Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Brian VanDeMark is in conversation with George Petras of USA Today.

In Road To Disaster: A New History Of America’s Descent Into Vietnam, Naval Academy professor Brian VanDeMark looks at the cataclysmic decisions made by the “best and the brightest” through the prism of recent research in cognitive science, psychology, and organizational theory. Drawing upon decades of archival research, his own interviews with many of those involved, and a wealth of previously unheard recordings by McNamara and Clark Clifford, VanDeMark explains how those in charge exhibited unfounded overconfidence, ignored essential information, became blind to the obvious, and were illogically inconsistent, all of which ultimately led to the death of almost 60,000 Americans and more than 3 million Indochinese.

Brian VanDeMark teaches history at the United States Naval Academy, where for more than twenty-five years he has educated midshipmen about the Vietnam War. He has also been a visiting fellow at Oxford University. VanDeMark was the research assistant on Clark Clifford's bestselling autobiography Counsel to the President and the coauthor of Robert McNamara's #1 bestseller In Retrospect.

George Petras is a graphics editor and researcher for USA Today.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Girl in Black and White: The Story of Mary Mildred Williams and the Abolition Movement restores Mary Mildred Williams to her rightful place in history and uncovers a dramatic narrative of travels along the Underground Railroad, relationships tested by oppression, and the struggles of life after emancipation. The result is an exposé of the thorny racial politics of the abolitionist movement and the pervasive colorism that dictated where white sympathy lay―one that sheds light on a shameful legacy that still affects us profoundly today.

Jessie Morgan-Owens is the dean of studies at Bard Early College in New Orleans, Louisiana. A photographer with the team Morgan & Owens, she received her doctorate from New York University and lives in New Orleans with her family.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Celebrate Women's History Month as celeste doaks, Lady Brion, and DaMaris Hill read selections and talk about their work. Hosted by Carla Du Pree, Executive Director of CityLit Project.

Poet and journalist celeste doaks is the author of Cornrows and Cornfields. Most recently, she is the editor of the poetry anthology Not Without Our Laughter. Her newest poems appear in Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump’s America Anthology. She is University of Delaware’s Visiting Assistant Professor in Creative Writing for 2017-2019, and the recipient of a 2017 Rubys Literary Arts Grant Award. For more visit www.doaksgirl.com or check out the podcast she co-hosts called Lit!Pop!Bang! on ITunes.

Brion Gill b.k.a. Lady Brion is an international spoken word artist, poetry coach, activist, organizer, and educator. She is the 2016 National Poetry Slam Champion and 2017 Southern Fried Regional Slam Champion. She received her BA in Communications from Howard University and her MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Design from the University of Baltimore. She is the author of the written & spoken word project —With My Head Unbowed, an aural-literary experience. She currently sits on the board of DewMore Baltimore and is the cultural curator for Baltimore’s grassroots think tank, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle.

Dr. DaMaris Hill is a writer and academic. Her books include The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrageand Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the Heartland and \ Vi-zəbəl \ \ Teks-chərs \ (Visible Textures), a collection of poems. Dr. Hill currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. Her latest book, A Bound Woman is a Dangerous Thing, is a powerful collection of poetry about black women in bondage, each poem dedicated to a woman who has been literally incarcerated, bound by oppression, or who forced the limits that society placed on her.

Presented in partnership with CityLit Project.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Thursday, March 14, 2019

Linda G. Morris is in conversation with John H. Morris, Jr., Esq., and Sidney Rauls-Ellis, LSWC.

Before Opie lived in Mayberry, Beaver and Wally in Mayfield, and Betty, Bud and Kathy in Springfield, there were thousands of little Black children experiencing the same quality of life in Cherry Hill, a post WWII planned suburban community containing a public housing project on a southeastern peninsula of Baltimore City. In Cherry Hill: Raising Successful Black Children in Jim Crow Baltimore, Linda G. Morris shares what life was like to grow up in a special place and time.

Linda G. Morris was born and raised in Baltimore, MD. She attended Baltimore City Public Schools, including Cherry Hill Elementary School #159, Garrison Jr. High School, and Edmondson High School. She began freelance writing in the mid-1970s; her work appearing in Essence and Baltimore Magazine. Linda now resides in Germantown, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund. 

