Completely Booked - Official Podcast of the Jacksonville Public Library

Beatriz Williams is the New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author of Our Woman in Moscow, The Summer Wives, Her Last Flight, The Golden Hour, The Secret Life of Violet Grant, A Hundred Summers, and several other works of historical fiction, including four novels in collaboration with fellow bestselling authors Karen White and Lauren Willig. A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA in Finance from Columbia University, Beatriz worked as a communications and corporate strategy consultant in New York and London before her first novel was published in 2012. Beatriz's books have won numerous awards, have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and appear regularly in bestseller lists around the world.

Born in Seattle, Washington, Beatriz now lives near the Connecticut shore with her husband and four children, where she divides her time between writing and laundry.

Reviews

"Williams' particular gift as a writer is peeling back the pages of history to breathe life into the interior lives of women — how they lived, loved, and lost within the expectations and limitations of their time." — Entertainment Weekly

"I think Williams is writing the best historical fiction out there. It's lush with period detail but feels immediate." — Elin Hilderbrand

Interviewer Jessica Hatch has a passion for writing laugh-out-loud fiction with a strong-beating heart. Her first novel, My Big Fake Wedding debuted at #1 on Amazon's "Humorous American Literature" charts in August 2022. It went on to be a Lonely Victories Best Book of 2022, and her follow-up, How to Keep a Husband for Ten Days, was a BookLovr pick for spring 2023.

Before being acquired by Bookouture, her debut novel won a pitch slam at the Brooklyn Book Festival in 2018 and was workshopped by acclaimed author Rumaan Alam at Aspen Summer Words in 2019.

Jessica has worked in book publishing since 2013. She has had bylines published in Writer's Digest, The Millions, and G*Mob Magazine, among others, and she is a proud alumna of the Mors Tua Vita Mea workshop in Sezze Romano, Italy.

Jessica was born outside of Richmond, Virginia, and now lives in Jacksonville, Florida, with her bartender husband, Paul, and their three cats. When she is not writing, you can find her jogging on the Riverwalk or planning her next international trip. Say hello on Instagram at @JessicaNHatch.

Reading Recommendations

Check out Beatriz's historical fiction from the library!

---

Never miss an event! Sign up for email newsletters at https://bit.ly/JaxLibraryUpdates

Jacksonville Public LibraryWebsite: https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaxlibrary Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaxLibrary/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaxlibrary/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jaxpubliclibraryfl Contact Us: [email protected]

In resistance to the homogenous policies that limited the possibility and wonder that grows from the earth, Dungy employs the various plants, herbs, vegetables, and flowers she grows in her garden as metaphor and treatise for how homogeneity threatens the future of our planet, and why cultivating diverse and intersectional language in our national discourse about the environment is the best means of protecting it.

Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade, winner of the Colorado Book Award. She is also the author of the essay collections Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden and Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dungy has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, her honors include NEA Fellowships in poetry (2003) and prose (2018), an American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and two Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations. Dungy's poems have been published in Best American Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems, the Pushcart Anthology, Best American Travel Writing, and over thirty other anthologies. She is University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University.

Interviewer Nikesha Elise Williams is a two-time Emmy award winning producer, an award-winning author, and producer and host of the Black & Published podcast. Her latest novel, The Seven Daughters of Dupree was acquired by Scout Press and will be published in 2025. A Chicago native, Nikesha is a columnist with JAX Today. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, ESSENCE, and VOX. She lives in Florida with her family.

READ

Check out Camille's work from the library: https://jkpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?qu=camille+dungy&te=

---

Never miss an event! Sign up for email newsletters at https://bit.ly/JaxLibraryUpdates

Jacksonville Public LibraryWebsite: https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaxlibrary Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaxLibrary/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaxlibrary/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jaxpubliclibraryfl Contact Us: [email protected]

Anyone can be a writer – even an accomplished chef! The first step is deciding what you'll write about. It could be something you're passionate about or particularly skilled in... Or could it simply be the book (or cookbook) you think is missing from the world!

