Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

New Orleans native Francesca Dumas is a quadroon, courted by moneyed white men. She leads a sheltered life of elegant gowns and lavish balls until a bullet shatters her dream world. While awaiting arrival of the Union Navy atop a Mississippi River levee on April 25, 1862, Francesca's lover is shot dead, and Francesca vows revenge.

Bob Rogers, an IBMer for 33 years, is a former U.S. Army captain, a veteran of the Vietnam War, and a charter member of the Baltimore chapter of the 9th and 10th (Horse) Cavalry Assocation. He is the author of First Dark: A Buffalo Soldier's Story.

Recorded On: Sunday, November 9, 2014

In Baron Wormser's new novel, set in Baltimore in 1962-63, Susan Mermelstein and her son Arthur journey from sheltered innocence through the contradictions and complexities of race, politics and history.

Born in Baltimore, Baron Wormser is an award-winning poet and the former poet laureate of Maine. He teaches in the MFA program at Fairfield University. He has published nine poetry collections and is the author of The Road Washes Out in Spring: A Poet's Memoir of Living Off the Grid. 

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

Recorded On: Thursday, November 6, 2014

Ailish Hopper is the author of Dark~Sky Society, selected by David St. John as runner-up for the New Issues prize, and the chapbook, Bird in the Head, selected by Jean Valentine for the Center for Book Arts prize. Individual poems have appeared in journals including Agni, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Tidal Basin Review, among other places. Hopper has received support from the Baltimore Commission for the Arts and Humanities, the Maryland State Arts Council, the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. She teaches at Goucher College.

Melanie Henderson was born and raised in Washington, D.C. She is an alumnus of Howard and Trinity Universities. Prior to earning an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, she studied poetry at the Voices Summer Writing Workshops (VONA) in San Francisco, CA. Her debut collection of poems, Elegies for New York Avenue, won the 2011 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Drumvoices Revue, jubilat, Reverie, Torch, Tuesday; An Art Project, and The Washington Informer among numerous others. She participated in Huong's Peace Mural Exhibition in Washington, D.C. (2008-2009), was selected as a feature reader for the 2009 Joaquin Miller Cabin Poetry Series and as a recipient of the 2009 Larry Neal Writers Award (D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities). She received a 2013 Pushcart Prize nomination from Iris G. Press. She is the Managing Editor of Tidal Basin Review.

Read "Circle in the Grass" and "Dark-sky Society" by Ailish Hopper.

Read four poems from Elegies for New York Avenue by Melanie Henderson.

Recorded On: Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Susan Katz Miller grew up with a Jewish father and a Christian mother and was raised Jewish. Now in an interfaith marriage herself, she is one of the growing number of Americans who are electing to raise children with both faiths, rather than one or none.

Susan Katz Miller is a former Newsweek reporter and former US correspondent for New Scientist. She blogs on interfaith families for Huffington Post and OnBeingBoth.com.

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

Recorded On: Wednesday, November 5, 2014

For millions of people worldwide, nurses are the difference between life and death, self-sufficiency and dependency, hope and despair. Saving Lives highlights the essential roles nurses play in contemporary health care and how this role is marginalized by contemporary culture. Examples drawn from television, advertising,and news coverage show how the media reinforces stereotypes that fuel the nursing shortage.

Founder and executive director of The Truth About Nursing, Sandy Summers practiced nursing for many years. She has master's degrees in nursing and public health from Johns Hopkins University. Harry Summers is a lawyer who practices in Washington, DC; he serves as senior advisor to The Truth About Nursing.

Recorded On: Monday, October 27, 2014