. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 1/25/2024)
In conversation with Kristen Graham, education reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer Public education reporter Benjamin Herold's stories, features, and investigative exposés have appeared in Education Week, PBS NewsHour, The Hechinger Report, NPR, and the Public School Notebook, among other publications. The recipient of a master's degree in urban education from Temple University and first place awards from the Education Writers Association, Herold formerly worked as a researcher, documentary filmmaker, and training specialist for rape-crisis and domestic-violence prevention organizations. In Disillusioned, he offers a timely examination of the hope and hazards suburban public schools and school boards offer in the fight to renew the promise of historical American middle class ideals. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 1/23/2024)
In conversation with CJ Hauser Featured as an Editor's Choice in The New York Times Book Review, Annie Liontas' debut novel, Let Me Explain You, follows the bridge-burning patriarch of a Greek American family who believes he has only days to live. Liontas is the co-editor of the anthology A Manner of Being: Writers on their Mentors, and has contributed writing to The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Gay Magazine, Guernica, and McSweeney's, among other places. The Gloss, her interview series with women and genderqueer writers, appears in BOMB, The Believer, and Electric Literature. A personal memoir in essays, Sex with a Brain Injury details the multiple concussions Liontas suffered in her 30s and their lasting effects, while offering a larger account of the roles brain injuries have played in historical and contemporary culture-particularly in relation to women and the LGBT community. CJ Hauser is the author of The Crane Wife, a popular memoir in essays that explores the many definitions of love. Also the author of the novels Family of Origin and The From-Aways, they have contributed writing to a wide array of periodicals, including The Paris Review, Tin House, The Guardian, Bon Appetit, Esquire, The New York Times, and Vogue UK. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 1/18/2024)
Tom Felton became internationally famous for his role as the bleach-blond bad guy Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movie series. More than a decade after the premiere of the last film in the series, he and the other performers continue to cast a spell over fans around the world as an enduring pop culture phenomenon. Before his villainous turn at Hogwarts, he acted in such beloved films as The Borrowers and Anna and the King, and has followed up on his success in the wizarding world with roles in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Belle, The Flash, and The Forgotten Battle, among many other film and television projects. This year he made his West End theater debut in 2:22 A Ghost Story. In Beyond the Wand, Felton reflects on the highs and lows of navigating fame at a young age, living as a normal teenager through it all, and the lasting friendships he enjoys with his Harry Potter co-stars. (recorded 10/19/2022)
The 24th United States Poet Laureate, Ada Limón is acclaimed for her explorations of the ''frightening mysteries and hopeful uncertainties of the everyday'' (The New York Times Book Review). Her many poetry collections include the National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Carrying; Bright Dead Things, a finalist for the National Book Award; and Big Fake World, winner of the Pearl Poetry Prize. The host of American Public Media's podcast The Slowdown, Limón has contributed poems to The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and the Harvard Review, among many other publications. The Hurting Kind is a collection of verse that ponders the filaments of joy, loss, and hope that connect us all. (recorded 10/17/2022)
In conversation with Airea D. Matthews, Philadelphia Poet Laureate and Co-Director of the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr
With an artist's perspective and a ground-level view of people in extremis across the world, writer Anna Badkhen offers ''rich and lucid prose [that] illustrates her journey as vividly as might a series of photographs'' (Christian Science Monitor). Her immersive investigations of the world's inequities have yielded seven books of nonfiction, including The World Is a Carpet: Four Seasons in an Afghan Village; Walking with Abel: Journeys with the Nomads of the African Savannah; and Fisherman's Blues: A West African Community at Sea. A contributor to Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and The New Republic, she has earned a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Barry Lopez Visiting Writer in Ethics and Community Fellowship, and the Joel R. Seldin Award for documenting the lives of civilians in warzones. In Bright Unbearable Reality, Badkhen offers 11 essays set across four continents that explore the human need for communion amidst the world's current emotional and political disruptions.
Airea D. Matthews is the Philadelphia Poet Laureate and Co-Director of the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr College. Her collection Simulacra won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and her work has appeared in Callaloo, Harvard Review, and American Poets, among other journals. The recipient of a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, her latest collection, Bread and Circus, comes out next year. (recorded 10/18/2022)
Religion scholar Reza Aslan is the author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Zealot, ''a lucid, intelligent page-turner'' (Los Angeles Times) that sifts through centuries of mythmaking to present a clear account of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. His other books include No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award and selected as the best book of the year by the Financial Times and the Los Angeles Times; How to Win a Cosmic War: Confronting Radical Religions; and Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized Age. His new book recounts the story of a U.S. missionary who fought for democracy in early 20th century Iran. (recorded 10/13/2022)
One of academia's leading authorities on African American literature, enslavement, gender studies, and the ways in which marginalized people are excluded in historical narratives, Saidiya Hartman is a University Professor at Columbia University. Her works include Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals; Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route; and numerous essays on feminism, film, and photography. Currently a member of the editorial board at Callaloo and a MacArthur fellow, Hartman has earned Fulbright, Rockefeller, and Guggenheim fellowships. A revised and updated edition of her ''audacious'' and ''provocative'' (The Nation) 1997 historical exploration of the lives of several Black women in Harlem and Philadelphia in the 1890s, Scenes of Subjection seeks to turn away from the ''terrible spectacle'' and toward the forms of routine terror and quotidian violence characteristic of slavery, illuminating the intertwining of injury, subjugation, and selfhood even in abolitionist depictions of enslavement.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is the Leon Forrest Professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University. Formerly a professor of African American Studies at Princeton University for eight years, her books include From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, How We Get Free, and Race for Profit, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in history. Taylor has been named one of the hundred most influential African Americans in the United States by The Root and Essence Magazine named her among the top one hundred ''change makers'' in the county. She has been appointed as a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians by the Organization of American Historians.A guest on such outlets as Democracy Now!, The Intercept, and All Things Considered, she has contributed opinion pieces to The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Paris Review, among many other periodicals. (recorded 10/12/2022)
Yiyun Li's ''remarkable'' (The Washington Post) debut fiction collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Guardian First Book Award. Her other work includes the novel The Vagrants, the story collection Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Windham-Campbell Prize, Li teaches writing at Princeton University and is a contributing editor for A Public Space. A story of obsession and friendship, her new novel follows a woman's mental journey back to the war-ravaged French village of her youth.
Acclaimed for their ''moments of joy and pure magic'' (Los Angeles Times), Elizabeth McCracken's seven books include Bowlaway, The Giant's House, Thunderstruck & Other Stories, and The Souvenir Museum, a story collection that was longlisted for the National Book Award. A former faculty member at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently the James Michener Chair for Fiction at the University of Texas at Austin, McCracken has earned the PEN New England Award, three Pushcart Prizes, and an O. Henry Prize, among other honors. Her latest novel finds a woman wrestling with grief, history, and her craft as she takes a trip to her recently departed mother's favorite city. (recorded 10/6/2022)
In conversation with Jo Piazza
A ''quite prescient and worthwhile'' writer who ''understands her characters inside and out'' (The New York Times Book Review), Jodi Picoult has authored many No. 1 bestsellers that are renowned for combining controversial topics with nuanced characters and precise descriptions of suburbia's fraught reality. Her 28 novels include House Rules, Handle with Care, Wish You Were Here, Nineteen Minutes, My Sister's Keeper, and Small Great Things, as well as the young adult novel Between the Lines, co-written with her daughter, Samantha van Leer.
The author of more than a dozen books, Jennifer Finney Boylan achieved great literary success in 2003 with her critically acclaimed memoir She's Not There, the first bestselling book by a transgender American. Her other works include You Are You, Long Black Veil, and I'm Looking Through You, a memoir about her upbringing in a dilapidated mansion on Philadelphia's Main Line. Currently the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer-in-Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University, a fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and a trustee of PEN America, Boylan is a former longtime national co-chair of GLAAD.
In their first collaborative novel, Picoult and Boylan tell the story of a woman who flees with her son to her sleepy New Hampshire hometown only to face the possibility that the teenager shares his father's explosive tendencies. (recorded 10/5/2022)
In conversation with Mark Krotov, publisher and editor of n+1 Vladimir Sorokin is one of contemporary Russian literature's most popular writers. Banned by the Soviet Union, his numerous novels include The Queue, The Blizzard, Day of the Oprichnik, and the controversial Blue Lard. His work also includes several screenplays, plays, short story collections, art exhibitions, and an opera libretto, and his writing has been translated into more than 30 languages. The subject of a 2019 documentary and famed for his outspoken criticism of Vladimir Putin's government, Sorokin has earned an O. Henry Award, the Andrei Bely Award for outstanding contributions to Russian literature, and a nomination for the Russian Booker Prize. His latest novel, Telluria, imagines a fractured future in which a holy war between Europe and Islam has sent the world spiraling into a state of feudalism and disarray.
Max Lawton has translated eight of Sorokin's novels and has translated his stories for n+1 and The New Yorker. The recipient of the prestigious Clarendon Scholarship for the University of Oxford, he is also a novelist and musician. (recorded 10/3/2022)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak
Margaret A. Burnham is the founding director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, an initiative to document every racially motivated killing in the South between 1930 and 1970. Also a law professor at Northeastern University and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve on the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board, she formerly worked as a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, as a staffer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and as a judge in the Boston Municipal Court. In By Hands Now Known, Burnham expands her analysis of the astonishing violence of the Jim Crow era to investigate the legal apparatus that held up this infamously cruel system and its still-reverberating legacy. (recorded 9/29/2022)
In conversation with Edwin Mayorga and Sharif El-Mekki
For 20 years Camika Royal was a middle and high school teacher and a teaching coach for her fellow educators in Baltimore, Washington, DC, and her hometown of Philadelphia. Currently an associate professor of urban education at Loyola University Maryland, she examines the racial, historical, and sociopolitical contexts of school reform ideologies, policies, and practices. A sought-after speaker and education consultant, she taught at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania and other colleges and universities in the Philadelphia and Baltimore areas.
Associate Professor in Swarthmore College's Department of Educational Studies and the Program in Latin American and Latino Studies, Edwin Mayorga is the founder of the Education in Our Barrios Project (BarrioEdProject) research study and after school club, and the Philadelphia Community, School and College Partnership Research Project. The co-editor of What's Race Got to do With It?: How Current School Reform Policy Maintains Racial and Economic Equality, he is the recipient of several research grants and fellowships.
The Director of the Center for Black Educator Development, Sharif El-Mekki has served as an administrator and teacher in Philadelphia schools for nearly three decades. The co-creator of The Fellowship-Black Male Educators for Social Justice, he was a 2013 U.S. Department of Education Principal Fellow Ambassador and an America Achieves Fellow. His other projects include Philly's 7th Ward blog and the 8 Black Hands podcast. (recorded 9/28/2022)
Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture
''John le Carré's nonfiction counterpart'' (The New York Times), Ben Macintyre is the bestselling author of A Spy Among Friends, Agent Zigzag, Operation Mincemeat, and The Spy and the Traitor, among other books. He has adapted several of these stories into popular documentaries for the BBC. Writer-at-large for The Times of London, Macintyre is the recipient of the Spears Book Award, has twice been nominated for the Edgar Award in best fact crime, and was shortlisted for Baillie Gifford Prize. Prisoners of the Castle recounts the harrowing story of the infamous Colditz Castle prison, wherein the Nazi's held some of WWII's most diverse, defiant, and resourceful Allied soldiers. (recorded 9/27/2022)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award winning broadcaster and journalist Tommie Smith and John Carlos made history at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics when they stood at the winners' podium and raised their black-gloved fists to protest racial injustice in the United States. Smith, gold medalist in the 200-meter sprint, and Carlos, the bronze medal winner, were forced to leave the games and faced a swift and brutal backlash at home. In his illustrated memoir for young readers, Smith tells the story of his rural Texas childhood, early career, Olympic victory, and internationally famous protest.
In addition to his Olympic gold medal, Tommie Smith held the record for the 200-meter sprint for more than 44 years, held an additional six running world records, won the 1966 NCAA Men's Outdoor Track and Field Championship, and was drafted into the NFL. The author of the memoir Silent Gesture, he coached track and taught sociology at Oberlin College. Smith is an inductee to the United States National Track and Field Hall of Fame and the California Black Sports Hall of Fame.
Derrick Barnes is the author of more than a dozen bestselling children's books that celebrate African American culture, including The Making of Dr. Truelove, Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, and the Ruby and the Booker Boys series. He has been honored with a Newbery Award and a Coretta Scott King Award
Emmy Award–-winning illustrator Dawud Anyabwile designed storyboards for Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT, and Boomerang. He illustrated the graphic novel adaptation of Walter Dean Myers' book Monster and is the illustrator of the Brotherman: Dictator of Discipline comic series, among numerous other projects. His many other honors include an Eisner Award and a Glyph Comics Award. (recorded 9/23/2022)
In conversation with Chenjerai Kumanyika
Ruth Wilson Gilmore is largely credited with creating carceral geography, the study of how the interplay between space, institutions, and political economies shape modern incarceration. The author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California and several often-anthologized essays, she is the co-founder of several social justice organizations, including the California Prison Moratorium Project and Critical Resistance. She is a professor of earth and environmental sciences and American studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she is also director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics. Gilmore's many honors include the Angela Y. Davis Prize for Public Scholarship from the American Studies Association and the Association of American Geographers' Harold Rose Award for Anti-Racist Research. A collection of Gilmore's work from the last three decades, Abolition Geography offers scholars, activists, and all interested people a new way of reacting to the incarceration crisis. (recorded 9/22/2022)
In conversation with Wesley Stace
''The most psychologically astute writer working today, our era's Jane Austen'' (Esquire), Ian McEwan won the Booker Prize for his novel Amsterdam. His 16 other novels include Atonement, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and later adapted into an acclaimed Oscar-nominated film; The Comfort of Strangers and Black Dogs, both Booker Prize finalists; and Nutshell. McEwan's other work includes two children's books, a work of nonfiction, two plays, five screenplays, and four short story collections, including First Love, Last Rites, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award. His new novel tells the story of a man careening through some of the 20th century's most turbulent events as he searches for answers about his family history. (recorded 9/21/2022)
In conversation with Kevin Werbach
Acclaimed for their intersectional explorations of cyberculture, religion, currency, and politics, Douglas Rushkoff's 20 bestselling books include Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Present Shock, and Media Virus. He also is the host of the Team Human podcast, writes a column for Medium, and created the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool. A professor of media theory and digital economics at City University of New York, Queens College, he was selected as one of the world's 10 most influential intellectuals by MIT, was the first winner of the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, is a recipient of the Marshall McLuhan Award, and has received many other accolades. In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff reveals the flawed mindset that has led out-of-touch tech titans to prepare for a societal catastrophe they could simply avert through practical measures.
Chair of the Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Ken Werbach is the author of For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business and The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust. He served on the Obama administration's presidential transition team and helped develop the Federal Communications Commission's approach to internet policy. (recorded 9/20/2022)
In conversation with David Fricke, senior editor for Rolling Stone and SiriusXM host
The co-founder, co-editor, and publisher of Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner has influenced the ways in which the world perceives music, politics, and pop culture for nearly 50 years. Also the founder and publisher of Outside, US Weekly, Family Life, and Men's Journal, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the American Society of Magazine Editor's Hall of Fame. Praised by Bruce Springsteen as ''a touchingly honest memoir from a man who recorded and shaped our times and of a grand life well lived,'' Like A Rolling Stone tells the story of Wenner's life and generation as it charts his association with rock stars, journalists, artists, politicians, and thought leaders. (recorded 9/15/2022)
In conversation with Laura McGrath, Assistant Professor of English at Temple University
''Quirky and often darkly hilarious'' (Mother Jones), Gary Shteyngart is the author of the culturally reflective novels The Russian Debutante's Handbook, winner of the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction; Absurdistan, named a ''best book of the year'' by slews of periodicals; the New York Times bestseller Super Sad True Love Story; and Lake Success, a critically acclaimed satire of the emptiness of materialism. His other work includes the National Book Critics Award finalist Little Failure, a memoir of his experiences in the dramatically dissimilar worlds of uber-consumerist America and the perpetually deprived Soviet Union of his youth. Shteyngart has contributed articles and essays to Esquire, GQ, and The New Yorker, and his work has been translated into more than 20 languages. In his latest novel, a group of friends navigates the rocky shoals of love, betrayal, and K-pop while in pandemic lockdown. (recorded 9/13/2022)
In conversation with Mark Bowden
A Pulitzer Prize–-winning journalist and author of four books, Buzz Bissinger is perhaps best known for the New York Times bestseller Friday Night Lights, the 1990 nonfiction chronicle of a Texas high school football team that has since been adapted into a successful film and a long-running television series. His other popular books include 3 Nights in August, A Prayer for the City, and Father's Day, a memoir about his cross-country journey with his extraordinary son. A contributing editor for Vanity Fair and a sports columnist for The Daily Beast, Bissinger is a longtime contributor to The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among other periodicals. The Mosquito Bowl tells the story of two United States Marine regiments that play a bloody game of football on the eve of the WWII invasion of Okinawa, a battle from which many of the players would not return.
Renowned for his ''signature blend of deep reportage and character-driven storytelling (The New York Times Book Review),'' Mark Bowden is the author of 15 bestselling books of investigative journalism, including Blackhawk Down, adapted by Ridley Scott into a popular film; Killing Pablo, winner of the Overseas Press Club's Cornelius Ryan Award for book of the year; The Three Battles of Wanat, a collection of his best long-form essays; and Hue 1968, the story of the Vietnam War's bloodiest battle as told by participants from both sides. (recorded 9/14/2022)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning journalist and interviewer
Co-star of the ABC mega-hit show Black-ish, Jenifer Lewis' nearly 35-year career has featured roles in some of Hollywood's most beloved films and television shows. These include such diverse projects as What's Love Got to Do With It, Pixar's Cars series, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, among dozens of others. Titled after her unofficial nickname, her memoir The Mother of Black Hollywood charts her journey from a childhood of poverty in the Midwest to the acting roles that have made her an icon. Lewis earned two Critics' Choice Television Award nominations for her work on Black-ish and her previous work has garnered an NAACP Image Award. Walking in My Joy is an essay collection that celebrates the importance of perseverance in the face of adversity and our need for self-love. (recorded 9/12/2022)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award winning journalist and broadcaster
The United States Representative for California's 28th Congressional District and the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Adam Schiff was the lead manager for the first impeachment proceedings against former President Donald Trump. He is a former member of the House Appropriations Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee, and served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles from 1987 to 1993 and a California State Senator from 1996 to 2000. In Midnight in Washington, Schiff reveals an inside look at American democracy's darkest moment, his own path to becoming one of the former president's most prominent antagonists, and the principles we need to renew and reinvigorate in the struggle against autocracy. (recorded 8/29/2022)
In their illustrated children's book, Brian Westbrook Sr. and Lesley Van Arsdall tell the story of a determined little critter named Brian who overcomes his small size to become a star in the Mouse Football League.
Brian Westbrook, Sr.played nine seasons in the NFL, including eight seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles. He was a two-time Pro-Bowl running back and was named first team All-Pro after the 2007 season, in which he led the league with over 2,000 yards from scrimmage. He now makes regular broadcast appearances in addition to his charity work with the Brian Westbrook Foundation and speaking engagements.
Lesley Van Arsdallis a seasoned TV news veteran who has covered Philadelphia sports, local and headline news as both an anchor and a reporter. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and two sons. This is her first children's book. (recorded 8/4/2022)
W. Kamau Bell is the host and executive producer of the Emmy Award–winning CNN docuseries United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell, and also directed and executive produced the recent four-part Showtime documentary We Need To Talk About Cosby. He has appeared as a guest and comedian on many television shows, has two comedy specials, hosts the radio show Kamau Right Now, co-hosts two podcasts, and hosted the FXX series Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. The author of the memoir The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell, he has contributed writing to The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Hollywood Reporter, and The LA Review of Books, among other places.
Kate Schatz is the author of The New York Times bestselling Rad Women book series. Her other books include the work of fiction Rid of Me, articles and essays in an array of publications, and ''Folsom, Survivor,'' which was anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2011. A political organizer and frequent public speaker, she is the co-founder of Solidarity Sundays, a nationwide network of more than 200 feminist activist groups. Schatz is the former chair of the School of Literary Arts at the Oakland School for the Arts, and she taught women's studies, literature, and creative writing at University of California, Santa Cruz; San Jose State; Rhode Island College; and Brown University.
Filled with activities, ideas, games, illustrations, resources, comics, and prompts for conversations, Do the Work! challenges readers and the people in their lives to better understand systemic racism in order to dismantle it. (recorded 8/3/2022)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition
One of the world's foremost chroniclers of the intersection of the human and natural worlds, Michael Pollan is a No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of eight books. These works include How to Change Your Mind, an examination of the science of psychedelics; Cooked, which was adapted into a Netflix series; Food Rules: An Eater's Manual; and A Natural History of Four Meals, which won the James Beard Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine for 35 years, Pollan has earned two James Beard Awards, the Reuters-I.U.C.N. 2000 Global Award for Environmental Journalism, and the Genesis Award from the Humane Society of the United States, among numerous other honors. He is the co-founder of the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics and is the Knight Professor of Science and Journalism at UC Berkeley. A challenge to rethink traditional notions of drugs, This Is Your Mind on Plants explores the allure, taboos, and effects of three very different psychoactive plants. (recorded 7/18/2022)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award winning broadcaster and journalist
Mark Leibovich's books include the No. 1 bestseller This Town, a ''vastly entertaining and deeply troubling'' (The New York Times Book Review) exploration of the political culture in Washington, D.C.; and Big Game, a beyond-the-playing-field analysis of professional football at its precarious economic and social peak. Former chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine and a former correspondent for The Washington Post, Leibovich recently joined The Atlantic as a staff writer and is a contributing political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. He won the 2011 National Magazine Award for his profile of journalist Mike Allen. A sequel to This Town, Thank You for Your Servitude is a no-holds-barred account of Donald Trump's collaboration with the Republican Party to transform the once-proud party into a cult of personality mired in corruption and anti-democratic values. (recorded 7/26/2022)
In conversation with Renée Chenault Fattah
In The XX Edge, Patience Marime-Ball and Ruth Shaber envision a new paradigm of gender-focused investing where more women are placed in decision-making roles and able to optimize their skills across all capital markets-leading to higher returns for individual investors and greater economic growth.
Patience Marime-Ball is the founder and CEO of Women of the World Endowment, an investment nonprofit focused on centralizing women changemakers as economic, environmental, and social changemakers while delivering market-rate, risk adjusted returns and impact at scale. She has more than two and half decades of investment experience across capital markets – including debt and equity financing, large scale infrastructure, distressed assets, as well as venture stage opportunities. Patience has led many ''firsts'' in the investing space; she developed the Banking on Women platform at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and was responsible for co-designing IFC's multi-billion dollar Global Trade Liquidity Program, as well as the first-ever gender bond issued on the Uridashi market.
Ruth Shaber is the founder and president of the Tara Health Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes and invests in programs aimed at health, well-being, and opportunities for women and girls. She is also the co-founder and board chair of Rhia Ventures, a group of foundations and investors devoted to reproductive health in the United States, and was a gynecologist and obstetrician at Kaiser Permanente for 22 years. Selected as a Forbes 2020 Impact 50: Investors Seeking Profit-and Pushing for Change for her work in impact investing, Shaber, is also the founder of the Women's Health Research Institute.
A former longtime co-anchor of the WCAU NBC 10 News, Renée Chenault Fattah also worked at several other stations across the country and as a lawyer at the New York firm of Hughes Hubbard & Reed. She serves on the board of directors of Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity and on the board of trustees of Johns Hopkins University, and in 2020 was inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame. (recorded 7/20/2022)
Acclaimed for crafting ''sharply drawn characters, exuberant prose,'' and ''plenty of period detail'' (Los Angeles Times Book Review), Diane McKinney-Whetstone is the author of six novels, including Tumbling, Tempest Rising, Trading Dreams at Midnight, and Lazaretto, a historical novel set in a legendary 19th-century Philadelphia quarantine hospital. A two-time recipient of the American Library Association Black Caucus Literary Award for fiction and winner of a Zora Neale Hurston Society Award, she taught creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania for 12 years and has contributed writing to The Atlantic, Essence, and Philadelphia Magazine. In Our Gen, McKinney-Whetstone follows the residents of a Philadelphia-area active-living retirement community who revert to the passions and excesses of their youth. (recorded 7/19/2022)
In conversation with Marc Lamont Hill
A world-renowned counterterrorism expert and former career intelligence officer who has deployed in the Balkans, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa, Malcolm Nance is a longtime consultant for the U.S. government's Special Operations and Homeland Security agencies. His New York Times bestselling books include The Plot to Hack America, Hacking Isis, The Plot to Betray America, and Defeating ISIS. The founder and executive director of the think tank Terror Asymmetrics Project on Strategy, Tactics and Radical Ideologies, he is a frequent commentator on MSNBC. In They Want to Kill Americans, Nance describes the existential threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump, his collaborators, and their followers.
The Steve Charles Chair in Media, Cities and Solutions at Temple University, Marc Lamont Hill is the host of BET News and the Coffee and Books podcast. The recipient of honors from the National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, he is the author of six books, including Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life; Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond; and Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics. (recorded 7/14/2022)
In conversation with Beth Kephart Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Think of England and the short story collections In the Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, and The New Yorker, and her story ''In the Gloaming'' has twice been adapted into feature films. A writing professor in Rutgers University-Newark's MFA program, Dark has earned a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, an O. Henry Award, and inclusion in several literary anthologies. A novel about friendship, class differences, and societal expectations for women, Fellowship Point tells the story of a a delicate but devastating rift between two lifelong friends.
Beth Kephart is the author of more than 30 books across a wide range of genres, including Going Over, Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, and most recently Wife | Daughter | Self. A writing professor at the University of Pennsylvania, she is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Pew Fellowship, and the Speakeasy Poetry Prize, among other honors. (recorded 7/13/2022)
In conversation with Asali Solomon
Nigerian American author Chinelo Okparanta's acclaimed debut novel Under the Udala Trees celebrates the act of loving fearlessly, even amidst the strife of prejudice and civil war. Selected for more than a dozen periodicals' 2015 ''best of'' lists, it won a Lambda Literary Award, was a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award, and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award in fiction. Okparanta is also the author of the short story collection Happiness, Like Water, winner of an O. Henry Prize, and a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and the Etisalat Prize for Literature. The director of the creative writing program at Swarthmore College, she has published fiction in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, and Tin House. Her latest novel delves into a young white man's journey from his prejudiced smalltown to a life of freedom in New York City.
Asali Solomon is the author of the novels The Days of Afrekete and Disgruntled, the short story collection Get Down, and stories published in a wide array of periodicals, including McSweeney's, Essence, and O, The Oprah Magazine. A professor of fiction writing and literature of the African diaspora at Haverford College, she is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award and the National Book Foundation's ''5 Under 35'' honor. (recorded 7/12/2022)
In conversation with Karen Heller,national features writer for The Washington Post, formerly a metro and features columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and a finalist for the2001 Pulitzer Prize in commentary.
''A master of narrative nonfiction'' (Rolling Stone), Patrick Radden Keefe is the author of the New York Times bestseller Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty. A critical history of the family responsible for making and marketing painkillers that led to the opioid crisis, it won the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle nominee. Keefe is also an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of three other books, including the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. His other honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Magazine Award for feature writing. He wrote and hosted the podcast Wind of Change, selected as the No. 1 podcast of 2020 by The Guardian. Writing about disreputable figures such as wine counterfeiters, arms dealers selling weapons illegally, and Swiss money launderers, Rogues is a collection of 12 of Keefe's New Yorker articles about corruption, fraud, and power. (recorded 6/29/2022)
Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture In conversation with Marjorie Margolies, President, Women's Campaign International and author of And How Are the Children?: Timeless Lessons from the Frontlines of Motherhood
The younger sister of President Joe Biden, Valerie Biden Owens led his seven consecutive successful campaigns for the U.S. Senate, was campaign manager for his presidential bids in 1988 and 2008, and was his principal campaign trail representative and a senior advisor for his 2020 bid for the White House. She is the chair of the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware, a partner at Owens Patrick Leadership Seminars, a board member of The Ministry of Caring, and formerly served on the national board of the Women's Leadership Forum of the Democratic National Committee. In her new memoir, Biden Owens shares stories of growing up in a close-knit Irish Catholic family, being a confidante and advocate in her brother's life and career, and learning lessons about overcoming gender barriers and achieving professional goals while raising children. (recorded 6/28/2022)
In conversation with Sayeeda Rashid, Director of the Center for Gender Resources and Sexual Education at Haverford College Hugh Ryan is the author of When Brooklyn Was Queer, a ''boisterous, motley ... entertaining and insightful'' (The New York Times Book Review) analysis of the famous borough's LGBTQ+ history from the 1850s to present. Winner of a New York City Book Award and a New York Times Editors' Choice, it was a finalist for the Randy Shilts and Lambda Literary Awards. Ryan earned the 2020 Allan Berube Prize from the American Historical Association and residencies or fellowships from Yaddo, The Watermill Center, the New York Public Library, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In The Women's House of Detention, he examines the history of the United States's current crisis of incarcerating queer and transgender people through the story of the notorious mid-20th century Manhattan prison that held tens of thousands of women, transgender men, and gender-nonconforming people. (recorded 6/23/2022)
In conversation with Hayden Dunbar, assistant editor, The Sewanee Review Lisa Taddeo is the author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Three Women, the ''staggeringly intimate'' (Entertainment Weekly) and extensively researched true story of the sex lives of three unconnected women in the U.S. Winner of the best narrative nonfiction book of the year at the British Book Awards, it was chosen as the best book of the year by numerous media outlets and was adapted into a television series by Showtime. Taddeo is also the author of the acclaimed novel Animal, worked as an associate editor at Golf Magazine, and has contributed work to The New York Times, Esquire, Elle, and Glamour, among several other publications. A collection of nine stories-two of which were awarded Pushcart Prizes-Ghost Lover is about the obsessions, manias, and fevered desires inherent to love and sex in the digital age. (recorded 6/21/2022)
In conversation with Herman Beavers Gene Andrew Jarrett is the author of Representing the Race: A New Political History of African American Literature and Deans and Truants: Race and Realism in African American Literature. He is the editor of an additional eight books of African American literary studies, including two about 19th century U.S. poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dean of the faculty and William S. Tod Professor of English at Princeton University, last year he was appointed to the Association of American Universities' Advisory Board for Racial Equity in Higher Education. On the 150th anniversary of Dunbar's birth, Jarrett's latest book is a nuanced biography of Dunbar as the Gilded Age celebrity, acclaimed as the ''poet laureate of his race,'' whose improbable success hid profound private struggles.
A professor of English and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Herman Beaversteaches 20th Century and Contemporary African American literature and poetry writing. He is the author of the scholarly monograph Geography and the Political Imaginary in the Novels of Toni Morrison, the poetry chapbook Obsidian Blues, and his poems have appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Versadelphia, and The American Arts Quarterly, among other publications. (recorded 6/16/2022)
In conversation with Melinna Bobadilla
A story collection featuring Latinas of Indigenous heritage experiencing the challenges of friendship and family in the American West, Kali Fajardo-Anstine's Sabrina & Corina won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Bingham Prize, and The Story Prize, among other honors. Fajardo-Anstine has contributed writing to an eclectic array of periodicals and journals, including The New York Times, Harper's Bazaar, O the Oprah Magazine, and Boston Review. The 2022/2023 endowed chair of Creative Writing at Texas State University, she has earned fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, and Tin House. Her debut novel Woman of Light is a Western saga that spans five generations of Chicana women.
Melinna Bobadilla is an actor & activist best known for roles like ‘Santos' on Orange is The New Black and fierce immigration attorney ‘Melinna Barragan' on the Peabody nominated series Gentefied, both on Netflix . Melinna is a multi-hyphenate culture maker and critic, as her work aside from acting includes being an educator, public speaker, VO artist and host/co-producer with Futuro Media's Latino Rebels Live. Melinna is an alumni of UC Berkeley & NYU and is a proud 1st gen daughter of parents born in Mexico. You can find her work on Netflix, Apple TV Plus (Little America), HBO Max (For Rosa), and coming up on Showtime & Amazon Freevee. IG @MelinnaBobadilla (recorded 6/15/2022)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award winning broadcaster and journalist
A two-time world champion debater and a former coach of the Harvard College Debating Union and the Australian national debating team, Bo Seo has won the World Schools Debating Championship and the World Universities Debating Championship. He formerly served as a national reporter for the Australian Financial Review and has contributed writing to The New York Times, The Atlantic, and CNN, among other media outlets. Currently a law school student at Harvard, he has a master's degree in public policy from Tsinghua University. In Good Arguments, Seo describes how debate empowered him to find his voice amidst his family's emigration from Korea to Australia when he was only 8, the ways in which many other people have utilized spoken rhetoric on their paths to success, and the specific debate strategies anyone can use to improve their lives.
Books will be mailed after the event. Please allow up to three weeks for delivery. U.S. orders only. Books provided by Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books (recorded 6/14/2022)
In conversation with Annie Liontas, author of Let Me Explain You and co-editor of the anthology A Manner of Being: Writers on their Mentors
Praised by Carmen Maria Machado as ''a sharp, flawless ... sexy and dark and strange and absolutely perfect'' debut novel, Rebecca Rukeyser's The Seaplane on Final Approach is about the increasingly elaborate erotic desires of a young woman working on a remote and chaotic Alaskan tourist island. A professor of fiction writing at Bard College Berlin and the recipient of the inaugural Berlin Senate Endowment for non-German literature, Rukeyser has published stories in a variety of publications, including ZYZZYVA, The Massachusetts Review, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading.
Annie Liontas' debut novel, Let Me Explain You (Scribner), was featured in The New York Times Book Review as Editor's Choice and was selected by the ABA as an Indies Introduce Debut and Indies Next title. She is the co-editor of the anthology A Manner of Being: Writers on their Mentors. Annie's work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Gay Magazine, BOMB, Guernica, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. The Gloss, her interview series with women and genderqueer writers, is running at BOMB, The Believer, and Electric Literature. Her informed memoir, Sex with a Brain Injury will be published in January 2024. Annie is a member of The Claw, a Philadelphia salon for women and genderqueer writers. (recorded 6/9/2022)
Maxine Hong Kingston is the distinguished author of The Woman Warrior (winner of the 1976 Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction), Tripmaster Monkey and China Men. The Fifth Book of Peace is Kingston's own creation, based on the three "books of peace" that were lost to a fire in Chinese legend. In it, she combines her own narratives with those drawn from writing workshops with Vietnam veterans. The result is "a powerfully emotional book that moves through tragedy to peace of both mind and heart." (recorded 10/8/2003)
In conversation with volume editor, Viet Thanh Nguyen
Acclaimed for her contributions to feminism and Chinese American literature, Maxine Hong Kingston won the 1976 National Book Critics Circle General Nonfiction Award for her first book, The Woman Warrior, and the 1981 National Book Award for general nonfiction for China Men. Her many other books of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and essays include Tripmaster Monkey, The Fifth Book of Peace, and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life. A professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, Kingston is a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the National Humanities Medal, and a lifetime achievement award from the Asian American Literary Awards. Her latest work collects three of her classic books, a collection of essays about her time living in Hawaiʻi, and difficult-to-find writings in which she examines her creative process.