Dennis Chan grew up in Jacksonville, where his family has owned twelve restaurants in the past eight decades. His earliest memories of food include standing on a little stool next to his grandfather's restaurant stove while watching him cook. Somehow, Dennis always knew that he would end up in the restaurant business. He opened Blue Bamboo in his hometown in 2005, after graduating from the prestigious Culinary Institute of America and working with the Disney Company, and celebrity chef Ming Tsai. Chef Dennis is an adjunct professor at Florida State College at Jacksonville and teaches personal enrichment cooking classes at Blue Bamboo. Chan's first cookbook, Hip Asian Comfort Food, was published in 2009. He also served as president of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association North East chapter. Dennis won the 2018 Neighborhood to Nation recipe contest by General Mills and was chosen as one of 16 chefs to participate in Hormel Foods' Culinary Enrichment and Innovation Program. Chef Chan lives in Jacksonville, Florida with his wife Elizabeth, and seven-year-old sons Bennett and Michael. He says, "After working around the country, I am so happy to have found my way back home." A supporter of many local organizations, Dennis believes that there is a place in everyone's heart and schedule for worthwhile organizations.

Officially known as the Boss of Food in her family, interviewer Lauren Titus is a long-time Northeast Florida resident who brings over 30 years experience in our area's local food movement to the magazine, along with a passion and expertise in baking and front-yard farming. After a career in digital production and enterprise content management, Lauren is excited to be focused on her first loves: writing and talking about food and the vital role it plays in our community. Lauren lives with her husband in St. Augustine, and while her children have flown from the nest, they continue to support the local food scenes in Austin and Los Angeles.

READ

Check out Dennis's cookbook, Let's Eat, from the library!

DENNIS RECOMMENDS

Places in Jacksonville to hold events in: The Main Library's Ansbacher Map Room is a cool place to hang out. It is also just a few floors away from the Main Library's Conference Center, which has an auditorium and a very functional event room. We have gotten the chance to cater in some pretty cool venues over the last 18 years. Some were on top of tall buildings, like the clubhouse at the Peninsula, and some were on the ground surrounded by trees, like Chandler Oaks Barn. We've catered at shooting ranges, and at homes right on the beach. We also I also love the venues making a difference for organizations in our community such as the soundstage at WJCT and the Glass Factory.

Book inspirations: Hello Cupcake for playful decorating techniques on cupcakes. The author is the photographer from my mentor's book, Blue Ginger Cookbook. Looking through that book always brings a smile. I have authored two cookbooks currently, Hip Asian Comfort Food and Let's Eat. Local bookstores carry them, and there is a copy at the Main Library. Southern Goodness from Celestia Mobley is my favorite local cookbook.

Music inspirations: My favorite songs are cooking show theme songs.

Sources for great ingredients: Jax Oriental, La Salsa, and Caribbean-Latino Asian are all well-stocked Asian markets. Atlantic Beach Urban Farms, Be Well Greens, and Bacon Farms are all great places to get fresh produce. The North Florida School has a good program teaching special needs children how to grow and maintain produce, and how to work in kitchens. Nothing beats Azar Sausage Company for locally made sausage. Cline's Custom Meats is the best place locally to get a steak to cook at home. We also have a cool "u-pick" persimmon farm here called Willie's Sweet Persimmons.

Local Personal Enrichment Cooking Schools: A Chefs Cooking Studio and Italian Cooking Lessons Jax are two places that I teach on occasion, in addition to cooking classes at Blue Bamboo.