Recorded On: Tuesday, March 12, 2019

John Muller, author of Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia and Mark Twain in Washington, D.C.: The Adventures of a Capital Correspondent, will present "The Lost History of Frederick (Bailey) Douglass in Baltimore" using newly discovered information found in the Baltimore City Archives, Maryland Historical Society, Enoch Pratt Free Library, and private archives. Muller has presented widely throughout the DC-Baltimore metropolitan area at venues including the Library of Congress, Newseum, Politics and Prose, American Library in Paris and local universities. He is currently working on a book about the lost history of Frederick Douglass on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

John Muller will be in conversation with Dr. Ida E. Jones, Morgan State University archivist.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Thursday, February 28, 2019

Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights is a genre-defying book of essays that record the small joys that occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday, and that we often overlook in our busy lives. His is a meditation on delight that takes a clear-eyed view of the complexities, even the terrors, in his life, including living in America as a black man; the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture; the loss of those he loves. More than any other subject, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world—his garden, the flowers in the sidewalk, the birds, the bees, the mushrooms, the trees.

Ross Gay is the author of three books of poetry, including Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, Against Which, and Bringing the Shovel Down. He is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a nonprofit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He teaches at Indiana University.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Thursday, February 21, 2019

Aminah lives an idyllic life until she is brutally separated from her home and forced on a journey that transforms her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the willful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father's court. These two women's lives converge as infighting among Wurche's people threatens the region, during the height of the slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century.

Born to two Ghanaian journalists, Ayesha Harruna Attah grew up in Accra and was educated Columbia University and NYU. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Asymptote Magazine, and the Caine Prize Writers’ 2010 Anthology. Her debut novel, Harmattan Rain, was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2010. Ayesha was awarded the 2016 Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship for non-fiction and she currently lives in Senegal.

Presented in partnership with CityLit Project.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Paulette Beete's poems, short stories, and personal essays have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Always Crashing, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, among other journals. Her chapbooks include Blues for a Pretty Girl and Voice Lessons. Her work also appears in the anthologies Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC and Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (with Danna Ephland). Her work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She also blogs (occasionally) at thehomebeete.com and her manuscript "Falling Still" is currently in circulation. Find her on Twitter as @mouthflowers.

Kathleen Hellen is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin (2018), the award-winning collection Umberto's Night, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net, and featured on Poetry Daily, her poems have been awarded the Thomas Merton poetry prize and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. She has won grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts. Hellen's poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, The Seattle Review, the The Sewanee Review, Southern Poetry Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Witness, and elsewhere. For more on Kathleen visit https://www.kathleenhellen.com

Stephen Zerance is the author of Safe Danger (Indolent Books, 2018), which was nominated for Best Literature of the Year by POZ Magazine. His poems have appeared in West Branch, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, and Poet Lore, among other journals. He has also been featured on the websites of Lambda Literary and Split This Rock. Zerance received his MFA from American University, where he received the Myra Sklarew Award. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Find him on Twitter @stephnz. Instagram: stephenzerance

Read "Freddie Gray Breaks Free" and "Please Excuse This Poem" by Paulette Beete.
Read "The Girl They Hired from Snow Country" by Kathleen Hellen.
Read "Anne Sexton's Last Drink" and "Lindsay Lohan" by Stephen Zerance.

Recorded On: Thursday, February 7, 2019

Cork Wars is a history involving World War II, immigration and cork. It’s a story about how cork—from cork oak forests around the Mediterranean—was a big deal in the mid-20th century. It was so big that when Germany cut supplies with the Atlantic blockade, cork companies and their workers got caught up in the life-and-death geopolitical struggle. What began as a simple trade in bark and bottle caps quickly grew into a global drama with sabotage, espionage, and profiteering.

In Cork Wars, David A. Taylor traces the fascinating story through the lives of Charles McManus, Frank DiCara, Melchor Marsa, and their families.

Journalist David A. Taylor teaches science writing at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America and Ginseng, the Divine Root: The Curious History of the Plant That Captivated the World.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Thursday, January 31, 2019

Each year Alden Forth takes a lover, only to let him go after a few short weeks. That is until the summer she finds her simple way of life threatened as her grandfather, her last surviving relative, descends into dementia. The arrival of a revivalist minister further upsets the balance in Alden's rural hometown, for the minister's vehemence to save souls has no bounds. Quickly the town's carefully constructed boundaries begin to crumble. Alden must face the truth about her grandfather's disease and the damning accusations of the minister and decide whether love is the thing that will save her or if it will destroy the only life she's ever known.

Christianna McCausland is an independent writer based in Maryland. Ms. McCausland is a graduate of Emory University and attended the Johns Hopkins University’s Masters in Writing program. Her nonfiction articles have appeared in publications including The Christian Science Monitor, Better Homes & Gardens, Baltimore magazine, The Baltimore Sun, People, and at CNN.com. She is the author of the nonfiction book Maryland Steeplechasing.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Wednesday, January 30, 2019