Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Kendra Kopelke and Mary Azrael are co-editors of Passager journal, now in its 22nd year, and Passager Books, a press dedicated to older writers. They have published books by individual authors and co-edited two anthologies, most recently Burning Bright: Passager Celebrates 21 Years.

Kendra Kopelke is author of four books of poems, including Hopper's Women, based on the paintings of Edward Hopper. She directs the MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts at the University of Baltimore.

Mary Azrael is the author of three books of poems and an opera libretto, Lost Childhood, inspired by the life of Holocaust survivor Yehuda Nir. She teaches poetry in the Odyssey program at Johns Hopkins University, Homewood Campus.

Read poems by Kendra Kopelke.
Read a poem by Mary Azrael.
Learn more about Passager.

Recorded On: Wednesday, June 13, 2012

As a prelude to the Star-Spangled Sailabration, an international parade of ships sailing into Baltimore's Inner Harbor June 13 - 19, David Taylor talks about the U.S. Navy's official commemorative book of the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812. Taylor and coauthor Mark Collins Jenkins present historical recollections, personal reminiscences of the war, and detailed histories through vibrant images and intimate stories. The book features photographs, period illustrations, historic documents, maps, letters, ephemera, and artifacts, including fascinating finds from the Navy's most recent underwater excavation of the war's lost ships.

David Taylor is the author of the award-winning books Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America; Ginseng, the Divine Root; and Success: Stories, a fiction collection. He has written and co-produced documentary films for PBS, the National Geographic Society, Discovery Channel, and the Smithsonian Channel, including "Soul of a People," which was nominated for a 2010 Writers Guild award.

Recorded On: Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Better Than Alright, an innovative collaboration with Essence and Ledisi in her writing debut, is a collection of Ledisi's personal photos, quotes, lyrics and richly detailed stories. Beginning with her performance at Essence's first Black Women in Hollywood luncheon in 2008, Ledisi charts her journey to acceptance of her beauty, talent and power, showing how she endured and ultimately triumphed in the music business, on her own terms.

Recorded On: Sunday, June 10, 2012

When Sargent "Sarge" Shriver, founder of the Peace Corps and architect of President Johnson's War on Poverty , died in 2011, thousands of tributes poured in from friends and strangers around the world. These tributes, which extolled the daily kindness and humanity of "a good man," moved Shriver's son Mark more than those lauding Sarge for his big-stage, headline-making accomplishments. After a lifetime searching for the path to his father's success in the public arena, Mark instead turns to a search for the secret of his father's joy, his devotion to others, and his sense of purpose. In A Good Man, he writes about his relationship with his father and his quest to understand the principles by which his father lived his extraordinary life.

Mark Shriver is the senior vice president of U.S. Programs at Save the Children in Washington, D.C., and a former Maryland state legislator. He also started the Choice Program and served on the coalition to create the National Commission on Children and Disasters following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, president of UMBC, will introduce Mark Shriver.

Photo of Mark Shriver © Laurence L. Levin.

Recorded On: Thursday, June 7, 2012

The first of three volumnes of The Graphic Canon is a collection of the world's great literature interpreted by artists and illustrators including R. Crumb, Will Eisner, Molly Crabapple, and Gareth Hinds. Volume One: From The Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons covers the earliest iterature through the end of the 1700s.

Russ Kick has edited the bestselling anthologies You Are Being Lied To and Everyone You Know is Wrong.

The New York Times has dubbed Kick "an information archaeologist" and Utne Reader named him one of its "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World."

Recorded On: Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Armed with only early boyhood memories, Lawrence P. Jackson begins his quest by setting out from his home in Baltimore for Pittsylvania County, Virginia, to try to find his late grandfather's old home by the railroad tracks in Blairs. My Father's Name tells the tale of the ensuing journey, at once a detective story and a moving historical memoir, uncovering the mixture of anguish and fulfillment that accompanies a venture into the ancestral past, specifically one tied to the history of slavery.

Jackson's dogged research in libraries, census records, and courthouse registries enables him to trace his family to his grandfather's grandfather, a man who was born or sold into slavery but who, when Federal troops abandoned the South in 1877, was able to buy forty acres of land. Jackson reconstructs moments in the lives of his father's grandfather, Edward Jackson, and great-grandfather, Granville Hundley, and gives life to revealing narratives of Pittsylvania County, recalling both the horror of slavery and the later struggles of postbellum freedom.

Lawrence Jackson is professor of English and African American studies at Emory University. He is the author of The Indignant Generation: A Narrative Histoyr of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960 and Ralph Emerson: Emergence of Genius.

Recorded On: Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Recorded On: Saturday, June 2, 2012

Raised by a pro-black, pan-Afrikan single mother during the crack years of 1980s Washington, DC, and educated at Sidwell Friends School and Harvard University, Baratunde Thurston has over 30 years' experience being black. Now, through stories of his politically inspired Nigerian name, the heroics of his hippie mother, the murder of his drug-abusing father, and other details, he shares with readers of all colors his wisdom and expertise of "being black."

Baratunde Thurston is the director of digital at The Onion, the cofounder of Jack & Jill Politics, a stand-up comedian, and a globe-trotting speaker. He was named one of the 100 most influential African Americans of 2011 by The Root andone of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company magazine.

Recorded On: Thursday, May 31, 2012

Millions of readers and film-goers around the world have been thrilled by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the Stieg Larsson trilogy. In a series of short vignettes, Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson's life partner, tells the story of their 30-year romance; of Larsson's lifelong struggle to expose Sweden's neo-Nazis; of his struggle to keep Expo, the magazine he founded, alive; his difficult relationships with his immediate family; and the joy and relief he discovered writing the Millenium Trilogy.

Eva Gabrielsson is an architect, author and political activist. In addition to working with Stieg Larsson on his writing projects, she is the coauthor of several books. As an activist, she works to stop violence against women.

Recorded On: Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Recorded On: Tuesday, May 29, 2012