Viet Thanh Nguyen won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in fiction, the Dayton Literary Prize, and the Edgar Award for best first novel for The Sympathizer. His other work includes the novel The Committed, the story collection The Refugees, two books of nonfiction, and a children's book. The Aerol Arnold Chair of English and professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, he has earned fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. (recorded 6/8/2022)
In conversation with Liz Moore Zakiya Dalila Harris is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller The Other Black Girl, a thriller in which a young Black editorial assistant slowly realizes there are more sinister forces in her publishing house than the microaggressions that hurt her career. It was chosen as Good Morning America and Read with Marie Claire book club picks, and was selected as one of the best books of 2021 by TIME, The Washington Post, Vogue, People, and NPR, among other media outlets. A former editorial assistant and assistant editor at Knopf and Doubleday, Harris has contributed essays and book reviews to Guernica and The Rumpus. The Other Black Girl is currently being adapted into a Hulu series.
Liz Moore is the bestselling author of Long Bright River, The Words of Every Song, Heft, and The Unseen World. A creative writing professor in the M.F.A. program at Temple University, her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Tin House and The New York Times, among other publications. (recorded 6/6/2022)
''The world's best green journalist'' (TIME), Bill McKibben gave one of the earliest cautions about climate change with his 1989 book The End of Nature. His many other bestselling books about the environment include Falter, Deep Economy, Eaarth, and Oil and Honey; as well as a novel, Radio Free Vermont, which imagines a group of Vermont patriots who decide to secede from the United States. Recipient of the Gandhi Prize, the Thomas Merton Prize, and the Right Livelihood Prize, McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the founder of the global grassroots climate campaign 350.org. Part memoir of an upbringing during which the promise of the U.S. seemed limitless to him, part history of the racial, economic, and environmental failings that have led to our current crises, his latest book bluntly asks, ''What happened?'' (recorded 6/2/2022)
In conversation with Benjamin Todd Jealous
A political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post since 2011, Robert Samuels has chronicled the impact of national policies and controversies from across the United States. He formerly worked at the Miami Herald, where he reported on politics, poverty, and crime. His work has earned the 2020 George Polk Award in Justice Reporting and a 2020 Peabody Award, among other honors.
Toluse Olorunnipa has been a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post since 2019. He previously reported on the White House, the first correspondent of native African and Nigerian descent to do so. A former political and policy reporter at Bloomberg News and crime, real estate, and natural disasters reporter at the Miami Herald, he is also currently an on-air contributor for CNN.
In His Name Is George Floyd, Samuels and Olorunnipa reveal how systemic racism led to tragic murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and inspired worldwide protests and policy changes. Referred to by Henry Louis Gates Jr. as ''an essential work of history,'' it uses hundreds of interviews and original research to tell George Floyd's story as a father, partner, friend, and man constantly in search of a better life.
The current president of the People for the American Way, Benjamin Todd Jealous teaches social innovation at The University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice. He is the former national president and CEO of the NAACP, the former executive director of the National Newspaper Publisher's Association, and was a visiting professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. The coeditor of the national bestseller Reach: 40 Black Men Speak of Living, Leading and Succeeding, he is an investor in social impact startups and advises Citizen, an app that provides real-time 911 alerts. (recorded 5/24/2022)
In conversation with Adnan A. Zulfiqar Haroon Moghul's many books include My First Police State, The Order of Light, and How to Be Muslim: An American Story, a ''profound and intimate'' (The Washington Post) memoir about life in the United States during the immediate aftermath of 9/11. A former member of the cohort of the Muslim Leadership Initiative, a fellow in Jewish-Muslim Relations at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, a Friday preacher, and public speaker, Moghul's writing investigates the topics of pop culture, faith, futurism, and philosophy. He has contributed essays to The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, Foreign Policy, and NPR's Fresh Air, among several other media outlets. In Two Billion Caliphs, Moghul uses his Muslim perspective to answer some of life's biggest questions and to address Islam's misunderstood past, its present challenges, and the hope it can offer for the future.
Adnan A. Zulfiqar is a legal historian working on Islamic law, criminal law and law in the Global South, with specific interests in legal obligation, jihad & revolution, policing and criminal codes. He previously helped draft and implement criminal codes in the Maldives and Somalia. He regularly provides expert media commentary for various outlets, is proficient in multiple languages and has spent over a decade in the Middle East, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. (recorded 5/19/2022)
In conversation with Liz Moore Jason Rekulak's Edgar Award–nominated debut novel The Impossible Fortress tells a coming-of-age story of first love, old school computer programming, and the heist of a Playboy magazine that features Vanna White. Rekulak is the former publisher of Philadelphia-based Quirk Books, where he managed the acquisition of a number of, well, very quirky books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, the Edgar Award–winning novel The Last Policeman, and the literary mashup Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, among many others. A spin on the supernatural thriller, Hidden Pictures follows a nanny who becomes increasingly disturbed by the drawings created by her five-year-old charge.
Liz Moore is the bestselling author of Long Bright River, The Words of Every Song, Heft, and The Unseen World. A creative writing professor in the M.F.A. program at Temple University, her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Tin House and The New York Times, among other publications. (recorded 5/18/2022)
In conversation with Ramesh Ponnuru, editor of National Review
A senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Matthew Continetti works in the field of American political thought and history, with an emphasis on the Republican Party and the history of 20th-century conservatism. His books include The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Media Elite Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star and The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine. The founding editor of The Washington Free Beacon, the former opinion editor at The Weekly Standard, and currently a contributing editor at National Review and a columnist for Commentary Magazine, his writing has been published in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, among other places. In The Right, Continetti provides a survey of the U.S. conservative movement's evolution and intellectual history.
Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for Bloomberg View, and a contributing editor to National Affairs. A visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute since 2012, he has been a commentator on a wide array of media outlets, including Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and PBS NewsHour, among many others. He is the author of The Party of Death and his articles have been published in numerous newspapers and magazines. (recorded 5/17/2022)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award winning broadcaster and journalist
The United States attorney general from 2009 to 2015, Eric Holder is the first African American to hold that position. In his 30-year career in government he also served in the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section and as an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Currently the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, he also works as senior counsel at the law firm of Covington & Burling. He was named to Time magazine's list of most influential people, referred to by Legal Times as one of the greatest Washington, D.C. lawyers of the past 30 years, and honored by Columbia University, his alma mater, with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. In Our Unfinished March, Holder presents a history of the struggle for voting rights in the U.S. and offers an actionable plan to safeguard our most essential right in the midst of unprecedented attacks on U.S. democracy. (recorded 5/13/2022)
In conversation with Isaac Fitzgerald
Freelance journalist Chloé Cooper Jones was a 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing for ''Fearing for His Life,'' a profile of the man who filmed NYPD officers killing Eric Garner. Also a philosophy professor, she has published articles in a wide array of periodicals, including The Believer, GQ, Vice, and New York magazine. She is the recipient of the 2020 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and the 2021 Howard Foundation Grant from Brown University, and her work has been anthologized in The Best American Travel Writing and The Best American Sports Writing. A memoir about motherhood, disability, and underlying societal expectations, Easy Beauty follows Jones's painful literal and figurative worldwide journeys to reclaim spaces she'd been denied.
Isaac Fitzgerald appears frequently on The Today Show and is the author of the bestselling children's book How to Be a Pirate as well as the co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (winner of an IACP Award). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Boston Globe and numerous other publications. His debut memoir, Dirtbag, Massachusetts, is forthcoming in July, 2022. He lives in Brooklyn. (recorded 5/12/2022)
In conversation with Nathaniel Popkin
The ''rare writer who can combine keen, grounded, psychological observation with visionary headiness'' (Salon), Ken Kalfus is the author of the novels The Commissariat of Enlightenment, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, a National Book Award finalist; and Equilateral. His short story collections include Coup de Foudre, Thirst, and PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Pew Fellowship for the Arts, Kalfus's works have been translated into more than 10 languages. In 2 A.M. in Little America, Kalfus imagines a plausibly dystopian future in which young people from the United States are forced to emigrate to other countries because of large-scale civil unrest.
Nathaniel Popkin's many books of fiction and nonfiction include Everything is Borrowed, The Year of the Return, and To Reach the Spring: From Complicity to Consciousness in the Age of Eco-Crisis. He is co-editor of the literary anthology Who Will Speak for America?, was the fiction editor of Cleaver Magazine, and the writer/editor of the Emmy-winning documentary film series Philadelphia: The Great Experiment. (recorded 5/11/2022)
One of the ''Indigenous novelists reshaping North American science fiction, horror, and fantasy'' (The New York Times), Rebecca Roanhorse is the bestselling author of the fantasy books Storm of Locusts, Trail of Lightning, and Race to the Sun. Inspired by pre-Columbian American cultures, her fantasy novel Black Sun was nominated for the 2021 Locus Award, 2021 Nebula Award, and the 2021 Hugo Award. Roanhorse's other work includes the Star Wars novel Resistance Reborn, contributions to Marvel Comics, and numerous short stories that have won Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards. Fevered Star is a sequel to Black Sun in the Between Earth and Sky series. (recorded 5/10/2022)
In conversation with Pam Jenoff
''A comedy writer with a heart of gold'' (The New York Times), Adriana Trigiani is the bestselling author of 20 books of fiction and nonfiction that have been published in 38 countries. These works include The Shoemaker's Wife; Very Valentine; Cooking with My Sisters; and Lucia, Lucia. Also an award-winning filmmaker, playwright, and television writer and producer, she directed the documentary Queens of the Big Time and wrote and directed the film adaptation of her debut novel, Big Stone Gap. Trigiani serves on the New York State Council on the Arts and is the founder of The Origin project, an in-school writing program in her home state of Virginia. Her latest novel, The Good Left Undone, follows three generations of Tuscan artisans struggling with a long-held family secret that emerges as the aged matriarch reflects on her family at the end of her life.
Pam Jenoff's New York Times bestselling novels include The Woman wth the Blue Star, The Lost Girls of Paris, The Orphan's Tale, and The Diplomat's Wife. A law professor at Rutgers University, she formerly served as special assistant to the Secretary of the Army, a diplomat for the State Department, and as a labor and employment attorney. (recorded 5/9/2022)
''One of the best thriller writers on the planet'' (Esquire), Don Winslow is the author of 22 bestselling crime novels that explore such broad-ranging topics as the socio-political underpinnings of the war on drugs, law enforcement, criminal hierarchies, and international politics. These books include the Cartel Trilogy, (The Power of the Dog, The Cartel, and The Border), The Force, and Savages for which he wrote the screenplay for the Oliver Stone-directed film adaptation of the same name. Winslow formerly worked as a private investigator, antiterrorist trainer, arson trial consultant, and safari guide. In City on Fire, this ''master of thrills shows his range, and his bite'' (The New York Times) with a fictionalized account of the real-life warring Irish and Italian criminal organizations that have controlled the New England region for generations. (recorded 5/5/2022)
In conversation with Solomon Jones. Lawrence Jackson's award-winning books include The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, biographies of Chester Himes and Ralph Ellison, and a memoir about his family history, titled My Father's Name: A Black Virginia Family after the Civil War. A Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and history at Johns Hopkins University, he is also the founder of the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts and a recipient of a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship. Shelter is an essay collection that begins with Jackson's initial struggle to make Baltimore his home and how his later adoption of the Charm City became a means to reexamine his personal history.
An award-winning Philadelphia Daily News columnist and morning host for 900 am WURD radio in Philadelphia, Solomon Jones is the author of the Essence bestselling novel The Bridge, as well as the critically acclaimed books Pipe Dream, Ride or Die, Payback, and Ten Lives, Ten Demands: Life and Death Stories, and a Black Activist's Blueprint for Racial Justice. He is also a blogger and frequent on-air commentator for NPR-affiliate WHYY and is the founder of Words on the Street Literacy Program and the Rally for Justice Coalition. (recorded 5/4/2022)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition
''A national treasure'' (Vanity Fair), Margo Jefferson won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her memoir Negroland, an examination of her upbringing and education amongst a small segment of privileged Black society in the United States. She is also the author of On Michael Jackson, an analysis of Jackson's cultural legacy as a pop star and celebrity. A former longtime theater and book reviewer for Newsweek and The New York Times, she won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for her cultural criticism. Her essays and reviews have been published in a variety of other periodicals, including Vogue, Harper's Magazine, and New York Magazine, among many others. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation grant, Jefferson currently teaches writing at Columbia University. In Constructing a Nervous System, she brings to life the family members, artists, athletes, intellectuals, and activists who have influenced her the most. (recorded 5/4/2022)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award winning broadcaster and journalist
The host of BET News, Black News Tonight, and UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill is the Steve Charles Chair in Media, Cities, and Solutions at Temple University. His books include Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond and Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics. Hill is the owner of Philadelphia's Uncle Bobbie's Coffee & Books and is the founder and director of the People's Education Center, a Germantown-based nonprofit organization devoted to community education.
Todd Brewster is the co-author, with Peter Jennings, of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Century. His other work includes the books Lincoln's Gamble and In Search of America, and articles published in Vanity Fair, Time, and Life, where he served as a senior editor. Currently the senior visiting lecturer in journalism at Mount Holyoke College, he taught journalism at Temple University, was a Knight fellow at Yale Law School, and was the founding director of the Center for Oral History at West Point. Brewster is also the executive producer of the awardwinning documentary Into Harm's Way.
In Seen and Unseen, Hill and Brewster analyze the role of visual media in the ongoing struggle for racial justice while examining what makes this moment unique in the overall history of civil rights movements in the United States. (recorded 5/2/2022)
In conversation with Mitchell Orenstein, Department Chair and Professor of Russian and East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania
In 2019, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was the focus of international interest when then-President Donald Trump and his allies targeted Yovanovitch amidst their efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden's family. This scandal led to the first impeachment proceedings against Trump, a major aspect of which was Yovanovitch's impassioned and steadfast congressional testimony. The child of parents who fled Nazi and Soviet atrocities, she has served in numerous senior State Department positions, including U.S. ambassador to Armenia, U.S. ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, under secretary of state for political affairs, and principal deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. Yovanovitch retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2020 and is currently a diplomat in residence at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. Lessons from the Edge uses experiences from her life and career to offer lessons about the ways in which corruption can endanger democracy. (recorded 4/28/2022)
To launch the 20th annual program season of One Book, One Philadelphia, join us for a conversation with Quiara Alegría Hudes, author of My Broken Language--the 2022 One Book featured title--and Lilliam Rivera, author of Never Look Back, the 2022 One Book youth companion title.
After their discussion, students from the Curtis Institute of Music will perform an original work of music inspired by My Broken Language. (recorded 4/27/2022)
In conversation with Marc Lamont Hill
Addressing social justice issues of policing, state surveillance of families, and science, Dorothy Roberts's books include Killing the Black Body, Shattered Bonds, and Fatal Invention. She has also authored more than 100 scholarly articles and has co-edited six books on various legal issues. The George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Pennsylvania, Roberts is the director of the Penn Program on Race, Science, and Society. In Torn Apart she explains that the abolition of the U.S. child welfare system-which is designed to punish Black families-will liberate Black communities.
The Steve Charles Chair in Media, Cities and Solutions at Temple University, Marc Lamont Hill is the host of BET News and the Coffee and Books podcast. The recipient of honors from the National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, he is the author of six books, including Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life; Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond; and Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics. (recorded 4/26/2022)
Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture In conversation with John Holloway
One of the United States's foremost experts on forensic sciences and the criminal justice system, M. Chris Fabricant is the director of strategic litigation at the Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization that uses DNA testing to release wrongly convicted individuals from prison. He is a former longtime public defender and law professor, frequently serves as a public speaker on legal reform and social justice, is featured in the Netflix documentary series The Innocence Files, and has published numerous articles in journals such as Fordham Law Review and New York University Law Review. In his new book, Fabricant examines the role that faulty scientific evidence has in continuing and strengthening an unjust and racist criminal justice system.
John Holloway is the associate dean and executive director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. (recorded 4/21/2022)
In conversation with Asali Solomon, author of the novels Disgruntled and Days of Afrekete
Using ''gorgeous, compassionate prose'' to continue ''our national conversation about people working together to heal our communities'' (The Washington Post), Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the author of The New York Times bestselling novels Wench and Balm. She has been a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards, the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, and the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Award, and she won the 2011 First Novelist Award from Black Caucus of the American Library Association. The current chair of the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, she teaches creative writing at American University in Washington, D.C. In Take My Hand, inspired by shocking real-life events, Perkins-Valdez tells the story of Civil Townsend, a Black doctor who seeks justice for wrongs done to her patients decades before in 1970s Alabama. (recorded 4/20/2022)
''A pioneer in primate studies'' (The Wall Street Journal), Dr. Frans de Waal is the author of The Bonobo and the Atheist, an exploration of the biological roots of human morality found in primate social interaction. His other 16 books include Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, and The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society. De Waal is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, the C. H. Candler Professor in Emory University's psychology department, and the former director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Based on decades of human and animal research, Different argues that biology doesn't necessarily support traditional gender roles in human communities. (recorded 4/14/2022)
Carole Phillips Memorial Lecture
Maggie Shipstead is the bestselling author of the novels Astonish Me and Seating Arrangements, the latter of which won the Dylan Thomas Prize and the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. A former Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University and the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, she is a longtime travel writer and has frequently contributed articles to Condé Nast Traveler and Departures. Shipstead's latest bestseller, Great Circle, tells the parallel stories of a bold woman aviator and the actor who portrays her on film almost a century later. ''A fat, juicy peach of a novel ... epic in spirit and scope'' (The Telegraph UK), it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and chosen as one of 2021's best books by NPR, The Washington Post, and Time, among others. (recorded 4/12/2022)
In conversation with Jamila Robinson
Chef and educator Bryant Terry is the author of four vegan cookbooks, including Grub, Afro-Vegan, and Vegetable Kingdom, winner of an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. In 2015 he earned a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award for his food justice activism. The chef-in-residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, his writing and recipes have been published in periodicals such as Gourmet, Food and Wine, and The New York Times Magazine, among many other places. San Francisco Magazine selected him as one of the 11 smartest people in the Bay Area food scene and Fast Company referred to him as one of 9 People Who Are Changing the Future of Food. In Black Food, Terry offers a tribute to Black culinary creativity with more than 100 esteemed contributors from around the globe.
The assistant managing food editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jamila Robinson is the chair of the James Beard Foundation Journalism Committee, where she is also a coach and mentor for the JBF fellowship program. She formerly worked as an editorial director for Atlantic Media, as a senior content strategist for the USA Today Network, and as a senior editor for features at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (recorded 4/12/2022)
Introduced by Denice Frohman In conversation with Cynthia Dewi Oka
The 2018–19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, Raquel Salas Rivera is the author of five full-length books of poetry. These poetry collections include lo terciario/the tertiary, longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry and winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry; while they sleep (under the bed is another country), longlisted for the 2020 Pen America Open Book Award; and x/ex/exis, winner of the inaugural Ambroggio Prize. The recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a grant from the Mellon Foundation, he serves as the principal translator for El proyecto de la literatura puertorriqueña/ The Puerto Rican Literature Project. In his latest poetry collection, Salas Rivera imagines a future decolonialized Puerto Rico.
Originally from Bali, Indonesia, Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of Fire Is Not a Country (2021) and Salvage (2017) from Northwestern University Press, and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water (2016) from Thread Makes Blanket Press. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, POETRY, Academy of American Poets, Hyperallergic, Guernica, The Rumpus, ESPNW, and elsewhere. A recipient of the Leeway Foundation's Transformation Award and the Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize, she is currently Poet in Residence at the Amy Clampitt House. (recorded 4/11/2022)
In conversation with Ariel Delgado Dixon Jennifer Egan won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for the novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, ''a new classic of American fiction'' (Time) that follows an aging punk rocker and his young employee. Her other books of fiction include the National Book Award Finalist Look at Me, the bestselling The Keep, The Invisible Circus, and the historical novel Manhattan Beach, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Her work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, and The New Yorker, among many other publications. Imagined as a ''sibling novel'' to A Visit From the Goon Squad, Egan's new novel conjurs a reality only a few advancements away from our own in which technology will allow users to download and share all their memories.
In Ariel Delgado Dixon's debut novel Don't Say We Didn't Warn You, two sisters endure a childhood of deprivation in a decaying warehouse and in a wilderness camp where troubled teenage girls are sent as a last resort. Referred to by author Joy Williams as ''eventful, complex, admirably structured, relentless, and spooky'', this novel tells a story of trauma and the struggles of family relationships. Delgado Dixon has published writing in Kenyon Review, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Mississippi Review, and The Greensboro Review, among other periodicals. (recorded 4/7/2022)
In conversation with Nydia Han, Consumer Investigative Reporter and co-anchor of 6ABC Action News Sunday mornings
A reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer for 31 years, Jennifer Lin worked as an international correspondent in China, a national correspondent in Washington, D.C., and a financial correspondent on Wall Street. She is the author of the family memoir Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family. Her documentary Beethoven in Beijing, co-directed with Sharon Mullally, recently premiered on PBS's Great Performances. In her companion book of the same name, Lin uses interviews and news stories to recount the Philadelphia Orchestra's 1973 historic tour of China, which at that time still banned Western music. (recorded 4/5/2022)
In conversation with John M. Cooper
Historian Neil Lanctotis the author of Campy: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella and Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution, a ''prodigiously researched'' and ''enormously important historical corrective to feel-good versions of baseball integration'' (The New York Times). The recipient of the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research, he has published articles in Smithsonian magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Baltimore Sun, among other periodicals. In The Approaching Storm, Lanctot details the early-20th century rift between three of the U.S.'s most important progressives as the country struggled to respond to the global consequences to World War I. John M. Cooper's many historical works include Pivotal Decades: The United States, 1900-1920; The Vanity of Power: American Isolationism and the First World War, 1914-1917; and Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, which was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and a Fulbright professorship in Moscow, Russia, he is professor-emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (recorded 3/29/2022)
In conversation with Peter Dobrin, classical music critic and culture writer, The Philadelphia Inquirer
One of classical music's most celebrated pianists, Jeremy Denk has performed with ensembles such as the National Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and he has frequently appeared at Carnegie Hall. His recordings have been number one on Billboard's Classical Chart and have been selected in best-of-the-year lists for several media outlets, including The Washington Post, BBC, The New Yorker, and NPR. A member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Denk is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Musical America's Instrumentalist of the Year Award, and the Avery Fisher Prize. His writing on music has been published in The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, and The New Republic, among other periodicals. In Every Good Boy Does Fine, Denk explores the composers, teachers, and professional struggles that have most influenced not only his career, but also his larger concept of what music means to us. (recorded 3/28/2022)
Hannah Tinti is the author of the bestselling novels The Good Thief and The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley and the short story collection Animal Crackers. A creative writing professor in New York University's M.F.A. program, she is the co-founder of the Sirenland Writers Conference and the co-founder and executive editor of One Story magazine.
Jai Chakrabarti's debut novel A Play for the End of the World was selected as one of 2021's best books by numerous periodicals. Formerly an emerging writer fellow with A Public Space, he has had his Pushcart Prize–winning short fiction anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Short Stories.
Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the novels Parakeet and 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas, and the story collection Safe as Houses. A creative writing teacher at NYU and The New School, she has earned The O. Henry Prize, The Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from MacDowell, Sewanee, and The Center for Fiction.
Mira Jacob is the author of the celebrated novel The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing and Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations. A fiction teacher at NYU, The New School, and Randolph College, her articles, drawings, and short fiction have been published in The New York Times Book Review, Tin House, and Literary Hub.
Edited by Tinti and published in partnership with the Selected Shorts literary radio program and live show, Small Odysseys presents never-before-published short stories by some of contemporary fiction's most acclaimed authors. (recorded 3/24/2022)
A Dublin native and a 34-year columnist and drama critic for The Irish Times, Fintan O'Toole is the author of nearly two dozen books, including A History of Ireland in 100 Objects, Enough is Enough: How to Build a Republic, and Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain. He is also a professor at Princeton University, a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and The Guardian, and formerly worked as the drama critic for the New York Daily News, The Sunday Tribune, and In Dublin magazine. Named to The Observer's list of ''Britain's top 300 intellectuals'', O'Toole is the recipient of the 2017 Orwell Prize for Journalism, the 2017 European Press Prize, and three Irish Book Awards. Combining memoir and national history, We Don't Know Ourselves documents the turbulence that has transformed Ireland over the past half century. (recorded 3/23/2022)
Donna Leon is the author of the internationally bestselling Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery novels, the ''endlessly enjoyable'' long-established series of books that combines ''deep thoughts about justice and vengeance and charming classical allusions'' (The New York Times Book Review). Born and raised in New Jersey, Leon is a 30-year resident of Italy and current resident of a small Swiss village. She worked as a copywriter in London, and taught literature in universities in Iran, China, and Saudi Arabia. In the series' 31st installment, Leon's dapper Venetian detective questions the bounds of loyalty as an innocent request reveals corruption and financial wrongdoing. (recorded 3/21/2022)
In conversation with Michael Kulikowski
''A national treasure, and easily the world's most famous classicist'' (The Guardian), Mary Beard ''radiates authority and expertise'' in guiding her readers through the world of Ancient Roman civilization. She is a professor at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Newnham College, and a Royal Academy of the Arts professor of ancient literature. Some of her seminal works include Rome in the Late Republic, The Parthenon, The Fires of Vesuvius, and S.P.Q.R.: A History of Ancient Rome. Beard is also the classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, where her column ''A Don's Life'' is regularly published. A frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, she has written and presented several BBC historical documentaries. Twelve Caesars explores the ways in which images of Roman emperors have influenced artists and thinkers for more than 2,000 years.
The head of the history department and the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Classics at Pennsylvania State University, Michael Kulikowski is the author of Rome's Gothic Wars, Late Roman Spain and Its Cities, The Triumph of Empire, and The Tragedy of Empire. He has appeared in several History Channel documentaries, has published numerous academic articles, and is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and The Wall Street Journal. (recorded 3/17/2022)
In conversation with Danielle M. Conway
The Nation's legal analyst and justice correspondent, Elie Mystal is an Alfred Knobler fellow at the Type Media Center and is the legal editor of More Perfect, Radiolab's podcast about the U.S. Supreme Court. A Harvard Law School graduate and former litigator at Debevoise & Plimpton, he was the executive editor of Above the Law, a news site sharing details and original commentary about the legal profession. Mystal is a frequent guest on MSNBC and Sirius XM. Referred to by Don Winslow as ''a powerful and important book of brightly alive ideas,'' Allow Me to Retort is a guidebook for how the U.S. Constitution should accurately be interpreted in opposition to Republican claims.
Dean and Donald J. Farage Professor of Law at Penn State Dickinson Law, Danielle M. Conway is an expert in procurement law, entrepreneurship, intellectual property law, and licensing intellectual property. She formerly was the dean of the University of Maine Law and served on the faculties at several other law schools. The author of numerous books, articles, and essays, Conway is the co-recipient of the Association of American Law Schools' Impact Award, and in 2016 she retired from the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel after 27 years of service. (recorded 3/15/2022)
The Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Howard Gardneris the author of 30 books, including A Synthesizing Mind, The App Generation, and Responsibility at Work. He is the recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, honorary degrees from 31 colleges and universities, and the Brock International Prize in Education.
A project director at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Wendy Fischman has written about development and learning for several scholarly and popular periodicals. She is the lead author of Making Good: How Young People Cope with Moral Dilemmas at Work, co-developed a classroom curriculum for teachers and students, and has consulted on school reforms.
In The Real World of College, Gardner and Fischman utilize more than 2,000 interviews with students, faculty, parents, alumni, and administrators from a variety of colleges and universities to examine why students consider learning secondary to their résumés, job prospects, and earning potential. (recorded 3/16/2022)
In conversation with Jason Freeman, editor and producer, author events Lee Kravetz's acclaimed nonfiction books include Supersurvivors: The Surprising Link Between Suffering and Success and Strange Contagion: Inside the Surprising Science of Infectious Behaviors and Viral Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves. He has contributed writing to a wide array of publications, including The New York Times, Psychology Today, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Daily Beast. In the debut novel The Last Confessions of Sylvia P., Kravetz creates three interwoven narratives to reimagine the time in which poet Sylvia Plath wrote her renowned semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. (recorded 3/14/2022)
In conversation with comedienne, actor, and author Catherine "Cat" Cohen
An acclaimed playwright, screenwriter, and actor, Harvey Fierstein is the Tony Award–winning author of Torch Song Trilogy and La Cage aux Folles. His play A Catered Affair was nominated for 12 Drama Desk Awards and he received Tony nominations for Kinky Boots, Newsies, and Casa Valentina. He also won Tonys for his performance in the Torch Song Trilogy and as Edna Turnblad in Hairspray. Fierstein has appeared in dozens of films and television shows, including Mrs. Doubtfire, Independence Day, Cheers, and The Good Wife, and he has voiced animated characters in Mulan, The Dark Crystal, and Big Mouth, among many others. In I Was Better Last Night, he reveals details of his personal trials and triumphs, explores his status as a cultural icon and gay rights activist, and reflects on his best-loved roles and writings.
Catherine "Cat" Cohen hosts the weekly cabaret show at Alan Cumming's East Village venue, Club Cumming, and co-hosts the popular weekly podcast Seek Treatment with Pat Regan. Her Netflix comedy special The Twist...? She's Gorgeous will hit screens on March 15, and last year she joined the cast of the FX series What We Do in the Shadows. Winner of the best newcomer title at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, she recently published her first book with Knopf, titled God I Feel Modern Tonight, a collection of comedic poetry. (recorded 3/13/2022)
Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Endowed Lecture In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition Michael Kazin's many critically acclaimed books include War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914–1918, selected as an editor's choice by The New York Times Book Review; American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation, chosen as a best book of 2011 by The New Republic, Newsweek, and The Progressive; A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan; and The Populist Persuasion. A history professor at Georgetown University, Kazin is editor emeritus of Dissent magazine, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and editor of The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History. In What It Took to Win he offers a thorough history of the Democratic Party and its historically imperfect but recently reinvigorated journey towards making genuine progress for U.S. society. (recorded 3/8/2022)
In conversation with Major Jackson Garrett Hongo was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for the poetry collection The River of Heaven. His other books of poetry include Yellow Light and Coral Road. The distinguished professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon and a regular contributor to SoundStage! Ultra, Hongo also authored Volcano: A Memoir of Hawaiʻi and The Mirror Diary: Selected Essays. Writing about his lifelong passion for sound reproduction equipment, music in many formats, and the poetic voices that influenced him most, The Perfect Sound is a celebration of all things audio.
The Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University and the poetry editor of The Harvard Review, Major Jackson is the author of five books of poetry, including The Absurd Man and Leaving Saturn. His many honors include the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has published poems and essays in a wide variety of periodicals, including The New Yorker, Paris Review, and Ploughshares. (recorded 3/2/2022)
In conversation with Cajetan Iheka, Associate Professor of Literature, Yale University, and author of African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics
One of Nigeria's most celebrated authors, Ben Okri is the author of many post-colonial novels, poetry, short story collections, and essays. He rose to international fame in 1980 upon the publication of his first novel, Flowers and Shadows, and is perhaps best known for The Famished Road, winner of the 1991 Booker Prize. A fable about the realities we create for ourselves, Astonishing the Gods was included, almost 25 years after its publication, in the BBC's ''100 Novels That Shaped Our World'' list. Every Leaf a Hallelujah, the tale of a young girl searching for a special flower that can cure her ill mother, is a modern-day fairytale written to be read by adults and children alike.
Cajetan Iheka is Associate Professor of English at Yale University, author of Naturalizing Africa: Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature, editor of Teaching Postcolonial Environmental Literature and Media, and coeditor of African Migration Narratives: Politics, Race, and Space. (recorded 2/28/2022)
Education historian Erika M. Kitzmiller has conducted research in the city of Philadelphia, its public schools, and the Free Library for nearly two decades. The result of her investigation is The Roots of Educational Inequality, a decades-spanning report of the factors contributing to one school's path from first-rate institution to its 2014 closure. An assistant professor of education at Columbia University's Barnard College, her writing has appeared in the Harvard Educational Review, Dissent, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Reuters, among other places. Her work has received funding from the National Academy of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation.
In conversation with: Ted Domers, School District of Philadelphia, Assistant Superintendent, Germantown High School Teacher
Janel Moore-Almond, School District of Philadelphia Graduate and Teacher, Carver High School
Akira Drake Rodriguez, Assistant Professor, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania (recorded 2/24/2022)
Barbara Gohn Day Memorial Lecture In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award winning broadcaster and journalist
In her 20 years as a columnist and assistant editor at The Times of London, Mary Ann Sieghart won a popular following for her pieces on politics, feminism, economics, and parenthood. Also a frequent broadcaster, she has presented several programs on BBC Radio 4 and hosted Newshour on the BBC World Service. Sieghart is chair of the judges for the 2022 Women's Prize for Fiction, recently served as a visiting professor at King's College London, chaired the Social Market Foundation think tank, and sat on several corporate, arts, and public policy boards. The Authority Gap uses data, analysis, and interviews with important women leaders, thinkers, and artists to uncover and fight the unconscious biases that continue systemic sexism.
Books will be mailed after the event. Please allow up to three weeks for delivery. U.S. orders only. Books provided by Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books (recorded 2/23/2022)
In conversation with Sara Nović
In Ariel Delgado Dixon's debut novel Don't Say We Didn't Warn You, two sisters endure a childhood of deprivation in a decaying warehouse and in a wilderness camp where troubled teenage girls are sent as a last resort. Referred to by author Joy Williams as ''eventful, complex, admirably structured, relentless, and spooky'', this novel tells a story of trauma and the struggles of family relationships. A 2017 nominee for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Award for Emerging Writers and shortlisted for the Masters Review Anthology Prize, Delgado Dixon has published writing in Kenyon Review, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Mississippi Review, and The Greensboro Review, among other periodicals.
Sara Nović teaches in the Popular Fiction MFA program at Emerson College, and is an instructor of Deaf studies at Stockton University. Her first novel, Girl at War, won the American Library Association's Alex Award, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Nović has an MFA in fiction and literary translation from Columbia University, and lives with her family in Philadelphia. (recorded 2/22/2022)
In conversation with Lise Funderburg
The director of the M.F.A. Creative Writing program at Emerson College, Jabari Asim is the author of the novel Only the Strong, the story collection A Taste of Honey, and several works of nonfiction, including We Can't Breathe, The Art of Survival, and What Obama Means...For Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Future. Also a Guggenheim fellowship-winning poet, playwright, and children's book author, he formerly served as the editor-in-chief of the NAACP's official publication The Crisis, and was an editor and syndicated columnist at The Washington Post. In his new novel, Asim tells the story of a group of enslaved Black people seeking love, friendship, and independence in the 19th century United States South.
Lise Funderburg is the author of Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk about Race and Identity and Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home. A lecturer in creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and a teacher at the Paris Writers' Workshop, her achievements include a Nonfiction Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Nation, Salon, and The Washington Post, among many other periodicals. Her most recent book is Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents. (recorded 2/17/2022)
In conversation with Geoffrey Dyer Tessa Hadley's many ''strange, unsettling-eerily beautiful, discomfiting, stay-up-late-addictive, sometimes hair-raising'' (San Francisco Chronicle) novels about the complexities of family relationships include Clever Girl, Accidents in the Home, The Past, and Everything Will be All Right. Two of her short story collections, Sunstroke and Married Love, were New York Times Notable Books and her fiction regularly appears in The New Yorker. A creative writing professor at England's Bath Spa University and a regular reviewer for the London Review of Books, Hadley has twice been longlisted for the Orange Prize and the Wales Book of the Year. Free Love tells the story of a compliant homemaker's intellectual and sexual awakening in a vibrant 1960s London.
