Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Join us for a game-changing conversation that might transform your life.

The Pratt Library and the Maryland Educational Opportunity Center present a panel of career-changers who will share their experiences on how a career change had a profound impact on their lives.

Career-changers include: 

Kevin Hatcher, from program administrator at Dept of Health & Mental Hygiene to massage therapist; Leslie Howard, from steelworker to lawyer; Dr. Akunna Iheanacho, from teacher to biomedical scientist; Brenda Lake, from sales associate to sales coordinator/assistant to the district director at Cricket Wireless to Sherwin Williams part-time district coordinator to assistant manager to human resources as recruitment coordinator; Maryland Delegate Mary Washington, statistician, professor, and state delegate.

Recorded On: Thursday, May 18, 2017

In Red Line: American Foreign Policy in a Time of Fractured Politics and Failing States, former Deputy Secretary of State P. J. Crowley, one of America’s most insightful national security commentators, unpacks the legacy of American triumphs and failures in Iraq.

Over the past quarter century, four consecutive American presidents—two Democrat, two Republican—have spent more time, diplomatic capital, and military resources on Iraq than any other country in the world. Much as the Vietnam syndrome cast a long shadow over American security policy in the decades after the end of the Vietnam War, Iraq provides the commanding narrative for this generation of American leaders. Crowley argues that presidents have fallen victim to the Iraq Syndrome—the disconnect between politics, policy, strategy, and narrative—that has hampered America’s foreign policy in the Middle East and hotspots throughout the world.

P. J. Crowley, Assistant Secretary of State and Spokesman for the U.S. Department of State under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, appears frequently on national and global television networks. He served as a spokesperson for the U.S. government for 30 years. Crowley was the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and Spokesman for the U.S. Department of State between 2009 and 2011 and was the primary U.S. government interlocutor with major media regarding the impact of the release of classified diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks. His opinion pieces have been published in a wide range of print and on-line outlets, including The Washington Post, the Guardian, and the BBC. Atlantic Magazine named him as one of 21 Brave Thinkers in 2011. A Professor of Practice at The George Washington University, Crowley is also a member of the Board of Directors of Al Jazeera America. He resides in Washington, DC.

The program is introduced by April Ryan, veteran White House reporter and National Association of Black Journalists’ Journalist of the Year for 2017.

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

Recorded On: Tuesday, May 16, 2017

In Committed: The Battle over Involuntary Psychiatric Care, psychiatrists Dinah Miller and Annette Hanson offer a thought-provoking and engaging account of the controversy surrounding involuntary psychiatric care in the United States. They bring the issue to life with first-hand accounts from patients, clinicians, advocates, and opponents. Looking at practices such as seclusion and restraint, involuntary medication, and involuntary electroconvulsive therapy—all within the context of civil rights—Miller and Hanson illuminate the personal consequences of these controversial practices through voices of people who have been helped by the treatment they had as well as those who have been traumatized by it.

The authors explore the question of whether involuntary treatment has a role in preventing violence, suicide, and mass murder. They delve into the controversial use of court-ordered outpatient treatment at its best and at its worst. Finally, they examine innovative solutions—mental health court, crisis intervention training, and pretrial diversion—that are intended to expand access to care while diverting people who have serious mental illness out of the cycle of repeated hospitalization and incarceration. They also assess what psychiatry knows about the prediction of violence and the limitations of laws designed to protect the public.

Dinah Miller, MD, is an instructor in psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Annette Hanson, MD, is an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Drs. Miller and Hanson are coauthors of Shrink Rap: Three Psychiatrists Discuss Their Work.

Presented in partnership with NAMI Metropolitan Baltimore.

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

Recorded On: Wednesday, May 10, 2017

In the Margins: A Conversation in Poetry is a unique collection of poetry reflecting the evolution of a writing group over 20 years, featuring the Baltimore poets: Christine Higgins, Ann LoLordo, Madeleine Mysko, and Kathleen O’Toole.

The book features poems that individually speak to social, family, and political issues while collectively chronicling the interrelationship of the poets. The project illustrates the poets’ individual voices and common interests: geography, a heritage of idealism that is both generational and spiritual, and a healthy dose of both reverence and rebellion.

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

Recorded On: Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Recorded On: Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Let the People Rule tells the story of the four-month campaign that changed American politics forever. In 1912 Theodore Roosevelt (TR) came out of retirement to challenge his close friend and handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, for the Republican Party nomination. To overcome the power of the incumbent, TR seized on the idea of presidential primaries, telling bosses everywhere to “Let the People Rule.”

The cheers and jeers of rowdy supporters and detractors echo from Geoffrey Cowan’s pages as he explores TR’s fight-to-the-finish battle to win popular support. After sweeping nine out of thirteen primaries, he felt entitled to the nomination. But the party bosses proved too powerful, leading Roosevelt to walk out of the convention and create a new political party of his own.

Using a trove of newly discovered documents, Geoffrey Cowan takes readers inside the colorful, dramatic, and often mean-spirited campaign, describing the political machinations and intrigue and painting indelible portraits of its larger-than-life characters. But Cowan also exposes the more unsavory parts of TR’s campaign: seamy backroom deals, bribes made in TR’s name during the Republican Convention, and then the shocking political calculation that led TR to ban any black delegates from the Deep South from his new “Bull Moose Party.”

