Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Marian Anderson (1897–1993) was an African American singer who overcame both poverty and the blatant racism of her day to become an international opera star. She may be best remembered now for her historic 1939 performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In the crowd that day was 10-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sabrina Coleman Clark, operatic soprano and educator, celebrates the life of this true American heroine in “Legacy of Hope: The Marian Anderson Story.” Ms. Coleman Clark melds together the music, history, and life story of this great artist into a captivating and thought-provoking narrative.

Recorded On: Saturday, March 16, 2013

Kweku Sai is dead. A renowned surgeon and failed husband, he succumbs suddenly outside his home in suburban Accra. The news of Kweku's death sends a ripple around the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before. In Ghana Must Go, Taiye Selasi charts the Sais' circuitous journey to one another as Kweku's children gather at their mother's new home. What is revealed in their coming together is the story of how they came apart: the hearts broken, the lies told, the crimes committed in the name of love.

Born in London, Taiye Selasi was raised in Massachusetts. She holds a B.A. in American Studies from Yale and a M.Phil. in international relations from Oxford. She made her literary debut in Granta with "The Sex Lives of African Girls," which the New York Times called a "standout piece of fiction."

Recorded On: Thursday, March 14, 2013

Is relativity Jewish? The Nazis denigrated Albert Einstein's revolutionary theory by calling it "Jewish science," a charge typical of the ideological excesses of Hitler and his followers. Philosopher of science Steven Gimbel explores the many meanings of this provocative phrase and considers whether there is any sense in which Einstein's theory of relativity is Jewish.

Einstein's Jewish Science intertwines science, history, philosophy, theology, and politics in fresh and fascinating ways to solve the multifaceted riddle of what religion means -- and what it means to science.

Steven Gimbel is the Edwin T. and Cynthia Shearer Johnson Professor for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Gettysburg College. He is author of Exploring the Scientific Method: Cases and Questions and other books.

Recorded On: Wednesday, March 13, 2013

This collection of essays by black scholars and activists, edited by Jared Ball and Todd Burroughs, is a critical response to Manning Marable's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Though lauded by many, Marable's book was debated and denounced by others as a flawed biography, full of conjecture and errors and lacking in new factual context.

Dr. Jared A. Ball is associate professor of communication studies at Morgan State University. Dr. Todd S. Burroughs is a lecturer in the communication studies department at Morgan State University.

Recorded On: Tuesday, March 12, 2013

A panel of four women writers from across the globe discusses the intersection of place, time and culture in literature and in the lives of women. The conversation will be moderated by Linda A. Duggins, Hachette Book Group.

Jami Attenberg has written about sex, technology, design, graphic novels, books, television and urban life for the New York Times, Salon, New York, Details.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post and other publications. She is the author of The Middlesteins (Grand Central Publishing).

Raquel Cepeda is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker. Cepeda edited the critically acclaimed anthology And It Don't Stop: The Best Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years, winner of a PEN and Latino Book Award. She is also former editor-in-chief of Russell Simmons' Oneworld magazine. Her new book is Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina (Atria Books).

Ayana Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where she will be teaching this spring. She is a recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Knopf), her first novel, has been chosen for Oprah Winfrey's Book Club 2.0. She lives and writes in Brooklyn.

Dina Nayeri was born in Iran during the revolution and emigrated to Oklahoma at the age of 10. She has a BA from Princeton and an MBA and Masters of Education from Harvard. She is currently a Truman Capote Fellow and a Teaching Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her new novel is A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (Riverhead).

Presented in partnership with the Antigua & Barbuda International Literary Festival. Media sponsor: The Baltimore Times.

Pictured, from top: Linda A. Duggins, Jami Attenberg, Raquel Cepeda, Ayana Mathis, Dina Nayeri.

Recorded On: Saturday, March 9, 2013

In The Secret Financial Life of Food, Kara Newman reveals the economic pathways that connect food to consumer, unlocking the mysteries behind culinary trends, grocery pricing, and restaurant dining. Kara Newman shows how contracts listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange can read like a menu and how market behavior can dictate global economic and culinary practice.

A former board member of the Culinary Historians of New York, Kara Newman is the spirits editor for Wine Enthusiast magazine and the author of two cocktail books.

Recorded On: Thursday, March 7, 2013

Clarinda Harriss is a professor emerita of English at Towson University, where she taught poetry, editing, and modern literature for decades, during one of which she was the Chair of English. Her most recent poetry collections are Air Travel, Mortmain, and Dirty Blue Voice. Harriss's poems and short fiction are widely anthologized. She directs BrickHouse Books, Maryland's oldest literary press. Her ongoing research interest is in prison writers. She and Moira Egan recently edited Hot Sonnets (Entasis Press, 2011), a collection of modern erotic sonnets. CityLit has established the Harriss Award for Poetry in her honor. Novelist Geoff Becker says that poems by Harriss "have the clarity of early light and the seductiveness of dreams."

Karen Garthe grew up in Baltimore and attended Towson High School. When she graduated in 1968, she went to New York to study dance, then embarked on numerous careers in a broad swath of venues in New York City. Clarinda Harriss was her English teacher at Towson and Faculty Advisor to the school literary magazine of which she was editor-in-chief. Garthe won the 2005 Colorado Prize for her first book, Frayed Escort. The Banjo Clock was published in June 2012 by the University of California Press. Reviewing The Banjo Clock in The Huffington Post, Seth Abramson says, "Karen Garthe writes some of the most expert—and tightly wound—lyric poems you'll ever read.[...] What Garthe is offering today's poetry readers is a reason to read poetry rather than prose, to listen to poetry rather than electronica, to inhabit a verse environment rather than some workaday multimedia environment whose [...] dimensions are as unlikely to educate as they are to inspire."

Read poems by Clarinda Harriss here and here.
Read poems by Karen Garthe here and here.

Recorded On: Tuesday, March 5, 2013

In 1952, the skies over Washington, D.C. were saturated with flying saucers. Aerial dog fights between United States Air Force pilots and these unknown invaders were tracked by commercial and military radar. While the nation's capital was held in thrall by these nighttime activities, the highest levels of the government were involved in covering it up. Or so the conspiracy theorists and UFOlogists would have you believe. Can we look back over the intervening years and discover what happened? Is the veil of secrecy too thick and strong to penetrate?

Bruce Press is the chair of the Independent Investigations Group of Washington, D.C., an affiliate of the Center for Inquiry. He is also a member of the National Capital Area Skeptics. His background as an engineer and photographer aid in his extracurricular interests investigating strange phenomena on a foundation of reason and scientific skepticism.

Recorded On: Saturday, March 2, 2013

Sonia Sotomayor was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2009. My Beloved World is the story of her life before she became the first Hispanic appointed to the court: her childhood in a Bronx housing project; her relationship with her grandmother who sheltered her from the meanness of the South Bronx; her dogged and brilliant march through public schools and the Ivy League; and her extraordinary legal career. My Beloved World is a book about self-discovery; Sotomayor, at the pinnacle of legal achievement, is still dazzled by the possibilities in America.

The Ivy Bookshop will have copies of the book, in English and Spanish language editions, for sale at the event.

Recorded On: Thursday, February 28, 2013

Isaac Rice, a teenaged slave, escapes from a South Carolina rice plantation and faces incredible hardships and danger as he travels westward. First Dark is an epic tale of a young man who pursues respect and dignity on an odyssey that takes him from the Civil War through the Indian Wars, Reconstruction and spillover bloodshed from a Mexican Revolution.

Bob Rogers, author of Will and Dena, is a former army captain and combat leader during the Vietnam War.

Recorded On: Sunday, February 24, 2013