Geoffrey Dyer is the author of four novels and numerous works of nonfiction. Writer-in-residence at the University of Southern California, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, his honors include the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, the Somerset Maugham Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. (recorded 2/16/2022)
In conversation with Nell Irvin Painter
Barbara Chase-Riboud's watershed 1979 novel Sally Hemings told a fictionalized story based on the true account of the life of Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman with whom Thomas Jefferson had children. It was the winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for best novel by an woman writer in the United States and through DNA evidence, the novel's premise about Heming and Jefferson's relationship has since been proven true. Chase-Riboud's other novels include Echo of Lions, The President's Daughter, and Hottentot Venus. She is also a celebrated poet and widely exhibited sculptor and visual artist. In the spirit of Sally Hemings, her new novel breathes life into the previously enigmatic Hannah Elias, one of early 1900s America's richest black women, and the murder that precipitated her rapid downfall.
Historian Nell Irvin Painter's books include Sojourner Truth, Creating Black Americans, and the bestseller The History of White People. The Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University, Painter directed that institution's Program in African American Studies from 1997 to 2000. She has also published numerous essays, reviews, and articles, and is the author of the memoir Old in Art School. (recorded 2/15/2022)
Catherine Price discusses her new book with #1 best selling author, Gretchen Rubin Catherine Price is the author of How to Break Up with Your Phone, a book that ''gives practical advice on how to forge a healthier relationship with technology-without the fear mongering." (Refinery29). Her other books include the parody travel guide 101 Places Not to See Before You Die, Vitamania, The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook, and Mindfulness: A Journal. A public speaker, teacher, and consultant, Price has contributed work to The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Outside, and Men's Journal, among many other periodicals. A mix of science and personal experience, The Power of Fun argues that having fun is crucial to our mental and physical health and presents a practical guide for having more of it.
Gretchen Rubin is one of today's most influential and thought-provoking observers of happiness and human nature. She's known for her ability to distill and convey complex ideas with humor and clarity in a way that's accessible to a wide audience. She's been interviewed by Oprah, eaten dinner with Daniel Kahneman, walked arm-in-arm with the Dalai Lama, had her work written up in a medical journal, been the subject of a ''The Talk of the Town'' piece in The New Yorker magazine, and been an answer on the game show Jeopardy! She's the author of many books, including the blockbuster New York Times bestsellers, The Four Tendencies and Better Than Before. Her book The Happiness Project has sold more than one million copies, been published in more than thirty languages, and spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list, including at #1. (recorded 2/10/2022)
Co-promoted with Asian Arts Initiative and Blue Stoop In conversation with Elizabeth McCracken
A debut ''work of gorgeous, enduring prose'' (The Washington Post), Lan Samantha Chang's Hunger explored the lives of immigrant families haunted by the past. Her other writing includes the novels Inheritance and All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, as well as several other works of short fiction and nonfiction. The first Asian American and the first woman director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Chang was a Berlin Prize fellow, won the PEN Open Book Award, and earned grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. In The Family Chao, a Chinese American family's long-simmering resentments bubble to the surface amidst the mystery of its stern patriarch's murder.
Evoking ''moving depictions of marriage and parenthood, and love, betrayal, and loneliness'' (The Boston Globe), Elizabeth McCracken's seven books include Bowlaway, The Giant's House, and Thunderstruck & Other Stories. A former faculty member at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently the James Michener Chair for Fiction at the University of Texas at Austin, McCracken has earned the PEN New England Award, three Pushcart Prizes, and an O. Henry Prize, among other honors. Longlisted for the National Book Award, The Souvenir Museum is a story collection in which characters begin transformative journeys that test the strange relationships that bind families together. (recorded 2/9/2022)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition Bernardine Evaristo won the 2019 Man Booker Prize and the Dublin Literary Award for Girl, Woman, Other, ''a breathtaking symphony of Black women's voices'' that explores the merging of identity and Britain's African and Caribbean colonial history. Her other novels include The Emperor's Babe and Hello Mum, both of which were adapted into BBC radio programs, in addition to her short fiction, poetry, literary criticism, and drama. A longtime advocate for greater inclusion of artists of color, she co-founded Britain's first Black women's theater company, first major Black theater conference, and first major conference on Black writing. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to literature. An exploration of identity, race, class, aging, and the power of persistence, Manifesto is a memoir of Evaristo's intertwined life and multi-decade effort to share her work with the world. (recorded 1/20/2022)
In conversation with Priya Joshi, Professor of English at Temple University in Philadelphia
Economist Amartya Sen received the Nobel Prize for his ''fascinating ... eloquent, and probing'' (The New York Times) work on social choice theory, welfare economics, development economics, and economics during peacetime and war. Advocating for ethical economies that prioritize tolerance, pluralism, and harmony, his many books include An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions, Development as Freedom, and Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. The Lamont University Professor at Harvard University, Sen is the recipient of many honors, including the Bharat Ratna, which is the most distinguished honor awarded by the president of India, the Eisenhower Medal, the French Legion of Honor, and the National Humanities Medal. ''A portrait of a citizen of the world'' (The Spectator), Home in the World recounts how his experiences in Asia, Europe, and the United States continue to shape his moral vision for the future.
Priya Joshi is a scholar of narrative who studies the social work of popular culture from the nineteenth- to twenty-first centuries. Priya's books include In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel in India which won the Modern Language Association's First Book Prize, and Bollywood's India: A Public Fantasy, both published by Columbia University Press. She's currently completing a study called Good Bad Books about the titles that everybody loved to read but hated to admit that they did. (recorded 2/7/2022)
In conversation with Stanford Thompson, founder and executive director of Play On Philly
A public and private school music educator for more than 20 years, Brendan Slocumb has performed on violin with the Washington Metropolitan Symphony, the Prince George's Philharmonic, and the Alexandria Symphony. He is the concertmaster for the NOVA-Annandale Symphony Orchestra, has frequently served as guest conductor for orchestras throughout Virginia and North Carolina, and is the founder of the Philippines-based nonprofit organization Hands Across the Sea, which has the mission to provide instruments, lessons, and financial support to young music students. The Violin Conspiracy, Slocumb's debut novel, follows a Black musician as he confronts the injustices of U.S. history, racism in the profession of classical music, and the theft of his great-great-grandfather's priceless Stradivarius violin. (recorded 2/3/2022)
In conversation with Jonathan Tamari
Born in Philadelphia to an immigrant family, Democrat Ro Khanna has served as the U.S. representative for California's 17th congressional district-better known as Silicon Valley- since 2017. The deputy assistant secretary of commerce during the Obama administration and a national co-chair for Bernie Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign, he was an economics professor at Stanford University and worked in private practice as a lawyer for technology companies. In Congress, Khanna has championed environmental causes, jobs programs, campaign finance reform, and anti-monopoly economic reforms, among other progressive issues. Dignity in a Digital Age presents Rep. Khanna's objective to achieve opportunity and access for people in the parts of the United States whose lives have been shaped by the growth of 21st technology while not necessarily experiencing the industry's economic benefits.
Jonathan Tamari is the national political reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Based in Washington, D.C., he writes about policy and politics on Capitol Hill and helped lead the Inquirer's coverage of Pennsylvania's critical role in the 2020 presidential election. A North Jersey native, he previously reported on New Jersey state politics and the Philadelphia Eagles. When he can disconnect, you'll find him running or walking his dog. (recorded 2/2/2022)
In conversation with Bernice McFadden
The author and co-author of 15 books that explore topics such as faith, race, social justice, and motherhood, Tracey Michae'l Lewis-Giggetts is a professor of English and Black Studies at the Community College of Philadelphia, hosts the podcast HeARTtalk with Tracey Michae'l, and is the founder of HeARTspace, a healing community for those who have experienced trauma. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Essence, The Guardian, and Ebony, among other publications. In her new essay collection, Lewis-Giggetts celebrates the reaffirming power of Black joy as a means of restoration, resilience, and resistance.
Bernice McFadden won the 2017 American Book Award and the 2017 NAACP Image Award for outstanding literary work for The Book of Harlan. Her other novels include Praise Song for the Butterflies, Sugar, and Gathering of Waters. She was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award and a four-time finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. (recorded 2/1/2022)
In conversation with Jacob S. Hacker
Political scientist Barbara F. Walter is the author of Reputation and Civil War: Why Separatists Conflicts are So Violent; Globalization, Territoriality, and Conflict; and Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention. The Rohr Chair in Pacific International Relations at the School of Global Policy & Strategy, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is on the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and International Studies Quarterly, among other academic journals. Walter has received grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the United States Institute of Peace. How Civil Wars Start examines the substantial increase in violent extremism around the globe in order to explore the rising possibility of a second U.S. civil war.
The Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science and the director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, Jacob S. Hacker is the author of The Great Risk Shift and The Divided Welfare State, and the co-author of Let Them Eat Tweets and American Amnesia, among several other books. He is a board member of The American Prospect, the Economic Policy Institute, and The Century Foundation. (recorded 1/31/2022)
In conversation with Liz Moore Co-sponsored by Blue Stoop
A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, Jessamine Chan has published short stories in Tin House and Epoch. She has received residencies and fellowships from various organizations, including the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Ragdale Foundation. In The School for Good Mothers, praised by Carmen Maria Machado as ''a timely and remarkable debut'' novel, Chan tells the story of an otherwise dedicated mother who, due to a single lapse in judgment, finds herself pitted against the government and in danger of losing custody of her child.
Liz Moore is the bestselling author of Long Bright River, The Words of Every Song, Heft, and The Unseen World. A creative writing professor in the M.F.A. program at Temple University, her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Tin House and The New York Times, among other places. (recorded 1/27/2022)
Holocaust survivor Nechama Tec is professor emerita of sociology at the University of Connecticut and the author of six books, including In the Lion's Den and Dry Tears, her memoir of growing up during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Recently adapted into an acclaimed film directed by Edward Zwick and starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber, Defiance tells the story of a forest community in western Belorussia that numbered more than 1,200 Jews by 1944: the largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in World War II. Tec illuminates group commander Tuvia Bielski's struggle as a partisan who lost his family to the Nazis, yet never wavered in his conviction that it was more important to save Jews than to kill Germans. Interviewed by Philadelphia Inquirer film critic, Carrie Rickey. (recorded 3/5/2009)
An award-winning Philadelphia Daily News columnist and morning host for 900 am WURD radio in Philadelphia, Solomon Jones is the author of the Essence bestselling novel The Bridge, as well as the critically acclaimed books Pipe Dream, Ride or Die, Payback, and The Dead Man's Wife. He is also a blogger and frequent on-air commentator for NPR-affiliate WHYY and is the founder of Words on the Street Literacy Program and the Rally for Justice Coalition. Jones previously taught creative writing at Temple University, worked as a columnist for the Philadelphia Weekly, and served on the boards of several committees to end homelessness. Presented through the profound stories of ten contemporary victims of criminal justice racism, his new book presents an actionable guide for social justice advocates to reform racist institutions and policies. (recorded 1/19/2022)
In conversation with Andy Kahan, Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams, Jr. director of author events
''A wrenching portrait of the enduring grace of friendship'' (NPR), Hanya Yanagihara's bestselling novel A Little Life is a story of tragedy and transcendent praise to brotherly love and an unsettling meditation on sexual abuse, suffering, and the difficulties of recovery. A National Book Award Finalist and short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, it was named to dozens of publications' ''best books of the year'' lists. Yanagihara is also the author of The People in the Trees, shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction. She is editor-in-chief at T Magazine: The New York Times Style Magazine. A story about the deep recesses of the human heart, To Paradise, her new centuries-spanning novel, follows three sets of characters navigating alternate realities that reveal frightening implications for our own lives. (recorded 1/18/2022)
In conversation with Fat Joe, rapper, producer, platinum recording artist, and host of the Fat Joe Show
Named the first chairman of the Jordan Brand Advisory Board in January 2019, Larry Miller led Michael Jordan's $200-million basketball shoe company to become a $4-billion athletic apparel global powerhouse. After helping found the Jordan Brand at Nike in 1999, he was president of the Portland Trailblazers from 2007 to 2012 and has served in leadership and advocacy roles for the Urban League, Junior Achievement, and Self Enhancement, Inc. In Jump, Miller begins his story with the violence of his 1960s West Philadelphia upbringing and incarceration and shares his later opportunities of education, redemption, and success.
Laila Lacy, a native of Philadelphia, graduated from Central High School. She earned a degree from Howard University in Washington, DC, where she studied Psychology and Human Communications and has studied at New York's Bank Street Graduate School of Education. Lacy taught middle school for the New York Board of Education and later served as a business development manager for several mortgage banking firms in California. In addition to collaborating on her father's memoir, she has written op-eds and product reviews that have been featured in the several online magazines.
Masks are required at all times while in the building. Due to the changing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and local health and safety regulations, please visit our website before all events to get the latest information on vaccine and masking guidance. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night. A book signing will follow the presentation. Books provided by Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books. (recorded 1/17/2022)
In conversation with Michael Days
A sports columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer since 2013, Mike Sielski is the author of Fading Echoes, the true story of two Pennsylvania high school football rivals who later found brotherhood while in the U.S. military in in the battlefields of the Middle East, and is the co-author of How to Be Like Jackie Robinson, a collection of life lessons taken from the trailblazing baseball legend. In 2015 he was voted the best sports columnist in the U.S. by The Associated Press Sports Editors. The Rise, referred to by Bob Costas as a ''story informed by meticulous research and rendered with clear-eyed insights,'' is about more than the tragedy that took Kobe Bryant's life and offers a thorough account of his identity as a sports and cultural figure and an assessment of his impact on our society.
Formerly The Philadelphia Inquirer's managing editor, vice president for diversity and inclusion, and editor for reader engagement, Michael Days serves on the Board of Visitors at Temple University's Klein College of Media and Communication. (recorded 1/13/2022)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning journalist and broadcaster
Renowned for his ''signature blend of deep reportage and character-driven storytelling (The New York Times Book Review),'' Mark Bowden is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He is the author of 15 bestselling books of investigative journalism, including Blackhawk Down, adapted by Ridley Scott into a popular film; Killing Pablo, winner of the Overseas Press Club's Cornelius Ryan Award for book of the year; The Three Battles of Wanat, a collection of his best long-form essays; and Hue 1968, the story of the Vietnam War's bloodiest battle as told by participants from both sides.
A contributor to National Geographic, The Atlantic, Esquire, and other periodicals, Matthew Teague is a former international and national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. He is executive producer of the 2021 feature film Our Friend, and his writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Best American Travel Writing, Best American Crime Writing, and Best American Sports Writing.
In The Steal, Bowden and Teague detail the 64 days in which Donald Trump and his allies attempted to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election. Employing detailed research, never-before-shared first-person accounts, and reports from all over the country, it offers a thorough account of this unprecedented attack on U.S. democracy. (recorded 1/12/2022)
In conversation with Carmen Maria Machado
Rumaan Alam is the author of the New York Times instant bestseller Leave the World Behind, ''a genuine thriller, a brilliant distillation of our anxious age, and a work of high literary merit'' (The Washington Post) that follows two families who meet at an isolated vacation during a possible cataclysm. The book was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award and named to nearly two dozen ''best of the year'' lists, and a film adaptation starring Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali is in production. Alam's other novels include Rich and Pretty and That Kind of Mother, and his other writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The Wall Street Journal, among other periodicals.
Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the memoir In the Dream House and the short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She is the Abrams Artist in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and a Guggenheim fellow. (recorded 12/2/2021)
In conversation with Rabih Alameddine, National Book Award nominated author of An Unnecessary Woman, The Angel of History, The Hakawati, and most recently, The Wrong End of the Telescope.
Somali-British author Nadifa Mohamed is the writer of the renowned novels Black Mamba Boy and The Orchard of Lost Souls. A regular contributor to The Guardian and the BBC, she is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and is a lecturer in creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Mohamed is the recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award, and was named one of Granta's best young British novelists of 2013, and was a part of the 2014 Africa39 list of the most promising writers under the age of 40 from sub-Saharan Africa. A finalist for the 2021 Booker Prize, The Fortune Men is a novel about Mahmood Mattan, a young Somali sailor falsely accused of a violent crime in 1950s Cardiff, Wales.
''Nadifa Mohamed's The Fortune Men is a blues song cut straight from the heart. It tells about the unjust death of an innocent Black man caught up in a corrupt system. Nadifa's masterful evocation of the full life of Mahmood Mattan, the last man executed in Cardiff for a crime he was exonerated for forty years later, is brought alive with subtle artistry and heartbreaking humanity. In one man's life Mohamed captures the multitudes of homelands, dialects, hopes, and prayers of Somalis, Jews, Maltese and West Indians drawn in by the ships that filled Wales' Tiger Bay in the 1950's, all hoping for a future that eludes Mattan.''-Walter Mosley, author of Devil in a Blue Dress (recorded 12/15/2021)
Watch the eventhere. In conversation with Dorothy Roberts Sandra Shaber Memorial Lecture
Recognized by the National Law Journal as one of the ''100 Most Influential Lawyers in America,'' Kathryn Kolbert made history in 1992 when she argued the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey before the U.S. Supreme Court, a case widely recognized as protecting the right to an abortion guaranteed by Roe v. Wade. The founder of the Athena Center for Leadership at Barnard College and the cofounder of the Center for Reproductive Rights, she created and was the executive producer of NPR's Justice Talking series.
Julie F. Kay has spent decades on the front lines of the legal fight to advance gender equality and religious freedom in the U.S. and internationally. After starting her career in law as a staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights , she has since helped pave the way for the legalization of abortion in Ireland, fought to protect the parenting rights of people leaving ultra-religious communities, and served as a founding president of Women's Link Worldwide.
In Controlling Women, Kolbert and Kay offer a comprehensive account of the struggle to safeguard the protections of Roe v. Wade and preserve women's fundamental reproductive rights in the face of nearly 50 years of legal battles.
Dorothy Roberts is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She is also founding director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society in the Center for Africana Studies and the author of several books that focus on health, social justice, and bioethics. (recorded 12/14/2021)
Watch the video on our youtube channel. In conversation with Signe Wilkinson
''One of America's foremost political satirists'' (The New York Times), illustrator, caricaturist, and cartoonist Edward Sorel has illustrated 41 covers for The New Yorker and has published pictorial essays and features in The Nation, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and The Atlantic, among many other publications. His many pictorial books include Literary Lives, Unauthorized Portraits, and Mary Astor's Purple Diary. The recipient of the George Polk Award for Satiric Drawing and the Best in Illustration Award from the National Cartoonists Society, Sorel's work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums. His new memoir combines 172 of his drawings, cartoons, and caricatures with lively prose to tell the story of his Depression-era Bronx upbringing, the adventures in his rich personal life, and extraordinary 70-year career.
Signe Wilkinson is a widely syndicated cartoonist and the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. Formerly based at The Philadelphia Inquirer, she is the recipient of three Overseas Press Club Awards. With Jonathan Zimmerman she co-authored the book Free Speech: And Why You Should Give a Damn. (recorded 12/9/2021)
The most widely read woman female writer in Turkey and acclaimed worldwide for her work's ''vision, bravery and compassion'' (The New York Times Book Review), Elif Shafak is the author of 12 bestselling novels, including The Bastard of Istanbul, The Architect's Apprentice, Three Daughters of Eve, and 10 Minutes 28 Seconds in This Strange World, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is also the author of the memoir Black Milk and has written articles for periodicals around the world. A fellow and a vice president of the Royal Society of Literature, Shafak has taught at numerous universities in Turkey, the U.K., and the U.S. The Island of Missing Trees explores love, trauma, and ecological renewal through the bittersweet love story of two Cypriot teens on opposing sides of war.
A ''21st-century Virginia Woolf'' (Literary Review UK), Siri Hustvedt is the author of the internationally bestselling novels The Blazing World, What I Loved, and The Summer Without Men, among others. She is also the author of A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, a three-part essay collection that employs feminism, psychology, neuroscience, and a host of other frameworks that connect pursuits to bridge the gaps between the sciences and humanities, a topic upon which she has also published numerous academic essays and papers. Her many honors include the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. In Mothers, Fathers, and Others, Hustvedt examines familial love and hate, feminism, and the power of art in a series of interdisciplinary essays. (recorded 12/7/2021)
In conversation with Michael Gorra, the Mary Augusta Jordan Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College and the editor of the Norton Critical Editions of As I Lay Dying, and The Sound and the Fury, and most recently The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War.
Kevin Birmingham is the author of The Most Dangerous Book, a ''lively'' and ''impressively researched'' (The Washington Post) history of James Joyce's controversial Ulysses. A New York Times bestseller, it won the PEN New England Award and the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. Birmingham's other writing has appeared in such periodicals as The New York Times Book Review and Harper's, and he was named a public scholar by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Sinner and the Saint reveals the incredible true story of the notorious 1830s Parisian murderer who inspired Fyodor Dostevsky's magnum opus Crime and Punishment. (recorded 11/30/2021)
Rabih Alameddine was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award for An Unnecessary Woman, a ''paean to the transformative power of reading'' (LA Review of Books). His many other works include the novels The Angel of History, The Hakawati, and the short story collection The Perv. The winner of the 2019 Dos Passos Prize, Alameddine was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has had solo gallery exhibitions of his paintings on three continents. In The Wrong End of the Telescope, a steadfast Arab American trans woman aids Syrian refugees on the island of Lesbos, and forms a close bond with a Syrian matriarch who is determined to protect her children and husband.
Claire Vaye Watkins' debut story collection Battleborn was named a best book of 2012 by numerous periodicals. Her other work includes Gold Fame Citrus, a novel in which two young lovers squatting in an abandoned mansion find hope in a drought-wracked future Los Angeles. Watkins is a writing professor at the University of California, Irvine, and her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, One Story, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Glimmer Train. I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness is the ''trippy and beautiful, slippery and seductive'' (Vogue) story of a new mother who leaves for a speaking engagement in Reno, Nevada and ends up on a transformative journey through the Mojave Desert of her youth. (recorded 11/23/2021)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition, and Dr. Anthea Butler, Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought and Chair of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania Introduced by legendary poet, Sonia Sanchez Nikole Hannah-Jones won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her work on The 1619 Project, a continuing initiative started byThe New York Times Magazine to reexamine United States history through the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans. The co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, Hannah-Jones has earned, among many other honors, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards, three National Magazine Awards, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. She was recently was named the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University. Interweaving 18 essays with 36 works of fiction and nonfiction by a group of writers of diverse backgrounds, skills, and experiences, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story is a greatly expanded exploration of the continuing legacy of slavery in our cultural, political, and legal institutions. (recorded 11/17/2021)
In conversation with Orly Lobel, author of You Don't Own Me: The Court Battles that Exposed Barbie's Dark Side
Specializing in intellectual property and science policy, Jorge L. Contreras is a professor of law and ethics of human genetics at the University of Utah. His more than 100 scholarly articles have appeared in publications such as Science, Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, and Nature, and he has been featured on BBC Radio, NPR, and PRI, among other media outlets. A member of the Advisory Board of the American Antitrust Institute, Contreras has served on several other high-level governmental, research, and legal boards. The Genome Defense follows the intense high-stakes courtroom fight undertaken by ACLU lawyers, activists, and scientists against biotech companies seeking to patent the very material that makes us who we are.
Orly Lobel is the award-winning author of several books and numerous articles. She is the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego and received her doctoral and law degrees from Harvard University. She is a prolific speaker, commentator, and scholar who travels the world lecturing about policy and industry. (recorded 11/18/2021)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition
Jonathan Karl is the author of Front Row at the Trump Show, an instant New York Times bestseller that peered behind the scenes into President Trump and his allies' unprecedented actions. The chief White House correspondent and chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, Karl has written extensively about Trump's presidency., Karl has also covered some of D.C.'s most important beats, including four presidential administrations, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the State Department. He was the president of the White House Correspondents' Association from 2019 to 2020 and has earned the Walter Cronkite Award for National Individual Achievement, an Emmy Award, and the Everett McKinley Dirksen Award, the highest honor for Congressional reporting. In Betrayal, Karl recounts the chaotic events that followed the 2020 presidential election and the former president's stunning downfall. (recorded 11/22/2021)
In conversation with Trapeta B. Mayson
Chronicling African American family life and women through 14 celebrated poetry collections, Lucille Clifton won the National Book Award and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and is the only author ever to have two books of poetry nominated in the same year for the Pulitzer Prize. She also authored scores of children's books, served as the Poet Laureate of Maryland, and earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Academy of American Poets. Originally published 34 years before her 2010 death, Generations is a memoir that traces Clifton's family's history from Buffalo, New York back to the Jim Crow South and the slave trade, all the way to the women of the Dahomey people of West Africa.
Generations is prefaced by an all-new forward from Tracey K. Smith. A former two-term United States Poet Laureate, she is currently the chair of Princeton University's Lewis Center for the Arts and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of four books of verse, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Life on Mars, as well as the memoir Ordinary Light.
In conversation with Trapeta B. Mayson, Philadelphia Poet Laureate and the author of She Was Once Herself and Mocha Melodies. (recorded 11/16/2021)
In conversation with Marsha Levick, cofounder, deputy director, and chief counsel of the Juvenile Law Center
The Blume Professor of Law and director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative at the Georgetown University Law Center, Kristin Henning represents young people in Washington, D.C.'s Superior Court and conducts nationwide training of criminal justice institutions across the U.S. on the intersection of race, adolescence, and policing. She is the former lead attorney of the Juvenile Unit at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and serves on the board of directors for the Center for Children's Law and Policy. In The Rage of Innocence, Henning exposes the day-to-day but widely hidden ways in which discriminatory and aggressive policing traumatizes Black children and leads them to fear, resist, and resent the police.
Marsha Levick is the cofounder, deputy director, and chief counsel of the Juvenile Law Center, the oldest public interest law firm for children in the United States. For more than 35 years, Ms. Levick has been an advocate for children's and women's rights, earning recognition as a national leader in juvenile law. Ms. Levick has authored or co-authored numerous briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court and many federal and state courts, contributing to cases including Roper v. Simmons, striking the juvenile death penalty; Graham v. Florida, striking juvenile life without parole sentences for non-homicide crimes; JDB v. North Carolina, requiring consideration of youth status in the Miranda custody determination; and Miller v. Alabama, striking mandatory juvenile life without parole sentences in homicide cases. (recorded 11/15/2021)
Ellis Wachs Endowed Lecture In conversation with Michael Smerconish
A national political reporter at The Washington Post, Bucks County's own Robert Costa has earned a wide readership and praise from fellow journalists for his deeply sourced and well-founded reporting. He previously wrote for National Review, was the moderator and managing editor for PBS's Washington Week, and served as a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. Co-authored with investigative journalist and bestselling writer Bob Woodward, Peril utilizes hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents to delve into the difficult transfer of power from the Trump administration to the Biden presidency and the resulting crisis for U.S. democracy.
Michael A. Smerconish is the host of The Michael Smerconish Program on SiriusXM POTUS Channel 124, the host of CNN's Smerconish on Saturday mornings, a Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, and a New York Times bestselling author. (recorded 11/12/2021)
Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them, ''a startling debut collection'' (The New York Times) of short stories was a Wall Street Journal #1 bestseller, the 2009 Oprah Book Club Selection, and was translated in to 12 languages. It was named to several publications' ''best of the year'' lists and earned the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Open Book Award, among other honors. A professor in the University of Florida's MFA writing program and the recipient of many literary fellowships, Akpan has published stories and autobiographical work in The New Yorker, the Nigerian edition of The Guardian, and the Hekima Review, among other places. His debut novel tells the satirical story of a Nigerian editor who experiences racism and feelings of white cultural superiority underneath the façade of the Manhattan publishing industry.
Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of the ''quirky, compelling'' and ''polished debut'' (Dallas Morning News) story collection Night at the Fiestas, winner of the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. A professor of creative writing at Princeton University, she has earned the ''5 Under 35'' award from the National Book Foundation, the Rome Prize, and a Stegner Fellowship. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The O. Henry Prize Stories anthology, among other places. The Five Wounds, Quade's debut novel, finds five generations of a New Mexican family converging in the year following an unexpected birth. (recorded 11/10/2021)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition Pine Tree Foundation Endowed Lecture
The New York Times's Supreme Court correspondent for nearly three decades, Linda Greenhouse won the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the United States's highest judicial branch. She is the author of Becoming Justice Blackmun and The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction, and the co-author of The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, her other journalistic honors include the John Chancellor Award, the Goldsmith Career Award, and the Radcliffe Institute Medal. In Justice on the Brink, Greenhouse offers a sobering account and inside analysis of the year in which the sitting membership of the Supreme Court transitioned into a rightwing super-majority. (recorded 11/9/2021)
In conversation with David Fricke, senior editor for Rolling Stone and SiriusXM host
One of Rolling Stone's ''100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time'', Robby Krieger is best known as a member of the legendary rock band The Doors. He wrote or co-wrote some of the group's biggest commercial hits, including ''Light My Fire,'' ''Touch Me,'' ''Love Me Two Times,'' and ''Love Her Madly.'' While The Doors have sold over one hundred million albums worldwide, inspired Oliver Stone's popular biopic feature film, and have received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy, Krieger has also become a Grammy-nominated solo artist, an accomplished painter, and he is the co-founder of the annual Medlock-Krieger Rock & Roll Golf Classic & All-Star Concert. In Set the Night on Fire, Krieger, the notoriously reserved musician describes his childhood, The Doors' triumphs and tragedies, and the frank details of his personal struggles. (recorded 11/8/2021)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning journalist and broadcaster
Currently Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, Huma Abedin began as an intern for the former first lady in 1996. In the interim she has served in the U.S. Senate as senior advisor to Senator Clinton, worked as traveling chief of staff for Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, was the deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Department of State, and was vice chair of Hillary for America in 2016. In her candid new memoir, Abedin tells the story of her upbringing in the United States and Saudi Arabia by Indian and Pakistani parents, her heartbreaking marriage to Anthony Weiner and their shared love for their son, and some of her most extraordinary career experiences. (recorded 11/5/2021)
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Endowed Lecture
One of the world's leading neuroscientists, Dr. Antonio Damasio has made watershed contributions to the understanding of how our brains process emotions, decisions, and conscious. He is the David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Philosophy, and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. His prolific body of work includes scores of scientific articles and several books, including Decartes' Error, The Feeling of What Happens, and The Strange Order of Things. A member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Damasio is the recipient of some of the scientific community's most prestigious awards. Feeling & Knowing is a guide to understanding the phenomenon of consciousness and how it relates to the physical brain. (recorded 11/4/2021)
In conversation with Christine Kendall, author of Riding Chance, nominated for a NAACP Image Award, and The True Definition of Neva Beane
Glory Edim is the creator of Well-Read Black Girl, a book club, book, and online community that showcases the universality of Black women's stories and experiences in and through literature. She also edited the 2018 NAACP Image Award-nominated anthology of the same name that featured a wide array of essays by Black women. A recipient of the 2017 Innovator's Award from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, Edim serves on the board of New York City's Housing Works Bookstore. She is the curator of the new story collection On Girlhood, referred to by Jacqueline Woodson as ''a loving family of writers who came before me,'' that includes such towering voices as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Toni Cade Bambara, and Alice Walker--among many others. (recorded 11/3/2021)
Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture
Renowned for his ''ability to combine high thinking with a shrewd capacity to understand day-to-day American politics,'' (The Economist) Pulitzer Prize winner George Will has written a nationally syndicated column at The Washington Post for the past 45 years. His many books include The Conservative Sensibility, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, and One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation. Will is the winner of the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, two Silurian Awards for editorial writing, and the Order of Lincoln award from his home state of Illinois. In American Happiness and Discontents, Will addresses such varied topics as American socialists, anti-capitalist conservatives, drug policy, the criminal justice system, climatology, the Coronavirus, the First Amendment, the composition of the federal judiciary, the morality of watching football, and so much more. (recorded 11/1/2021)
In conversation with Adam McNeil, host of the New Books in African American Studies podcast
The McCausland Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, Woody Holton teaches early U.S. history, specializing in economics, African American history, Indigenous history, and women's history. His many books include the Bancroft Prize–winning biography Abigail Adams; Forced Founders, winner of the Merle Curti Award from the Organization of American Historians; and Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, a National Book Award finalist. He is also the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation. In Liberty Is Sweet, Holton uses more than a thousand primary accounts to offer a wide-ranging reassessment of marginalized peoples' contributions to U.S. independence and their conflicts with the values, decisions, and agendas of the Founding Fathers.
Adam McNeil is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at Rutgers University, where he writes about Black Women from the Chesapeake Bay during the Revolutionary and Founding eras. Adam's research has been supported by fellowships from the University of Michigan's Clements Library, the David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society, and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture. In addition to academic writing, Adam regularly contributes to academic blogs Black Perspectives and The Junto, and regularly interviews scholars on the New Books in African American Studies podcast, where he has interviewed nearly one hundred scholars about their works in African American Studies and African American History. (recorded 10/28/2021)
Joshua Ferris's ''brash, extravagant, and chillingly beautiful'' (The New Yorker) novels include Then We Came to the End, winner of the 2008 PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel and a finalist for the National Book Award; To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, which was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize; and The Unnamed, the story of a lawyer who has the uncontrollable urge to walk and keep walking. One of The New Yorker's ''20 Under 40'' writers and winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize, Ferris is also the author of the short story collection The Dinner Party and has published fiction in Granta, Prairie Schooner, and Best American Voices, among other places. In A Calling for Charlie Barnes, a scheming malcontent finds redemption on an unlikely path.
Dana Spiotta is the author of five novels, including Wayward, which the New York Times called a "virtuosic, singular and very funny portrait of a woman seeking sanity and purpose in a world gone mad." Spiotta has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, the St. Francis College Literary Prize, and the John Updike Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. (recorded 10/26/2021)
In conversation with Jonathan Franzen, bestselling author of Crossroads, Freedom, Purity, and The Corrections among other works of fiction and non-fiction.
''A fiercely intelligent writer'' (The New York Times), Donald Antrim is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, The Hundred Brothers, and The Verificationist. His other work includes Afterlife, a memoir about his mother; The Emerald Light in the Air, a story collection compiled from his published work's frequent appearances in The New Yorker; and essays and articles published in a variety of periodicals. He has received grants and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the MacArthur Foundation, among others. In One Friday in April, Antrim uses the harrowing circumstances surrounding his 2006 suicidal thoughts and actions to reframe this misunderstood illness as something other than the choice of a depressed person. (recorded 10/21/2021)
In conversation with Nicole Dennis-Benn
Asali Solomon is the author of Disgruntled, ''a smart, philosophical, coming-of-age'' (San Francisco Chronicle) novel about the double-binds of race in late 1980s Philadelphia. Her other work includes the short story collection Get Down, as well as stories published in a wide array of periodicals, including McSweeney's, Essence, and O, The Oprah Magazine. A professor of fiction writing and literature of the African diaspora at Haverford College, Solomon is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award and the National Book Foundation's ''5 Under 35'' honor. The Days of Afrekete follows two women who reconnect years after their college days and rediscover themselves amidst the questions asked at middle age.
