Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Kathi Wolfe is a poet and writer. Wolfe's most recent collection, The Uppity Blind Girl Poems, winner of the 2014 Stonewall Chapbook Competition, was published by BrickHouse Books in 2015. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Wordgathering, Gargoyle, Poetry Magazine, and other publications. In 2013, Finishing Line Press published Wolfe's poetry chapbook The Green Light. Her collection Helen Takes the Stage: The Helen Keller Poems was published by Pudding House in 2008. She was a 2008 Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writer Fellow. Wolfe is a contributor to the groundbreaking anthology Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. She is a contributor to the Washington Blade, the acclaimed LGBT newspaper.

David Eberhardt has published three books of poetry: The Tree Calendar, Blue Running Lights, and Poems from the Website, Poetry in Baltimore.He is at work on amemoir:For All the Saints. As a peace protester, Dave was incarcerated at Lewisburg Federal Prison in 1970 for 21 months for pouring blood on draft files with Father Philip Berrigan and two others to protest the Vietnam War. He is retired after 33 years of work as a Director of Offender Aid and Restoration at the Baltimore City Jail.

Gregg Mosson is the author of two books of poetry, Questions of Fire and Season of Flowers and Dust. From 2003 through 2010, he founded and edited the magazine Poems Against War: a Journal, which published seven issues and remains archived online at www.poemsagainstwar.com. He is a former reporter and commentator whose work has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, The Baltimore Sun, The Oregonian, The Baltimore Review, and The Futurist. His poetry has appeared in many small-press journals. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, he has taught both at Johns Hopkins and at the University of Baltimore. He is a former contributing poetry editor at The Baltimore Review.

In Cleveland, full of love

--from “Love and Kumquats” by Kathi Wolfe (previously published in the Potomac Review and Wordgathering)

Slipping- I don't think I can do without the great apes!- militias filtering through 

The forests-  paws sold for rifles, mountains silver moon lit- silver back 

Paws made into ash trays[....]

--from "Great Apes" by David Eberhardt

--from "Unknown Soldier (for David Eberhardt)" by Gregg Mosson

Recorded On: Wednesday, October 7, 2015

At their New England art school, Paulina and Fran both stand apart from the crowd. Paulina is striking and sexually adventurous, a self-proclaimed queen bee with a devastating mean-girl streak. Fran, with her gorgeous untamed head of curly hair, is quirky, sweet and sexually innocent. An aspiring painter whose potential outstrips her confidence, she floats dreamily through criticism and dance floors alike. On a school trip to Norway, the girls are drawn together, each disarmed by the other's character.

Though their bond is instant and powerful, it's also wracked by complications. When Fran winds up dating one of Paulina's ex-boyfriends, an incensed Paulina becomes determined to destroy the couple, creating a rift that will shape their lives well past their art school days.

Paulina & Fran is the debut novel of a writer with rare insight into the complexities of obsession, friendship, and prickly ever-elusive love. Rachel Glaser has studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and fiction at the UMass-Amherst MFA Program. Her previous books include the story collection, Pee on Water, and Moods, a collection of poetry. In 2013, Glaser received the McSweeney's Amanda Davis Fiction Award.

Recorded On: Monday, October 5, 2015

Ranging from the 17th century to the present and crossing multiple continents, Counternarratives' novellas and stories draw upon memoirs, newspaper accounts, detective stories, interrogation transcripts, and speculative fiction to create new and strange perspectives on our past and present.

In "Rivers," a free Jim meets up decades later with his former raftmate Huckleberry Finn. "An Outtake" chronicles an escaped slave's fate in the American Revolution. "On Brazil, or Denouement" burrows deep into slavery and sorcery in early colonial South America, and in "Blues" the great poets Langston Hughes and Xavier Villaurrutia meet in Depression-era New York and share more than secrets.

John Keene is a former member of the Dark Room Writers Collective, a graduate fellow of Cave Canem, and the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including a Whiting Foundation Prize for fiction. He is associate professor of African American and African Studies at Rutgers University. Keene is the author of the award-winning novel Annotations.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a generous grant from PNC Bank.

Recorded On: Wednesday, September 30, 2015

In the wake of the killing of Freddie Gray and the subsequent uprising, many media outlets focused on tired stereotypes about black criminality rather than the years of oppression that sparked the protests. Rashad Robinson, Executive Director of ColorOfChange, and Stacey Patton, reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education, will talk about how dehumanizing media coverage can reinforce bias and negatively impact black communities.

