Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Loren Miller, one of the nation's most prominent civil rights attorneys from the 1940s through the early 1960s, successfully fought discrimination in housing and education. Alongside Thurgood Marshall, Miller argued two landmark civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, whose decisions effectively abolished racially restrictive housing covenants. One of these cases, Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), is taught in nearly every American law school today. Later, Marshall and Miller played key roles in Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legal segregation in public schools.

 Amina Hassan's book, Loren Miller: Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist, recovers this remarkable figure from the margins of history and for the first time fully reveals his life for what it was: an extraordinary American story and a critical chapter in the annals of racial justice. 

Born to a former slave and a white midwesterner in 1903, Loren Miller lived the quintessential American success story, blazing his own path to rise from rural poverty to a position of power and influence. Author Amina Hassan reveals Miller as a fearless critic of those in power and an ardent debater whose acid wit was known to burn "holes in the toughest skin and eat right through double-talk, hypocrisy, and posturing."

Amina Hassan is an independent historian and an award-winning public radio documentarian. Her diverse background in public radio and media activism has allowed her to live and travel extensively in the Caribbean, the Near and Middle East, North Africa, Central America and Europe. She has been a Corporation for Public Broadcasting consultant and has administered radio projects for the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and the Institute for Policy Studies. Hassan has a master's in telecommunications and a Ph.D. in rhetorical criticism from Ohio University.

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

Recorded On: Tuesday, October 4, 2016

AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK! From prize-winning, bestselling author Colson Whitehead, a magnificent, wrenching, thrilling tour de force chronicling a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South.

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hellish for all the slaves, but Cora is an outcast even among her fellow Africans, and she is coming into womanhood; even greater pain awaits. Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, and they plot their escape. Matters do not go as planned -- Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her -- but they manage to find a station and head north.

In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is not a metaphor -- a secret network of tracks and tunnels has been built beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, where both find work in a city that at first seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens -- and Ridgeway, the relentless slave-catcher sent to find her, arrives in town. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing journey, state-by-state, seeking true freedom. Like Gulliver, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey -- Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors for black people in states in the pre-Civil War era. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage, and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.

Colson Whitehead is the New York Times bestselling author of The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. A Pulitzer Prize finalist and a recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, he lives in New York City.

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

Recorded On: Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Ron Capps is the author of Seriously Not All Right: Five Wars in Ten Years (Schaffner, 2014), a memoir of his service as a soldier and Foreign Service officer in Rwanda, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Darfur. Seriously Not All Right is a memoir that provides a unique perspective of a professional military officer and diplomat who suffered (and continues to suffer) from PTSD. His story, and that of his recovery and his newfound role as founder and teacher of the Veterans Writing Project, is an inspiration and a sobering reminder of the cost of all wars, particularly those that appeared in the media and to the general public as merely sidelines in the unfolding drama of world events.

Capps is the founder and director of the Veterans Writing Project, a non-profit that provides no-cost writing seminars and workshops for veterans and their family members. He is the curriculum developer and lead instructor for the National Endowment for the Arts programs that bring expressive and creative writing seminars to wounded warriors at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence. He is a graduate of both the Master of Liberal Arts program and the MA in Writing program of the Johns Hopkins University and did further graduate work at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

In Tom Glenn's new novel, The Trion Syndrome, German professor Dave Bell is haunted by a half-remembered clandestine mission in Vietnam and the myth of Trion, the Greek demigod. Dave discovers an unpublished novella by Thomas Mann based on the Trion myth and believes he sees himself. Friendless, Dave is betrayed by his colleagues and accused of sexual harassment. He loses his job, his wife divorces him, and his children refuse to see him. At his lowest point, his suppressed memory of what happened in Vietnam resurfaces.

Tom Glenn has worked as an intelligence operative, a musician, a linguist, a cryptologist and a government executive. He is a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books and the author of two previous novels, Friendly Casualties and No-Accounts.

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

Recorded On: Tuesday, September 27, 2016

As the crack epidemic swept across inner-city America in the early 1980s, the streets of Baltimore were crime ridden. For poor kids from the housing projects, the future looked bleak. But basketball could provide the quickest ticket out, an opportunity to earn a college scholarship, and perhaps even play in the NBA.  Dunbar High School had one of the most successful basketball programs, not only in Baltimore but in the entire country; and in the early 1980s, the Dunbar Poets were arguably the best high school team of all time. Four starting players -- Muggsy Bogues, Reggie Williams, David Wingate, and Reggie Lewis -- would eventually play in the NBA, an unheard-of success rate.  

Alejandro Danois takes us through the 1981-1982 season with the Poets as the team conquered all its opponents. But more than that, he takes us into the lives of these kids, and especially of Coach Bob Wade, a former NFL player from the same neighborhood who knew that the basketball court, and the lessons his players would learn there, held the key to the future. Drawing on interviews with Coach Wade, Muggsy Bogues, and others, The Boys of Dunbar: A Story of Love, Hope, and Basketball is a remarkable testament to the power of dedication, inspiration, and teamwork. It is an ode to an extraordinary coach, a father figure who had lived the life of his players years before and who turned a dream into reality.

Alejandro Danois is editor-in-chief of The Shadow League and a freelance sports and entertainment writer. He lives in Baltimore.