Nicole Dennis-Benn is the author of Patsy and Here Comes the Sun, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the Lambda Literary Award. Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, she teaches at Princeton and lives with her wife in Brooklyn, New York. (recorded 10/20/2021)
In conversation with John Freeman Anthony Doerr won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for All the Light We Cannot See, ''a beautiful, daring, heartbreaking, oddly joyous novel'' (Seattle Times) about a blind French girl and a German boy navigating the carnage of World War II. Also the winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and a National Book Award finalist, it spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list. Doerr's other work includes the novel About Grace, two story collections, and a memoir, for which he has earned five O. Henry Prizes, the Story Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors. A novel of the interconnected tapestry of human experience, Cloud Cuckoo Land weaves together the lives of a fifteenth century orphan, an octogenarian in present-day Idaho, and a girl on an interstellar spacecraft decades from today.
John Freeman was the editor of Granta until 2013. His books include Dictionary of the Undoing, How to Read a Novelist, Tales of Two Americas, and Tales of Two Planets. His poetry includes the collections Maps, The Park, and the forthcoming Wind, Trees. In 2021, he edited the anthologies There's a Revolution Outside, My Love with Tracy K. Smith, and The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story. An Executive Editor at Knopf, he teaches writing and literature classes at NYU. (recorded 10/19/2021)
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is the author of five poetry collections, including The Gospel of Barbecue, Red Clay Suite, and The Age of Phillis, which was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry and won a 2021 NAACP Image Award. Critic at Large for The Kenyon Review and a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma, Jeffers has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Antiquarian Society. Additionally, Jeffers has been honored with the Harper Lee Award for Literary Distinction and with induction into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. An instant New York Times bestseller and an Oprah Book Club selection, her debut novel The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois chronicles the centuries-spanning journey of a Black American family from the days of the colonial slave trade to our own unsteady era.
The director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, Kevin Young is also the poetry editor for The New Yorker, where he hosts the Poetry Podcast. He is the author of the poetry collections Brown, Blue Laws, Book of Hours, and Jelly Roll, a finalist for the National Book Award. His nonfiction books include Bunk and The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The former director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, Young has been honored with the Lenore Marshall Prize for Poetry, an American Book Award, and the Paterson Poetry Prize. Stones is the newest collection from Young, ''one of the poetry stars of his generation'' (Los Angeles Times). (recorded 10/18/2021)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning journalist and broadcaster
The United States representative for California's 28th congressional district and the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Adam Schiff was the lead manager for the first impeachment proceedings against former President Donald Trump. He is a former member of the House Appropriations Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee, and served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles from 1987 to 1993 and a California state senator from 1996 to 2000. In Midnight in Washington, Schiff reveals an inside look at one of U.S. democracy's most challenging moments, his own path to becoming one of the former president's most prominent critics, and the principles we need in the struggle against autocracy. (recorded 10/18/2021)
In conversation with Adriana Trigiani
The senior vice president and deputy publisher of Doubleday, Todd Doughty has worked for Penguin Random House publishing for more than 20 years. When the World Health Organization named COVID-19 a global pandemic, he decided that he had to find a way to recognize the commonplace joys many of us take for granted. As a result, Doughty wrote Little Pieces of Hope, a combination of thoughts, lists, illustrations, playlists, and exercises to remind readers of life's mundane and remarkable beauty.
''A comedy writer with a heart of gold'' (The New York Times), Adriana Trigiani is the bestselling author of 20 fiction and nonfiction books that have been published in 38 countries. She is also an award-winning filmmaker, playwright, and television writer and producer. Her forthcoming novel The Good Left Undone will be released in April 2022. (recorded 10/14/2021)
In conversation with Mitchell S. Jackson Keisha N. Blain's Set the World on Fire, a history of some of the early 20th century's leading Black nationalist women, won the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize and was named one of Smithsonian Magazine's best history books of 2018. With Ibram X. Kendi, she coauthored the #1 New York Times bestseller Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019. An associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, Blain is an editor for The Washington Post's ''Made by History'' section and is the president of the African American Intellectual History Society. In Until I Am Free, Blain combines biography and social commentary to share the enduring life and legacy of Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, and also offers a manifesto for those who wish to continue fighting for racial, voting, and women's rights.
Mitchell S. Jackson is the John O. Whiteman Dean's Distinguished Professor in the Department of English. Recipient of a 2021 Guggenheim fellowship, Jackson won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for his article about the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. His debut novel The Residue Years was recognized with a Whiting Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Prize. His nonfiction book, Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family, was named a best book of 2019 by NPR, Time and elsewhere. (recorded 10/12/2021)
Dr. Temple Grandin is a philosophical leader and activist for both the animal welfare and autism advocacy efforts. She is a TIME Magazine Top 100 Hero, the author of more than 60 scientific papers, a sought-after public speaker, and professor of animal science at Colorado State University. Her semi-autobiographical nonfiction books Emergence, Thinking in Pictures, and The Autistic Brain inform scientists and a still largely uninformed general public about autism. The HBO movie based on her life, starring Claire Danes, received seven Emmy Awards.
Psychologist Dr. Deborah Moore is the founder and director of Fall Creek Counseling Associates, a landmark practice that works with children, teens, and adults with autism. The author and coauthor of many scholarly and popular works on autism, gaming addiction, and internet addiction, she collaborated with Grandin on the 2016 book The Loving Push: How Parents and Professionals Can Help Spectrum Kids Become Successful Adults.
In Navigating Autism, Grandin and Moore use their decades of personal and professional experience to offer nine empowering strategies for those who want to successfully work with young people on the autism spectrum. (recorded 10/8/2021)
In conversation with Trudy Rubin, Worldview columnist, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Known for her testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives during Donald Trump's 2019 impeachment hearings, Fiona Hill has more than 30 years of experience in foreign policy. The Robert Bosch Senior Fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, she is a former National Security Council official and a former officer at the National Intelligence Council. Hill is the coauthor of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin and The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold, and she has written extensively on strategic issues related to Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In There Is Nothing for You Here, she traces her path as the daughter of a coal miner in northern England to her service to three U.S. Presidents. Hill examines the desperation impacting American politics and shows why expanding opportunity is the only long-term hope for our democracy.
Books provided by Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books (recorded 10/7/2021)
In conversation with Reginald Dwayne Betts, essayist, poet, and author of the award-winning collection, Felon
An investigative reporter at The New York Times, Andrea Elliott won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for a series of articles on Sheik Reda Shata, an Egyptian-born imam living in Brooklyn. She formerly worked as a staff writer at the Miami Herald, where she covered immigration and Latin American politics. The winner of Columbia University's Medal for Excellence, the George K. Polk Award, the Scripps Howard Award, and a prize from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Elliott was a visiting journalist at the Russell Sage Foundation, an Emerson Fellow at New America, and received a Whiting Foundation Grant. Based on her 2013 five-part series for the Times on the plight of children experiencing homelessness in New York City, Elliot's debut book follows eight challenging years in the life of a girl guiding her siblings as they experience the effects of widening income inequality and a disappearing social safety net. (recorded 10/6/2021)
In conversation with Richard Rothstein
Sheryll Cashin's NAACP Image Award–nominated books on racism and inequality include The Failures of Integration, The Agitator's Daughter, and Place, Not Race. The Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Civil Rights and Social Justice at Georgetown University, a contributing editor at Politico, and a member of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, Cashin formerly worked as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and in the Clinton's White House. White Space, Black Hood, which Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. referred to as ''riveting and beautifully written'' and ''meticulously researched'', uses two decades of data to expose the ways in which the U.S. government fostered inequality through the creation of impoverished Black spaces and affluent white spaces.
A distinguished fellow of the Economic Policy Institute and a senior fellow (emeritus) at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Richard Rothstein is the author of the bestselling book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America and is a former national education columnist for The New York Times. (recorded 10/5/2021)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition
Publishing industry veteran Christine Pride has held a variety of editorial positions at Doubleday, Simon & Schuster, and Crown, among other publishing companies. In this capacity she has championed and edited a number of New York Times bestselling memoirs and inspirational stories. Also a freelance editorial consultant, teacher, and coach, Pride writes the ''Race Matters'' column for the popular blog Cup of Jo.
A journalist, editor, and podcast host, Jo Piazza is also the author of seven novels, including Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win, If Nuns Ruled the World, and Fitness Junkie. Her other writing has been widely published in a variety of places, including The Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, and Slate. She formerly served as a managing editor for Yahoo! Travel, the executive news director for the print and digital editions of In Touch Weekly, and the senior digital editor at Current TV.
Pride and Piazza's collaborative novel tells the dual-perspective story of two lifelong friends, one Black and one white, whose bond is forever changed when the latter's police officer husband is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager.
Books provided by Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books (recorded 10/4/2021)
In conversation with Sapphire
The National Poet Laureate of Scotland from 2016 to 2021, Jackie Kay is the author of the celebrated poetry collections Life Mask, Off Colour, and The Adoption Papers, winner of the Scottish Arts Council Book Award. She is also the author of Red Dust Road, a coming-of-age memoir of being a mixed race adopted daughter of communists in 1970s Scotland, as well as several plays, children's books, and the novel Trumpet, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize. A fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, she is the chancellor of the University of Salford in Manchester, England. In her latest book, Kay combines history with personal narrative to offer a layered account of the life of the ''Empress of the Blues'' Bessie Smith.
Sapphire is the author of the acclaimed novel Push, which was adapted into the Academy Award–winning film Precious. She is also the author of the novel The Kid and three collections of poetry. (recorded 9/30/2021)
In conversation with Meg Wolitzer
An ''American literary treasure'' (The Boston Globe), Hilma Wolitzer is the author of the novels In the Flesh, The Doctor's Daughter, and Ending, which served as the inspiration for Bob Fosse's celebrated film All That Jazz. Her other work includes four children's books, a nonfiction account of fiction workshops, two screenplay adaptations of her novels, and stories and reviews published in Esquire, The New York Times, and Ploughshares, among other periodicals. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, she has taught writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Columbia University, and New York University. Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket is a career-spanning collection of Wolitzer's short stories, including the title story, which was her first published work, that catapulted her from suburban homemaker to ''poet of domestic detail'' (Ms.).
Hilma Wolitzer's daughter, bestselling novelist Meg Wolitzer, is the author of 14 novels, including The Wife, The Position, and The Female Persuasion. She has taught writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Princeton University, and Skidmore College. Her work has been adapted into three feature films. (recorded 9/29/2021)
In conversation with Tyler Kepner
''Arguably the best pure long-form sportswriter in the land'' (Chicago Sun-Times), Joe Posnanski is the bestselling author of six books, including in-depth accounts of golf legends Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus, the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, and baseball coaching great Buck O'Neil. Currently a columnist for The Athletic, the co-host of The Poscast weekly baseball podcast, and a prolific sports blogger on his popular website, he is a former columnist for Sports Illustrated and The Kansas City Star. Posnanski won two Sports Emmy Awards for his coverage of the 2014 and 2016 Olympics and he has been honored as National Sportswriter of the Year by five separate organizations. In his newest book, Posnanski tells the story of baseball through 100 biographies of some of the sport's greatest players.
The national baseball writer for The New York Times since 2010, Tyler Kepner is the author of K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches and The Phillies Experience: A Year-by-Year Chronicle of the Philadelphia Phillies. (recorded 9/28/2021)
In conversation with Adam Kirsch
Recognized for their ''signature blend of tragedy and spirituality'' (The Washington Post), Dara Horn's novels include In the Image, The World to Come, and A Guide for the Perplexed. One of Granta's Best Young American Novelists, Horn is the recipient of two National Jewish Book Awards, the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize, among other honors. She is a former teacher of Jewish literature and Israeli history at Harvard University, Sarah Lawrence College, and City University of New York, a contributor to The Atlantic and The New York Times, and the author of the bestselling nonfiction ebook The Rescuer. Based on research, family history, and world travel, Horn's latest book examines the contradictory cultural fascination with Jewish death that exists next to a lack of respect for Jewish life.
An editor at The Wall Street Journal's Weekend Review section and a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, Adam Kirsch is the author of several books of poetry and criticism, including The Thousand Wells, Who Wants to Be a Jewish Writer?, and The Blessing and the Curse: The Jewish People and Their Books in the Twentieth Century. (recorded 9/23/2021)
In conversation with Andrew Ervin
A ''genuine artist ... who can render the intricate dazzle of it all and at the same time plumb its philosophical implications'' (Esquire), Richard Powers won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory, a tale of activism, the natural world, and people's connection to trees. His other novels include The Echo Maker, a story of the brain, mass migrations, and car accidents; Orfeo, the narrative of a falsely accused amateur scientist/composer; and Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, in which a WWI-era photo sends the men on very different quests. Powers has earned the National Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Lannan Literary Award, and two Pushcart Prizes. Bewilderment follows a widower astrobiologist dealing with both the mysteries of the cosmos and the troubles befalling his young son.
Andrew Ervin is a writer and critic and author of Extraordinary Renditions, Burning Down George Orwell's House, and Bit by Bit: How Video Games Transformed Our World. He teaches part-time in the MFA program at Temple University and for the School of Interactive Games and Media at Rochester Institute of Technology. (recorded 9/22/2021)
Celebrated for ''his courage and his convictions'' in tackling sensitive issues, Randall Kennedy is ''a member of that small coterie of our most lucid big thinkers about race'' (The Washington Post). The Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School, he formerly held positions at the United States Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court, where he clerked for Thurgood Marshall. His many books include Interracial Intimacies, The Persistence of the Color Line, For Discrimination, and Sellout. In Say it Loud!, Kennedy offers a collection of provocative essays about George Floyd, birtherism, Clarence Thomas, antiracism, and more. (recorded 9/21/2021)
In conversation with Danielle Evans
Pulling the delicate threads of ''fear and vulnerability, joy and passion, the capacity for love and pain and grief'' (The Washington Post), Alice McDermott's fictional narratives explore intersecting stories of familial love, Irish American culture and assimilation, and the lessons of adulthood. Her novels include Someone; Charming Billy, winner of the 1998 National Book Award; That Night; At Weddings and Wakes; and After This, all of which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. For more than 20 years McDermott was the Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University and on the Sewanee Writers Conference faculty. She has contributed writing to The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and The New York Times, among many other periodicals. In What About the Baby?, McDermott shares a collection of essays inspired from a lifetime of reading, writing, and teaching literature.
Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, winner of the PEN America PEN/Robert W. Bingham prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the Paterson Prize, and a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 selection. She teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. (recorded 9/20/2021)
In conversation with Imani Perry
A longtime activist for justice and equity, Tarana Burke founded the Me Too movement in 2006 as a way for women to come together in their shared experiences of sexual violence. She is the senior director of the advocacy group Girls for Gender Equity, founded the Just Be nonprofit organization, worked at Art Sanctuary Philadelphia, and has collaborated with many other groups to hold workshops and create initiatives around issues of sexual violence, discrimination, and economic justice. The recipient of the Ridenhour Prize for Courage, a VH1 Trailblazer Award, and the Sydney Peace Prize, she was one of TIME magazine's 2017 Persons of the Year and one of its 100 Most Influential People of 2018. Unbound is a memoir of Burke's journey from childhood trauma to the role of empathetic, empowered advocate for worldwide social change.
Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies and faculty associate in the Program in Law and Public Affairs and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton. She is the author of six books, most recently the award-winning titles, Breathe: A Letter to My Sons and Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry. (recorded 9/17/2021)
In conversation with Angie Martinez Over the years Gabrielle Union has been a tireless advocate for the marginalized and the victimized, and fans around the world have watched her both on and off screen stand up to and speak out against injustice, in its myriad forms. With her newest book, You Got Anything Stronger?, Gabrielle is at her most vulnerable. Life happens with all its plot twists, and Gabrielle is opening up about everything from her surrogacy journey to navigating married life to aging and leveling up in your career. This will be a memorable afternoon of conversation that will leave guests feeling empowered and inspired. Angie Martinez is recognized as one of the most influential personalities in popular culture and multimedia. Angie's nearly twenty years of on-air hosting experience has led her to become the media trailblazer that she is today: multimedia host, spokeswoman, actress, recording artist, entertainment personality, author, and philanthropist. (recorded 9/15/2021)
In conversation with Luis J. Rodríguez
"Not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one" (The New York Times Book Review), Sandra Cisneros explores the themes of place, identity, and working-class culture in her novels, poems, and short stories. Her bestselling books include The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, and Loose Woman. She is the recipient of the National Medal of Arts, the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, and numerous fellowships and honorary doctorates, among other honors. Cisneros is also the founder of the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation, nonprofit organizations dedicated to encouraging emerging writers. Martita, I Remember You/Martita, te recuerdo is a story about a young woman who leaves her Mexican family in Chicago to find literary success in Paris.
A significant figure in Chicano literature, Luis J. Rodríguez is a poet, novelist, critic, and journalist. He is the founder of the Tia Chucha Press, the recipient of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award, and was the 2014 Los Angeles Poet Laureate. (recorded 9/14/2021)
Colm Tóibín's ''audacious, profound, and wonderfully intelligent'' (The Guardian) work includes an impressive list of novels, short stories, essays, plays, poetry, and criticism. His novels The Blackwater Lightship, The Master, and The Testament of Mary were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and Brooklyn was adapted into the popular BAFTA Award–winning film of the same name. He is recipient of an Irish PEN Award, and is currently the Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. In The Magician, Tóibín joins research with imagination to present a fictionalized portrait of legendary German author Thomas Mann and his family amidst the violence of early 20th century Europe. (recorded 9/14/2021)
Christopher Emdin is the author of The New York Times bestseller For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too, a combination of theory, research, and practical application that offers a helpful approach to teaching in urban classrooms of color. Also the author of Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation, he created the #HipHopEd social media movement and the Science Genius B.A.T.T.L.E.S. program, which uses rap to engage students with science. Emdin is a professor of science education at Columbia University, where he is associate director of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education and director of the Science Education program. His latest book offers a radical, new educational model based on empowering students through the celebration of their unique identities. (recorded 9/13/2021)
In conversation with Lorene Cary, author of the memoirs Ladysitting and Black Ice, three novels, and a book for young readers. She teaches at University of Pennsylvania and has written a one-act opera of Ladysitting and a play, My General Tubman.
After a 20-year career as a journalist, working at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Tribune, and then as a corporate executive, Carole Hopson followed her dream to become a pilot. Based in Newark, NJ, Hopson currently flies the Boeing 737 for United Airlines as a first officer. Her debut fiction, A Pair of Wings: A Novel Inspired by Pioneer Aviatrix Bessie Coleman, an Oprah Daily best pick for July 2021, is about the exciting life of Queen Bess.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 8/12/2021)
In conversation Trapeta Mayson, Philadelphia Poet Laureate
Former United States Poet Laureate Rita Dove won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Thomas and Beulah, a semi-fictional collection of verse that examined the lives of her grandparents. In addition to her many other collections, she is the author of an essay collection, stage play, novel, and short story collection. The only poet to win both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts, her other honors include the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal from Harvard University, the Wallace Stevens Award from the American Academy of Poets, and 28 honorary degrees. She has taught poetry at the University of Virginia for more than 30 years. In Playlist for the Apocalypse, Dove offers her thoughts about the state of global injustice, the United States's unsteady moral compass, and small moments of grace.
Books with signed book plates available from the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 8/11/2021)
In conversation with Benj Pasek, Tony Award-winning songwriter and New York Times bestselling author of Dear Evan Hansen
A celebrated director, playwright, screenwriter, and librettist, James Lapine earned three Tony Awards for ''Best Book of a Musical'' for Passion, Falsettos, and Into the Woods. His many other honors include the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, five Drama Desk Awards, a Peabody Award, and induction into the Theater Hall of Fame. He also directed the feature films Impromptu, Life with Mikey, and Earthly Possessions. Putting It Together is about Lapine's collaboration with Stephen Sondheim to create Sunday in the Park with George, their iconic 1984 Broadway musical based on Georges Seurat's painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.
Benj Pasek is an Oscar, Grammy, Tony, and Golden Globe Award-winning songwriter and New York Times bestselling author. Along with frequent collaborator Justin Paul, he is best known for his work on Dear Evan Hansen, La La Land, and The Greatest Showman. The accompanying albums for each project have appeared in the top 10 of the Billboard 200, the latter of which is certified Platinum in over a dozen countries. He is on the board of the Dramatist Guild Foundation and the American LGBTQ+ Museum.
Books with signed book plates are available from the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 8/10/2021)
In conversation with David Clay Large, professor at the Fromm Institute, University of San Francisco, Senior Fellow at the Institute of European Studies, U.C. Berkeley, and author of ten books including Berlin, Where Ghosts Walked: Munich's Road to the Third Reich, and Nazi Games. Rebecca Donner is the author of the ''remarkable debut'' (Baltimore Sun) novel Sunset Terrace, the story of a community of single mothers and kids in 1980s Los Angeles. Donner's other work includes the graphic novel Burnout, as well as essays, reviews, and articles that have appeared in a variety of publications, including The New York Times, The Believer, and Guernica. The recipient of a fellowship at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, Donner has taught writing at Columbia University, Wesleyan University, and Barnard College. In her latest book, Donner explores the remarkable life and brutal death of her great-great-aunt Mildred Harnack, the leader of one of Nazi Germany's most successful underground resistance groups and the only identified person from the United States to be a leader in the German resistance.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 8/9/2021)
In conversation with Andrea Mitchell, anchor of Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC and NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker are the authors of the #1 bestselling book A Very Stable Genius, a ''taut and terrifying'' account of Donald Trump's ''shambolic tenure in office to date'' (The New York Times). In I Alone Can Fix It, they use in-the-room sources to offer a detailed account of Trump and his enablers' disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the public protests following Minneapolis Police Department Officers Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, J. Kueng, and Tou Thao's killing of George Floyd, and the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building.
A national investigative reporter at The Washington Post, Leonnig won Pulitzer Prizes in 2014 for revealing the U.S. government's secret domestic surveillance efforts and in 2015 for her coverage of the Secret Service's misconduct and security failures. Her reporting about the Secret Service was the basis of her New York Times bestselling book Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service. Leonnig offers on-air political analysis for NBC News and MSNBC.
The senior Washington correspondent at the Post, Rucker was part of a team of Post reporters, which also included Leonnig, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for its coverage of Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. The recipient of the George Polk Award and the Aldo Beckman Award from the White House Correspondents' Association, Rucker also works as an on-air political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.
Books with signed book plates will be mailed after the event.
Please allow three weeks for delivery. U.S. orders only.
(recorded 7/28/2021)
Omar El Akkad is the author of American War, a ''poignant and horrifying'' (Washington Post) dystopian novel that imagines a future civil war born from the U.S.'s current destructive policies and impulses. It was an international bestseller, translated into 13 languages, and named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, NPR, and Esquire. Also an acclaimed journalist, El Akkad earned Canada's National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists for the reporting he did from locations such as Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. His new novel tells the story of the international refugee crisis through the experiences of Amir, a Syrian boy who washes up on the shore of a small island.
Books with signed book plates will be available from the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 7/22/2021)
In conversation with Resmaa Menakem, bestselling author of My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies Robin DiAngelo's New York Times bestseller White Fragility, a ''methodical, irrefutable exposure of racism in thought and action'' (The New Yorker), explores the counterproductive white behaviors that help maintain racism and offers white people solutions to engage more responsibly in their work against white supremacy and racism. A professor of education at the University of Washington, DiAngelo has worked as a consultant and facilitator on issues of social and racial justice for more than 25 years, and is also the author of Is Everyone Really Equal? and What Does It Mean to be White? Her latest book builds on the framework of White Fragility to identify the ways in which well-intentioned white people create racial inequality.
For more information about each author, visit: Robin DiAngelo, Resmaa Menakem
A limited number of signed book plates will be available with a purchase of the authors books from the Joseph Fox Bookshop: Nice Racism | My Grandmother's Hands (recorded 7/20/2021)
In conversation with adrienne maree brown
Internationally sought-after wellness expert Jessamyn Stanley is the author of Every Body Yoga, ''a clever memoir of a millennial woman's search for self-acceptance'' (Elle) wrapped inside a beginner's manual to asana yoga. A regular contributor to Self magazine, cohost of the Dear Jessamyn podcast, and founder of the wellness community The Underbelly, she has been featured in such publications as The New York Times, Good Morning America, and Sports Illustrated. In Yoke, Stanley explores the concept of the ''yoga of the everyday'' through a series of autobiographical essays about such varied topics as self-love, impostor syndrome, cannabis, and the missing spiritual element to Western yoga.
adrienne maree brown is a podcaster, public speaker, and the writer-in-residence at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute.
Books with signed book plates available at the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 7/21/2021)
In conversation with Wendy Moffat, Professor of English and Curley Chair of Global Education at Dickinson College and author of the prize-winning biography, A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E.M. Forster
A professor in the Pennoni Honors College of Drexel University, William di Canzio has also taught writing and literature at Yale University, Smith College, and Haverford College. His plays Dooley and Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier have been staged in New York City, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, among many other places. He has been honored with the Julie Harris Playwright Award, a Brown Foundation Award, and residencies and fellowships from the MacDowell, the Eugene O'Neill Theater's National Playwrights Conference, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Alec, his debut novel, continues the story at the end of Maurice, E.M. Forster's tale of a gay romance.
Books with signed book plates are available from the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 7/15/2021)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition
Celebrated for her ''stellar instincts, sturdy craftsmanship and penetrating wisdom'' (San Francisco Chronicle), Yaa Gyasi is the author of Homegoing. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for best first book and the PEN/Hemingway Award for a first book of fiction, this breakout debut follows two half-sisters on opposite sides of the 18th-century Ghanaian slave trade and their descendants. Gyasi, a native of Ghana who emigrated with her family to the U.S. in 1991, received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she earned a Dean's Graduate Research Fellowship. Her new novel, an instant New York Times bestseller and a Today show book club pick, finds a Ghanaian family living in Alabama grappling with grief, faith, and the search for a science–based explanation for suffering.
Books with signed book plates will be mailed after the event. Please allow three weeks for delivery. (recorded 7/14/2021)
A former bookseller turned flight attendant, T. J. Newman flew for Virgin America and Alaska Airlines from 2011 until this year. While her passengers were asleep on cross-country red-eye flights, she began to write a novel on whatever she could find during her shifts, including cocktail napkins. After being rejected by 41 agents, she sold Falling and the publishing rights for her second novel for a seven figure deal. Referred to by Don Winslow as ''Jaws at 35,000 feet,'' this ''stunning and relentless'' debut tells the story of a crowded L.A. to New York flight that the captain has to crash in order to save his kidnapped family.
Books available from the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 7/13/2021)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning journalist and broadcaster Scott Ellsworth is the author of Death in a Promised Land, an in-depth book about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, one of modern history's most horrific incidents of racial violence against Black Americans. His other works include The Wind Beneath Their Feet, a history of mountaineering in the Himalayas; and The Secret Game, the bestselling true story of a trailblazing 1940s-era Black basketball team. Formerly an historian at the Smithsonian Institution, Ellsworth has written about United States history for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications. In The Ground Breaking, Ellsworth returns to Tulsa on the eve of the 100th anniversary of its infamous racial massacre to offer an ''indispensable'' and ''fast-paced but nuanced'' (The Guardian) account of white people's murder of Black individuals and the complete destruction of the Greenwood neighborhood, also known as Black Wall Street.
Books available from the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 7/1/2021)
In conversation with Jonny Meister, host of The Blues Show on WXPN
In his five decades in blues music, Grammy-winner Bobby Rush has recorded hundreds of his own songs, collaborated with the likes of Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, and headlined music festivals all over the world. At 87, he still tours more than 200 days a year, entertaining audiences with his unique funk-infused blues tunes. An inductee to the Blues Hall of Fame, a B.B. King Entertainer of the Year, and a 13-time Blues Music Award winner, he recently performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and played himself in the 2019 film Dolemite Is My Name. Named for one of Rush's most popular songs, I Ain't Studdin' Ya tells the story of an incredible life and continuing legendary career.
Books with signed book plates will be mailed after the event. Please allow three weeks for delivery. U.S. book orders only. All others will be refunded. (recorded 6/30/2021)
In conversation with Jason Villemez, editor of the Philadelphia Gay News
A decades-long activist for LGBTQ+ rights and women's empowerment, Sarah Schulman is the author of more than twenty novels, nonfiction books, screenplays, and stage plays. Her other work has appeared in periodicals such as The New Yorker and The New York Times. Schulman is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the College of Staten Island, a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities, and the cofounder of the MIX New York LGBT Experimental Film and Video Festival. Schulman has also earned fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Based on more than 200 interviews, Let the Record Show explores the widespread impact of ACT UP, the diverse community AIDS activist group.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 6/29/2021)
Joshua Cohen's acclaimed novels include Moving Kings, Witz, and Book of Numbers, ''a fascinating look at the dark heart of the Web'' and ''one of the best novels ever written about the Internet'' (Rolling Stone). One of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists in 2017, Cohen is the author of the short story collection Four New Messages and the book of essays Attention: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction. Cohen has contributed nonfiction to The New York Times, Harper's, and n+1. Blurring the line between the real and the imagined, The Netanyahus follows a Jewish historian who unexpectedly must play host to an exiled Israeli historian and his family on a wintry 1959 upstate New York college campus.
Books with signed book plates available from the Joseph Fox Bookshop Rivka Galchen is the author of Atmospheric Disturbances, a comical mystery that follows a doctor who believes his wife has been replaced with a duplicate. The recipient of an MD from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Galchen also earned an MFA from Columbia University, where she was a Robert Bingham Fellow. She was also the recipient of a 2006 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award and published a popular essay on the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics in The Believer. A combination of history and fiction, Galchen's latest novel tells the tale of Katharina Kepler, a 17th century widow accused of witchcraft who seeks help from her son, the renowned mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler.
Books with signed book plates available from the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 6/28/2021)
In conversation with Rachel Ossip Co-sponsored by n+1 and Blue Stoop Elias Rodriques currently teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and in the fall of 2021 will start as an assistant professor of African American literature at Sarah Lawrence College. Focusing on African American Literature, Black Marxist writing, Black Feminism, and Critical Prison Studies, his work has been published in the Guardian, the Nation, Bookforum, and n+1, where he is an assistant editor. In his debut novel, Rodriques tells the story of a mixed–race son of Jamaican immigrants who is called back to his Palm Coast Floridian hometown to investigate the death of his first love-alongside the mysteries of his own family history and identity. Rachel Ossip is a designer, writer, and editor based in Brooklyn, NY. She serves as the managing editor of n+1 magazine and the designer for n+1 books, and manages the contemporary art imprint Paper Monument. She has worked with a range of small publishers, academic publications, and public institutions, such as New Directions and the Othering & Belonging Journal, and teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Books with signed book plates available from the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 6/24/2021)
In conversation with David Baldacci, global #1 bestselling author whose books are published in over 45 languages and in more than 80 countries, with 150 million copies sold worldwide. Alex Michaelides is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Silent Patient, a debut thriller that blends ''Hitchcockian suspense, Agatha Christie plotting, and Greek tragedy'' (Entertainment Weekly) to tell the tale of a criminal psychotherapist's quest to unravel a taciturn artist's motivations for murder. A native of Cyprus, Michaelides studied English literature at Trinity College and screenwriting from the American Film Institute. In his new novel, a group therapist delves behind Cambridge University's tranquil spires to investigate the murder of a young woman involved in a secret society known as The Maidens.
Signed books will be mailed after the event. Please allow circa three weeks for delivery. U.S. orders only. All others will be refunded. (recorded 6/23/2021)
In conversation with Seph Rodney, PhD, opinions editor and managing editor of the Sunday Edition for Hyperallergic, author of The Personalization of the Museum Visit, and winner of the 2020 Rabkin Arts Journalism Prize.
The interim director of New York's Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Laura Raicovich is a fierce advocate for museums to be hubs of activism and protest that foster a more engaged and informed public. The former director of the Queens Museum, her 2018 resignation from that institution became one of the latest instances of politicized resignations amongst museum administrators across the U.S. A recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship, Raicovich lectures internationally, has created and implemented new museum preservation strategies, and is the author of the books At the Lightning Field and A Diary of Mysterious Difficulties. In Culture Strike, she offers context for historical and contemporary museum controversies, argues that ideological neutrality in museums is a myth, and outlines a plan for improving these institutions to better serve the public.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 6/22/2021)
In conversation with Jill Lepore, historian and bestselling and award-winning author of These Truths: A History of the United States, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, and If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future--among many other works.
Leading Professor of History and African American Studies at Yale University and a Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Elizabeth Hinton is one of the country's foremost experts on policing, racial inequality, and criminalization. She is the author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America, and her articles and essays have been published in The Atlantic, The Nation, and Time, among other places. Professor Hinton's ''groundbreaking, deeply researched and profoundly heart-rending account'' (New York Times Book Review) of police violence inflicted upon Black Americans, America on Fire explains the history of Black rebellions as a response to police violence throughout the U.S. since the 1960s and warns that rebellions will continue until society stops calling on the police and begins changing our oppressive systems.
Books are available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 6/21/2021)
In conversation with Katie Ford, author of If You Have to Go and three previous collections of poems. Ford is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship and she teaches at the University of California, Riverside.
Bestselling memoirist Emily Rapp Black is the author of Poster Child, an exploration of her childhood as an amputee and March of Dimes spokesperson; The Still Point of the Turning World, an account of her young son's diagnosis and death from a rare congenital disease; and Sanctuary, a reflection on the meaning of ''resilience'' in the midst of grief and new love. Her essays, stories, poems, and reviews have appeared in periodicals such as the New York Times, Vogue, and The Boston Globe, and she is the nonfiction editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. A former Fulbright scholar and a Guggenheim Fellow, Black teaches Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. Black's new book holds a mirror up to the art, disability, and experiences of Frida Kahlo and explains how Black's connection with Frida Kahlo helped her better understand her own life.
Books with signed book plates available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 6/17/2021)
In conversation with Anthony B. Bradley, Professor and Chair of Religious and Theological Studies at The King's College (New York) and a Research Fellow at The Acton Institute Jason L. Riley's books include Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders; False Black Power?; and Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed. A longtime columnist for The Wall Street Journal and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, he widely lectures and offers commentary about important social and political issues on various media outlets. Riley's latest work is a biography of conservative social theorist Thomas Sowell. In it he offers a portrait of the Jim Crow South orphan's evolution to public intellectual while arguing that academia should reconsider the unsentimental Sowell's views.
Books with signed book plates available from the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 6/16/2021)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist
The first Black woman CEO of a Fortune 500 company, Ursula M. Burns headed Xerox from 2009 to 2016. She was the chair and CEO of VEON from 2017 to early 2020, and previously served as a senior advisor to Nestlé, Exxon Mobil, and The Ford Foundation, among many other positions. A prominent figure in the Obama White House, she is currently a member of Uber's board of directors. Forbes ranked Burns in 2014 as one of the most powerful women in the world. Where You Are Is Not Who You Are charts Burns's story from tenement housing on Manhattan's Lower East Side to the halls of corporate power while also offering a critique of the excesses of big business.