Since 2005, ColorOfChange, the nation's largest online civil rights organization, has been a leading force in holding government and corporations accountable to black people and advancing visionary solutions for building a just society. From fighting for justice for Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Renisha McBride and Trayvon Martin to battling attempts to suppress the black vote and helping shape the successful strategy in the fight to protect a free and open Internet, ColorOfChange has been at the forefront of the most critical civil rights issues of this century.

Before joining The Chronicle, Stacey Patton was a senior editor and writer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She has also reported for the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun.

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

Recorded On: Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Objective Troy tells the story of Anwar al-Awlaki, the once-celebrated American imam who called for moderation after 9/11, a man who ultimately directed his outsized talents to the mass murder of his fellow citizens. It follows Barack Obama's campaign against the excesses of the Bush counterterrorism programs and his eventual embrace of the targeted killing of suspected militants. And it recounts how the president directed the mammoth machinery of spy agencies to hunt Awlaki down in a frantic, multi-million dollar pursuit that would end with the death of Awlaki by a bizarre, robotic technology that is changing warfare -- the drone.

Scott Shane is a national security reporter for the New York Times based in Washington, DC. From 1983 to 2004, he was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a generous grant from PNC Bank.

Recorded On: Monday, September 21, 2015

When he was 12 years old, Freeman Hrabowski heard Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. talk about a children's march for civil rights and opportunity. Hrabowski convinced his parents to let him participate in the famed Children's Crusade. He spent five terrifying nights in jail and became a leader for the younger kids.

Dr. Hrabowski went on to fuse his passion for education and for equality. As president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, he founded the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, which has been one of the most successful programs for educating African Americans who go on to earn doctorates in the STEM disciplines. In Holding Fast to Dreams, Hrabowski recounts his journey as an educator, a university president, and a pioneer in developing successful, holistic programs for high-achieving students of all races.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a generous grant from PNC Bank.

Recorded On: Monday, September 28, 2015

When Mark Zuckerberg announced his $100 million pledge to transform the Newark Schools -- and to solve the education crisis in every city in America -- it looked like a huge win for then-mayor Cory Booker and governor Chris Christie. But their plans soon ran into a constituency not so easily moved: Newark's key education players, fiercely protective of their billion-dollar-per-annum system. It's a prize that, for generations, has enriched seemingly everyone, except Newark's students.

Journalist Dale Russakoff delivers a story of high ideals and hubris, good intentions and greed, celebrity and street smarts, as reformers face off against entrenched unions, skeptical parents and bewildered students. The growth of charters forces the hand of Newark's school superintendent Cami Anderson who closes, consolidates, or redesigns more than a third of the city's schools.

The Prize is a portrait of a titanic struggle over the future of education for the poorest kids, and a cautionary tale for those who care about the shape of America's schools.

Dale Russakoff spent 28 years as a reporter for the Washington Post, covering politics, education, social policy and other topics.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a generous grant from PNC Bank.

Recorded On: Thursday, September 17, 2015

Best-selling author James Patterson is Pratt's very special guest at the Central Library. He donated 25,000 books to Baltimore City Public Schools and spoke to over 300 5th graders in the Main Hall of the Central Library on Wednesday, September 16.

This event is a partnership with BCPS. We are happy that they chose the library to host James Patterson for the students.

James Patterson spoke about his newest book for young adults, Public School Hero.

Recorded On: Wednesday, September 16, 2015

This debut novel from the author of The Drunken Botanist is based on the forgotten true story of one of the nation's first female deputy sheriffs.

Constance Kopp doesn't quite fit the mold. She towers over most men, has no interest in marriage or domestic affairs, and has been isolated from the world since a family secret sent her and her sisters into hiding fifteen years ago.

One day a belligerent and powerful silk factory owner runs down their buggy, and a dispute over damages turns into a war of bricks, bullets, and threats as he unleashes his gang on their family farm. When the sheriff enlists her help in convicting the men, Constance is forced to confront her past and defend her family -- and she does it in a way that few women of 1914 would have dared.

Amy Stewart has written six nonfiction books on the perils and pleasures of the natural world, including four New York Times bestsellers: The Drunken Botanist, Wicked Bugs, Wicked Plants and Flower Confidential. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the American Horticulture Society's Book Award, and an International Association of Culinary Professionals Food Writing Award.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a generous grant from PNC Bank.

Recorded On: Tuesday, September 15, 2015

The 2015 Mencken Memorial Lecture, "H. L. Mencken: Anti-Semite?" is presented by David S. Thaler and introduced by last year's lecturer, Larry Gibson.

Recorded On: Saturday, September 12, 2015