---

Never miss an event! Sign up for email newsletters at https://bit.ly/JaxLibraryUpdates

Jacksonville Public LibraryWebsite: https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaxlibrary Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaxLibrary/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaxlibrary/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jaxpubliclibraryfl Contact Us: [email protected]

Dr. Wayne W. Wood, Hon. AIA. Widely regarded as one of the foremost chroniclers of Jacksonville's history and architecture, Dr. Wayne Wood has been called "the undisputed godfather of preservation in Jacksonville." An author, historian, artist, and retired optometrist, Wayne is the founder of Riverside Avondale Preservation, the Riverside Arts Market, and Friends of Hemming Park. He is the author of the local classic book, Jacksonville's Architectural Heritage, and he recently published a completely new deluxe edition to commemorate the city's Bicentennial. It was his fifteenth book on Jacksonville. In 2010 he was selected as one of the "Top Twenty Change Agents in Northeast Florida" by the Florida Times-Union. Wayne is the Historian-at-Large for the Jacksonville Historical Society. A self-proclaimed "Arts Agitator," he was named one of the "50 Most Influential People in Northeast Florida" by Jacksonville Magazine, and Folio Weekly called him "The Most Interesting Man in Jacksonville."

Interviewer Tim Gilmore is the author of 21 books and several works for the stage, and is the founder of the literary arts festival JaxbyJax. He's also the writer and creator of www.jaxpsychogeo.com, a project that explores nearly 600 stories of strange and historic locations in and around Jacksonville, Florida.

READ

Check out a copy of the Bicentennial Edition or the original edition of Jacksonville's Architectural Heritage in our catalog!

WAYNE RECOMMENDS

For more great books on local history, check out:

• Life: The Untold Story of Charles Adrian Pillars, by Wayne Wood
• The Broward Family: From France to Florida, by Robert C. Broward
• The Great Fire of 1901, by Wayne Wood and Bill Foley
• The Architecture of Henry John Klutho: The Prairie School in Jacksonville, by Robert C. Broward

---

Never miss an event! Sign up for email newsletters at https://bit.ly/JaxLibraryUpdates

Jacksonville Public LibraryWebsite: https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaxlibrary Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaxLibrary/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaxlibrary/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jaxpubliclibraryfl Contact Us: [email protected]

Michael Wiley's new novel is The Long Way Out, featuring Franky Dast, an exonerated ex-con who investigates a series of murders in Northeast Florida. Michael is also the author of three mystery and detective series, including the Shamus Award-winning Joe Kozmarski books, the Daniel Turner thrillers, and, most recently, the Sam Kelson PI novels, which are currently in development for television. His short stories appear often in magazines and anthologies, including Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2022.

Michael grew up in Chicago and lived and worked in the neighborhoods and on the streets where he sets his Kelson and Kozmarski mysteries. He teaches literature at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville—the setting of The Long Way Out, an earlier Franky Dast novel (Monument Road), and the Daniel Turner novels.

Interviewer Mark Ari authored the novel, The Shoemaker's Tale (Zephyr Press) and publishes fiction, nonfiction and poetry. His paintings have been exhibited in group and solo shows in Spain, France, and the United States, especially New York City. Most recently, "Not in My Country," an installation (text, film, sculpture, and scent) created with Ginger Andro and Chuck Glicksman was selected for Walls and Borders, an exhibition at Westbeth Gallery (NYC, 2021) sponsored by the Sculptors Guild (NYC). Recent writings appear in Adroit Journal, Heavy Feather Review, the International Journal of Professional Holistic Aromatherapy, and the anthology, Music Gigs Gone Wrong (Paycock Press). Ari is a three-time MacDowell fellow. Other awarded fellowships include the Ragdale Foundation (twice), Ucross Foundation, and Spain's Fundacion Valparaiso. He is a multi-award-winning educator at the University of North Florida, where he directs the creative writing program.

READ

Check out all of Michael's books from the library, as well as Ari's The Shoemaker's Tale!

Michael Wiley recommends three "first books" by other mystery and thriller writers:

• Megan Abbott, Die a Little: "A terrific hardboiled story by a writer known best now for her psychological suspense thrillers."
• S.A. Cosby, My Darkest Prayer: "The newly re-released, amazing first book by the author of Blacktop Wasteland and Razor Blade Tears."
• Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress: "The Easy Rawlins mystery by the writer of dozens of excellent books, though none better than this."