Books with signed book plates will be mailed after the event. Please allow three weeks for delivery. U.S. orders only. All others will be refunded. (recorded 6/15/2021)
Pine Tree Foundation Endowed Lecture In conversation with Dr. Steven Larson, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
Acclaimed for his ''exceptional empathy and care'' (Boston Globe) as a physician, anthropologist, and infectious-disease expert, Paul Farmer is the Kolokotrones University Professor and Chair of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard University and is chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is also a founding director of Partners In Health, an international non-profit organization that provides medical care and advocacy for those living in poverty. The recipient of the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, a MacArthur Fellowship, and honorary doctorates from numerous universities, Farmer is the author of Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues and Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. In Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds, he melds firsthand reportage, science, and advocacy into a narrative account of 2014's deadly Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea.
Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 6/14/2021)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition
Acclaimed for bringing ''a clear-eyed, investigative fearlessness'' (The Washington Post) to a diverse range of topics, Lawrence Wright is a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker. He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Looming Tower, an in-depth history of the rise of violent extremism and the intelligence failures that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks. His many other nonfiction works include books about different communities and their experiences in Texas, the secretive world of Scientology, and contemporary American religious figures. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Society of American Historians, Wright has written and performed two one-person plays and co-produced the Emmy-winning documentary Going Clear. Wright recently published The End of October, a bestselling novel about a devastating medical crisis. The Plague Year is about the impact of Covid-19, the initially slow government response to this crisis, and the medical professionals working to save lives and educate the public.
Books will be mailed after the event. Please allow three weeks for delivery. U.S. orders only. All others will be refunded. (recorded 6/11/2021)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning journalist and broadcaster In appreciation of the George S. Pepper Society Carol Anderson is the author of the National Book Critics Circle Award winner White Rage, ''a riveting and disturbing history'' (The Nation) of white people and how they worked against Black advancement since Reconstruction. Her other books include Bourgeois Radicals; Eyes off the Prize; and One Person, No Vote, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award. The Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University and a member of the Advisory Board of the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, Anderson has earned fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the National Humanities Center, among many others. Her latest book offers a sobering look at the ways in which all levels of the government, white people, and U.S. courts have consistently weaponized the Second Amendment since its creation to deny African Americans their rights and citizenship.
Signed books will be mailed after the event. Please allow three weeks for delivery. U.S. orders only. All others will be refunded. (recorded 6/10/2021)
In conversation with Imani Perry
Kiese Laymon's Heavy, a coming-of-age memoir that begins in Jackson, Mississippi, was named a Best Book of 2018 by the New York Times, NPR, and the Washington Post, among other media outlets. The Hubert McAlexander Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Oxford American, Laymon is also the author of the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. His latest work is a revised edition of his 2013 debut novel, Long Division. "A little fantasy, a little mystery, and a lot hilarious'' (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), it follows Citoyen ''City'' Coldson, a time-hopping teen seeking answers in the disappearance of a local girl in his grandmother's Gulf Coast community.
Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies and faculty associate in the Program in Law and Public Affairs and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton. She is the author of six books, most recently the award-winning titles, Breathe: A Letter to My Sons and Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry.
Books with signed book plates are available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 6/8/2021)
In conversation with Joe Klein, Time political columnist and bestselling author of six books including Primary Colors and most recently Politics Lost
Employing ''his narrative gifts and vivid prose'' (The Washington Post) to chronicle some of the world's most extreme environments, Sebastian Junger is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Storm, War, Fire, Tribe, and A Death in Belmont. A contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a special correspondent at ABC News, he has earned a Peabody Award and the National Magazine Award. His debut documentary film, Restrepo, which was co-directed with the late Tim Hetherington, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and was nominated for an Oscar. In his new book, Junger ruminates on the tenets and contradictions of freedom by way of a year spent with three friends traveling along the East Coast's railroad lines.
Signed books will be mailed after the event. Please allow three weeks for delivery. U.S. orders only. All others will be refunded. (recorded 6/1/2021)
In conversation with Christina Baker Kline, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train, A Piece of the World, and The Exiles Michael Punke is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Revenant, ''a superb revenge story'' (The Washington Post Book World) set in the 19th century U.S. frontier that was the basis for the Academy Award–winning film of the same name. His other writing includes nonfiction books about the efforts to save the buffalo and an infamous 1917 Montana mining disaster. Currently the Vice President for Global Public Policy for Amazon Web Services, Punke formerly served as the U.S. Ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, an adjunct professor, and a history correspondent for the Montana Quarterly. In his new novel, Punke investigates an important but little-known 1866 conflict between the U.S. Army and the Lakota tribes of present-day Wyoming.
Books with signed book plates available from the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 6/7/2021)
In conversation with Nicole Galland, historical novelist and author of Master of the Revels and creator of Shakespeare for the Masses
With a ''gift for combining intricate, engrossing plots with full-bodied characterizations'' (Washington Post), Irish–British novelist Maggie O'Farrell is the author of After You'd Gone, The Distance Between Us, The Hand That First Held Mine, and Instructions for a Heatwave, among several others. A former journalist in Hong Kong, deputy literary editor of the Independent on Sunday, and creative writing teacher, she is also a bestselling author. O'Farrell's work has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Betty Trask Award, the Costa Award, and has been translated into more than 30 languages. Hamnet, winner of the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction, tells the Elizabethan-era tale of William Shakespeare's family including his force–of–nature wife, Shakespeare's journey as a rising star, and the shared grief over the loss of their son Hamnet whose name Shakespeare would later use in his play Hamlet.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 6/3/2021)
In conversation with Nydia Han, Consumer Investigative Reporter and co-anchor of 6ABC Action News Sunday mornings
Kevin Kwan is the author of Crazy Rich Asians, "a lively, generous story of shallow extravagance and human devotion'' (The Boston Globe) involving Rachel Chu, a young Chinese-American woman, and her trip to meet her boyfriend's extremely wealthy family living in Singapore. An international bestseller that was translated into 30 languages and the opening volume of the trilogy of books including China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems, Crazy Rich Asians was adapted into a mega-successful major motion picture. In Sex and Vanity, a Good Morning America Book Club selection, Kwan spins the tale of an engaged woman who finds herself falling for a frustrating but irresistible Asian American man, despite the objections of her family.
Books with signed book plates will be mailed after the event. Please allow three weeks for delivery. U.S. orders only. All others will be refunded. (recorded 6/2/2021)
In conversation with Britt James, founder of Philly Unknown
In 2015, British hairstylist Joshua Coombes hit the streets of London with a pair of scissors and an extraordinary idea-that giving free haircuts to those who are experiencing homelessness could do more than simply change their outward appearances. He began posting their photos before and after their haircut and personal stories on Instagram in an effort to remove the stigmas many associate with homelessness. Through this mission's worldwide attention and success he founded the #DoSomethingForNothing movement, which seeks to inspire people to donate their skills and time to those in need. Full of never-before-seen photos and writing, Coombes's book urges us to find our shared humanity through universal themes of acceptance, love, and perseverance.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 5/30/2021)
In conversation with Karen M. McManus, author of the number one New York Times bestseller One of Us Is Lying and The Cousins David Yoon is the author of Frankly in Love, a "funny, profane and poignant'' (Wall Street Journal) tale of cultural expectations, racism, and first love. An instant New York Times bestseller, it was a William C. Morris Young Adult Debut Award Finalist and an Asian Pacific American Librarians Association Honor Book. Yoon is also the author of the celebrated young adult novel Super Fake Love Song and drew the illustrations for his wife Nicola Yoon's #1 New York Times bestseller Everything, Everything. Version Zero, his debut adult novel, follows three twenty-something computer experts who want to literally break the internet.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 5/27/2021)
In conversation with Michael Smerconish
Five-time Pennsylvania Sportswriter of the Year, Ray Didinger covered the NFL for The Philadelphia Bulletin and the Philadelphia Daily News for over 25 years. He has authored or coauthored 11 books about sports and sportswriting, including The Eagles Encyclopedia, which he cowrote with the late Robert S. Lyons. The ''definitive book for any Eagles fan'' (Philadelphia Daily News), a revised and expanded edition was published in 2018 to reflect the 87-year-old team's victory in Super Bowl LII. Didinger currently hosts a talk show on 94 WIP Sports Radio and serves as a football analyst for NBC Sports Philadelphia. Didinger's new memoir explores his childhood in Southwest Philadelphia, his five-decade career covering a wide variety of sports across multiple media platforms, and the art of balancing being a long-suffering Eagles fan and an objective journalist.
Michael A. Smerconish is the host of The Michael Smerconish Program on SiriusXM POTUS Channel 124, the host of CNN's Smerconish on Saturday mornings, a Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, and a New York Times bestselling author.
Books with signed book plates available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 5/26/2021)
In conversation with Salamishah Tillet, the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing and author of In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece Kaitlyn Greenidge is the author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman, a ''wonderfully audacious debut novel'' (Essence) that examines the nuances of race, gender, and history through the story of a family teaching sign language to a young chimpanzee. Greenidge was a finalist for the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the 2017 Young Lions Fiction Award, and has earned fellowships from the Whiting Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. A contributor to the New York Times, Greenidge has also written for Glamour, The Wall Street Journal, and Vogue, among other publications. Named one of 2021's most anticipated books by many publications, Libertie follows the journey of a Reconstruction–era Black doctor searching for equality in place, profession, and her family.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 5/24/2021)
In conversation with Reggie Shuford, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Pennsylvania.
The Executive Director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, Marc Bookman is an internationally renowned expert on death penalty law. He served for 17 years in the Homicide Unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, providing legal representation to many clients facing the possibility of the death penalty. A sought-after speaker at numerous legal conferences and trainings across the country, he has published essays on various aspects of capital punishment in The Atlantic, Mother Jones, and VICE, among other places. In A Descending Spiral, Bookman offers 12 essays that expose the tragic absurdities, unfortunate human instincts, and systemic criminal justice failings that undercut the logic and fairness of the death penalty in the United States.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 5/20/2021)
In conversation Trapeta Mayson, Philadelphia Poet Laureate
A reflection of the heartrending turmoils of racial injustice and brutality against Black Americans amidst the fear and uncertainty of a pandemic, There's a Revolution Outside, My Love is a kaleidoscopic collection of letters, poems, and essays penned by a diverse field of writers.
Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade, winner of the Colorado Book Award. Her debut collection of personal essays is Guidebook to Relative Strangers, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019.
Gregory Pardlo won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for his poetry collection Digest. Also the recipient of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize, he is the poetry editor for the Virginia Quarterly Review and teaches at the MFA program at Rutgers University, Camden.
A professor of creative writing at Dartmouth College University, Joshua Bennett is the 2020-2021 Visiting Scholar at Friends Seminary in New York City. He is the author of three books of poetry and literary criticism, including The Sobbing School and Owed.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 5/19/2021)
In conversation with Joan Maloof, Professor Emeritus at Salisbury University and founder of the Old-Growth Forest Network. Her most recent book is Treepedia: A Brief Compendium of Arboreal Lore
One of the world's leading forest ecologists, Dr. Suzanne Simard is most famous for revolutionizing our understanding of how trees communicate with each other. She and her team discovered that complex systems move water and nutrients between the trees in social networks that are in some ways much like our own. A Professor of Forest Ecology in the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Forestry, Simard has shared her research in both academic and popular forums, including three TED talks and two documentary appearances. In Finding the Mother Tree, she guides us into the intimate world of trees not only through her observations and data, but also through the story of her upbringing in the logging rainforests of British Columbia and her unique perception of these surprisingly mysterious living things.
Can't wait? Watch a TED talk by Dr. Simard
Books with signed book plates will be available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 5/18/2021)
In conversation with Mark Zandi, Chief Economist, Moody's Analytics
The senior United States Senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar chairs the Senate Rules Committee; the Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights; and the Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee. A 2020 Presidential candidate, she is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School, a former partner at two corporate law firms, and led Minnesota's largest prosecutor's office for eight years. Ranked by a 2019 Vanderbilt University study as the most effective Democratic senator in the 115th Congress, she has worked to pass bipartisan legislation on a wide range of issues, including consumer product safety, agricultural issues, and civil rights, among many others. In Antitrust, Klobuchar offers a history of America's fight against monopolies as a guide to curtailing contemporary monoliths like Facebook, Google, and Amazon. (recorded 5/17/2021)
In conversation with Megha Majumdar, bestselling author of A Burning
British–-Ghanaian writer Caleb Azumah Nelson's debut novel Open Water is, ''an intense, elegant'' (Guardian) tale of two young Black British artists who find love as they struggle to succeed in an environment that simultaneously elevates and rejects them. It was named to scores of publications' most–-anticipated–-books–-of–-2021 lists, including Esquire, Vulture, ONYX Magazine and Vogue (UK). Nelson has contributed writing to the The White Review and Litro, and he recently won the People's Choice prize and was shortlisted for the BBC Short Story Award. Also an acclaimed photographer, he was shortlisted for the Palm Photo Prize.
Books with signed book plates available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 5/13/2021)
In conversation with Reginald Dwayne Betts, essayist, poet, and author of the award-winning collection, Felon
When Ian Manuel was 13 years old he shot a young mother of two in the face during a botched robbery. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he spent the next 26 years in prison, 18 of them in solitary confinement. He was released at the age of 40 through both the help of his victim-with whom he had struck up a friendship as profound as it was unlikely-and through the legal assistance of Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. In My Time Will Come, Manuel tells not just his story of a childhood spent in deprivation, his incarceration, and his ultimate redemption, but a larger story of the power of the human spirit over a justice system that too often sentences young offenders of color to life without parole.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 5/11/2021)
Martha C. Nussbaum is the author of numerous watershed books and articles concerning moral, legal, and political philosophy, including The Fragility of Goodness, Sex and Social Justice, and Cultivating Humanity. The Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, her scores of honors include the 2016 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy, 62 honorary degrees, and the Berggruen Prize, perhaps the greatest accolade a public intellectual can receive. In her latest book, Nussbaum explores the pride-driven sexual violence and misogyny perpetrated by the men who hold power in institutions like courts, sports, and the arts.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 5/12/2021)
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Endowed Lecture In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist Annette Gordon-Reed won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, a history of the African American family whose close blood ties to Thomas Jefferson had been redacted from history. Her other books include Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History and a biography of Andrew Johnson, and with Peter S. Onuf she co-authored ''Most Blessed of the Patriarchs'': Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination, a revealing character study that definitively clarifies the philosophy of the man from Monticello. The Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University, Gordon-Reed's honors include the National Humanities Medal, a MacArthur ''Genius Grant,'' and the Frederick Douglass Prize. In her new book, the historian and Texas native examines the Lone Star State roots of Juneteenth and its continuing importance to the fight for racial equity.
Books with signed book plates available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 5/10/2021)
In conversation with Dennis Overbye, science reporter for the New York Times and author of the books Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos and Einstein in Love
''The single best explainer of abstruse science in the world today'' (Washington Post), Brian Greene is a Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Columbia University. His New York Times bestsellers include The Fabric of the Cosmos, The Hidden Reality, and The Elegant Universe, which later served as the basis of two Peabody and Emmy Award–winning NOVA series. Renowned for his watershed discoveries in superstring theory, Greene is the cofounder of the World Science Festival, the Director of Columbia University's Center for Theoretical Physics, and a popular cultural figure. Until the End of Time is not just an exploration of the cosmos but also a reflection about our place within the ever-expanding vastness of the universe. (recorded 5/6/2021)
In conversation with Selena Coppock, standup comedian, writer, author, and creator and voice of @NYTVows, the parody Twitter and Instagram account that lampoons the New York Times Wedding section
A former writer and editor at the New York Times, Cate Doty took on many different projects during her 15 years at the Times. Covering presidential campaigns, food, business, and New York City, she finally found a natural home in the wedding announcements section. Against the backdrop of cutthroat high-society figures, the politics of an ever-changing society, and the overwhelming details in the announcements she wrote, Doty's own peculiar love story began. Mergers and Acquisitions is both an intimate and eye-opening memoir of her experience and a peek inside the odd and esteemed institution of marriage itself. A journalism professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Doty has also contributed writing to Southern Living and Our State, among other periodicals.
Books with signed book plates are available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 5/4/2021)
Celebrated for his skill at ''elucidating crucial episodes in the history of art and architecture'' (Time), Ross King is the author of many bestselling nonfiction books that peak behind the curtain of history of the studios, workshops, and inner toils and torments of some of the world's greatest artists. These works include Brunelleschi's Dome, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, Leonardo and the Last Supper, and Mad Enchantment-a portrait of the struggles churning just beneath the tranquil surface of Monet's iconic water lilies. In his new book, King conjures a revelatory vision of the remarkable 15th century Florentine merchant, craftsman, and intellectual Vespasiano da Bisticci, who is often referred to as ''the king of the world's booksellers.''
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 4/29/2021)
Yusef Komunyakaa won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Neon Vernacular, a collection of poems that spoke about the realities of the Vietnam War, of which he was a veteran. His other collections include Warhorses, Taboo, and The Emperor of Water Clocks. The Distinguished Senior Poet in New York University's creative writing program and a former Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets, he is the recipient of the 2011 Wallace Stevens Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the William Faulkner Prize, among other honors. Full of Komunyakaa's signature jazz–like meter and moving imagery, Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth includes both new work and selected poems from the last two decades.
Books available to order through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 4/28/2021)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition Natalie Cohn Memorial Lecture
A ''hero on the left'' (Washington Post) for her vocal support of progressive legislation and issues, Mazie K. Hirono is the only immigrant and the first Asian American woman in the United States Senate. Hawaii's junior Senator since 2013, she formerly served the Aloha State in the U.S. House of Representatives, as its lieutenant governor, and as a State Representative. At the age of seven, Senator Hirono emigrated with her mother and brother from rural Japan aboard the President Cleveland and crossed the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii. Charting her journey from a single room in a Honolulu boarding house to the Washington, D.C. halls of power, Heart of Fire is Senator Hirono's story of resilience, speaking truth to power, and her hard-fought advocacy for the most vulnerable Americans. (recorded 4/26/2021)
Carole Phillips Memorial Lecture In conversation with singer, songwriter, and novelist Wesley Stace
Acclaimed for ''her hauntingly beautiful voice and fearless experimentation'' (NPR), singer–-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones has remained one of music's most intriguing figures for more than four decades. Combining rock, jazz, blues, and pop, her 18 albums have garnered two Grammys and a multigenerational fanbase. A sought–-after collaborator, Jones has been a guest vocalist in more than a dozen other musicians' works. She is also a celebrated record producer, actor, and narrator. Last Chance Texaco is an intimate account of her unsteady childhood, the pleasures and pitfalls of early success, her battle against substance abuse, and her enduring position as a woman in rock and roll.
A book with a signed book plate is included with the price of your ticket. Books will be mailed after the event. Please allow 2 - 3 weeks for delivery. (recorded 4/22/2021)
Natalie Diaz is the author of When My Brother Was an Aztec, an ''ambitious . . . beautiful'' (New York Times) American Book Award–winning poetry collection that ruminates on her sibling's drug addiction. A former professional basketball player, an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian community, and an English professor at Arizona State University, she is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. In her National Book Award nominated sophomore collection, Diaz transcends the horrors committed by America upon Indigenous people to find sublimity amongst vistas of words, the reversal of erasure, and the choice to love.
Acclaimed for celebrating identity, lineage, and the subversion of traditional notions of power, poet Denice Frohman has performed at the Obama White House, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Apollo, among a multitude of other venues. A former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, she has published work in Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump, and the Acentos Review, among many other places. Frohman is a former director at the Philly Youth Poetry Movement, has received fellowships and grants from numerous arts institutions, and has been prominently featured in BuzzFeed, Cosmopolitan, and Refinery29.
Natalie Diaz's and Denice Frohman's books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 4/21/2021)
In conversation with Chris Jackson, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, One World; and Khadijah Costley White, Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University
Winning on a platform of prison reform in a city notorious for its high incarceration rates, Larry Krasner was elected District Attorney of Philadelphia in 2018 with more than 50% of the vote. He worked as a public defender and civil rights lawyer in Philadelphia for more than 30 years before deciding that he wanted to help his city from within. Featured in an eight-part PBS documentary about his office's efforts to reform criminal justice in Philly, Krasner has been featured in such outlets such as the New York Times, CNN, Newsweek, and CBS News. In For the People, he outlines a transformative vision for the ways in which citizens can begin to dismantle and rebuild an unjust legal system.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 4/20/2021)
In conversation with Carrie Rickey, writer and former film critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer
Phillip Lopate's ''observant, elegiac, and far-reaching'' (New York Times) essay collections include Bachelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, and Portrait Inside My Head. His other acclaimed work includes a diverse array of travel writing, film and architectural criticism, poetry, fiction, and memoir which has appeared in periodicals such as Paris Review and Esquire. A professor of nonfiction writing at Columbia University's MFA program, Lopate is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Ggrants, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In The Golden Age of the American Essay, Lopate anthologizes some of the most brilliant writing produced in the inspiring but tumultuous decades following World War II.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 4/15/2021)
In conversation with M. Nzadi Keita, Poet-in-Residence, Associate Professor; co-coordinator, African-American/Africana Studies at Ursinus College, and author of Brief Evidence of Heaven: Poems from the life of Anna Murray Douglass
Referred to by Maya Angelou as ''a lion in literature's forest,'' living legend Sonia Sanchez is the author of numerous plays, children's books, a story collection, and nearly 14 collections of poetry, including the American Book Award winner Homegirls and Handgrenades. A luminary of the Black Arts Movement, she served as the Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women's Studies at Temple University, was named Philadelphia's very first Poet Laureate in 2012, and has lectured at more than 500 colleges and universities. Her many honors include the Wallace Stevens Award Prize, the Langston Hughes Poetry Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cleveland Foundation. Collected Poems represents five decades of Sanchez's art and devotion to the causes of Black liberation and women's rights.
Books with signed book plates available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 4/13/2021)
In conversation with Don Winslow, New York Times bestselling author of The Border, The Force, The Cartel, Power of the Dog, Savages, and Broken, his new collection of six short novels. Blake Bailey is acclaimed for his ''meticulously researched, judicious, and critically perceptive'' (Boston Globe) biographies of some of the 20th century's most complicated writers, including John Cheever, Charles Jackson, and Richard Yates. His many honors include the National Book Critics Circle Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fFellowship, and his memoir, The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography. Through Bailey's exclusive access to Philip Roth and Roth's archivescoupled with complete independence, Bailey's latest book charts Philip Roth's arc from lower-middle-class Newark, New Jersey to his position as one of America's towering literary figures.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 4/12/2021)
NOTE: SIGNED BOOKS ARE NOW SOLD OUT. ALL TICKETS BOUGHT AFTER 5:50 P.M (EST) ON EVENT DAY ARE FOR ENTRY WITH AN UNSIGNED BOOK INCLUDED. PURCHASE TICKETS In conversation with musician, novelist, and teacher Wesley Stace
''One of rock's MVPs since the mid-Sixties'' (Rolling Stone), Richard Thompson is a beloved singer, songwriter, and guitarist. His prolific body of work includes 18 solo studio albums, eight seminal duet albums with his former wife Linda Thompson, and five albums with Fairport Convention, the band he formed at the age of 18 in his native London. He's been a guest musician on albums by artists ranging from Crowded House to Loudon Wainwright III, and his songs have been covered by Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, and REM, among too many others to name. Beeswing is a reflection on the spirit of a special cultural era, a candid look at life on the road and in the studio, and the story of Thompson's emergence as a major presence on the British folk rock scene.
Books will be mailed after the event. Please allow 2 - 3 weeks for delivery. (recorded 4/8/2021)
In conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel Introduced by Virginia Sanchez Quiara Alegría Hudes won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Water by the Spoonful, a story of ''shimmering, sustaining warmth'' (New York Times) that follows an Iraq War veteran struggling for purchase after returning home. She also co-wrote the acclaimed musical In the Heights with Lin Manuel-Miranda, which has been adapted into a soon-to-be-released film. A playwright in residence at Signature Theater in New York, her other plays and musicals include the award-winning Yemaya's Belly, Barrio Grrrl!, and Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue, a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. In My Broken Language, Hudes tells the lyrical story of her Philly barrio upbringing, the muse-like influence of her extended Puerto Rican family, and how she transformed her obsession with stories into celebrated, finely wrought art.
Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright Paula Vogel's many works include Indecent, How I Learned to Drive, and Don Juan Comes Home From Iraq. Three awards have been named in her honor: the Paula Vogel Award for playwrights given by The Vineyard Theatre, the Paula Vogel Award from the American College Theatre Festival, and the Paula Vogel mentorship program. The founder of Brown University's playwriting program and the former O'Neill Chair at Yale School of Drama, she has also taught theater writing to incarcerated women, community organizations, and aspiring scribes across the world.
Co-sponsored by Power Street Theatre Books with signed book plates are available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 4/7/2021)
Pine Tree Foundation Lecture In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist
''A renaissance man...driven by a joyful desiredrive to discover'' (The Times of London), Walter Isaacson is the author of definitive and internationally bestselling biographies of Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Kissinger, and Albert Einstein. He is also the author of The Innovators, a century-spanning saga of the people who created the computer and the internet. Former CEO of the Aspen Institute, chairman of CNN, and managing editor of Time magazine, he currently co-hosts the PBS show Amanpour & Co. and teaches History at Tulane University. In The Code Breaker, Isaacson describes how Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues are revolutionizing humanity's fight against disease by hacking evolution itself.
Each book-with-ticket purchase includes a signed book plate. Please allow two-to-three weeks for delivery. Books will ship after the event. (recorded 4/6/2021)
In conversation with Deb Perelman Reem Kassis is the author of The Palestinian Table, a guide to Middle Eastern cooking woven together through recipes, regional history, and three generations of family traditions. Praised by fellow Philadelphian Michael Solomonov as ''an incredible cookbook,'' The Palestinian Table won the 2018 Guild of Food Writers First Book Award and was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Cookbook Award. Born and raised in Jerusalem, Kassis is a graduate of the Wharton School and a former business consultant, and has contributed to periodicals such as the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. In The Arabesque Table, she returns with a collection of recipes that celebrates Arab cuisine's diverse history and dynamic present.
Deb Perelman is the creator of the long-running Smitten Kitchen blog, a no-fuss cooking resource that has spawned legions of followers and two bestselling cookbooks. She has also appeared in Martha Stewart Living, Parenting, and NPR, among other places.
Signed books will be available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 4/5/2021)
In conversation with Bob Mankoff, cartoonist, cartoon and humor editor for Esquire, and former cartoon editor, The New Yorker
Across the political spectrum, throughout history, the U.S. public has demanded the suppression of ideas and images that allegedly threaten our nation. However, the biggest danger comes not from speech but from censorship. In their new book, Jonathan Zimmerman and Signe Wilkinson chart the history of free speech in the U.S. and argue for its renewed importance amidst contemporary challenges to the First Amendment.
Jonathan Zimmerman is the Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor in Education at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading scholar on the ways in which schools and universities address controversial topics such as free speech, sex, and religion.
Signe Wilkinson is a widely syndicated cartoonist and the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning., Formerly based at The Philadelphia Inquirer, she is the recipient of three Overseas Press Club Awards, and two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for Cartooning.
Signed books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 4/1/2021)
Deborah Willis, Ph.D., is the author of Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present; Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present; and Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs, among other books. University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, she is the recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships. In addition to exhibiting her work all over America, Willis has curated numerous photography exhibitions, served as a museum consultant, and has appeared in and consulted on several media projects. In her new book, Willis offers a far–ranging but intimate photographic essay about Black experiences in the U.S. Civil War.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 3/30/2021)
Ellis Wachs Endowed Lecture In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist
Kate Masur is the author of An Example for All the Land, a Lincoln Prize finalist that examined Washington, D.C.'s role as a 19th century laboratory for civil rights policy and justice. She is also the author of numerous academic articles and essays that focus on how Americans viewed race, abolition, and equality during this era. Praised by David W. Blight as a ''masterpiece of scope, insight, and graceful writing,'' Until Justice Be Done is a history of the fight against racist American laws and institutions-Southern and Northern-in the decades before the Civil War.
Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 3/25/2021)
In conversation with Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh, The Queen of the Night, and How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, and associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College Viet Thanh Nguyen won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Sympathizer, the ''intelligent, relentlessly paced and savagely funny'' (Wall Street Journal) tale of a South Vietnamese army captain who immigrates to Los Angeles and reports on his fellow military exiles to the Viet Cong. The novel was also awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction and the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, among many other honors. Nguyen is also the author of Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, a nonfiction companion to The Sympathizer, and the acclaimed short story collection The Refugees. An English professor at the University of Southern California, he has earned fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. With The Committed, Nguyen has created a literary thriller and a novel of ideas that continues the story of the The Sympathizer's main character titular sympathizer as he experiences the delights and dangers of Paris. (recorded 3/23/2021)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition
America's sole Black primetime news anchor, Don Lemon has hosted CNN Tonight since 2014. Before joining the respected cable network in 2006, he worked for NBC News and MSNBC, and earlier in his career as a reporter and anchor in Birmingham, Philadelphia, and Chicago, among other places. The recipient of an Edward R. Murrow Award and three regional Emmy Awards, Lemon was named one of EBONY magazine's 150 most influential African Americans of 2009 and one of Advocate's 50 Most Influential LGBTQ People in Media in 2014. This Is the Fire draws on personal experience, informed reporting, and historical research to examine the struggle to end racism in our lifetime. (recorded 3/22/2021)
In conversation with Alix Gerz, Vice President of Communications, Free Library of Philadelphia
Hala Alyan's novel Salt Houses, a ''heart-wrenching, lyrical and timely'' (Dallas Morning News) study of three generations in a Palestinian family, won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award. A clinical psychologist by profession, she is also the author of several award-winning poetry collections, including The Twenty-Ninth Year, Atrium, and Hijra. Alyan has also published work in the New Yorker, Guernica, and the New York Times Book Review, among other places. A look at war's intergenerational legacy in the Middle East, The Arsonists' City tells the tale of a scattered family's return to Beirut to save its ancestral home.
Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 3/16/2021)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition
The chair of the Department of African American Studies and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at PrincetonUniversity, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is the author of the acclaimed book Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul. "One of the most imaginative, daring books of the 21st century" (Los Angeles Times), it vehemently argues against the idea that America exists as a post-racial society. He is also the author of Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America and is a frequent contributor and commentator to a host of media outlets. In Begin Again, Glaude offers guidance in our current struggles with race and trauma through James Baldwin's political and personal evolution.
Books and a limited number of signed book plates are available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop. (recorded 11/24/2020)
In conversation with Action News anchor, Jim Gardner
On the eve of the biggest professional risk of her life-running for a seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives-Madeleine Dean discovered that her son, Harry Cunnane, was battling a severe painkiller addiction. What followed was a family struggle fought by countless American families caught in the grip of the opioid epidemic. Told with candor through the dual perspectives of mother and son, Under Our Roof offers a first-hand look at this public health crisis. Concurrently publishing with Under Our Roof is You Are Always Loved: A Story of Hope, a child's companion to the adult memoir. This is a picture book, featuring an evergreen message about hope and unconditional love.
Dean currently serves as the U.S. Representative for Pennsylvania's fourth congressional district and Cunnane works as a resource director at the same treatment center at which he initially sought help for his addiction.
Signed books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 3/10/2021)
In conversation with Imani Perry
Referred to by Michael Eric Dyson as ''one of the most brilliant and committed critics and advocates writing and thinking and working on behalf of Black people today,'' Dr. Yaba Blay is a scholar, activist, and cultural consultant. Focusing on Black women and girls through topics like personal identity and body image, she has launched a number of viral media campaigns, produced the CNN documentary Who is Black in America?, and is an internationally renowned public speaker. Her work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Essence, and EBONY, and she has appeared on CNN, BET, and NPR, among other media outlets. In One Drop, Blay questions conventional perceptions of Blackness in order to create and understand a more diverse worldwide community.
Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies and faculty associate in the Program in Law and Public Affairs and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton. She is the author of six books, most recently the award-winning titles, Breathe: A Letter to My Sons and Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry.
Books available through Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books (recorded 3/4/2021)
In conversation with Jacinda Barrett, Traveler, Actress on Netflix Bloodline, Writer, Mother, Wife and all the rest of it.
Beth Kephart is the author of more than 30 books across a wide range of genres, including poetry, young adult fiction, and, most notably, the memoir. These works include the award-winning how-to-guide, Handling the Truth; A Slant of Sun, a National Book Award finalist; and Love, an ode to all things Philly. A writing professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Kephart is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Pew fellowship, and the Speakeasy Poetry Prize, among other honors. Composed of interlocking essays about travel, everyday miracles, and family, her new memoir is praised by Carolyn Forché as a ''shimmering'' book in which ''that most sought, most elusive treasure is revealed: what it means to be human, and aware.''
Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 3/3/2021)
Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Endowed Lecture
Joby Warrick won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction for Black Flags, ''a revealing, riveting and exquisitely detailed account'' (San Francisco Chronicle) of the rise of ISIS and its mastermind's life and death. He also won the 1996 Pulitzer for public service for his contribution to a series about the devastating effects of factory farming on the southeastern United States. A reporter at the Washington Post for the last 25 years, Warrick is also the author of The Triple Agent, the narrative nonfiction story of a 2009 suicide bombing that killed seven CIA employees in Afghanistan. Red Line is a true-life thriller that details the largely unreported American effort to find and destroy Syria's chemical weapons.
Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 3/2/2021)
In conversation with Kaitlyn Greenidge Brontez Purnell is the author of Since I Laid My Burden Down, a debut novel about growing up gay in 1980s Alabama that ''not only holds its own as queer literature, but also expands upon it'' (San Francisco Chronicle). The winner of a 2018 Whiting Award for Fiction, he is also the author of a graphic novel, a children's book, and a novella. The multi-talented Purnell is also the creator of a cult zine, the frontman for a punk band, the founder of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company, and the director of an array of short films, documentaries, and music videos. One of Vulture's ''46 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2021,'' 100 Boyfriends is a funny, foulmouthed, and sensitive look into the messy lives of queer men navigating the pitfalls of modern dating.
Kaitlyn Greenidge is the author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman, a finalist for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize and one of the New York Times ''Critics' Top 10 Books of 2016.'' A contributing writer for the Times, Greenidge has earned fellowships from the Whiting Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 2/24/2021)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist
In 2017, Amelia Pang earned the first place award in investigative journalism from the LA Press Club for her undercover exposé on the exploitation of immigrants smuggled into America to work in Chinese restaurants. Covering topics such as sexual violence on Native American reservations, economic hardships for immigrant Americans, and organic import fraud, her writing has appeared in publications such as The New Republic and Mother Jones. Her debut book tells the true story of a Chinese political prisoner and forced laborer's desperate missive and the larger story of how a vast array of products come from brutal slave labor camps.
Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 2/23/2021)
In conversation with Jon Meacham Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture
Michael Eric Dyson is the author of Tears We Cannot Stop, an ''eloquent, righteous, and inspired'' (Philadelphia Inquirer) call for racial change that was named one of the best books of 2017 by multitudes of publications. His many books address Barack Obama's presidency, Hurricane Katrina, Jay-Z, and the effects of MLK's assassination, among other wide-ranging topics. A frequent New York Times opinion writer, MSNBC political analyst, and a professor at Vanderbilt University, his many honors include an American Book Award and two NAACP Image Awards. In Long Time Coming, Dyson employs the lives and legacies of five contemporary Black martyrs as catalysts for America's long-needed voyage toward a racial reckoning and redemption.
An expert on history, politics, and religion in America, Jon Meacham won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for his biography American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. His other bestselling nonfiction includes American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation and The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels.
Signed books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 2/18/2021)
In conversation with Ashley Fox, Writer. Speaker. Entrepreneur. Athlete. Mom. ESPN alumna.
