Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

This collection of insightful and searing essays celebrates the vibrancy and strength of black history and culture in America. In We Can't Breathe, Jabari Asim disrupts what Toni Morrison has exposed as the "Master Narrative" and replaces it with a story of black survival and persistence through art and community in the face of centuries of racism. In these wide-ranging and penetrating essays, he explores such topics as the twisted legacy of jokes and falsehoods in black life, the importance of black fathers and community, the significance of black writers and stories, and the beauty and pain of the black body. What emerges is a rich portrait of a community and culture that has resisted, survived, and flourished despite centuries of racism, violence, and trauma.

Jabari Asim was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. For eleven years, he was an editor at The Washington Post, where he also wrote a syndicated column on politics, popular culture and social issues. Since 2007 he has been the editor-in-chief of Crisis magazine, the NAACP's flagship journal of politics, culture and ideas. Asim is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts and the author of four books for adults, including The N Word, and six books for children.

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

Recorded On: Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Geraldine Connolly was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. She is the author of a chapbook, The Red Room, and four full-length poetry collections: Food for the Winter (Purdue), Province of Fire (Iris Press), Hand of the Wind (Iris Press), and her new book, Aileron, published by Terrapin Books in 2018.

Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Georgia Review, The Cortland Review, and Shenandoah. It has been anthologized in Poetry 180: A Poem a Day for American High School Students;  Sweeping Beauty: Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework;  and The Doll Collection. She has won many awards, including two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Margaret Bridgman Fellowship of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, a Maryland Arts Council fellowship, and the Yeats Society of New York Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Ted Kooser's "American Life in Poetry" project and has been broadcast on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac, as well as Grace Cavalieri's The Poet and the Poem.

Doritt Carroll is a native of Washington, D.C.  Her poems have appeared in Coal City Review, Poet Lore, Gargoyle, Nimrod, and Slipstream, among others. Her collection GLTTL STP was published by Brickhouse Books in 2013. Her chapbook Sorry You Are Not An Instant Winner was published in 2017 by Kattywompus.  She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and works as a poetry editor for The Baltimore Review.  She also has served as poet in residence at the Shakespeare Theatre Company and runs the Zed’s reading series.

Read "The Summer I Was Sixteen" by Geraldine Connolly.
Read "medicare" by Doritt Carroll.

Recorded On: Wednesday, October 3, 2018

The ;conversation with Tim Mohr will be moderated by WBAL-TV anchor Andre Hepkins.

The story of East German punk rock is about much more than music; it is a story of extraordinary bravery in the face of one of the most oppressive regimes in history. It began with a handful of East Berlin teens who heard the Sex Pistols on a British military radio broadcast to troops in West Berlin in 1980, and it ended with the collapse of the East German dictatorship. When the East German punks became more numerous, more visible, and more rebellious, security forces—including the dreaded secret police, the Stasi—targeted them. They were spied on by friends and even members of their own families; they were expelled from schools and jobs; they were beaten by police and imprisoned. Instead of backing down, the punks fought back, playing an indispensable role in the underground movements that helped bring down the Berlin Wall.

Rollicking, cinematic, deeply researched, highly readable, and thrillingly topical, Tim Mohr's Burning Down the Haus brings to life the young men and women who successfully fought authoritarianism three chords at a time—and is a fiery testament to the irrepressible spirit of resistance.

Tim Mohr is an award-winning translator of authors, including Alina Bronsky, Wolfgang Herrndorf, and Charlotte Roche. He has also collaborated on memoirs by musicians Gil Scott-Heron, Duff McKagan of Guns n’ Roses, and Paul Stanley of KISS. His own writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, New York Magazine,and Inked, among other publications, and he spent several years as a staff editor at Playboy magazine, where he edited Hunter S. Thompson, John Dean, and Harvey Pekar, among others. Prior to starting his writing career he earned his living as a club DJ in Berlin.

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

Recorded On: Tuesday, October 2, 2018

On October 16, 1859, John Brown and his band of eighteen raiders descended on Harpers Ferry. In an ill-fated attempt to incite a slave insurrection, they seized the federal arsenal, took hostages, and retreated to a fire engine house where they barricaded themselves until a contingent of US Marines battered their way in on October 18.

The raiders were routed, and several were captured. Soon after, they were tried, convicted, and hanged. Among Brown’s fighters were five African American men -- John Copeland, Shields Green, Dangerfield Newby, Lewis Leary, and Osborne Perry Anderson -- whose lives and deaths have long been overshadowed by their martyred leader and who, even today, are little remembered. Only Anderson survived, later publishing the lone insider account of the event that, most historians agree, was a catalyst to the catastrophic American Civil War that followed. Five for Freedom: The African American Soldiers in John Brown's Army is the story of these five brave men, the circumstances in which they were born and raised, how they came together at this fateful time and place, and the legacies they left behind. 