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

Recorded On: Thursday, September 15, 2016

Uprising in the City explores the unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray. While describing the protests and violence, the book draws on author Kevin Shird's observations, experiences, and feelings as a Baltimore native and national youth advocate dedicated to helping inner city youth understand and escape the perils of street culture. Shird includes extensive interviews with key people in Baltimore and discusses how to break the cycle of problems which have plagued Baltimore for decades. The book looks at other American cities which are facing many of the same issues as Baltimore. It offers solutions on how to reduce the poverty rate, educate the media, improve education, reduce arrests, and find alternatives to present crime fighting strategies.

Kevin Shirdis the author of the memoir, Lessons of Redemption. After serving time in federal prison, he now advocates for young people and policy changes. He collaborates with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy to promote substance abuse awareness. He also serves on Baltimore's Heroin Treatment and Prevention Task Force.

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

Recorded On: Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Recorded On: Saturday, September 10, 2016

Recorded On: Saturday, September 10, 2016

Poets Le Hinton and Laura Shovan read in the company of the 2016 Pratt Library Poetry Contest finalists—Saundra Rose Maley, Maggie Rosen, and Sheri Allen. The host is Steven Leyva, editor of Little Patuxent Review, which is celebrating its 10-year anniversary. LPR judged the contest.

Le Hinton is the author of five poetry collections including The Language of Moisture and Light (Iris G. Press, 2014). His work has been widely published and can be found or is forthcoming in The Best American Poetry 2014, Little Patuxent Review, The Baltimore Review, The Summerset Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and outside Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, incorporated into Derek Parker's sculpture Common Thread. His current manuscript, A Chorus of Cotton, is scheduled to be published later in 2016 or early 2017.

Laura Shovan is former editor for Little Patuxent Review and editor of two poetry anthologies. Her chapbook, Mountain, Log, Salt and Stone, won the inaugural Harriss Poetry Prize. Laura works with children as a poet-in-the-schools and was the 2015-2016 Howard County Poetry and Literary Society's writer in residence. The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary is her debut novel-in-verse for children (Wendy Lamb Books/Random House).

Contest winner Saundra Rose Maley has had poems in Dryad, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Full Moon on K Street: Poems about Washington D.C., and D.C. Perspectives. Her first book of poems, Disappearing Act, was published in 2015, by Dryad Press. She co-edited A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright with Anne Wright and is currently working again with Anne on a book about Wright and translation, tentatively titled Where the Treasure Lies. She also published Solitary Apprenticeship: James Wright and German Poetry. She teaches Composition and Research at Montgomery College in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Runner-up Maggie Rosen lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. She grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina. She has degrees from Brown University and The George Washington University. Most of her professional work has been as a teacher of English to speakers of other languages. Her poems have been published in Cider Press Review, RiverLit, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Barely South, and Conclave, among other publications. She was recently a finalist in the Bethesda Urban Partnership Poetry Contest and in the Montgomery Writes! Contest. Her chapbook, The Deliberate Speed of Ghosts, will be published in 2016 by Red Bird Chapbooks.

Runner-up Sheri Allen is a recent Baltimore returnee after decades in other states and countries. Former Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Miami University of Ohio, she worked for the Theology Department at Loyola University Maryland this spring. Sheri earned her MFA in Creative Writing with a multi-genre thesis from the University of Florida, and a PhD in English and Comparative Literature with a Creative Writing track from the University of Cincinnati. Her poems have appeared in Lilith, Best New Poets, Tampa Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Boulevard.

Recorded On: Wednesday, July 20, 2016

In Just Another Southern Town, Joan Quigley recounts an untold chapter of the civil rights movement: an epic battle to topple segregation in Washington. At the book's heart is the formidable Mary Church Terrell, in 1950 an 86-year-old charter member of the NAACP and former suffragette, and the test case she mounts seeking to enforce Reconstruction-era laws prohibiting segregation in D.C. restaurants. Through the prism of Terrell's story, Quigley reassesses Washington's relationship to civil rights history, bringing to life a pivotal fight for equality that erupted five years before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a Montgomery bus and a decade before the student sit-in movement rocked segregated lunch counters across the South.

Joan Quigley is an attorney and journalist. She is also the author of The Day The Earth Caved In: An American Mining Tragedy (Random House 2007). She received the 2005 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, administered by Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard. A graduate of Princeton, William & Mary Law School and Columbia Journalism School, her writing has appeared in TheWashington Post, time.com, nationalgeographic.com and TheDaily Beast.

Recorded On: Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Jessica Anya Blau is the author of The Wonder Bread Summer, Drinking Closer to Home, and the nationally bestselling The Summer of Naked Swim Parties. Her books have made many Best Books of the Year lists and have been chosen as Best Summer Reads by the Today Show, the New York Post, New York Magazine, Cosmo, CNN, Vanity Fair, NPR, Oprah.Com and others. All three novels have been optioned for film and television. The Trouble with Lexie, Jessica’s latest novel, will be published in June. Jessica grew up in Southern California and currently lives in Baltimore.

Matthew Norman is an advertising copywriter. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Baltimore. His first novel, Domestic Violets, was nominated in the Best Humor Category at the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards. Visit his blog at thenormannation.com, or follow him on Twitter @TheNormanNation.       

Recorded On: Wednesday, June 29, 2016