Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

James Arthur and Joseph Harrison read from and talk about their work.

James Arthur’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and The American Poetry Review. He has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship, and a Discovery/The Nation Prize. His first book, Charms Against Lightning, was published by Copper Canyon Press. Arthur lives in Baltimore and teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. During 2016 he will be the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at Queen’s University Belfast.

Joseph Harrison is the author of Someone Else’s Name (2003), Identity Theft (2008), and Shakespeare’s Horse (2015), all published by Waywiser Press. Some of his early poems are anthologized in The Fly in the Ointment (20th anniversary edition, Syllabic Press, 2014). His honors include an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellowship in poetry from the Guggenheim Foundation. He is the Senior American Editor for Waywiser Press, and the editor of The Hecht Prize Anthology (Waywiser, 2011). He lives in Baltimore.

Read "The Land of Nod" and "A Local History" by James Arthur.

Read "Shakespeare's Horse" and "Dr. Johnson Rolls Down a Hill" by Joseph Harrison.

Recorded On: Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Word Warrior documents the writing, life and times of a pioneering, yet overlooked, African American artist. Throughout Richard Durham's lifetime (1917-1984), this prolific Mississippi-born, Chicago-based writer used his eloquent literary voice and fierce determination to fight for freedom, equality and justice for all.

Durham first authored engaging poetry and radio dramas during the 1930s and '40s. He may be best known for his award-winning "Destination Freedom" series featured on Chicago's NBC affiliate, WMAQ, from 1948-1950. The series took listeners on a weekly, half-hour journey through the lives and accomplishments of African American history makers and heroes -- a truly unique series on a medium that barely recognized and usually negatively stereotyped black citizens in a highly discriminatory America.

Richard Durham also earned honors as an investigative reporter for the black-owned Chicago Defender. During the 1960s, he edited the Nation of Islam's Muhammad Speaks newspaper and served as lead writer for "Bird of the Iron Feather," a pioneering public television series about black life. Durham wrote Muhammad Ali's 1975 autobiography, The Greatest, and later served as a strategist and speechwriter for Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington.

Sonja D. Williams is a professor in the Howard University Department of Media, Journalism, and Film. She has worked as a broadcast journalist and media trainer in the Caribbean, Africa and throughout the United States, receiving numerous awards, including three George Foster Peabody Awards for Significant and Meritorious Achievement.

The Brown Lecture Series is supported by a generous grant from the Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Foundation.

Recorded On: Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Elizabeth Nix, professor of legal, ethical and historical studies at the University of Baltimore, will bring examples of structural racism and white privilege to light by talking about the history of Baltimore and how that history has resulted in discriminatory patterns and policies and segregation in Baltimore.

Elizabeth Nix is co-editor of Baltimore'68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City.

Talking About Race is presented in partnership with Open Society Institute-Baltimore.

Recorded On: Tuesday, October 27, 2015

D. Watkins, a native son of the east side (the beast side) of Baltimore, has survived the kind of life in urban America that has claimed the lives of many of his friends and family members. He writes with the compassion and unsentimental clarity of a survivor -- of a man who is passionately determined to stop the cycles of violence and suffering that have long been inflicted on his community. Watkins' debut book, The Beast Side, is a rare, highly personal dispatch from the streets.

When his older brother was shot down by business rivals, Watkins took over his drug racket, earning enough to continue his education. He eventually earned a master's of education from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Baltimore. He now teaches creative writing at Coppin State University.

Recorded On: Thursday, October 22, 2015

Rachel Carson, author of the 1962 bestseller, Silent Spring, was the first American to combine two longstanding, but separate, strands of American environmentalism -- the love of nature and a concern for human health. In Rachel Carson and Her Sisters, Robert K. Musil redefines the achievements and legacy of Carson, linking her work to a wide network of American women activists and writers, such as Ellen Swallow Richards, Dr. Alice Hamilton, Terry Tempest Williams, Sandra Steingraber, Devra Davis, and Theo Colborn, all of whom overcame obstacles to build and lead the modern American environmental movement.