In 2012, Maria Kefalas's daughter, Calliope, was diagnosed with a rare, degenerative, and incurable genetic disease called metachromatic leukodystrophy. Rather than succumbing to grief, Kefalas and her husband harnessed this powerful emotion in order to save other children and, ultimately, themselves. What followed was an incredible odyssey that included a fundraising bake sale of more than 50,000 cupcakes, a blog that blossomed into articles published in the likes of Slate and the Huffington Post, two groundbreaking charitable foundations, and advocacy in America's loftiest halls of power. Harnessing Grief maps this journey and how it affected 13 other families with similarly afflicted children. A sociology professor at Saint Joseph's University, Kefalas is also the author of the books Hollowing Out the Middle, Working-Class Heroes, and Promises I Can Keep.
Books may be purchased through theJoseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 2/16/2021)
In conversation with Nomi Eve, author of Henna House and The Family Orchard, Director of the Creative Writing MFA program, Drexel University.
Melissa Broder is the author of The Pisces, a darkly erotic yet tender tale of academia, break-ups, and compulsive merman love. She is also the author of an essay collection, So Sad Today, and four collections of poetry. Her poems have appeared in a multitude of publications, including Tin House and Guernica, and she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. Following a calorie-obsessed lapsed Jew who falls under the spell of a zaftig Orthodox frozen yogurt store employee, Broder's new novel is a ''sensuous and delightfully delirious tale'' (O, The Oprah Magazine) of variously forbidden appetites.
Books with signed book plates may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 2/11/2021)
Barbara Gohn Day Memorial Lecture In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist
''An astute observer, excellent explainer, and superb synthesizer'' (Seattle Times), Elizabeth Kolbert is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. An amalgam of field reporting, scientific discovery, and natural history, it follows the ongoing legacy of the manmade global cataclysm that threatens the very existence of life on earth. A longtime staff writer at the New Yorker and a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board, she has earned a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Magazine Awards, and a Heinz Award, among other honors. In Under a White Sky, Kolbert returns to her study of humanity's impact on the world to examine how we might change nature in order to save it.
For Book-with-Ticket purchases please allow 2 - 3 weeks for delivery Books with signed book plates will ship after the event (recorded 2/10/2021)
In conversation with novelist and musician Wesley Stace
A founding member of jazz fusion super group Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, bass guitarist Victor Wooten is a five-time Grammy winner and has been called ''the Michael Jordan of the bass.'' A producer, songwriter, and solo touring artist, he is the only person to thrice be voted Bassist of the Year in Bass Player Magazine's readers' poll and was named one of the top ten bassists of all time by Rolling Stone. He is also the author of the novel The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music. His new book tells the story of three strangers who are mystically summoned to Nashville to save the sound of live music.
Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 2/9/2021)
In conversation with Ambassador John Limbert, US Deputy Secretary of State for Iran (2009-10); former hostage in the US Embassy in Tehran (1979-81)
An author, historian, and former journalist, John Ghazvinian is the Executive Director of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil, a ''riveting account and superb analysis'' (Boston Globe) of the competition between world powers for the emerging market of crude oil from a dozen African countries. The coeditor of American and Muslim Worlds before 1900 and a contributor to periodicals such as Newsweek, The Nation, and the Huffington Post, he has taught Middle East history at a number of colleges and universities. In his new book, Ghazvinian charts the tangled relationship between America and Iran from the Persian Empire of the 18th century to the often icy diplomacy of today.
Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 2/4/2021)
In conversation with writer and librarian Maisy Card, author of These Ghosts Are Family
Nadia Owusu won a 2019 Whiting Award for her work on Aftershocks. ''A memoir that broods on lost identity and statelessness'' (Elle), this debut book tells the story of the nomadic childhood she spent following her Ghanaian diplomat father across Africa and Europe and her arrival in New York in the wake of his death. Her other writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the New York Times, Literary Review, and Epiphany, among other publications.
Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 2/3/2021)
In conversation with Eric Foner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery and Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, winner of the Bancroft, Parkman, and Los Angeles Times Book prizes. James Oakes won the 2008 and 2013 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize for his scholarly work on the 16th President and the politics of abolition. His many books include Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics, and Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–1865. He is the longtime Graduate School Humanities Chair at City University of New York. The Crooked Path to Abolition diagrams the Constitution-based course of Lincoln's antislavery strategies.
Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 2/2/2021)
Due to a technical issue, the first 15 minutes of the recording were inaudible. The podcast joins Dr. Farmer a little later in his presentation. A recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Genius Award, Dr. Paul Farmer is the U.N. Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is also the co-founder of Partners In Health, a nonprofit organization that addresses the healthcare needs of the developing world by pioneering locally driven solutions. In Haiti After the Earthquake, Dr. Farmer-who has worked in Haiti for nearly 30 years-examines the devastating aftermath of the 2010 quake and explores the complex social issues that make the impoverished nation especially vulnerable to natural disaster. Dr. Farmer will be interviewed by Dr. Steven Larson, Assistant Dean for Global Health Programs and an Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. (recorded 12/6/2011)
A senior fellow and the director of technology and development at the Center for Global Development, Charles Kenny has extensively contributed to policy reforms in global health, UN peacekeeping, and international financial corruption, among many other urgent issues. A contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine and a contributor to Business Week, he is the author of Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding and How We Can Improve the World Even More and The Upside of Down: Why the Rise of the Rest Is Great for the West. In The Plague Cycle, Kenny reveals the precarious relationship between civilization and infectious disease over the past 5,000 years.
Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 1/28/2021)
In conversation with Yvette Nicole Brown, star of screens big and small and known to audiences for her roles in Community, The Mayor, Supermansion, The Odd Couple, and many other films and TV shows.
The president of EMILY's List since 2010, Stephanie Schriock has helped steer the five-million-member organization to some of the greatest victories seen in its 35-year history. These victories included the election of many pro-choice women Democratic U.S. senators, U.S. representatives, governors, and state and local officials. Currently on the Board of Advisors of the anti-voter suppression group Let America Vote, Schriock served as the national finance director of Howard Dean's presidential campaign and managed the Senate races of Jon Tester in 2006 and Al Franken in 2008. In Run to Win, she offers strategies women can use to succeed in politics and other male-dominated fields. Stacey Abrams writes, ''Run to Win demystifies how to tackle the challenges of campaigns, using authentic voices to welcome readers with honesty, compassion and humor.''
Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 1/27/2021)
In conversation with Errin Haines, founding member and editor at large at The 19th, a new, nonprofit newsroom focused on the intersection of women, politics and policy. Salamishah Tillet is the author of Sites of Slavery, an examination of how contemporary African American intellectuals utilize the subject of slavery to challenge African American exclusion from the narratives of American history. She is a contributing critic-at-large for the New York Times, the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark, and cofounder of the Chicago-based arts nonprofit A Long Walk Home. An amalgam of literary history, memoir, cultural criticism, and biography, Tillet's latest book explores the impact of Alice Walker's 1982 novel and the circumstances of its creation. (recorded 1/26/2021)
In conversation with Jennifer Weiner, bestselling author of numerous books including In Her Shoes and most recently Big Summer
Yellow Wife tells the harrowing story of an enslaved woman forced to barter love and freedom while living in the most infamous slave jail in Richmond, Virginia.
Sadeqa Johnson is the award-winning author of four novels, each exploring themes of marital fidelity, friendship, and the difficulties of connecting in modern life. Her accolades include being the recipient of the National Book Club Award, the Phillis Wheatley Award and the USA Best Book Award for best fiction.'' (recorded 1/25/2021)
In conversation with musician and novelist Wesley Stace, author of Misfortune, By George, Wonder Kid and most recently Out Loud with dancer and choreographer Mark Morris
An actor renowned as much for his versatility as his depth, Gabriel Byrne has portrayed King Arthur, Satan, Pope Gregory X, Lord Byron, a heartless Irish-American gangster, a Viking chieftain, D'Artagnan the Musketeer, and an ersatz Keyser Söze, among hundreds of other screen and stage roles. He earned a Golden Globe Award and two Emmy nominations for his role as a self-doubting psychotherapist on HBO's In Therapy, and was thrice nominated for Tony Awards for his roles in Eugene O'Neill's plays. In Walking with Ghosts, Byrne traces his path as a boy wandering the outskirts of working-class Dublin, to his entrance and expulsion from the Catholic seminary, to his days in amateur theater that launched a 40-year career.
A book and signed book plate are included with the price of your ticket. Books will be mailed after the event. Please allow 2 - 3 weeks for delivery. (recorded 1/21/2021)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist ''A nuanced analysis of White male America'' that ''deftly combines history and sociological study with personal narrative'' (Washington Post), Ijeoma Oluo's So You Want to Talk About Race took a frank look at America's institutionally racist political, economic, and social systems. A New York Times bestseller, it garnered wide critical acclaim and was named to a plethora of 2018's best-of-the-year lists. Named one of the Root's 100 Most Influential African Americans in 2017, Oluo has written for the Guardian, the Stranger, Time, and Elle, among other publications. In Mediocre, she investigates the costs and consequences of white male supremacy over the last 150 years of American history.
Closed captioning and ASL Interpretation will be provided. A book and signed book plate are included with the price of your ticket. Books will be mailed after the event. Please allow 2 - 3 weeks for delivery. (recorded 1/19/2021)
In conversation with Daniel Torday, Director of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College, author of The Last Flight of Poxl West, Boomer1, and The Sensualist, and two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award.
''One of the most gifted, wickedly entertaining story writers around'' (New York Times Book Review), George Saunders won the Man Booker Prize for Lincoln in the Bardo, a kaleidoscopic tale of the 16th President's son's death and purgatorial afterlife. His surreal short story collections include the New York Times notable books Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline; and Tenth of December, a National Book Award finalist. A professor of creating writing at Syracuse University, Saunders is the recipient of Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships and has been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Pairing iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol with seven corresponding essays, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a meditative master class on what makes great fiction click.
A signed book is included with the price of your ticket. Books will be mailed after the event. Please allow 2 - 3 weeks for delivery. (recorded 1/18/2021)
In conversation with author, journalist, and editor Larry Platt After 20 years of managing and 57 years with one franchise, Tommy Lasorda still suits up in Dodger Blue every day. The embodiment of the American dream, Lasorda went from a scrawny, overlooked Italian kid of average ability to become one of the most successful managers in baseball history--a Hall of Famer who led the Dodgers to eight division titles and two world championships in his storied seasons as manager. (recorded 11/16/2007)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist Katherine May's fiction and memoirs include The Electricity of Every Living Thing, Burning Out, and No-Stress Meditation. She was also the editor of The Best, Most Awful Job, an anthology of essays about motherhood. Her latest book is Wintering, a paean to how we muddle through life's inevitable fallow seasons and embrace the opportunities these moments offer. Melding lessons from literature, the natural world, and personal experience, it's referred to by Elizabeth Gilbert as ''every bit as beautiful and healing as the season itself.'' The former Programme Director for Creative Writing at Canterbury Christ Church University, May has published work in such varied periodicals as Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and the Times of London.
Books available through theJoseph Fox Bookshop
(recorded 12/10/2020)
In conversation with author, essayist, and radio host Solomon Jones. Jerald Walker's recent How to Make a Slave and Other Essays was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award. A ''restless, brilliant'' collection that ''can alight on a truth without pinning it in place'' (New York Times), it examines such wide-ranging topics as the medical establishment's racial biases, the burden of cultural stereotypes, and other elements that speak to what it means to be a Black American male in this charged moment. A creative writing professor at Emerson College and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, Walker is also the author of Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption; and The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult. (recorded 12/9/2020)
In celebration of thirty-five years of cartooning at the Philadelphia Daily News and Inquirer.
The first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, Signe Wilkinson is acclaimed for her distinctive and irreverent art. A widely syndicated cartoonist based at the Philadelphia Daily News since 1985, she previously worked as a freelance journalist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and an editorial artist for the San Jose Mercury News. She has also published two collections of her work and has contributed drawings to a variety of other publications and books. A former president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, Wilkinson is the recipient of four Overseas Press Club Awards, two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for Cartooning, and Moore College of Art & Design's Visionary Woman Award. Her latest book is Herstory: 19 Cartoons Celebrating the 19th Amendment. . (recorded 12/3/2020)
In conversation with Khaliah Ali Wertheimer
Dubbed the ''Erin Brockovich of Sewage,'' Catherine Coleman Flowers is a hero of the environmental justice movement. She is the rural development manager at the Race and Poverty Initiative of the Equal Justice Initiative and the former founder and director of the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise. A crusader against the lack of basic sanitation in the rural United States, Flowers claims that these conditions foster an array of ancillary negative consequences. Waste tells the story of her transformation from country girl to student civil rights organizer to MacArthur Fellowship-winning frontline activist.
Books available through theJoseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 12/2/2020)
In conversation with Ketu H. Katrak, Professor in the Department of Drama at the University of California, Irvine, and author of the forthcoming book Jay Pather, Performance, and Spatial Politics in South Africa
Acclaimed Kenyan scholar and writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is the author of the novels A Grain of Wheat; Weep Not, Child; and Petals of Blood, among several other works of fiction, memoirs, children's books, and essays. The Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine, he has been awarded 12 honorary doctorates, was nominated for the Man Booker Prize, and is annually tipped to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In The Perfect Nine, Thiong'o spins a ''sinuous retelling'' of the origin of the Gĩkũyũ people of Kenya ''as an epic poem rivaling the Iliad in body count and surpassing it in whimsy'' (New Yorker).
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 12/1/2020)
In conversation with Sarah Glover, veteran journalist and past president of the National Association of Black Journalists.
In 1990, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Les Payne set out on a nearly 30-year crusade to write the most comprehensive biography of Malcolm X ever attempted. Through painstaking research and exhaustive interviews with anyone he could find who knew the human rights activist, he sought to separate fact from fiction in order to offer a revelatory and wholly new portrait of this uniquely American icon. A former editor at Newsday, syndicated columnist, and a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, Payne passed away in 2018 before completing his opus. His daughter and principal researcher Tamara Payne completed the work, which won the 2020 National Book Award for non-fiction.
Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 11/12/2020)
In conversation with co-author Todd London, Head of the MFA Playwriting Program at the New School, School of Drama
A theater director in New York for more than 50 years, the legendary André Gregory has collaborated on film adaptations of his productions with the likes of Louis Malle and Wallace Shawn, with whom he made the 1981 cult classic My Dinner with André. His other work includes roles in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, Brian De Palma's Bonfire of the Vanities, and, most recently, Jonathan Demme's screen interpretation of Ibsen's The Master Builder. Not content with success in only two fields, he is also a painter, and the author of the play in verse, Bone Songs. In This Is Not My Memoir, Gregory takes a vertiginous trip through his memories of the wondrous places and remarkable people that have stirred him most.
Horace W. Goldsmith Endowed Lecture Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 11/23/2020)
Karen Russell's debut novel, Swamplandia!, the tale of a family's run-down alligator-themed Everglades amusement park, was a New York Times Best Book of the Year, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and a nominee for the Orange Prize. Her short story collections include Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Orange World and Other Stories, and St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. She is the Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University's MFA program, and her many honors include fellowships from the MacArthur and Guggenheim Foundations and the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novelette. A dystopian novella ''with a Swiftian sense of satire'' (Boston Globe), Sleep Donation tells the story of a corporate recruiter's battle against a lethal insomnia epidemic.
Book and signed book plate available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop.
''A superhero of rendering human consciousness and emotion'' (New York Times Book Review), Charles Yu is the author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, a romp through quantum space-time that was one of Time magazine's best books of the year. A recipient of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 Award, he has twice been nominated for Writers Guild of America Awards for his work on HBO's Westworld. A send-up and take-down of Tinseltown tropes and racial stereotypes, Interior Chinatown follows a protagonist who fights to see himself as the hero in his own life story. Yu won the National Book Award in Fiction for 2020.
Book and signed book plate available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop. (recorded 11/19/2020)
Jess Walter's six acclaimed novels include the #1 New York Times bestseller The Beautiful Ruins, the National Book Award finalist The Zero, and Citizen Vince, winner of the Edgar Award. A former print journalist, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his coverage of the infamous Ruby Ridge standoff. His short stories have been chosen three times for the Best American Short Stories anthology, and his other short fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, McSweeney's, and Esquire, among numerous other publications. In his latest novel, Walter follows the fortunes of two brothers caught in the class upheavals of early-and eerily familiar-20th-century America. (recorded 11/17/2020)
The nephew of a beloved neighborhood barber, West Philadelphian Antonio M. Johnson is the creator of You Next, a pictorial dive into one of African American men's most valued institutions. Part sanctuary, part cultural space, barber shops signify transformation, affirmation, and aspiration. Exploring these physical and intellectual salons all over the country, You Next is an amalgam of photos, essays, and interviews. A graduate of Baltimore's Morgan State University and now a resident of Atlanta, Johnson has seen his photos exhibited at the Hamilton Landmark Gallery in Harlem, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Watch the event on youtube. Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 11/18/2020)
In conversation with Simon Callow
Music critic for the New Yorker since 1996, Alex Ross is the author of the international bestseller The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. A trip down the rabbit hole of modern sound's biggest moments and personalities, it won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Ross is also the author of Listen to This, an essay collection ranging in topic from Mozart to Led Zeppelin. A 2008 MacArthur Fellow and a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, he is the recipient of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award and a Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center for his contributions to contemporary music. His latest book examines Richard Wagner's soaring music, vile politics, and complicated legacy.
Acclaimed British actor Simon Callow is best known for his roles in films such as Amadeus and Four Weddings and a Funeral, though he has appeared in scores of other movies, television shows, and stage plays. He has also directed a wide variety of stage productions of operas, musicals, and dramas for such institutions as the Old Vic, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Scottish Opera. An accomplished author, Callow has written at length about Charles Dickens, whom he has played on both stage and screen. He has also penned an acclaimed book on acting, biographies of Orson Welles, Oscar Wilde and Richard Wagner, and articles about classical music for Gramophone magazine.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 11/14/2020)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist
''A painful indictment of American inhumanity woven with threads of grace and love'' (Guardian) Issac J. Bailey's memoir My Brother Moochie offered a raw, first-hand account of the author's older brother's longtime incarceration for murder. The James K. Batten Professor of Public Policy at Davidson College, Bailey was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and taught journalism at Coastal Carolina University. His award-winning work has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time, amongst many other periodicals, and he has appeared on NPR, CNN, and MSNBC. Addressing such topics as Confederate iconography, police brutality, and white discomfort, Why Didn't We Riot? is an essay collection that explores what it means to be black in Trump's America.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 11/11/2020)
''A terrific writer who commands'' his historical subject matter with ''authority and panache'' (New York Times), H. W. Brands was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his bestselling biographies of Benjamin Franklin (The First American) and Franklin Roosevelt (Traitor to His Class). He explores such diverse subjects as Aaron Burr, Ronald Reagan, the California gold rush, Andrew Jackson, the Vietnam War, Bill Gates, and the second generation of American statesmen in his more than two dozen books that ''weave together keen political history with anecdote and marvelous sense of place'' (Boston Globe). Brands returns with the story of two towering figures of American abolitionism.
Register for the event here. Books and a limited number of signed book plates are available through The Joseph Fox Bookshop. Pine Tree Foundation Endowed Lecture (recorded 11/5/2020)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist
Acclaimed for exploring complicated sociopolitical aspects of identity within the Muslim American experience, Ayad Akhtar won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Disgraced, a play in which racial and cultural prejudices persist in so-called progressive climates. His other work includes the play Junk, the screenplay for the film The War Within, and American Dervish, a novel that follows a pre-9/11 Wisconsin Muslim family wrestling with faith and inclusion. Among other accolades, he has earned an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Nestory Award, fellowships from a wide array of institutions, an Obie Award, and two Tony nominations. In his new novel, Akhtar peers at the rifts of a post-Trump America through the lens of a dispossessed immigrant father and son.*
Books are available through The Joseph Fox Bookshop.
*Note: there is slight ring during the introduction which ends when the discussion begins. (recorded 11/4/2020)
In conversation with Nomi Eve, author of Henna House and The Family Orchard, Director of the Creative Writing MFA program, Drexel University.
''One of America's most important novelists and an international literary sensation'' (New York Times), Nicole Krauss is the bestselling author of the celebrated books Man Walks into a Room, The History of Love, Great House, and Forest Dark. She is the inaugural writer-in-residence at Columbia University's Mind, Brain, and Behavior Institute, and her other work has appeared in Harper's, Esquire, and the New Yorker. Krauss is the winner of the Saroyan Prize for International Literature and a finalist for the National Book Award, among many other honors. To Be a Man is a globe-hopping story collection that delves into the very nature of what drives men and women in their relationships. (recorded 11/10/2020)
A ''gifted magician of words'' (Time), Barbara Kingsolver is the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Poisonwood Bible, a postcolonial epic about an evangelical American family's undoing in the Congo. She is the author of several essays and works of creative nonfiction, and her other novels include The Lacuna, Flight Behavior, and Unsheltered. She is founder of the PEN/Bellwether Prize, winner of the National Humanities Medal, and recipient of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. How to Fly, Kingsolver's second collection of poetry, reflects on both the exquisitely noted and overlooked workaday wonders of the untamed worlds inside and around us. (recorded 10/29/2020)
In conversation with: Rachelle Baker, illustrator; Jennifer Harlan, writer; Steffi Walthall, illustrator Veronica Chambers is the editor for Narrative Projects at The New York Times and a co-author of "Finish the Fight!" She joined The Times in 2018 as the lead editor of the Past Tense project, which told stories using photographs unearthed from the paper's archives. Born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, her other works include the critically acclaimed memoir "Mama's Girl," the anthology "Queen Bey: A Celebration of the Power and Creativity of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter," and the new children's book "Shirley Chisholm Is a Verb."
Jennifer Harlan is a member of the Special Projects team at The New York Times and a co-author of "Finish the Fight!" As a reporter on the Past Tense project, she wrote about all sorts of overlooked histories, from private eyes to roller derby, with a focus on women's history. She also writes for The Times about books, board games, the opioid crisis and the coronavirus pandemic. She is from Louisville, Kentucky, but currently calls Brooklyn home.
Rachelle Baker is a multi-disciplinary artist from Detroit, MI. In addition to "Finish the Fight!", her illustrations have been published in several books including "Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and the Black American Dream" by Blair Imani, "Shirley Chisholm is a Verb" by Veronica Chambers, and the forthcoming "Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop,'' by Clover Hope, which comes out in February 2021.
Steffi Walthall is a Virginia-based illustrator, a sometimes comic artist and all times storyteller that celebrates diversity in all forms. She loves working on character-centric stories whether they are fictional or historical. In addition to "Finish the Fight!" her work includes "The Field Guide To The North American Teenager" by Ben Philippe, "50 Fearless Women Who Made American History" by Jenifer Bazzit, and "The Story Of: Martin Luther King Jr" by Christine Platt.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop (recorded 10/28/2020)
One of America's most celebrated poets, the ''outspoken, prolific, energetic'' (New York Times) Nikki Giovanni is the author of numerous collections of poetry including Acolytes; Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgment; and Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea. Her recent nonfiction includes A Good Cry, a rumination on a life spent in the vanguard of social change. A standout activist and educator from the Civil Rights and Black Arts movements of the 1960s, she is the first winner of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, a seven-time winner of the NAACP Image Award, and one of Oprah Winfrey's 25 ''Living Legends.'' In Make Me Rain, Giovanni lifts up her loved ones, celebrates her black heritage, and illuminates the pervasive stains of American racial injustice and prejudice.
Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop
(recorded 10/27/2020)
Comedian, writer, and actor Colin Quinn's decades-long career includes stints as anchor of Saturday Night Live's ''Weekend Update,'' his own titular talk show, numerous standup specials, and appearances in multitudinous sitcoms, movies, and talk shows. He is referred to by the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and Tina Fey as the essential New York comic's comic, and his acclaimed one-man Broadway shows-addressing everything from the fall of world empires to his family-include My Two Cents, The Coloring Book, and Red State, Blue State. In Overstated, Quinn infuses insight with comedy to lambaste the sacred cows and quirks of 50 very dissimilar states.
(recorded 10/23/2020)
In conversation with: Helen Ubiñas, metro columnist at the The Philadelphia Inquirer
In her nearly 30 years as a journalist, Maria Hinojosa has reported for PBS, CBS, and CNN, among other outlets, and is the longtime anchor and executive producer of NPR's Peabody Award–winning show Latino USA. A frequent guest on MSNBC and the founding co-anchor of the political podcast In the Thick, she is also the host of WGBH's talk show Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One. Her work has earned four Emmy Awards, two Robert F. Kennedy Awards, and the Edward R. Murrow Award. In Once I Was You, Hinojosa relates her experience of growing up Mexican American in Chicago to our current immigration crisis.
Books may be purchased online in Spanish or in English through The Joseph Fox Bookshop. A limited number of signed bookplates will be available while supplies last.
(recorded 10/21/2020)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist
Asha Lemmie's New York Times bestselling novel Fifty Words for Rain tells the decades and continents-spanning story of Nori, a child born to a married Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover. Concealed by her grandparents, Nori accepts a solitary life until she meets and forms a bond with her half-brother Akira-a bond that gives her the strength to claim her place in the world. The book was recently the Good Morning America Book Club pick for September. A classically trained musician from Washington D.C., Lemmie began writing Fifty Words for Rain when she was only 16 years old.
Books may be purchased online through The Joseph Fox Bookshop.
(recorded 10/20/2020)
In conversation wth Elizabeth Mosier
A longtime faculty member at Drexel University, the Family Institute, and Widener University, B. Janet Hibbs is a renowned expert on family issues and partner relationships. A professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Anthony Rostain is one of America's leading authorities on ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, Tourette syndrome, and the learning disorders related to these conditions. He also treats patients at CHOP, where he is co-director of the Pediatric Neurodevelopmental Psychiatry Service. The Stressed Years of Their Lives is a guidebook for parents and college-age teens seeking a better understanding of mental health and the methods by which students can thrive.
Elizabeth Mosier is the author, most recently, of Excavating Memory: Archaeology and Home. Her thirty-year career in higher education includes teaching creative writing, directing a pre-college program, and directing admissions communications at Bryn Mawr College. (recorded 6/25/2020)
In conversation with Liz Moore, best selling author of Long Bright River
Lauded for his ''marvelous'' and ''bloody brilliant'' (Toronto Star) works of fiction, prolific novelist, dramatist, children's author, and screenwriter Roddy Doyle's work is rooted in the vibrant colloquialisms and tight relationships of the Irish working class. His novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha won the Man Booker Prize, and his Barrytown series-comprised of The Commitments, The Snapper, The Van, and The Guts-were critical darlings and adapted into successful movies. In Love, Doyle tells an elegiac tale of two old drinking buddies who revisit the Dublin pubs and poignant pains of their youth. (recorded 6/24/2020)
Ezekiel J. Emanuel is Vice Provost for Global Initiatives and Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. An oncologist and author of nine books on medical ethics and healthcare, he previously served as a special adviser for health policy in the Obama administration. He is also the author of Reinventing American Health Care and a memoir about his illustrious brothers. Emanuel's new book profiles 11 disparate countries' healthcare systems and shows how the U.S.-despite spending far more than any other nation-doesn't come close to having the best. (recorded 6/23/2020)
The popular anchor of Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace has reported on nearly every watershed national and international political event. During his 50-year career in journalism, he has earned three Emmys, the duPont-Columbia Silver Baton, and the Peabody Award. Wallace has interviewed seven presidents, was the first Fox News journalist to moderate a general election presidential debate, and in 2018 conducted a notably difficult interview with Vladimir Putin. In Countdown 1945, he looks at the meetings and machinations leading to the August 6, 1945, atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. (recorded 6/22/2020)
Architectural critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer for more than 20 years, Inga Saffron won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her sagacious critiques of urbanism, planning, and Philly's hyper-rapid transformation after a half-century slump. An Inquirer writer since 1985, she worked as the paper's suburban reporter and Eastern European correspondent, was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2012, and in 2018 was awarded the prestigious Vincent Scully Prize by the National Building Museum. Becoming Philadelphia is a collection of Saffron's most insightful newspaper columns. (recorded 6/17/2020)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition Stacey Abrams is the New York Times bestselling author of Lead from the Outside, a serial entrepreneur, nonprofit CEO, and political leader. After serving eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven as minority leader, Abrams became the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, where she won more votes than any other Democrat in the state's history. Over the course of her career, she has founded multiple organizations devoted to voting rights, training and hiring young people of color, and tackling social issues at both the state and national levels. Dedicated to civic engagement, her most recent endeavors include: launching Fair Fight to ensure every American has a voice in our election system, Fair Count to ensure accuracy in the 2020 Census and greater participation in civic engagement, and the Southern Economic Advancement Project, a public policy initiative to broaden economic power and build equity in the South.
Abrams received degrees from Spelman College, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and Yale Law School. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, she and her five siblings grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi and were raised in Georgia. (recorded 6/16/2020)
A prolific book critic whose reviews appear in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times Book Review, Donna Rifkind was a 2006 finalist for the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle. The Sun and Her Stars is her ''marvelous, knowledgeable'' (Boston Herald) look at the life of Salka Viertel, the until-now unheralded German Jewish expat screenwriter and Garbo confidant who created a Hollywood haven for scores of European émigrés-including Albert Einstein, Arnold Schoenberg, and Bertolt Brecht, among myriad others-who had escaped the horrors of Nazi Germany. (recorded 6/11/2020)
Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies and faculty associate in the Program in Law and Public Affairs and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton. She is the author of six books, most recently the award-winning titles, Breathe: A Letter to My Sons and Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry. She was born in Birmingham, Alabama and currently lives outside Philadelphia with her two sons.
Kiese Laymon is the Hubert McAlexander Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of the novel, Long Division, a collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, and the award-winning Heavy: An American Memoir. Laymon was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi.
(recorded 6/9/2020)
In conversation with Erica Armstrong Dunbar, award-winning author of Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge and She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman.
Lauren Francis-Sharma's acclaimed novel 'Til the Well Runs Dry tells the ''universally touching'' (New York Times) multigenerational sagaof asharp-tongued Trinidadian seamstress's travails and bittersweet triumphs. It was honored as the fiction selection of the 2015 Black Caucus of the American Library Association and one of O, The Oprah Magazine's ''10 Titles to Pick Up Now.'' She is also assistant director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the proprietor of the DC Writers Room. Her latest novel follows the journey of a rebellious young woman from Trinidad to a new life with the Crow Nation in 1830s Wyoming. (recorded 5/28/2020)
In conversation with Andrea González-Ramírez, Senior Writer at GEN and an Ida B. Wells fellow at Type Investigations. Read Ms. González-Ramírez's interview with Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.
Originally from Ecuador, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio became one of the first undocumented students admitted to Harvard University. Now a fellow at Laurene Powell Jobs's Emerson Collective and a doctoral candidate in the American studies program at Yale, she has written about race, culture, and immigration in a variety of publications, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, and n+1. In her new book, Villavicencio ventures beyond combustive political rhetoric and alarmist headlines to reveal the remarkable, relatable lives of undocumented Americans in every corner of the country. (recorded 5/21/2020)
One of contemporary sci-fi/fantasy's most popular writers, Seanan McGuire won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards for the Wayward Children series of books. Also the author of, among other books, the October Day series and the InCryptid series, she writes science fiction/horror under the pen name Mira Grant and has published several works of nonfiction. She is currently writing the Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider comic series for Marvel. Her other honors include the 2011 Shirley Jackson Award and the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. In Middlegame, McGuire introduces a polyglot, his numbers-obsessed twin, and an alchemist who pushes them toward godhood. Imaginary Numbers is the ninth book in the sprawling InCryptid urban fantasy series. *Production note: the interlocutor's audio is a bit muddled throughout but Seanan's audio sounds fine. (recorded 5/14/2020)
A reporter for the New York Times for 25 years, Jennifer Steinhauer has covered the United States Congress since 2010. Her former assignments include Los Angeles bureau chief and New York City Hall bureau chief. The winner of the Newswoman's Club of New York Front Page Deadline Reporting Award in 2006 for her coverage of Hurricane Katrina, Steinhauer is the author or co-author of two cookbooks and a novel about the entertainment industry. The Firsts follows the diverse stories of the 87 women in the House and the 23 in the Senate-the largest number in American history-elected to the 116th Congress. (recorded 5/12/2020)
Winner of the 2019 National Book Award for fiction, Trust Exercise follows a star-crossed suburban teen romance in a 1980s performing arts high school. Susan Choi's novels are known for excavating the hidden corners of the human heart and acclaimed for their ''nuance, psychological acuity, and pitch-perfect writing'' (Los Angeles Times). Her books include the Asian American Literary Award–winning The Foreign Student; American Woman, a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize; A Person of Interest, a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award; and My Education, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction. A creative writing teacher at Yale, Choi has earned Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships.
The author of nearly 30 books for young people and adults, Jacqueline Woodson has won three Newbery Honors, a Coretta Scott King Award and three Coretta Scott King Honors, and the 2014 National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming, a poetry collection about her upbringing in New York and South Carolina amidst the vestiges of Jim Crow. Her other books include After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Another Brooklyn, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Woodson's latest novel, ''a universal American tale of striving, failing, then trying again'' (Time), addresses a bevy of societal issues through the intergenerational saga of a family striving to escape the tug of history. (recorded 5/7/2020)
In conversation with Dr. Rachel Valletta, Environmental Scientist at The Franklin Institute and director of all climate change education and outreach programming.
A columnist and deputy editor at New York magazine, David Wallace-Wells has written extensively about the environment and the future of science, including a widely read-and hotly debated-2017 article about worst-case climate change scenarios. He formerly was a National Fellow at the New America Foundation and the deputy editor of the Paris Review. In his number-one New York Times bestseller The Uninhabitable Earth, Wallace-Wells issues a fervent call-to-arms to a world closer to the brink of climate-change Armageddon than many would care to admit. ''This generation's Silent Spring,'' (Washington Post), it is a travelogue of the crisis as it unfolds in real time and a rumination upon how it will affect the next generation. (recorded 5/5/2020)
Frank B. Wilderson III spent more than five years in South Africa, where he was one of two Americans elected to the African National Congress during the country's transformation after apartheid. His books include Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid and Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms, and he served as a dramaturge for the Lincoln Center Theater in New York and the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. Chair of African American Studies and professor in the Culture & Theory Doctoral Program at the University of California, Irvine, he has been honored with the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award for Creative Nonfiction and an NEA Literature Fellowship. In Afropessimism, Wilderson fuses innovative philosophy with trenchant memoir to argue slavery's unique historical social position and its pervasiveness even today. (recorded 4/28/2020)
In conversation with New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
In her popular long-running blog, bitches gotta eat, Samantha Irby offers raw, humorous takes on her sometimes difficult personal life, pop culture, and, of course, food. She is also the author of three essay collections: Meaty; New Year, Same Trash: Resolutions I Absolutely Did Not Keep; and the New York Times bestseller We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. She has contributed work to a variety of publications and written an episode of the television show Shrill. In her new essay collection, Irby ponders inspirational Instagram infographics, being friendzoned by Hollywood, living in a red state, and the discomfort of life as a 40-year-old. (recorded 4/30/2020)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition
A world-renowned leader in the Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement, featured in the new film Crip Camp, Judith Heumann has spent four decades working with a wide array of governmental agencies, activist groups, and NGOs on legislation and policy to benefit disabled people. Praised by Hillary Clinton for her ''insights, knowledge, sass, and wit,'' Heumann served in Bill Clinton's administration, shaping disability policy in the Department of Education, and was appointed by Barack Obama as the Special Advisor on Disability Rights for the State Department. She is also a former Senior Fellow at the Ford Foundation and advisor to the World Bank. Being Heumann is a memoir of her early struggle for education equality and lifelong crusade for inclusion and community for disabled people everywhere. (recorded 4/16/2020)
A professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and associate director of the university's Orphan Disease Center, Dr. David Fajgenbaum holds an MBA from the Wharton School, earned a master of science at Oxford, and graduated from Georgetown, where he was a football quarterback. Renowned on the field and in school for his mental and physical stamina, he was blindsided by a mysterious illness that baffled doctors and left him near death. Not content to leave his life in the hands of a too-slow medical community, he developed a treatment that put his condition in remission. The cofounder and executive director of the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network, he was named to prestigious Forbes ''30 Under 30'' list. He details his journey in Chasing My Cure. (recorded 4/14/2020)
Named ''Woman of the Year'' by Latina magazine in 2000, poet, essayist, and fiction writer Julia Alvarezis renowned for her lyrical, poignant, politically insightful books, including How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, which details the lives of four sisters before and after their exile from the Dominican Republic; In the Time of the Butterflies, a million-copy bestseller; and Return to Sender, a novel about the families of undocumented Mexican workers in Vermont. Her many awards include the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature and the 2013 National Medal of Arts. Afterlife, her first adult novel in 15 years, considers our political moment and asks: What do we owe those in crisis in our families, including members of our human family? How do we live in a broken world without losing faith in one another or ourselves? And how do we stay true to those glorious souls we have lost?