Eugene L. Meyer is an award-winning journalist and author and a former longtime reporter and editor at the Washington Post. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, and many other national and regional publications. Meyer is also the author of Chesapeake Country (1990, 2015) and Maryland Lost and Found...Again (2003). He is a contributing editor for Bethesda magazine and lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

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

Recorded On: Thursday, September 20, 2018

The 2018 Mencken Memorial Lecture presented by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post.

Dana Milbank is a nationally syndicated op-ed columnist. Before joining the staff of the Washington Post in 2005, he served as a senior editor at the New Republic and a reporter with the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of three books, including the national bestseller Homo Politicus.

Recorded On: Saturday, September 15, 2018

In 1844, Horace Wells, a Connecticut dentist, encountered nitrous oxide, or laughing gas -- then an entertainment for performers in carnival-like theatrical acts -- and began administering the gas as the first true anesthetic. His discovery would change the world, reshaping medicine and humanity's relationship with pain. But that discovery would also thrust Wells into scandals that threatened his reputation, his family, and his sanity -- hardships and triumphs that resonate in today's struggles with what hurts us and what we take to stop the hurt. In The Strange and True Tale of Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist: A Novel, Michael Downs mines the gaps in the historical record and imagines the motivations and mysteries behind Wells's morbid fascination with pain, as well as the price he and his wife, Elizabeth, paid -- first through his obsession, then his addiction.

Michael Downs is the author of The Greatest Show: Stories (2012) and House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City (2007), which won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. His debut novel, The Strange and True Tale of Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist (Acre Books, 2018) tells the story of the 19th-century man widely credited with discovering painless surgery. Downs is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance. A former newspaper reporter, Downs is an associate professor of English at Towson University.

It is January 2017 and Bill has hit rock bottom. Yesterday, he was William M. Katzenelenbogen, successful science reporter at The Washington Post. But things have taken a turn. Fired from his job, aimless, with exactly $1,219.37 in his checking account, he learns that his college roommate, a plastic surgeon known far and wide as the “Butt God of Miami Beach,” has fallen to his death under salacious circumstances. With nothing to lose, Bill boards a flight for Florida’s Gold Coast, ready to begin his own investigation -- a last ditch attempt to revive his career. There’s just one catch: Bill’s father, Melsor.

Melsor Yakovlevich Katzenelenbogen -- poet, literary scholar, political dissident, small-time-crook -- is angling for control of the condo board at the Château Sedan Neuve, a crumbling high-rise in Hollywood, Florida, populated mostly by Russian Jewish immigrants. Melsor will use any means necessary to win the board election. And who better to help him than his estranged son? Featuring a colorful cast of characters, The Chateau injects the crime novel genre with surprising idiosyncrasy, subverting it with dark comic farce in a setting that becomes a microcosm of Trump’s America.

Paul Goldberg’s debut novel The Yid was published in 2016 to widespread acclaim and named a finalist for both the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the National Jewish Book Award’s Goldberg Prize for Debut Fiction. As a reporter, Goldberg has written two books about the Soviet human rights movement, and has co-authored (with Otis Brawley) the book How We Do Harm, an expose of the U.S. healthcare system. He is the editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, a publication focused on the business and politics of cancer. He lives in Washington, D.C.

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

Recorded On: Thursday, September 13, 2018

In his new book, America: The Farewell Tour, Chris Hedges provides a provocative examination of America in crisis, where unemployment, deindustrialization, and a bitter hopelessness and malaise have resulted in an epidemic of diseases of despair -- drug abuse, gambling, suicide, magical thinking, xenophobia, and a culture of sadism and hate.

According to Hedges, America is convulsed by an array of pathologies that have arisen out of profound hopelessness, a bitter despair and a civil society that has ceased to function. The opioid crisis, the retreat into gambling to cope with economic distress, the pornification of culture, the rise of magical thinking, the celebration of sadism, hate and plagues of suicides are the physical manifestiations of a society that is being ravaged by corporate pillage and a failed democracy. As the society unravels, we also face global upheaval caused by catastrophic climate change.

Hedges argues that neither political party, now captured by corporate power, addresses the systemic problem. America: The Farewell Tour seeks to jolt us out of our complacency while there is still time.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the author of American Fascists, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, and War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.

Marc Steiner moderates the conversation with Chris Hedges.

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

Recorded On: Wednesday, September 5, 2018

The 2018 Enoch Pratt Free Library / Little Patuxent Review Poetry Contest winner shares the stage with a contest runner-up, two contest judges, and a Little Patuxent Review contributor.

Born in India and raised in Dubai, Poetry Contest winner Kanak (pronounced Kuh-nuck) Gupta is currently trying her luck in Baltimore, as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University. She likes reading, writing, and living stories (and poetry).