Dr. Musil is president and CEO of the Rachel Carson Council. He is also a senior fellow and adjunct professor at the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, School of Public Affairs, American University. From 1992 to 2006, he served as executive director and CEO of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Recorded On: Wednesday, October 21, 2015

In 1886 New York, the son of John Cross, a respectable architect, racks up a sizeable gambling debt to Kent's Gents, a notorious gang of thieves and killers. To pay back the debt, Cross has to use his inside knowledge of high society mansions and museums to craft a robbery even the smartest detectives won't solve. Cross becomes invaluable to the gang, but his life has become a balancing act. It will only take one mistake for it all to come crashing down and for his family to go down too.

An architect by profession, Charles Belfoure is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Paris Architect. Belfoure will talk about his inspiration for the book and his historical research process, plus provide insight into the architecture of the Gilded Age.

Recorded On: Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts' new book, Grant Park, explores the last four decades of U.S. race relations through the interconnected stories of two Chicago journalists: Malcolm Toussaint, a celebrated black columnist, and Bob Carson, his unassuming white editor. 

The night before Election Day in 2008, Toussaint sneaks an incendiary, racially charged column into the paper, defying his editors' wishes, and then promptly disappears. The next morning, with Toussaint nowhere to be found, Carson is fired. Toussaint has been kidnapped off the street by a pair of white supremacists who scheme to bomb Barack Obama's Election Night rally in Grant Park. Carson, furious and determined to confront Toussaint, must also deal with the sudden reappearance of his lost love, a fellow former peace activist now working for the Obama campaign.

Leonard Pitts' column appears in the Baltimore Sun. He is the author of the novels Freeman and Before I Forget, the memoir Becoming Dad, and Forward From This Moment: Selected Columns, 1994-2009.

Recorded On: Monday, October 19, 2015

The New Black is a documentary that tells the story of how the African American community is grappling with the gay rights issue. The film documents activists, families and clergy on both sides of the campaign to legalize gay marriage and examines homophobia in the black church, revealing the Christian right wing's strategy of exploiting this phenomenon in order to pursue an anti-gay political agenda.

Following the screening, Dr. Anika Simpson, associate professor of philosophy and Coordinator, Women's and Gender Studies, Morgan State University, will moderate a panel discussion and conversation with audience members.

Panelists include: Rev. Delman Coates, senior pastor, Mount Ennon Baptist Church, Clinton, MD; Sharon Lettman-Hicks, executive director & CEO of National Black Justice Coalition; and Samantha Master, African American Leadership & Engagement Specialist, Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Presented in partnership with the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights.

Recorded On: Sunday, October 11, 2015

Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA, will talk about structural changes in the job market that have resulted in many day laborers, especially among immigrants and people of color. They will focus on how we can help build power, respect and fair labor standards for the 2.5 million nannies, housekeepers and elderly caregivers in the U.S.

Ai-Jen Poo is co-director of the Caring Across Generations campaign. She has been organizing immigrant women workers since 1996. In 2000 she co-founded Domestic Workers United, the New York organization that spearheaded the successful passage of the state's historic Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in 2010.

Gustavo Torres is the executive director of CASA, a multi-service Latino advocacy and support agency. He has been recognized nationally and internationally for his leadership and vision in the immigrant rights movement in the United States. He joined CASA's staff as a community organizer and has served as CASA's executive director since 1994.

Talking About Race is presented in partnership with Open Society Institute-Baltimore.

Recorded On: Thursday, October 15, 2015

Born in the Dominican Republic, Peralta came to the United States legally with his family when he was four years old. When their visas lapsed, his father returned to the Dominican Republic. Peralta and his family went into the city's shelter system where he met a young volunteer who noticed his sharp mind and interest in his studies and helped him obtain a scholarship to Manhattan's elite Collegiate School. 

Peralta received his BA summa cum laude from Princeton University, his MPhil from the University of Oxford, and his PhD in classics from Stanford University. He is currently a Mellon Research Fellow at Columbia University.

Presented in partnership with Loyola University's Center for Innovation in Urban Education and the Espranza Center, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association.

Recorded On: Wednesday, October 14, 2015