Geoffrey Cowan, president of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands and the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership at the University of Southern California, is the best-selling author of The People v. Clarence Darrow. For his role in dramatically increasing the number of presidential primaries in 1968, ABC Television News called him “the man who did more to change Democratic Conventions than anyone since Andrew Jackson started them.”

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

Recorded On: Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Elizabeth Hazen is a poet and essayist whose work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2013, Southwest Review, The Threepenny Review, The Normal School, and other journals. She earned her BA at Yale and her MA at Johns Hopkins where she was a student in The Writing Seminars. She teaches English at Calvert School in Baltimore, Maryland, where she lives with her son, Gregory, and their cat Ferdinand. Chaos Theories is her first book.

Rose Solari is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, The Last Girl, Orpheus in the Park, and Difficult Weather, the one-act play, Looking for Guenevere, and the novel, A Secret Woman. She has lectured and taught writing workshops at many institutions, including the University of Maryland, College Park; St. John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland; the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University; and the Centre for Creative Writing at the University of Oxford’s Kellogg College in Oxford, England. In 2010, she co-founded Alan Squire Publishing (ASP), a collaborative indie publishing initiative, with James J. Patterson; in 2012, ASP became an imprint of the Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP). Rose’s awards include the Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize, an EMMA award for excellence in journalism, and multiple grants.

Read four poems by Elizabeth Hazen.

Read three poems by Rose Solari.

Recorded On: Tuesday, April 25, 2017

D Watkins (The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir) and Liza Jessie Peterson (All Day: A Year of Love and Survival Teaching Incarcerated Kids at Rikers Island) talk about their new books and the writing life.

D Watkins is a columnist for Salon, and his work has been published in the New York Times, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and other publications. He holds a Master's in Education from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Baltimore. He teaches at the University of Baltimore and is founder of the BMORE Writers Project.

Liza Jessie Peterson is an actress, poet, playwright, educator and activist. She has performed her play, The Peculiar Patriot, in more than 35 jails and penitentiaries across the country and has opened for keynote speakers at conferences on mass incarceration. She has appeared in the films Love the Hard Way, Bamboozled, A Drop of Life, and What About Me. She is featured in Ava Duvernay's upcoming Netflix documentary about mass incarceration, 13th.

Recorded On: Thursday, April 20, 2017

Mason Jar Press, a new, local independent press, brings together their authors in a celebration of literature and art. Join the authors of the most recent MJP publications—the Black Ladies Brunch Collective and Michelle Junot—for a reading, Q and A, and book signing. Hosted and moderated by MJP authors Stephen Zerance and Matthew Falk.

Michelle Junot has kept notes on her phone for years—what to pick up at the store, work-out logs, prayers, hopes, thoughts on life and death—all the while creating a snapshot of her life with an honesty that only occurs when not paying attention. In Notes From My Phone(Mason Jar Press, 2016), Junot opens up her phone and her life to you. This collection of essays, to-do lists, vignettes, reminders and dreams mixes heart-felt memoir with the everyday marginalia that makes up a twenty-something’s life and day planner.

The Black Ladies Brunch Collective’s poetry anthology, Not Without Our Laughter, (Mason Jar Press, 2017) is a collection of humorous and joyful poems, riffing on Langston Hughes’s novel Not Without Laughter. It explores topics of family, work, love and sexuality. The women of BLBC believe, like Hughes, that even in these currently tense racial times, laughter and the celebration of life is crucial. Historically, it is what African Americans have done and will continue to do, no matter what challenges face them. The Black Ladies Brunch Collective is Teri Cross Davis, Anya Creightney, Katy Richey, celeste doaks, Saida Agostini, and Tafisha Edwards. Edited by celeste doaks.

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

Recorded On: Wednesday, April 19, 2017

During the Presidential campaign, Donald Trump called for a complete ban on Muslims entering the U.S., surveillance of mosques, and a database for all Muslims living in the country. In We Too Sing America, nationally renowned activist Deepa Iyer shows that this is the latest in a series of recent racial flash points, from the 2012 massacre at the Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, to the violent opposition to the Islamic Center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and to the Park 51 Community Center in Lower Manhattan. Iyer asks whether hate crimes should be considered domestic terrorism and explores the role of the state in perpetuating racism through detentions, national registration programs, police profiling, and constant surveillance.

A leading racial justice activist, Deepa Iyer served for a decade as the executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), focusing on community building in post-9/11 America. She teaches in the Asian American studies program at the University of Maryland.

The program will be introduced by Tariq Touré, an award winning Muslim Writer and Social Justice Advocate born and raised in West Baltimore, Maryland. Touré is an awardee of the MPower100 Muslims fighting  for Social Justice, HBCU Top 30 under 30 Alumni and Baltimore Magazine's Rising Community Voices. Touré holds a Master's of Social Work in Community Administration and Policy from Howard University.

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

Recorded On: Tuesday, April 18, 2017