Help us provide digital content during the closure with your contributions. (recorded 4/7/2020)
Feminist author and journalist Kate Roiphe is the author of In Praise of Messy Lives, a ''daring, vivid, combative'' (Wall Street Journal) collection of essays that explores everything from Joan Didion to Mad Men. Her other books include The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism; The Violet Hour, and Uncommon Arrangements. Director of the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, she has contributed articles to such varied publications as the New York Times, Esquire, Vogue, and the Paris Review. Presented as a series of journal entries, The Power Notebooks chronicles Roiphe's charged personal history, weaving it together with deeper insights into the ways in which famous female writers such as Sylvia Plath and Simone de Beauvoir repeatedly saw their own power subjugated.
Help us keep providing digital content during the closure through your contributions. (recorded 3/31/2020)
In conversation with Beth Kephart, the award-winning author of more than twenty-five books, including Going Over, Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, and most recently The Great Upending.
A finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, Emily St. John Mandel's bestselling Station 11 vacillates in time between the world that we know and the dystopic travails of a Shakespearean acting troupe in the years following a global plague. Her other novels include Last Night in Montreal, The Lola Quartet, and The Singer's Gun, winner of the 2014 Prix Mystère de la Critique in France. She is a staff writer for art and culture magazine The Millions. In The Glass Hotel, Mandel tells a tale of a gargantuan Ponzi scheme, cryptic threats, and the clandestine landscapes that exist just below the veneer of ordinary life. (recorded 3/26/2020)
''Boisterous, highly entertaining,'' and ''altogether original'' (Washington Post), James McBride is the author of the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, in which a young boy born into slavery joins abolitionist John Brown's doomed crusade. His nonfiction books include the New York Times bestselling memoir The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother and Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul. His other fiction includes the novels Miracle at St. Anna and Song Yet Sung, and the short-story collection Five-Carat Soul. Also an award-winning composer, screenwriter, and saxophonist, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2016. Deacon King Kong is a novel about a very public shooting in a 1960s Brooklyn housing project. (recorded 3/11/2020)
The campaign manager for Barack Obama's 2008 primary and general election victories, David Plouffe later served on the White House staff as a senior advisor and was largely credited with the 44th president's 2012 win. He formerly worked as a leading Democratic Party media consultant and a senior executive at Uber, and he currently heads policy and advocacy at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. His book The Audacity to Win detailed Obama's campaign victory over prominent and powerful conservative forces. In his latest book, Plouffe offers a practical and motivational playbook for defeating Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
Pine Tree Foundation Endowed Lecture (recorded 3/10/2020)
''One of the best sportswriters alive'' (USA Today), John Feinstein is the author of the bestselling A Good Walk Spoiled, A Season on the Brink, and Where Nobody Knows Your Name, among almost two dozen other books. He has been a staff columnist for the Washington Post, Sporting News, and Golf Digest, and a regular on-air commentator for The Golf Channel, The Jim Rome Show, and the CBS Sports Radio Network. Three decades after changing the complexion of sportswriting with the publication of A Season on the Brink, Feinstein returns to his beloved college basketball to tell the story of the often-anonymous heroes of Division 1 hoops. (recorded 3/5/2020)
Historian Adam Hochschild's ten ''carefully researched and vigorously told'' (Houston Chronicle) books include King Leopold's Ghost, a haunting portrait of Belgium's 19th-century brutal colonization of the Congo, and To End All Wars, the little-told story of the First World War's moral critics. Both were National Book Critics Circle Award finalists. His other books variously address the atrocities of Stalinist Russia, the perspectives of famous and little-known participants in the Spanish Civil War, and the history of the antislavery movement in the British Empire. He is cofounder of Mother Jones magazine, and his many awards include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History. Rebel Cinderella details the life of an impoverished immigrant sweatshop worker who married the scion of one of New York's richest families and became one of America's great social justice crusaders. (recorded 3/4/2020)
The creators of the immensely popular eponymous blog Tom and Lorenzo, Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez entertain millions of readers a month with their singular perspective on fashion and pop culture. They are frequent guests on Sundance Channel's All on the Line with Joe Zee and Sirius XM Radio's show Derek and Romaine, and have been profiled, quoted, or interviewed by dozens of media outlets, including the New York Times, National Public Radio, and Vanity Fair. In Legendary Children, Fitzgerald and Marquez posit that RuPaul's Drag Race is the prism through which queer social history and modern culture can be understood. (recorded 3/3/2020)
R. Eric Thomas is the creator of Elle's ''Eric Reads the News,'' a daily humor column that lambasts pop culture, celebrity, and politics that has been praised by Lin-Manuel Miranda as ''Sedaris-level laugh-out-loud funny.'' Also a renowned playwright, his work has been staged across America and has garnered a slew of awards, including the Barrymore Award and the Dramatists Guild Lanford Wilson Award. His writing has appeared in the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among other periodicals, and he is the longtime host of The Moth StorySlams in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. In his debut essay collection, Thomas explores just what it means to be an ''other'' in the face of college code-switching, the reconciliation of his sexuality with his Christian identity, and the 2016 election. (recorded 2/27/2020)
In conversation with Michael A. Smerconish
Editor at large at Wired and a technology writer for more than 30 years, Steven Levy is the author of seven books, including In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives; Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age; and Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, named by PC Magazine as the best sci-tech book of the last 20 years. He has contributed articles to such periodicals as Harper's, the New Yorker, and Rolling Stone, and is a former editor at Backchannel and Newsweek. Levy's latest book charts the juggernaut rise of Mark Zuckerberg's social media platform from the dorms of Harvard to becoming one of the world's most valuable and ubiquitous corporations.
Michael A. Smerconish is the host of The Michael Smerconish Program on SiriusXM POTUS Channel 124, the host of CNN's Smerconish on Saturday mornings, a Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, and a New York Times bestselling author. (recorded 2/26/2020)
Gish Jen's many novels include Typical American, World and Town, and Mona in the Promised Land. She is also the author of two nonfiction works that explore the differences in East-West notions of art and culture, and her short stories have appeared dozens of publications, including the New Yorker, the New Republic, and the Atlantic. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Jen has earned a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Book Critics Circle Award nomination, and her writing has appeared in four Best American Short Stories anthologies. A dystopian tale of rising sea levels, a segregated populace, and an underground baseball league, The Resisters is a novel set against an increasingly plausible American backdrop. (recorded 2/25/2020)
In conversation with Alyssa Mastromonaco, author of Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?: And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House and frequent guest on Pod Save America
The White House director of communications in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2013, Dan Pfeiffer is the New York Times bestselling author of Yes We (Still) Can, an ''amusing and insightful'' (Esquire) account of the shifting tides of politics of the internet age and a guide to fighting back in the Trump era. He is also the cohost of the popular Pod Save America, a no-nonsense breakdown of the week's news. In UnTrumping America, Pfeiffer returns with a political roadmap for defeating the current president and putting America back on a steady path. (recorded 2/24/2020)
The food editor at the New York Times and the founding editor of the Times's digital cookbook, NYT Cooking, Sam Sifton is one of America's most popular culinary writers. He formerly worked as the Gray Lady's national news editor, restaurant critic, and culture editor; held numerous positions at the New York Press; and was a founding editor of Talk magazine. He is the author of the cookbook Thanksgiving: How to Cook It Well and A Field Guide to the Yettie, a nonfiction look into the culture of young tech entrepreneurs. In his new cookbook, Sifton offers a salutation to the art of Sunday supper and the pleasures of communal meals. (recorded 2/20/2020)
Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation, ''an effortless-seeming downhill ride that picks up astonishing narrative speed as it goes'' (New York Review of Books), tells the story of a once heady marriage at its breaking point. It was named to scores of 2014 ''Best of the Year'' lists and was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award and Folio Prize. Offill is also the author of the novel Last Things, a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the L.A. Times First Book Award. A writing teacher at Syracuse University and Queens University, she is also the author of four children's books. Her new novel is the story of a librarian who becomes increasingly obsessed with doomsday preparations. (recorded 2/13/2020)
Walk this way for an evening with Joseph ''Rev Run'' Simmons, frontman for the mega-influential hip-hop trio Run-DMC. Regarded as the driving force behind ushering rap into the mainstream, the group was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Joining Rev Run is his wife, Justine Simmons, his costar on the popular reality show Run's House and his coauthor of Take Back Your Family: A Challenge to America's Parents. The long-married couple knows one thing about love-it's tricky! In Old School Love, they share the secrets and principles that have kept them together for a quarter century. (recorded 2/12/2020)
A curator with more than 30 years' experience, Dr. Gretchen Sorin has consulted for more than 250 institutions, including the Smithsonian, the Jewish Museum, and the New York State Historical Association. She is the director of the Cooperstown Graduate Program of the State University of New York, the author of In the Spirit of Martin: The Living Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Through the Eyes of Others: African Americans and Identity in American Art, and coauthor of Touring Historic Harlem: Four Walks in Northern Manhattan. In Driving While Black, Sorin tells the true story of the famous Green Book, which reshaped the notion of travel for African Americans and helped drive the nascent civil rights movement. (recorded 2/11/2020)
Referred to by Roger Ebert as ''the conscience of American independent filmmaking,'' John Sayles is the writer/director of 18 movies, including Matewan, Lone Star, Eight Men Out, and Passion Fish. In addition to writing more than 100 screenplays, he is the author of four novels and two short story collections, including Pride of the Bimbos, Union Dues, and Dillinger in Hollywood. His work has earned two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, the Golden Globe, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In Yellow Earth, Sayles spins a parable about Native American resistance to corporate and governmental forces. (recorded 2/10/2020)
In conversation with Dick Polman
''Substantial'' and ''notably fair minded'' (New York Times Book Review), E.J. Dionne Jr. is a syndicated columnist who appears twice weekly in the Washington Post and nearly 100 other newspapers, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a visiting professor at Harvard University, and a professor at Georgetown University. A regular commentator on National Public Radio and on other radio and television programs, his New York Times bestselling books include Why the Right Went Wrong, the National Book Award–nominated Why Americans Hate Politics, and One Nation After Trump. In his latest book, Dionne advocates an alliance between progressives and moderates in order to reestablish America's prospects for a healthy future.
Dick Polman, Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes national political columns at dickpolman.net (recorded 2/6/2020)
In conversation with Mark Bowden, most recently author of The Last Stone: A Masterpiece of Criminal Interrogation
David Zucchino is a contributing writer for The New York Times. He has covered wars and civil conflicts in more than three dozen countries. Zucchino was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his dispatches from apartheid South Africa and is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for his reporting from Iraq, Lebanon, Africa, and inner-city Philadelphia. He is the author of Thunder Run and Myth of the Welfare Queen. In his new book, Zucchino tells the story of the 19th-century North Carolina port city that, while once a burgeoning example of a mixed-race community, exploded into racial violence that erased the progress made by formerly enslaved people and their children. (recorded 2/4/2020)
In conversation with Jon McGoran, author of Splintered
Eoin Colfer is the internationally acclaimed author of the Artemis Fowl series, which chronicles the ''magical'' (Washington Post) adventures of a young antihero criminal mastermind. The novels and their companion books have sold millions of copies worldwide and have been adapted into a forthcoming film. Also the author of the sixth installment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, several Marvel comics, a cyberpunk novel, and two children's books, Colfer was Ireland's Children's Laureate from 2014 to 2016. Telling the story of a high-flying vodka-swilling Louisiana dragon who happens across a teen on the run from a corrupt lawman, Highfire is a genre-warping adventure fantasy for adults. (recorded 2/3/2020)
In conversation with Mark Zandi, Chief Economist, Moody's Analytics
''The most celebrated economist of his generation'' (Economist), Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in 2008 for his work in international trade and monetary geography. A New York Times op-ed columnist since 1999, he is the author or editor of more than two dozen books, including The Age of Diminished Expectations, The Conscience of a Liberal, and End This Depression Now!, as well as the former monthly columns ''No Free Lunch'' in Fortune and ''The Dismal Science'' in Slate. In his latest book, Krugman tackles common fiscal misunderstandings and offers a guide to the most vital economic policy issues of our time.
Sandra Shaber Memorial Lecture (recorded 1/30/2020)
In conversation with Dr. Jen Ashton, Chief Medical Correspondent for ABC News and author of The Self-Care Solution: A Year of Becoming Happier, Healthier, and Fitter--One Month at a Time
A professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University, Jennifer S. Hirsch also codirects the school's Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation (SHIFT), a research project that explored sexual health and sexual assault among undergraduates. Shamus Khan chairs Columbia's sociology department and codirects SHIFT's ethnographic team. Hirsch's books include A Courtship After Marriage: Sexuality and Love in Mexican Transnational Families and The Secret: Love, Marriage, and HIV. Currently the editor of the academic journal Public Culture and a former Time magazine columnist, Khan is the author of Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School. Built upon years of research, interviews, and observation, Sexual Citizens delves into the question of why sexual assault is so ubiquitous on college campuses. (recorded 1/28/2020)
In conversation with Sarah Marshall, journalist, writer, and co-host of the podcast You're Wrong About.
In June 1980, two young middle-class women who had been hitchhiking to a nature festival called the Rainbow Gathering were found murdered in a remote clearing in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. Though no one was prosecuted for these crimes, suspicions turned on one local family, then on a convicted serial killer, and then seemed to melt away into time. Emma Copley Eisenberg moved to Pocahontas County for two years, combing through the hills for clues to the murders, discovering along the way how this violent act traumatized those affected and helped shape a complex narrative about the self-perceptions of Appalachians. Eisenberg's writing has appeared in such publications as Granta, McSweeney's, Tin House, Salon, and Slate. (recorded 1/23/2020)
In conversation with Carmen Maria Machado, most recently author of In the Dream House
''A subtle observer of human interactions'' with ''an inborn ability to cast a spell'' (New York Times), Garth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, a novel that follows a gay man seeking to know his own heart. Winner of the British Book Award for Debut of the Year and a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by more than 50 publications. His stories and criticism have appeared in a wide range of periodicals, including the Paris Review, the New Yorker, and the Atlantic. Cleanness revisits the characters and Bulgarian setting of What Belongs to You.
Watch the video here. (recorded 1/16/2020)
Praised for their ''clarity of expression . . . devastating directness'' and ''coruscating wit'' (Washington Post), Andrew Bacevich's bestselling books include The Limits of Power, America's War for the Greater Middle East, and Twilight of the American Century. A professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University, he served in the U.S. Army for 23 years, retiring as a colonel.His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the London Review of Books, and the American Conservative, among other publications. In The Age of Illusions, Bacevich offers a comprehensive account of the post–Cold War American blunders and misconceptions that gave rise to the Trump era.
(recorded 1/15/2020)
In conversation with Mike Newall, metro columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer
''Incisive, insightful, and compassionate'' (Boston Globe), Liz Moore is the author of the acclaimed novels Heft and The Unseen World. She is the recipient of the 2014 Rome Prize in Literature, the University of Pennsylvania's ArtsEdge residency, and Philadelphia's Athenaeum Literary Award. A creative writing professor in the MFA program at Temple University, her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Tin House and the New York Times, among other places. Moore's new novel follows two sisters on opposite sides of the law in a Philadelphia neighborhood devastated by the opioid crisis and a string of related murders. (recorded 1/14/2020)
A former Paris bureau chief and contributing writer for the New York Times, Elaine Sciolino is acclaimed for her ''deliciously detailed and smart'' (Vogue) chronicles of French culture and history. Her books include the bestsellers The Only Street in Paris: Life on the Rue des Martyrs, La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life, and Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran. In 2010 Sciolino was decorated as a chevalier of the Legion of Honor, France's highest honor. The Seine plumbs the depths of the romantic river, exposing its long history, colorful characters, and how it made the City of Lights shine so brightly. (recorded 12/12/2019)
In conversation with novelist and musician Wesley Stace
''One of the major literary voices of our time'' (San Francisco Chronicle), Salman Rushdie is the author of more than a dozen novels, including The Satanic Verses, The Golden House, and Midnight's Children, winner of the ''Booker of Bookers'' Prize in 1993. His other works include a short story collection, East, West, and four works of nonfiction, including the memoir Joseph Anton, which chronicles his time in hiding during the fatwa against him. In his latest novel, Rushdie spins the humorous tale of a modern-day Don Quixote in midlife crisis tilting at the windmills of America's moral and spiritual turpitude. (recorded 12/10/2019)
William D. Cohan is the bestselling author of The Last Tycoons, an inside history of Lazard Frères & Co., one of the country's most venerable investment banks. A former longtime Wall Street mergers and acquisitions banker, the topics of his other books range from the financial improprieties of Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs to the Duke lacrosse scandal. He is a regular contributor to news outlets including the New York Times, the Financial Times, and CNBC. A portrait of four of his fellow Andover boarding school graduates, Cohan's new book is a group portrait of four vastly dissimilar men linked by the poignancy of their untimely demises.
Pine Tree Foundation Endowed Lecture (recorded 12/5/2019)
In conversation with writer and film critic Gary Kramer
André Aciman is the author of the nationwide bestseller Call Me by Your Name, a novel that chronicles the bittersweet love story of a teenage boy and the young academic staying at his family's mansion on the Italian Riviera. Named to a number of ''Best Book of the Year'' lists, it was adapted into an Oscar-winning film. Aciman is a professor of comparative literature at the City University of New York and the author of several other acclaimed novels and works of nonfiction. A tale of chance encounters, missed opportunities, and romantic longing, Find Me returns to the captivating circle of characters from Call Me by Your Name. (recorded 12/3/2019)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition
New Yorker writer Ronan Farrow has won the Pulitzer Prize for public service, a National Magazine Award, and a George Polk Award for his ''indefatigable and imaginative'' (Globe and Mail) reportage of some of the most important issues of our time. A former anchor and reporter for MSNBC and NBC News and a former State Department official in Afghanistan and Pakistan, he is the author of the New York Times bestseller War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence. In his new book, he offers a harrowing account of his plunge into the scores of abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein. (recorded 11/26/2019)
Deirdre Bair won the National Book Award for her ''blockbuster biography'' of Samuel Beckett, ''the best introduction to an enigmatic giant of 20th-century literature'' (Christian Science Monitor). Her other acclaimed biographies include portraits of Simone de Beauvoir, Carl Jung, and Al Capone. Her books have twice been finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and she is the recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships. In Parisian Lives, Bair travels nearly 50 years into the past in an exploration of the relationships she had with Beckett and de Beauvoir-literary peers but mortal enemies-and the disparate approaches she used to garner intimate insight into their lives and literature. (recorded 11/21/2019)
In conversation with Larry Platt, co-founder/co-executive director of The Philadelphia Citizen and former editor of the Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Magazine and co-author of Life is Magic
Philadelphia Eagles long-snapper Jon Dorenbos played in two Pro Bowls and had an illustrious 14-year career in the NFL. Also a gifted magician, he was a finalist on the 11th season of America's Got Talent and is a frequent guest on The Ellen Show. Illusion and sleight-of-hand became an escape shortly after his father murdered his mother when he was 12 and he and his sister were thrust into foster care and then sent to live with a beloved aunt. From this early tragedy to success as a professional football player, magician, and motivational speaker, Life Is Magic is a memoir of Dorenbos's heartening journey. (recorded 11/18/2019)
In conversation with Carrie Rickey, former film critic for the Inquirer
Mentor to some of contemporary cinema's top directors (Joss Whedon and Michael Bay) and founder of the department of film studies at Wesleyan University, Jeanine Basinger built the program into one of the best in the world. Her twelve books include works about silent films, women on the screen, and the studio system during Hollywood's Golden Age. A trustee emeritus of the American Film Institute, Basinger has appeared in numerous documentaries and on many DVD commentary tracks. Replete with revealing portraits of an array of Hollywood's brightest lights, lush illustrations, and penetrating analysis, The Movie Musical! is an authoritative guide to cinema's most whimsical genre. (recorded 11/19/2019)
A staff writer for the New Yorker since 1992, Susan Orlean won wide acclaim for the 1998 New York Times bestseller The Orchid Thief, the story of a renegade Florida swamp plant poacher that was adapted into an Academy Award–winning film by Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze. Her many other books include Animalish, Saturday Night, and Rin Tin Tin, a nonfiction account of the beloved canine American icon. Orlean's latest book details the 1986 Los Angeles Public Library fire that consumed hundreds of thousands of books, a story writ small about the larger role this unique institution plays in American life.
Carole Phillips Memorial Lecture (recorded 11/14/2019)
Saeed Jones is the author of the ''hard and glaring and brilliant'' (NPR Book Review) poetry collection Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. He is also the co-host of BuzzFeed's morning show AM to DM and was the website's former LGBT editor. How We Fight for Our Lives is a memoir of Jones's life as a young, black, gay man in the South searching for his place in the American landscape.
The recipient of the Whiting Award for nonfiction, Clifford Thompson's writing has appeared in a diverse array of publications, including the Washington Post, the Village Voice, and the Wall Street Journal. The author of an essay collection, Love for Sale, and a novel, Signifying Nothing, he teaches writing at New York University and Sarah Lawrence College. In the tradition of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Thompson's latest book is ruminates on race in America amidst the tumult of Trump's America. (recorded 11/12/2019)
In conversation with Emma Eisenberg, author of the forthcoming book The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia
Carmen Maria Machado's bestselling debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the National Book Award and is being adapted by the FX network as a feminist spin on Black Mirror. The Artist in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and a Guggenheim Fellow, her work has been published in the New Yorker, Granta, and Tin House, among other periodicals. Told with wit and bare self-reflection, In the Dream House is a candid account of Machado's relationship with a charming but psychologically abusive woman. (recorded 11/7/2019)
In conversation with Lorene Cary, author of Black Ice, The Price of a Child, Ladysitting and the forthcoming Arden Theatre production of My General Tubman
Erica Armstrong Dunbar is the author of the National Book Award finalist Never Caught, the story of Ona Judge, a young enslaved person who risked her life to escape servitude under President George Washington. Named the National Director of the Association of Black Women Historians and the first director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia, she is the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University. Dunbar's latest book is a biography of the runaway enslaved person, abolitionist, Civil War heroine, conductor of the Underground Railroad, and women's suffragist known admiringly as ''Moses.''
(recorded 11/5/2019)
Paul Hendrickson's books include Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934–1961, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; Sons of Mississippi, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War, a National Book Award finalist. A creative writing teacher at the University of Pennsylvania for more than 20 years and a feature writer at the Washington Post for the two decades before that, he has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize six times. In Plagued by Fire, Hendrickson ventures behind the façade of America's most iconic architect to reveal a life marked by tragedy and family secrets. (recorded 11/4/2019)
In conversation with Marty Moss-Coane, host of WHYY's Radio Times
The winner of two Academy Awards and three Primetime Emmy Awards, screen icon Sally Field is acclaimed for roles including a flying nun, a Depression-era Texas widow, a multiple-personality disorder sufferer, a union organizer, a soap queen, Spider-Man's aunt, Forrest Gump's mom, Mary Todd Lincoln, and a runaway bride hitchhiker. She is also a longtime advocate for human rights, has served since 2002 on the board of directors of the international women's NGO Vital Voices, was honored by President Obama with the National Medal of Arts, and is an inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In Pieces is a memoir of Field's lonely but instructive childhood, her craft, and her most important roles: as a daughter, mother, and grandmother.
Production note: the sound is a bit distorted toward the beginning but it clarifies as the event continues. (recorded 11/1/2019)
In conversation with author events editor and producer Jason Freeman
Praised as ''an absolutely transformative figure'' by the late Anthony Bourdain, Sean Brock is the founding chef of the Husk restaurant group, which has four locations in South Carolina and Georgia. In 2015, he won the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook and the IACP Julia Child First Book Award for Heritage, an ingredient-guided curation of heirloom Southern cuisine. Brock was also nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on the television show The Mind of a Chef. A celebration of one of America's most cherished cuisines, South shares the ingredients, methods, and regional twists home chefs can use to create their own spins on age-old recipes.
Julie Dannenbaum Memorial Culinary Arts Lecture (recorded 10/29/2019)
A columnist for the New York Times and a member of its editorial board since 1995, Gail Collins was the Gray Lady's editorial page editor from 2001 to 2007, the first woman to hold that position. Her books include America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines; Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics; and As Texas Goes ... : How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda. In her new book, Collins offers a history of American women and aging, drawing a bead on our evolving attitudes on the matter while proposing that for ladies of a certain age, the best is yet to come. (recorded 10/29/2019)
In conversation with Michael Klein, editor/producer of inquirer.com/food and @phillyinsider
Originally a meeting place for South Philly's Abruzzi-American community, the members-only Palizzi Social Club is now one of America's hottest restaurants. Since owner and chef Joey Baldino took over in 2017, this mecca for Southern Italian fare has been named Eater Philly's #1 restaurant of the year and Bon Appetit's #4 Best New Restaurant. A proud South Philadelphian, Baldino is also the owner of Zeppoli, a Sicilian BYOB in Collingswood, New Jersey. Dinner at the Club coauthor and fellow South Philadelphian Adam Erace is a food and travel writer who has contributed to dozens of publications, including Food & Wine and Travel + Leisure. The recipient of awards from the International Association of Culinary Professionals, Erace is also the owner of Green Aisle Grocery, a two-location gourmet market in Philadelphia. (recorded 10/28/2019)
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist James B. Stewart is the author of the number-one New York Times bestseller Den of Thieves, the story of the most notorious insider-trading ring in financial history; DisneyWar, the boardroom imbroglio about the bitter struggle for control of the secretive corporation; and Blind Eye, the account of a coldblooded doctor who moonlighted as a serial killer. A New York Times columnist and journalism professor at Columbia University, he is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and is a former editor at the Wall Street Journal. In Deep State, Stewart offers a definitive account of the war between the current President and America's largest law enforcement agencies, which ventures into new and disturbing territory the Mueller probe could not approach. (recorded 10/23/2019)
The co-anchor of the flagship hour of the venerable Today show, Hoda Kotb has also been a Dateline correspondent for the past 21 years. Her New York Times–bestselling books include Ten Years Later and Hoda, and the children's books I've Loved You Since Forever and You Are My Happy. The winner of four Emmys, a Peabody Award, and the Edward R. Murrow Award, she has several times been honored with the Gracie Award by the Alliance for Women in Media. In I Really Needed This Today, Kotb offers a curated collection of quotes-by turns inspiring, wise, and funny-drawn from her wildly popular Instagram posts. (recorded 10/18/2019)
In conversation with award-winning broadcaster, Tracey Matisak
The first openly gay U.S. male athlete to win a winter Olympics medal, Adam Rippon earned bronze as part of the figure skating team event at the 2018 games. He was also the winner of the 2016 U.S. National Championships and the 2010 Four Continents Championships. Last year he was named one of Time's 100 most influential people and to Out magazine's Power 50: The Most Influential Voices in LGBTQ America. From the athlete's impoverished homeschooled childhood in Scranton to Olympic glory and winning Dancing with the Stars, Rippon's new memoir is a showcase for his inspiring story and humorous outlook. (recorded 10/17/2019)
In conversation with Andy Kahan, director, author events
''As good as any piece of literature can get'' (Chicago Sun Times), Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and stands as perhaps the most acclaimed book about the Vietnam War. His other books include If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, In the Lake of the Woods, and Going After Cacciato, winner of the 1979 National Book Award. Penned one scrap of paper at a time, Dad's Maybe Book is a collection of O'Brien's advice for the two young sons who might never get to know him in adulthood.
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Endowed Lecture (recorded 10/15/2019)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013 and President Obama's national security advisor from 2013 to 2017, Susan Rice has been at the forefront of some of the 21st century's most consequential international challenges. Currently the Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the School of International Service at American University, she also sits on the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. From Rice's early family struggles to her becoming a champion of American interests on the world stage, Tough Love is not only a personal story, but a larger entreaty to bridge the domestic divides that threaten our global moral credibility. (recorded 10/10/2019)
In conversation with Joe Torsella, State Treasurer for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Venture capitalist and longtime Philadelphia-area philanthropist Richard Vague serves on the Penn Medicine board, is Chairman of the University of Pennsylvania Press, and is the president of the Philadelphia Live Arts and Fringe Festival. He is the author of The Next Economic Disaster: Why It's Coming and How to Avoid It, an examination of the role of public debt in financial crises. In his latest book, Vague employs insights gained through years spent in the banking industry and analysis of historical economic disasters spanning the last two centuries in order to illustrate how our current system can break the cycle of calamity.
Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture (recorded 10/7/2019)
In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist
Dr. Imani Perry is the author of Looking for Lorraine, a work of ''masterly syntheses of research and analysis'' (New York Times Book Review) of the life of Lorraine Hansberry, the author of A Raisin in the Sun. A professor of African-American studies, public affairs, and gender and sexuality studies at Princeton University, Perry is also the author of More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States and May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem. A meditation on black resilience and resistance, Breathe challenges America to see black children as deserving of humanity in an increasingly unjust society. (recorded 10/2/2019)
In conversation with Laurie Halse Anderson, bestselling author of Speak, Shout, Fever 1793, and the Seeds of America trilogy Introduced by the Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, Raquel Salas Rivera
The first Latina to write for Marvel comics, Gabby Rivera created the popular AMERICA series, featuring the eponymous multiverse-hopping superpowered queer Latina dynamo Miss America, aka America Chavez. Honored as one of the SyFy network's top comic creators and one of NBC's #Pride30 Innovators, she has also contributed short stories to several anthologies, including The Secret Loves of Geeks, Sound Bites, and A People's Future of the United States. In Juliet Takes a Breath, Rivera offers up an audacious queer coming-of-age tale about a newly out young Puerto Rican from the Bronx who embarks upon an eye-opening internship with her idol.
(recorded 9/27/2019)
SPOILER ALERT. A number of critical plot points are exposed during the discussion. In conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Blight, author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
Ta-Nehisi Coates won the 2015 National Book Award for Between the World and Me, a ''searing meditation on what it means to be black in America today'' (New York Times). A national correspondent for the Atlantic, he won the 2014 George Polk Award for his cover story ''The Case for Reparations.'' Coates is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the author of We Were Eight Years in Power, a collection of new and previously published essays. His debut novel tells the story of an escaped enslaved person's journey from the barbaric Deep South to the misguided utopic movements of the North. (recorded 9/25/2019)
With ''an uncanny ability to simplify without being simplistic'' (Seattle Times), Malcolm Gladwell synthesizes academic research and critical analysis with engaging prose and relatable anecdotes to fashion surprisingly counterintuitive conclusions about our everyday lives. His mega-bestselling books include The Tipping Point, Outliers, Blink, and David and Goliath. A former business and science writer for the Washington Post, Gladwell has been a staff columnist at the New Yorker since 1996 and is the host of the popular Revisionist History podcast. From Fidel Castro to Bernie Madoff to the death of Sandra Bland, Gladwell's latest book examines our interactions with strangers and why they often go awry. (recorded 9/26/2019)
In conversation with Ian Zolitor, host of The Folk Show on WXPN
Introduced by Cynthia Schemmer
Legendary English singer-songwriter Billy Bragg's more than 40-year musical career melds facets of folk, punk, and protest music with political and romantic themes. Some of his most famous works include Brewing Up with Billy Bragg, Don't Try This at Home, and Tooth & Nail. A longtime left-wing activist, he has testified before a commission that debated reforming the House of Lords and founded an organization that gives musical instruments to prisoners. His recent book Roots, Radicals and Rockers tells the story of the music genre skiffle. In The Three Dimensions of Freedom, Bragg prescribes liberty, equality, and accountability as the antidotes to rising global authoritarianism. (recorded 9/23/2019)
In conversation with Glory Edim, author and founder of Well-Read Black Girl
In ''fiercely beautiful'' novels, memoirs, and essay collections brimming with ''enchantments and surprises'' (Los Angeles Times), Edwidge Danticat bears witness to the complexities of Haitian life in stories of courage, brutality, family, and rebellion. These books include Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work; the National Book Award finalist Krik? Krak!; and Brother, I'm Dying, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. The MacArthur Fellowship recipient and Pushcart Prize winner's latest story collection explores the tidal forces of community that ebb and flow within us all. (recorded 9/19/2019)
In conversation with Sara Nović, author of Girl at War and America is Immigrants
The Tiger's Wife, Téa Obreht's bestselling debut novel, won the 2011 Orange Prize and was a National Book Award finalist. A ''graceful commingling of contemporary realism and village legend'' (Washington Post), it follows a young doctor's investigation into her grandfather's death in a Balkan country healing from war. One of the New Yorker's 20 best American fiction writers under 40, Obreht has published work in the Guardian, Harper's, and the Atlantic, and her short stories have been widely anthologized. In her second novel, a frontierswoman awaiting her family's return crosses paths with a world-weary former outlaw in the drought-baked barrens of 1890s Arizona. (recorded 9/18/2019)
Renowned for placing ''his reader's hand on the heart of human experience'' (Philadelphia Inquirer), Jonathan Safran Foer is the bestselling author of the frenetically irreverent, emotionally urgent novels Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Here I Am. Also the nonfiction author of Eating Animals, a philosophical investigation into the carnivorous human condition, Foer is the recipient of many literary honors, including the Guardian First Book Award and the National Jewish Book Award. In We Are the Weather, he issues an urgent call to sacrifice current relative comfort for the sake of humanity's future, one that begins with what we collectively eat and don't eat at breakfast. (recorded 9/17/2019)
In conversation with Action News anchor, Jim Gardner
Dr. Amy Gutmann is President of the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also a professor of political science and communications. Formerly the provost at Princeton, she is the author of 16 books, which focus on topics ranging from higher education and healthcare access to ethics. Fellow Penn academic Jonathan D. Moreno is a professor of medical ethics and health policy, history and sociology of science, and philosophy. A member of President Obama's transition team and bioethics commission, his work has been published in scores of academic and popular journals. In their new book, Gutmann and Moreno examine the last 60 years of American healthcare to demonstrate the tough moral choices that accompany great leaps in medical progress.