---

Never miss an event! Sign up for email newsletters at https://bit.ly/JaxLibraryUpdates

Jacksonville Public LibraryWebsite: https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaxlibrary Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaxLibrary/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaxlibrary/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jaxpubliclibraryfl Contact Us: [email protected]

Leela Corman is a painter, educator, and graphic novel creator, working in the realm of diaspora Ashkenazi culture and third-generation restorative work. Her books include the Unterzakhn (Schocken/Pantheon, 2012), which was nominated for the Eisner, the L.A. Times Book Award, and Le Prix Artemisia, and won the ROMICS Prize for Best Anglo-American Comic. Her latest, a short comics collection called You Are Not A Guest, was released by Field Mouse Press in 2023. Her graphic novel Victory Parade, a story about WWII, women's wrestling, and the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp, will be published by Schocken/Pantheon in 2024. Her short comics have also appeared in The Believer Magazine, Tablet Magazine, Nautilus, and The Nib.

Corman works primarily with Polish-Jewish history and life, in both her fiction and nonfiction comics, as well as women's history, 20th-century New York history, trauma, loss and (occasionally) music.

Interviewer Badr Milligan is a project manager by day and a podcast creator by night. Since 2012, he has been vocal in sharing his interests with the world and amplifying the stories of others. He's the creator and host of the award-winning podcast, The Short Box: A Comic Book Talk Show, and recently launched The Nexxt Spin podcast for music lovers. In 2018, he helped form the Jax Podcaster's United Group, a collective of podcasters and audio creators dedicated to helping one another through collaboration and community. Badr is also an FSCJ alumnus and veteran of the Florida Air National Guard, using both experiences to run his own small business, The Short Box Entertainment Company.

Check out Leela's work from the library: https://jkpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?qu=leela+corman&te=

Unterzakhn by Leela Corman: A mesmerizing, heartbreaking graphic novel of immigrant life on New York's Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century, as seen through the eyes of twin sisters whose lives take radically and tragically different paths. For six-year-old Esther and Fanya, the teeming streets of New York's Lower East Side circa 1910 are both a fascinating playground and a place where life's lessons are learned quickly and often cruelly.

Leela Recommends

"I am a recommendations factory!"

Places to visit in Florida:

• The Springs! Visit with care and gentleness for their fragile ecosystems and be amazed at their hallucinatory beauty. They're Florida's best-kept secret!
• Chamblin's Book Mine in Jacksonville.
• Hear Again Records, the amazing Third House Books, and Volta Coffee, all in Gainesville.

Podcasts Leela Recommends:

• Maintenance Phase! Essential listening for debunking all the wellness pseudoscience, diet culture, and anti-fatness we all grew up with. The BMI episode alone should be required listening. Plus it's very funny!
• Conspirituality, a weekly deep dive into the intersection of cults, yoga and wellness culture, right-wing extremism, mis- and disinformation, and politics.
• On The Media, essential investigative journalism and media literacy.
• Reveal, one of the best investigative journalism podcasts I've heard, especially in the areas of systemic racism and abuses of power in the US, hosted by the fantastic Al Letson, who I believe is a Florida native. [Editor's note: An Orange Park High School grad!]

Artists Leela Recommends:

• Wangechi Mutu
• Clarity Haynes
• Jinal Sangoi
• Jeanne Mammen
• Joan Semmel
• William Kentridge
• Kara Walker

Television Leela Recommends:

• Reservation Dogs, a funny and heartbreaking series about contemporary Indigenous life in Oklahoma, created and starring Indigenous folks.
• Pose, set in the queer ballroom scene of New York in the late 1980s and early 90s, starring, among other greats, national treasure Billy Porter.
• This is going to sound strange, but I'm really into German detective shows on Netflix, especially Dogs Of Berlin, Same Sky, NSU German History X, and Kleo, all of which deal in various ways with the end of the Cold War, the rise of racist movements after the Wall fell, and the complexities of immigration and contemporary Germany. CW for violence and depictions of racism.
• Severance is an excellent sci-fi, reminiscent of the very best of Philip K Dick's work.