Runner-up Rachel E. Hicks’s poetry has appeared in Saint Katherine Review, Welter, Off the Coast, Gulf Stream Magazine, and other journals. She also writes essays and fiction, and works as a freelance copy editor. An associate editor at Del Sol Press, she also served as the 2018 Poetry Out Loud Regional Coordinator for the Maryland State Arts Council. After living in eight countries -- most recently China -- she now resides in Baltimore. Her career has included teaching (high school English and homeschool) and volunteering with an international relief and development agency. Find her online at rachelehicks.com.

Steven Leyva, Little Patuxent Review editor, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and raised in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 2 Bridges Review, Fledgling Rag, The Light Ekphrastic, Cobalt Review, and Prairie Schooner. He is a Cave Canem fellow, the winner of the 2012 Cobalt Review Poetry Prize, and author of the chapbook Low Parish. Steven holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore, where he is an assistant professor in the School of Communication Design.

Chelsea Lemon Fetzer, a Little Patuxent Review Poetry Reader, holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA in Fiction from Syracuse University.  Her fiction and poetry have appeared in journals such as Callaloo, Tin House, Mississippi Review, and The Minnesota Review.  A selection of her poetry received the honor of finalist for the 2015 Venture Award and her debut pamphlet (chapbook) is in the works.  Her nonfiction essay “Speck” was published in The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century, an anthology published by 2Leaf Press in 2017. Committed to bringing the literary arts to communities of all means, Fetzer has led writing workshops through The Create Collective, PEN American Center's "Readers & Writers" Program, the Black Writers Conference at Medgar Evers College, the New York Writers Coalition, The University of Baltimore, and independently.  Fetzer currently lives in Baltimore where she is mothering, working on her first novel, and serving on the board of CityLit Project. 

Wallace Lane, a Little Patuxent Review contributor, is a poet and author from Baltimore, Maryland. He received his MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore in May 2017. His poetry has appeared in Skelter, The Avenue, Welter, and Rise Up and is forthcoming in several other literary journals. Wallace also works as a teacher with Baltimore City Public Schools.

Runner-up Nancy Kang will not be able to attend this event, but you can learn more about her here.

Watch a video of Kanak Gupta reading her winning poem, "Death in Dubai."
Read "Chengdu Pastoral" by Rachel E. Hicks.
Read "'I know you're never gonna wake up'" and "Supremacy" by Steven Leyva.
Read "flare" by Chelsea Lemon Fetzer.
Watch a video of Wallace Lane reading from Jordan Year.
Read "Yellow Woman" by Nancy Kang.

Recorded On: Tuesday, August 21, 2018

The Third Hotel by Laura van den Berg is a propulsive, brilliantly shape-shifting novel. A widow tries to come to terms with her husband’s death -- and the truth about their marriage -- in this surreal, mystifying story of psychological reflection and metaphysical mystery. Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, she finds her husband, Richard, standing outside a museum. He’s wearing a white linen suit she’s never seen before, and he’s supposed to be dead. Grief-stricken and baffled, Clare tails Richard, a horror film scholar, through the newly tourist-filled streets of Havana, clocking his every move. As the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, Clare finds grounding in memories of her childhood in Florida and of her marriage to Richard, revealing her role in his death and reappearance along the way. 

Laura van den Berg is the author of two story collections, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us and The Isle of Youth, and the novel Find Me. She is the recipient of a Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Bard Fiction Prize, an O. Henry Award, and a MacDowell Colony fellowship. Born and raised in Florida, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Nate Brown’s short stories have appeared in the Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, Five Chapters, REAL, and Carolina Quarterly, and his nonfiction has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Publisher's Weekly, and LitHub. The managing editor of the Austin-based literary journal American Short Fiction, he lives in Baltimore and teaches writing at Stevenson University and at the George Washington University in Washington, DC.

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

Recorded On: Thursday, August 9, 2018

Addiction is too often viewed only through the prism of sadness and pain.  At this event, you are invited to imagine the greater possibilities as we celebrate the creativity and optimism of the writers from The Imagination Lab.

The Imagination Lab is the brainchild of Karen Reese, Executive Director of Man Alive, Inc.—the first and longest running methadone maintenance clinic in Maryland.  The lab was created to explore and nurture the creative talents of those in medication-assisted treatment for substance use disorders. 

The program is hosted by Don Riesett, an accomplished writer and international business executive, who has for the past four years volunteered his time with The Imagination Lab.  The writers he has guided will share creative non-fiction selections of which they are rightfully proud.

Their work lends credence to Albert Einstein’s famous quote:  “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.”  Work by collagists attending a Vision Board class will be on display as well.     

Recorded On: Wednesday, August 15, 2018