(recorded 9/16/2019)
Paul Tough is the author of the bestselling How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, a ''persuasive wake-up call'' (People) to the deprivations of knowledge suffered by American kids from both extremes of the economic spectrum. His other books include Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America and Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why. His work has been published in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and GQ, among other periodicals. In his latest book, Tough challenges conventional wisdom about higher education and explains what works and what doesn't in the American university. (recorded 9/12/2019)
Winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for his novel Empire Falls, Richard Russo is acclaimed for capturing the ''foolishness of this lonely world, but also the humor, friendship and love that abide'' (San Francisco Chronicle). His novel Nobody's Fool, starring the world-worn protagonist Sully and the irresistible residents of North Bath, New York, was adapted into a popular film starring Paul Newman and spawned a popular follow-up, Everybody's Fool. In Chances Are . . ., three 66-year-old men convene on Martha's Vineyard to reminisce about their college days and solve a mystery that has haunted them for decades.
''Among the strongest voices in American fiction'' (Los Angeles Times), writer's writer Amy Hempel is the author of the acclaimed short-story collections Reasons to Live, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, Tumble Home, and The Dog of the Marriage. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, she teaches in the creative writing programs at Bennington College and Stony Brook Southampton. In Sing to It, Hempel employs her singular style of prose to reveal characters in search of connection, compassion, and reckoning. (recorded 8/6/2019)
In conversation with award-winning journalist, Tracey Matisak.
The Democratic governor of Virginia from 2014 to 2018, Terry McAuliffe ''won praise even from Republicans for his tireless salesmanship'' (Washington Post) of the Old Dominion. A former chair of the National Governors Association, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and co-chair of Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, he is also the author of the New York Times bestseller What a Party! My Life Among Democrats, Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators, and Other Wild Animals. In Beyond Charlottesville, McAuliffe offers a behind-the-scenes account and cautionary tale of the destructive Unite the Right rally that ultimately claimed a life and bared the ugliest facets of American racism. (recorded 8/5/2019)
In conversation with Michael A Smerconish
Veteran counterterrorism czar and one of the world's leading experts on cyberspace security, Richard A. Clarke worked for seven presidents and devoted three decades of his professional life to combating threats to the United States. He is the author of four novels and four nonfiction books, including the New York Times bestseller Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror. From 2011 to 2015, Robert K. Knake served in the Obama administration as director for cybersecurity policy at the National Security Council. A senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and senior research scientist at Northeastern University's Global Resilience Institute, he is also a security advisor for a wide swath of businesses. In The Fifth Domain-the Pentagon's name for cyberspace-Clarke and Knake detail cyberattacks, web warriors and weapons fighting on the front lines of these incursions, and the ways that governments, businesses, and citizens can confront these threats.
Michael A. Smerconish is the host of The Michael Smerconish Program on SiriusXM POTUS Channel 124, the host of CNN's Smerconish on Saturday mornings, a Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, and a New York Times bestselling author. (recorded 7/18/2019)
Exploring an astonishing range of genres and subject matter, Julie Salamon is the author of a score of novels, children's books, and nonfiction books. Initially a longtime banking reporter and film critic for the Wall Street Journal, then a TV critic and arts reporter at the New York Times, she has also written hundreds of articles for such magazines as the New Yorker, the New Republic, and Vanity Fair. In An Innocent Bystander, Salamon tells the long-reverberating story of the 1985 slaying of disabled Jewish New Yorker Leon Klinghoffer at the hands of Palestinian terrorists aboard a luxury liner in the Mediterranean. (recorded 7/16/2019)
They're back! In Andrew Shaffer's sequel to the New York Times bestseller Hope Never Dies, the bromantic thriller that saw the former president and vice president tumble down a Delaware rabbit hole of conspiracy and murder, Obama and Biden are once again drawn into a web of intrigue only they can untangle. This time, when Biden joins his old friend and boss in Chicago, a stolen BlackBerry leads to a deeper cabal that unfolds in speakeasies, high-rises, and the streets of the Windy City's South Side. Shaffer's other genre-bending bestsellers include Fifty Shames of Earl Grey, How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters, and The Day of the Donald. (recorded 7/15/2019)
Mary Pope Osborne is the prolific author of the beloved Magic Tree House series of children's books. Featuring time-traveling brother and sister Jack and Annie, the wildly popular books have been translated into nearly three dozen languages and have sold more than 134 million copies worldwide. To the Future, Ben Franklin! finds the duo traveling back in time to meet America's most famous bespectacled inventor. Pope Osborne's sister, Natalie Pope Boyce, is her coauthor on the Magic Tree House Fact Tracker series, which give curious young readers more information about the historical time periods, people, places, and creatures encountered by the main series' young heroes.
With a special appearance by Ben Franklin himself! (recorded 7/11/2019)
''One of the biggest names in popular fiction'' (USA Today), Jennifer Weiner is the beloved number-one New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels-including Good in Bed, All Fall Down, and In Her Shoes, which was made into a major motion picture starring Cameron Diaz, Shirley MacLaine, and the city of Philadelphia. She is also the writer of two YA books about a diminutive Bigfoot and an essay collection titled Hungry Heart, an intimate and honest meditation on yearning, fulfillment, and her many identities. In her new novel, Weiner follows two sisters over the course of more than six decades as they search for their places in an ever-shifting American landscape. (recorded 7/9/2019)
The recipient of an Overseas Press Award for her contributions to This American Life, Rachel Louise Snyder is the author of No Visible Bruises. A ''gut-wrenching'' (Esquire) and intimate investigation into the scope and root causes of one of America's most urgent social crises, it was awarded the prestigious J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Award. Her other books include Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade and the novel What We've Lost Is Nothing, a chronicle of the intrigues and prejudices left in the wake of a mass burglary in a suburban Chicago neighborhood. An associate professor at American University, Snyder has published in a litany of periodicals, including the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the New York Times Magazine. (recorded 6/26/2019)
In conversation with Rakia Reynolds, founder and CEO of Skai Blue Media
The firebrand former editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue and the first African American ever to hold the post of beauty and health director in Condé Nast's 107-year history, Elaine Welteroth ''masterminded the reinvention of the beauty and fashion magazine as a voice for social justice'' (Chicago Tribune). Also a former editor at Glamour and Ebony, she is currently a judge on Project Runway, has written for the show Grown-ish, and has appeared as a commentator in numerous media outlets. Welteroth's New York Times bestselling manifesto/memoir More Than Enough unpacks insights on barrier breaking, identity, and race for those seeking to claim space in the workplace and the world on their own terms.
One of the most sought-after minds in strategic communications, Rakia Reynolds is a thought leader, tastemaker, and branding expert who advises top Fortune 500 companies on creative strategy. Rakia (pronounced RA-KEY-AH) has been guiding client successes with her own distinctive brand of authenticity and expertise for over 15 years. Recently, she served as creative director for Philadelphia's bid for Amazon H2Q- which has resulted in landing Philly as a top 20 finalist from contending cities across the country. Rakia is the Founder and CEO of strategic communications agency Skai Blue Media. A non-traditional agency, Skai Blue Media is a proudly eclectic group of storytellers, brand experts, and strategists. Her team works with lifestyle, technology, non-profit, entrepreneurs and brands, and is based in Philadelphia and New York. (recorded 6/25/2019)
On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the riots that started the fight for American LGBTQ+ rights, The Stonewall Reader highlights some of the movement's most iconic moments and figures in the years before and after those tumultuous events. Assembling archival research and first-person accounts, editor Jason Baumann-the New York Public Library's coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections-planned the book's release to coincide with Love & Resistance: Stonewall 50, the library's exhibition on the Stonewall riots and the ensuing gay liberation movement, open through July 14, 2019. He will be joined by Mark Segal, founder of the Philadelphia Gay News, who will discuss his contribution to the anthology, ''And Then I Danced,'' Karla Jay, author of Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation and a distinguished professor emerita at Pace University, and Joel Hall, part of the Third World Gay Revolution movement in Chicago, and a dancer, choreographer, and activist. (recorded 6/20/2019)
In conversation with Bill Marimow
As NPR's Correspondent in Shanghai, Frank Langfitt created a free-taxi service where he offered rides in exchange for passenger's stories and candid conversation. He met a motley crew of characters whose lives he followed for years as they navigated the sea change in Chinese economic and political life. Langfitt, now NPR's London correspondent, got the idea for the free taxi while growing up outside of Philadelphia where he spent his summers off from college driving cabs and exploring his hometown. Langfitt has also served NPR's East Africa correspondent, the Baltimore Sun's reporter in Beijing, and got his start as a freelancer with the Philadelphia Inquirer. (recorded 6/19/2019)
Esi Edugyan's novel Half-Blood Blues, the story of a World War II–era mixed-race jazz band's abducted star trumpeter, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, among other honors. She is also the author of another novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, and Dreaming of Elsewhere, a nonfiction meditation on home, identity, and belonging. ''A lush, exhilarating travelogue reminiscent of Jules Verne'' (New Yorker), Edugyan's new novel is the soaring tale of a young enslaved person who slips the bonds of Barbados through the miracle of flight. Named one of the best books of the year by a variety of periodicals, its eponymous protagonist finds physical and spiritual freedom amidst an uplifting hot-air balloon sojourn from the Caribbean to the Arctic. (recorded 6/18/2019)
In conversation with longtime radio host Steve Ross
Mark Kram Jr. won the 2013 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing for Like Any Normal Day, the tragic story of two brothers bonded but separated by a devastating sports injury. He formerly wrote for the Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Magazine and was honored by the Society of Professional Journalists with the 2011 Sigma Delta Chi Award for feature writing. Smokin' Joe explores the pugilistic and personal life of one of the sweet science's most misunderstood figures. (recorded 6/13/2019)
In conversation with Nikil Saval, an editor of n+1 and author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace
A professor of geography and urban studies at Temple University, Jacob Shell is the author of Transportation and Revolt: Pigeons, Mules, Canals, and the Vanishing Geographies of Subversive Mobility, a historical study of the connections between modes of transit and rebellion. Praised as ''fascinating'' by esteemed primatologist Frans de Waal, Shell's latest book explores the millennia-spanning working relationship between humans and elephants, journeying to the rugged and sometimes dangerous Southeast Asian forests where this partnership still exists. (recorded 6/11/2019)
Here Comes the Sun, Nicole Dennis-Benn's debut novel about a young Jamaican struggling to protect her sister and village as she experiences feelings for another woman, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, among other honors. Her new novel, Patsy, follows an undocumented Jamaican immigrant's travails in Brooklyn.
Rebecca Makkai's books include The Borrower, Music for Wartime, and The Hundred-Year House, which won a Book of the Year Award from the Chicago Writers Association. Her stories have appeared in Harper's, Tin House, and The Best American Short Stories, among other publications. Shortlisted for the National Book Award and winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal, Makkai's latest novel interweaves fine art, the tragedy of the 1980s and '90s AIDS crisis, and the tumult of the contemporary world. (recorded 6/6/2019)
In his bestselling L.A. Quartet mysteries and the Underworld USA trilogy, James Ellroy ''has vigorously redefined the well-shadowed turf of contemporary crime fiction'' (Atlanta Journal Constitution). He is also the author of the Lloyd Hopkins trilogy of novels, several collections of short stories and essays, and a memoir about his mother's 1958 still-unsolved murder. In This Storm, the second installment in the Second L.A. Quartet, Ellroy hammers out a sordid story of corrupt cops, war profiteers, Japanese internment, and fascism during the darkest days of World War II. (recorded 6/4/2019)
In conversation with nos. 1 bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand
James Patterson holds the Guinness World Record for the most number-one New York Times bestsellers, and his books have sold more than 375 million copies worldwide. A tireless champion of the power of books and reading, Patterson created a new children's book imprint, JIMMY Patterson, whose mission is to foster lifelong reading habits. He has donated more than 1 million books to students and soldiers and funds more than four hundred James Patterson Teacher Education Scholarships. In Unsolved, a steely FBI agent struggles to find the pattern in a string of seemingly unrelated murders. (recorded 6/3/2019)
Rick Atkinson won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for An Army at Dawn, the first volume in his Liberation trilogy, a ''densely researched but supremely readable'' (New York Times Book Review) history of the Allied victory in World War II. His other bestselling books include The Day of Battle, The Long Gray Line, In the Company of Soldiers, and Crusade. A longtime reporter at the Washington Post, Atkinson has garnered two Pulitzer Prizes, a George Polk Award, and the Gerald R. Ford Award for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense. Recounting the chaotic first 21 months of the Revolutionary War, The British Are Coming is the first in a three-volume account of America's fight for independence. (recorded 5/30/2019)
In conversation with Jason Freeman, producer and editor of author events
John Waters's transgressive movies include Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, and Cecil B. Demented. He is also the author of Shock Value, Crackpot, Role Models, Make Trouble, and 2014's Carsick, in which-armed with his trademark loud suits, wit, and pencil-thin mustache-Waters mingled with America's denizens as he hitchhiked to the West Coast. In his new book, the ''Pope of Trash'' offers lessons on failing upward, developing wide-ranging cultural and sartorial tastes, loving without emotional peril, and cheating death itself. (recorded 5/23/2019)
One of Newsweek's ''150 Women Who Shake the World'' and the Guardian's ''Top 100 Women,'' Tony Award–winning playwright Eve Ensler is a performer, activist, and author. Her phenomenon The Vagina Monologues has been published in nearly 50 languages and adapted as an HBO film. She is the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls; One Billion Rising, a global action to end gender-based violence; and co-founder of the City of Joy, an institution for survivors of violence in the Congo. The Apology is a transformative imagined apology from her father. (recorded 5/22/2019)
A staff writer at The New Yorker for more than three decades, Adam Gopnik is the author of Paris to the Moon, The Table Comes First, and At the Strangers' Gate, an ''elegant'' memoir of his 1980s move to a peculiar New York that ''effortlessly weaves in the city's cultural history'' (New York Times). A three-time recipient of the National Magazine Award and a winner of the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting, Gopnik was decorated with the French Republic's medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. An answer to dogmatic attacks on liberalism and its adherents, A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto about the great historical moral success of this philosophy and its necessity in an age of calcifying autocracy. (recorded 5/21/2019)
A ''clever and insightful inspector of the American scene'' (Wall Street Journal), David Brooks has written an op-ed column for The New York Times since 2003. A former editor and columnist at The Weekly Standard, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic Monthly, he frequently appears on PBS NewsHour, Meet the Press, and NPR's All Things Considered. His books include the bestselling Bobos in Paradise, The Social Animal, and The Road to Character, a look at the mélange of traits that can lead to the path of substantive living. In The Second Mountain, Brooks posits that those who embrace lives of deeper commitment and service to others find greater fulfillment.
Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Endowed Lecture (recorded 5/16/2019)
''Masterful. . . . A devastating debut novel'' (The Washington Post), Tommy Orange's There There has been lauded as a new American treasure by some of the country's greatest writers and esteemed publications. A New York Times bestseller and one of its 10 Best Books of the Year, it follows the convergence of 12 unforgettable Native American characters living in Oakland, California, building to a shocking but inexorable conclusion. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, Orange teaches in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Two-time National Book Award finalist Rachel Kushner is the author of The Flamethrowers, a ''white-hot ember of a book'' (Los Angeles Times) that traces the jagged trajectory of a young woman through the 1970s New York art scene, and Telex from Cuba, in which two American children in a gilded rural enclave sense the impending Castro revolution. In The Mars Room, a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Kushner tells the ''tough, prismatic'' yet ''surprisingly luminous'' (Wall Street Journal) story of a young woman at the outset of a double life sentence in a California prison. (recorded 5/15/2019)
George Packer won the 2013 National Book Award for The Unwinding, a biographical examination of the seismic shifts in economics and politics over the past three decades that have brought the United States to the brink. A longtime New Yorker staff writer possessed of a ''far more coherent worldview than most reporters'' (The New York Times Book Review), he was honored with two Overseas Press Club awards in 2003 for his coverage of the war in Iraq and his reporting on the civil war in Sierra Leone. His books include the bestselling The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Blood of the Liberals, winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. In Our Man, Packer charts the rise and fall of diplomat Richard Holbrooke, the brilliant but self-absorbed architect of the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the Balkan wars.
Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture (recorded 5/14/2019)
In conversation with Anusha Balasubramanian. Anusha spends her days as an executive assistant at a Philadelphia investment firm, but her greatest passions are books, cooking, and her mother's idli.
Lauded as the ''queen of Indian cooking'' (Saveur), Madhur Jaffrey is largely credited for bringing her home country's cuisine to America with 1973's An Invitation to Indian Cooking. She has since authored more than a dozen James Beard Award–winning cookbooks. Also an acclaimed actor, Jaffrey won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 1965 Berlin Film Festival for her role in the Merchant Ivory film Shakespeare Wallah. With more than 70 easy-to-replicate recipes, her new cookbook offers a guide to making Indian cuisine with one of America's new favorite kitchen gadgets. Join us to hear stories from her long and varied career. (recorded 5/10/2019)
The first woman and the first life scientist to head the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Susan Hockfield now serves as the esteemed institution's President Emerita. A pioneering neuroscientist whose work included the discovery of a gene linked to the spread of brain cancer, she has earned the Edison Achievement Award, a number of honorary degrees, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and recently served as science envoy with the U.S. Department of State. In The Age of Living Machines, Hockfield describes a contemporary biotech convergence leading to the bleeding edge products that will help us overcome some of our greatest human and environmental challenges.
(recorded 5/8/2019)
''A powerful storyteller, frankly sensual [and] mortally funny" (New York Times), Lorene Cary is the author of the novels Pride, The Price of a Child, If Sons, Then Heirs, and the memoir Black Ice. A senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and the recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, she is the founder of SafeKidsStories.com and Art Sanctuary, a local African American lecture and performance program. In Ladysitting, Cary's irascible 100-year-old grandmother moves in, bringing with her tension, tenderness, and a unique perspective on forgiveness. (recorded 5/7/2019)
Excavating the hidden corners of the human heart and acclaimed for their ''nuance, psychological acuity, and pitch-perfect writing'' (Los Angeles Times), Susan Choi's novels include the Asian American Literary Award-winning The Foreign Student; American Woman, a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize; A Person of Interest, a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award; and My Education, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction. A creative writing teacher at Yale, Choi has earned Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. Trust Exercise follows a star-crossed suburban teen romance in a 1980s performing arts high school.
Myla Goldberg is the author of the bestselling Bee Season, the story of a family's disintegration told through the lens of a young spelling prodigy. It was a New York Times Notable Book, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, and was adapted into a film starring Richard Gere. Her other novels include The False Friend and Wickett's Remedy. Goldberg's new novel is a portrait of an ambitious 1950s-era photographer and mother formed through a collage of perspectives on the character's art and life. (recorded 5/2/2019)
Inspired by the themes in the One Book, One Philadelphia 2019 selection, Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, a panel of formerly incarcerated community advocates were joined in conversation by District Attorney Larry Krasner and Chief Public Defender Keir Bradford-Grey. Their discussions about criminal and juvenile justice reform in Philadelphia were moderated by Claire Shubik-Richards, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, and Arcadia University Professor Favian Martin. Panelists included Kempis Ghani Songster, Reuben Jones, and Cameron Holmes. (recorded 2/11/2019)
In conversation with Annette John-Hall, cohost and producer of The Why on WHYY
A 14-year veteran crime reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News, Nicole Weisensee Egan was the first journalist to delve into Andrea Constand's 2005 sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby. As other news organizations lost interest, she dug deeper, developing sources and discovering details that ultimately influenced the prosecution of ''America's Dad'' a full decade later. Pulling back the curtain on pop culture, media responsibility, and an initially indifferent criminal justice system, Chasing Cosby is the ultimate insider's account of the stunning fall from grace of one of America most celebrated cultural icons. (recorded 4/30/2019)
The national baseball writer for the New York Times since 2010, Tyler Kepner began his career as a teenager, interviewing players for a homemade magazine that garnered him national attention. His first book, The Phillies Experience: A Year-by-Year Chronicle of the Philadelphia Phillies, came out in 2013. Praised by Bob Costas as ''analytical and anecdotal, insightful and entertaining,'' K explores the evolution of pitching through archival research and more than three hundred interviews with Hall of Famers and contemporary stars. (recorded 4/29/2019)
Ranked by Forbes as the third most powerful woman in the world, Melinda Gates has been on a 20-year mission to solve some of the world's most pressing problems. Through her work as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-the world's largest philanthropic organization- one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, invest in women. In The Moment of Lift, the former Microsoft executive introduces us to her heroes in the movement towards equality, offers startling data, shares moving conversations she's had with women from all over the world―and shows how we can all get involved.
John Green is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of six books, including The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down . His books have been published in more than 55 languages, and adapted for popular feature films.
(recorded 4/25/2019)
In conversation with Catherine M. Recker.
''One of the most intense, visceral'' (Philadelphia Inquirer) writers of our time, Mark Bowden is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and Vanity Fair and is the author of numerous New York Times bestselling books of investigative journalism, including Black Hawk Down. His other books include Killing Pablo, winner of the Overseas Press Club's Cornelius Ryan Award for book of the year; The Three Battles of Wanat, a collection of his best long-form essays; and Hue 1968, the story of the Vietnam War's bloodiest battle as told by participants from both sides. In The Last Stone, Bowden returns to a story he covered as a cub reporter in the 1970s as new evidence emerges in the case of two vanished children. (recorded 4/24/2019)
In conversation with Concepción de León, the digital staff writer for the Books desk at The New York Times. She also writes "El Espace," a news and culture column for Latino.
A ''one-woman cultural collision'' (Los Angeles Times Book Review), poet, essayist, and fiction writer Julia Alvarez is renowned for her lyrical, poignant, politically insightful books, including How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, which details the lives of four sisters before and after their exile from the Dominican Republic; A Wedding in Haiti, an examination of three of Alvarez's most personal relationships; and Return to Sender, a novel about the families of undocumented Mexican workers in Vermont. Her many awards include the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature and the 2013 National Medal of Arts. On the eve of the 25th anniversary of its publication, the new edition of Alvarez's novel In the Time of the Butterflies is a celebration of the four mariposa sisters who symbolized courage, love, and resistance. (recorded 4/23/2019)
In conversation with Bruce Weber, former obituary writer for the New York Times and author of the books As They See 'Em: A Fan's Travels in the Land of Umpires and Life is A Wheel: Memoirs of a Bike-Riding Obituarist.
Janny Scott, a 15-year reporter for The New York Times, was part of a team that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. She is also the author of the ''meticulous'' (Washington Post) biography A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother. She is the scion of a wealthy investment banker forebear who built the imposing 800-acre Androssan estate on Philadelphia's Main Line. In her new book, she tells the multi-generational story of the ways in which financial and genetic inheritance affected members of her family, including her grandmother, Helen Hope Montgomery Scott, a socialite and celebrated horsewoman said to have inspired Katherine Hepburn's character in the play and Academy Award-winning film The Philadelphia Story. (recorded 4/22/2019)
In conversation with State Representative Christopher M. Raab
Emily Bazelon is the author of Sticks and Stones, ''a humane and closely reported exploration'' (Wall Street Journal) of school bullying and the empathetic steps students, parents, and teachers can take to mitigate this cruel phenomenon. A staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and a former senior editor at Slate, she is a lecturer at Yale Law School, where she is also the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law. In her new book, Bazelon proffers a major critique of the American criminal justice system, arguing that prosecutors have vast and unchecked power over defendants' charges and sentences. (recorded 4/18/2019)
''The world's best green journalist'' (Time), Bill McKibben gave one of the earliest cautions about global warming with his 1989 book The End of Nature. His many other bestselling books about the environment include Deep Economy, Eaarth, and Oil and Honey; as well as a novel, Radio Free Vermont, which imagines a band of Vermont patriots who decide to secede from the United States. Recipient of the 2013 Gandhi Peace Award, McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In Falter, he offers a dire warning about the shrinking space in which civilization can exist. (recorded 4/16/2019)
''A rollicking adventure into the origins of the apostrophe, the proliferation of profanity in American culture, and everything in between'' (San Francisco Chronicle), Mary Norris's bestselling Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen was a raucous, cheery memoir about grammar, usage, and practical life advice gleaned from her three decades in The New Yorker's venerable and notoriously fastidious copy department. Her latest book is another paean to language and expression. In Greek to Me, Norris celebrates all things Greek-words, gods, wine, and waiters-as she offers a hot take on the distant but oddly familiar language that helped beget our own. (recorded 4/15/2019)
A 30-year contributor to The New Yorker, Patricia Marx is the author of several books including Starting From Happy and Him Her Him Again the End of Him, both of which were Thurber Prize finalists. A former writer for Saturday Night Live and Rugrats, she has taught screenwriting and humor at a number of universities, and is the recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship. Her new book, illustrated by Roz Chast, is a collection of bon mots passed down from her mother. Chast has published more than 800 cartoons in The New Yorker since 1978. She has written or illustrated more than a dozen books, including several collected volumes of her published cartoons, an illustrated love note to Manhattan titled Going into Town, and the memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and a National Book Award Finalist.
Natalie Cohn Memorial Lecture (recorded 4/11/2019)
In conversation with Chef Elijah Milligan
A former Top Chef star, the executive chef at Washington D.C.'s popular Kith and Kin, and a Forbes and Zagat's 30 Under 30 honoree, Kwame Onwuachi is one of America's most acclaimed young culinary personalities. Raised in the Bronx and Nigeria, he started a catering company with money he made selling candy on the subway, eventually training at the Culinary Institute of America and in the kitchens of some of the country's best restaurants. A memoir about food, celebrity, and race, Notes from a Young Black Chef serves up lessons about following your star even when it takes a wrong turn. (recorded 4/10/2019)
Richard Blanco made history four times at Barack Obama's second presidential inauguration: He was the first immigrant, the first Latino, the youngest person, and the first openly gay person to be the U.S. inaugural poet. Exploring heritage and identity, his poetry collections include City of a Hundred Fires, Directions to the Beach of the Dead, and Looking for the Gulf Motel. He is also the author of The Prince of Los Cocuyos, a memoir that delves into his upbringing as the child of Cuban exiles, and his artistic, sexual, and cultural identities as an American. Through seemingly disparate historical events and motifs, his new poetry collection asks, ''How do we love this country?'' (recorded 4/9/2019)
A 30-year writer at the Miami Herald whose column was syndicated in more than 500 newspapers, humorist Dave Barry won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1988. His more than 30 New York Times bestselling books include I'll Mature When I'm Dead, Insane City, You Can Date When You're 40, and Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States. Two of Barry's books were used as the basis for the CBS TV sitcom Dave's World. Drawn from daily life's deeply personal but universally experienced humiliations, absurdities, and moments of grace, Lessons from Lucy urges us to find the joy in our lives. (recorded 4/8/2019)
In conversation with Dick Polman, "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania, national political columnist at WHYY News and contributor to The Atlantic
Standing at ''the summit of American historical writing'' (Washington Post), Robert Caro is the author of biographies of New York power-brokering urban planner Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson, the latter of which is part of a multi-volume series on the complicated ex-President. He has earned an astounding two Pulitzer Prizes, three National Book Critics Circle Awards, two National Book Awards, the Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Art and Letters, and in 2010 President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal. In Working, Caro reflects on lessons gleaned from researching and writing his watershed books, as well as what it felt like to interview many of the people central to these works. (recorded 4/8/2019)
A longtime foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, Michael Dobbs reported on some of the most important events of our time. His many books include Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America, and One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. His latest book details the story of the isolationist United States's handling of the refugee crisis of the 1930s and 40s, as seen through the desperate attempts of German Jews to acquire U.S. visas.
The Unwanted complements the exhibition The Americans and the Holocaust that is now on view at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC (recorded 4/4/2019)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition
''The ultimate Obama insider'' (New York Times), Valerie Jarrett was the longest serving advisor in the 44th President's administration. Born in Iran and raised in 1960s Chicago, Jarrett originally practiced corporate law and left to enter local politics, where in 1991 she interviewed an up-and-coming lawyer named Michelle Robinson. And the rest is history, one she tells in Finding My Voice, a memoir of her rise to become one of the most consequential women in the United States.
Barbara Gohn Day Memorial Lecture (recorded 4/3/2019)
Barry Lopez won the National Book Award for Arctic Dreams, a ''rich, abundant, vigorously composed'' (Boston Globe) meditation on his travels in the barren but beautiful far North. His other work includes Of Wolves and Men, Crow and Weasel, and Resistance. Texas Tech University's Visiting Distinguished Scholar, he has earned Guggenheim, Lannan, and National Science Foundation fellowships. In Horizon, Lopez immerses readers in six far-flung regions of the world as he ponders man's explorations and exploitations of nature amidst a very personal search for purpose in a fractured world.
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Endowed Lecture (recorded 4/2/2019)
In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition
A ''heroine of the resistance'' (Vogue), Cecile Richards was the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund from 2006 to 2018. The daughter of legendary Ann Richards, she began her career in the labor movement, then helped her mother become Texas's first Democratic woman governor, and later served as Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's Deputy Chief of Staff. One of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World, she serves on the board of the Ford Foundation and founded the Texas Freedom Network in order to counter the religious right. Make Trouble tells her indelible story and offers practical advice for a new generation of leaders.
Sandra Shaber Memorial Lecture (recorded 3/28/2019)
Nathan Englander is the author of the story collections For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. In addition to his widely anthologized short fiction, he is the author of the novels The Ministry of Special Cases and Dinner at the Center of the Earth. In Kaddish.com, to his Orthodox family's dismay, an atheist refuses to say the Jewish prayer for the dead for his recently departed father..
''Historical fiction that unfolds with the urgency of a thriller'' (Newsweek), Thomas Mallon's acclaimed novels include Dewey Defeats Truman, Watergate, and Fellow Travelers, which was adapted into a popular opera. For this work he has earned Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the National Book Critics Circle award for reviewing, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award for prose style. Landfall is a fictionalized account of the stormy George W. Bush years between 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. (recorded 3/27/2019)
In conversation with award-winning journalist Tracey Matisak.
Falsely accused and convicted of a 1972 robbery in which a white guard was killed, Albert Woodfox served more than four decades in solitary confinement in Louisiana's notoriously brutal Angola prison. Finding solidarity and inspiration behind bars with members of the Black Panther Party, he was able to find inner peace and a spirit of resistance. After decades he was finally able to find a capable lawyer sympathetic to his plight, though it still took another 16 years to prove his innocence and gain his release. According to CNN's Van Jones, Woodfox's life and new memoir, Solitary, are an ''inspiring triumph of the human spirit and a powerful call for the necessity of prison reform.'' (recorded 3/26/2019)
''A heady amalgam of science, history, a little bit of anthropology and plenty of nuanced, captivating storytelling'' (The New York Times Book Review), Adam Rutherford's A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived delves into the ages-spanning story of our species through the field of genomics. A National Geographic Best Book of 2017, it was a nonfiction finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A University College London PhD and science writer for The Guardian, Rutherford has also written and hosted several programs for the BBC, including Inside Science, The Cell, and Playing God. His new book investigates just what it means to be human. (recorded 3/21/2019)
In conversation with Beth Kephart, the award-winning author of twenty-four books, including Going Over, Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, and Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River.
''An unflinching witness and eloquent mourner'' (The New Yorker), Carolyn Forché is the author of the poetry collections Blue Hour, The Angel of History, The Country Between Us, and Gathering the Tribes. For this body of work she has amassed an impressive list of honors, including fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Windham-Campbell Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. The Lannan Chair in Poetry at Georgetown University, Forché is also a respected translator, editor, and activist. What You Have Heard Is True tells the story of her journey with an enigmatic man into the chaos and horror of the Salvadoran Civil War. (recorded 3/19/2019)
Renowned chef and restaurateur Lidia Bastianich is the owner and co-owner of celebrated Italian restaurants in Manhattan, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City. The author of a baker's dozen cookbooks, a judge on Masterchef Jr. Italy, and a regular contributor to television cooking shows for two decades, she currently hosts the Emmy-winning Lidia's Kitchen on PBS. Her other honors include recognition from the National Italian American Foundation, several James Beard Awards, and induction into the Culinary Hall of Fame. Her new memoir traces the route from her childhood in communist Yugoslavia and consequent emigration to New York at 12, to her first tentative steps in the restaurant business as a teen.
(recorded 3/18/2019)
Esteemed primatologist Frans de Waal is the author of The Bonobo and the Atheist, a ''tour de force'' (Nature) exploration of the biological roots of human morality found in primate social emotions, including empathy, reciprocity, and fairness. One of Time's 100 Most Influential People, de Waal is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, directs the Living Links at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, and is the C. H. Candler Professor in Emory University's psychology department. Positing that humans are not the only species capable of love, hate, and everything in between, Mama's Last Hug explores the profound emotional lives of animals. (recorded 3/14/2019)
In conversation with Gene Seymour, contributor to The Nation and former film critic and jazz columnist for Newsday. He has written for Bookforum, CNN.com, and The Washington Post.
Author and spoken-word artist Darius James's 1992 masterpiece, the William S. Burroughs meets Thomas Pynchon meets Ishmael Reed fever-dream Negrophobia, is a raunchy, raucous, headlong dive into the many faces of American racism. With other works including That's Blaxploitation: Roots of the Baadassssss 'Tude, Voodoo Stew, and Froggy Chocolate's Christmas Eve, James is the cowriter and narrator of the of 2013 film The United States of Hoodoo. With a new introduction by film scholar Amy Abugo Ongiri and a new preface by the author, the multi-genre Negrophobia is dire, darkly comic, and more relevant than ever. (recorded 3/12/2019)
An Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota and an unromantic chronicler of Native American culture and literature, David Treuer is the author of the novels Prudence, Little, The Hiawatha, and The Translation of Dr. Appeles. He is a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California, a Pushcart Prize winner, and a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient. In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer offers an epic counter-narrative to the conventional histories of Native American life from the 1890 massacre to the present. (recorded 3/7/2019)
In converation with Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger
Examining the intersections of race, gender, and politics in a popular monthly Cosmo column, Brittney Cooper is also a professor of women's and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University. Praised by Michael Eric Dyson as ''the boldest young feminist writing today,'' Cooper is the author of Beyond Respectability, a map of the development of female African American intellectuals. Her new book celebrates the power of anger, dispels stereotypes, and reminds women of the power they possess.
Rebecca Traister is the author of All the Single Ladies, The New York Times bestselling book about the intersection of sex, economics, and emotions related to the growing number of single women in 21st-century America; and Big Girls Don't Cry, an investigation of the 2008 American presidential election's effects on women and cultural feminism. A writer-at-large for New York magazine, Traister has contributed to many other periodicals, including The Nation, Vogue and The Washington Post. (recorded 3/5/2019)
The author of numerous international bestselling crime novels, Don Winslow is the recipient of dozens of awards and spots on myriad best-books-of-the-year lists. These books include The Winter of Frankie Machine, The Force, and Savages, for which he wrote the screenplay for the Oliver Stone-directed film adaptation of the same name. The conclusion to the Cartel trilogy that began with The Power of the Dog and The Cartel, ''an epic, gritty south-of-the-border Godfather for our time'' (Esquire), Winslow's latest book brings the blood-soaked War on Drugs onto American soil and into our highest corridors of power. (recorded 2/28/2019)