Films/Directors Leela Recommends:

• Pedro Almodóvar
• Fatih Akin
• Ildiko Enyedi
• Jim Jarmusch
• Preston Sturges
• Busby Berkeley
• That documentary about Little Richard, I Am Everything. What a beautiful person he was!

Music Leela Recommends:

• Come, the best band of the 1990s, who've been re-issuing their back catalog and playing reunion shows everywhere.
• Bill Orcutt Quartet, "Music For Four Guitars", very up my Branca/Verlaine alley.
• Chris Brokaw, "Puritan".
• Thurston Moore Group.

Prose Leela Recommends:

• Lisa Carver books.
• Jewish Currents magazine, the best of contemporary diaspora thought and politics.
• Girls They Write Songs About by Carlene Bauer, the most pitch-perfect Gen X novel I have yet encountered.
• This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, by Tadeusz Borowski. A corrosive work written a few years after the author's release from Auschwitz, that is required reading for high school students in Poland.

Comic Creators Leela Recommends:

• Emil Ferris
• Lauren Weinstein
• Rina Ayuyang
• Megan Kelso
• Jaime Hernandez 4Ever!

Miscellaneous Recommendations:

Casey Johnston's newsletter She's A Beast, in which she writes about weight lifting, debunking and dismantling diet culture and fitness pseudoscience and anti-fatness, and celebrates getting swole.

---

Never miss an event! Sign up for email newsletters at https://bit.ly/JaxLibraryUpdates

Jacksonville Public LibraryWebsite: https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaxlibrary Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaxLibrary/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaxlibrary/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jaxpubliclibraryfl Contact Us: [email protected]

Please note: This episode is only available until June 16, 2023.

New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean has written on a variety of topics, including one that's near and dear to our hearts! Hear her talk to local author Michael Wiley about The Library Book, her other bestselling books, her writing process, and what it’s like to have your work and life adapted for the big screen! She is currently at work on adapting The Library Book for a forthcoming limited series with Paramount TV, as well as a memoir.

Susan Orlean is the bestselling author of The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession, The Library Book, and Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. Her latest is On Animals, her first essay collection in nearly twenty years, which gathers a lifetime of musings, meditations, and in-depth profiles about the creatures we share our homes, lives and the world with. 

The Library Book is an exploration of the history, power, and future of these endangered institutions, told through her quest to solve a mysterious act of arson that nearly destroyed the Los Angeles Public Library in 1986. Orlean’s writing has inspired two films so far, including Adaptation (based off The Orchid Thief), the Academy Award-winning film directed by Spike Jonze and starring Meryl Streep. A staff writer at The New Yorker for over three decades, she has also written for Outside, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Vogue, and The Boston Globe, and has edited both Best American Essays and Best American Travel Writing.

Find more at www.susanorlean.com and @susanorlean on social media. 

Interviewer Michael Wiley’s new novel is The Long Way Out, featuring Franky Dast, an exonerated ex-con who investigates a series of murders in Northeast Florida. Michael is also the author of three mystery and detective series, including the Shamus Award-winning Joe Kozmarski books, the Daniel Turner thrillers, and, most recently, the Sam Kelson PI novels, which are currently in development for television. His short stories appear often in magazines and anthologies, including Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2022. He teaches literature at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville.

Books We Recommend:

• Check out Susan Orlean’s books!
• Check out Michael Wiley's books!

---

Never miss an event! Sign up for email newsletters at https://bit.ly/JaxLibraryUpdates 

Jacksonville Public Library
Website: https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaxlibrary
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaxLibrary/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaxlibrary/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jaxpubliclibraryfl
Contact Us: [email protected] 

Jessica Q. Stark is the author of Buffalo Girl (BOA Editions, forthcoming April 2023), Savage Pageant (Birds, LLC, 2020) and four poetry chapbooks, including INNANET (The Offending Adam, 2021). Savage Pageant was named one of the "Best Books of 2020" in The Boston Globe and in Hyperallergic. Her poetry has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry, Poetry Society of America, Pleiades, The Southeast Review, Carolina Quarterly, The Boiler, Tupelo Quarterly, Glass Poetry Journal, among others. She is a Poetry Editor at AGNI and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Florida. She co-organizes the Dreamboat Reading Series with Dorsey Craft in Jacksonville, Florida.

Interviewer Dorsey Craft is the author of Plunder, winner of the May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. Her work has received support from the Sewanee Writer's Conference and the Anderson Center at Tower View. Dorsey's poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Blackbird, Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She currently serves as Assistant Poetry Editor of AGNI and teaches composition and creative writing at the University of North Florida.

JESSICA RECOMMENDS

Top three poetry books on my shelf:

• Dorothy Chan's Babe
• Carmen Jimenez Smith's Be Recorder
• Diane Seuss' Frank: Sonnets

Semi-secret favorite haunts in Jax:

• Light on the Sugar bakery for phenomenal Asian pastries and creme puffs
• Trent's Seafood for the best low-key seafood in town
• Camp Chowenwaw Park for unique, treehouse camping just outside of town

---

Sign Up for Library U to hear about the latest Lit Chats and catch them live! — https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/library-u-enrollment

Jacksonville Public LibraryWebsite: https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaxlibrary Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaxLibrary/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaxlibrary/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jaxpubliclibraryfl Contact Us: [email protected]

Aaron Woodson is a Florida-based military combat veteran who has served in the US Air Force and US Air National Guard for over 15 years. He began his military career participating in military campaigns such as Operation Iraqi Freedom and Inherent Resolve. At a very young age, Aaron began to nurture an interest in and passion for poetry. He began to write poems at school and his love for writing grew so deep that he told his parents that someday he would publish his own book. Having moved to Jacksonville in 2016, he decided to finish up his now-completed book, The Face of Expression, a poetry book that fuses story-telling and non-fiction clips into it. The Face of Expression highlights topics about life, love, pain, struggle, rejection, faith, and experiences. Aaron gets his inspiration to write from his spirituality, traveling, singing, music, positive quotes, and experiences, among others.

Interviewer Taryn "LoveReigns" Wharwood is a poet, writer, author, emcee, motivational speaker, entrepreneur and curator. Taryn is the program manager for The Performers Academy, a 12-year partner of Family Support Services. The Performers Academy uses the healing power of the arts as behavioral intervention and diversion for youth and teens, and Taryn manages programs including the Just Like Me Cultural and Exhibition Experience for teens.

Taryn conducts weekly writing workshops for adults in recovery, at-risk youth in drug rehabilitation centers, youth in foster care and in juvenile detention centers. She is the CEO of IAmLoveReigns Enterprises LLC, providing online business solutions for small- to medium-sized businesses, artists and entertainers. Taryn is also the host of the Random Thoughts of Reign podcast, which she began during the pandemic as a way to connect the world with creators during quarantine. LoveReigns is the founder of Artis(Tree) Live and The Closet Jax and co-founder of The Cypher Open Mic Poetry & Soul, which is, to date, the longest-running open mic in Jacksonville history.

READ

Check out all of the books in the Face of Expression series in our catalog: https://jkpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?qu=%22aaron+woodson%22&te=!

AARON RECOMMENDS

Books:

• The Alchemist: https://jkpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?qu=TITLE%3Dalchemist&qu=AUTHOR%3Dcoelho&te=
• 48 Laws of Power: https://jkpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?qu=TITLE%3D%2248+laws+of+power%22&qu=AUTHOR%3Dgreene&te=
• The 5 Love Languages: https://jkpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?qu=the+five+love+languages&qu=AUTHOR%3Dchapman&te=
• The Face of Expression 3: Fall of A King: https://jkpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?qu=face+of+expression+3+woodson&te=
• The Art of War: https://jkpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?qu=art+of+war&qu=AUTHOR%3Dtzu&te=

Movies:

• Creed III: https://jkpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?qu=%22creed+iii%22&te=
• Avatar: The Way of Water: https://jkpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?qu=%22avatar+the+way+of+water%22&te=
• Wakanda Forever: https://jkpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?qu=wakanda+forever+film&te=
• Till: https://jkpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?qu=TITLE%3D%22till%22&qu=chukwu&te=

---

Sign Up for Library U to hear about the latest Lit Chats and catch them live! — https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/library-u-enrollment

Jacksonville Public LibraryWebsite: https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaxlibrary Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaxLibrary/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaxlibrary/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jaxpubliclibraryfl Contact Us: [email protected]

Christopher Gorham is a lawyer and teacher of modern American history at Westford Academy, outside Boston. He has degrees in history from Tufts University and the University of Michigan, where he studied under legendary historian Sidney Fine. Gorham has a J.D., summa cum laude, from Syracuse University College of Law, where he served on the editorial staff of the Syracuse Law Review. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post and in online journals.

Interviewer Kelsi Hasden is an adjunct professor of composition at the University of North Florida and Florida State College at Jacksonville. She holds a Bachelor's degree in English focusing on Postcolonial theory and Women's studies and a Master's degree in Rhetoric and Composition. She writes about a range of issues and events, dines out as often as she can, and attends events around Jacksonville. Kelsi writes and edits articles for The Jaxson and Modern Cities.

READ

Check out The Confidante in print, digital, and audio in our catalog!

CHRISTOPHER RECOMMENDS

Here are the three books I found especially enlightening as I wrote The Confidante.

1. Kristin Downey's The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life and Legacy of Frances Perkins is the story of the progressive whose wish list essentially became the New Deal (minimum wages, Social Security, etc.). Perkins was the first woman cabinet member in American history, serving as Secretary of Labor for the entirety of Roosevelt's presidency (1933-1945). Personally, Perkins was not particularly warm and could be seen as rather mirthless. But her legacy as a New Deal heroine is deserved and her prominence in FDR's cabinet underscores how much Roosevelt respected competence regardless of sex or ethnicity.
2. FDR and Perkins went back to his days as Governor of New York, and even before that, women played a large role in his professional life. In The Gatekeeper: Missy LeHand, FDR, and the Untold Story of the Partnership That Defined a Presidency, by Kathryn Smith, we learn that after Roosevelt contracted polio in 1921, Roosevelt brought on Marguerite "Missy" LeHand, a working-class woman from Somerville, Massachusetts as his secretary. In time, she became much more. When FDR became President in 1933, Missy came to Washington. She was not only the gatekeeper of his social and professional calendar but was essentially his Chief-of-Staff until a series of strokes incapacitated her in 1940-41. It was at this time, as I discuss in my book, that Anna Rosenberg became part of FDR's innermost circle.
3. The dual struggles for equality in defense work and desegregation of the armed forces were undertaken within the Roosevelt White House by Mary McLeod Bethune, Robert Weaver, Bill Hastie, Al Smith, and Robert Vann. Bethune was the leader of the "Black Cabinet," but the men alongside her performed admirable work in the service of advancing the Black cause. In her excellent book, The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt, Jill Watts describes the successes of the Black Cabinet—and the challenges: all five risked losing their jobs, being cashiered to faraway agencies, or being labeled Communist by reactionary congressmen.

---

Sign Up for Library U to hear about the latest Lit Chats and catch them live! — https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/library-u-enrollment

Jacksonville Public LibraryWebsite: https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaxlibrary Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaxLibrary/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaxlibrary/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jaxpubliclibraryfl Contact Us: [email protected]