Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

In this memoir, Richard O'Mara, a former reporter, columnist, foreign correspondent and editor for the Baltimore Sun, writes about growing up in Philadelphia during the Great Depression. "Reading these engrossing essays, the reader is gripped by two emotions: admiration at the author's story-telling skill, and wonder ... that a young man with such a backgound ... could develop into such a skilled and remarkable writer." Betsy Olavarueth, editor, The Puerto Escondido Times

Recorded On: Wednesday, May 23, 2012

The Jazz Exponents, a saxophone quartet, perform music from a real ‘golden age’ in jazz history, with tunes by greats like Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Horace Silver.

Recorded On: Saturday, May 19, 2012

Lia Purpura is the author of seven collections of essays, poems and translations, most recently Rough Likeness. Her essays are full of joy in the act of intense observation; they're also deliciously subversive and alert to the ways language gets locked and loaded by culture. Rough Likeness finds worlds in the minute, and crafts monuments to beauty and strangeness.

Lia Purpura is Writer in Residence at Loyola University, Baltimore, and teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program. Her awards include a 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (for On Looking), NEA and Fulbright fellowships, four Pushcart prizes, the AWP Award in nonfiction and the Beatrice Hawley award in poetry.

Recorded On: Tuesday, May 22, 2012

In her debut novel, Meredith Goldstein tells the story of five singles at a friend's lavish wedding on the Chesapeake Bay. Their entertaining trials of heartbreak, loneliness, and relationship disasters are set against the joyous occasion of Bee's nuptials. Funny, romantic and unpredictable, The Singles takes you to the wedding festivities where the guests take center stage.

Meredith Goldstein is an advice columnist and entertainment reporter for the Boston Globe. She writes the "Love Letters" blog and co-writes the paper's society column, "Names."

Recorded On: Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Before the age of 12, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's life was shaken by the Nazi invasion of her native Prague, World War II, fascism, and the onset of the Cold War. Albright recounts her own experiences during this time, and those of her family, in Prague Winter. Drawing upon her memory, her parents' written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and newly-available documents, she offers a moving account of this tumultuous period. An intense personal journey into the past, it offers vital lessons for the future.

Madeleine Albright served as U.S. Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001 and as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling books: Madam Secretary; The Mighty and The Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs; Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership; and Read My Pins.

Madeleine Albright is interviewed by Sanford Ungar, president of Goucher College.

Recorded On: Thursday, May 10, 2012

Over Time is as unconventional and wide-ranging as Frank Deford's remarkable career. Fresh out of Princeton in 1962, Deford joined Sports Illustrated. They called him "the Kid," and he made his reputation with dumb luck, discovering fellow Princetonian Bill Bradley and a Canadian teenager named Bobby Orr. In this charming memoir, Deford traces the entire arc of American sports writing and gives us a tour of great American sports literature.

A Baltimore native, Frank Deford has written 18 books, won a Peabody and an Emmy, and read more than 1,500 commentaries on NPR's Morning Edition. He is senior contributing writer at Sports Illustrated and is a regular correspondent on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel on HBO. Among his many honors: he has been elected to the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters; has been voted U.S. Sportswriter of the Year six times; and was twice voted Magazine Writer of the Year by the Washington Journalism Review.

Recorded On: Wednesday, May 9, 2012

 Facilitated by: Anthony McCarthy

The Anthony McCarthy Show is a one-stop show for the in-depth interviews and information on breaking news, politics, public policy, arts, and culture. The key difference between this show and others can be summed up in one word, experience.

Panelists:
Navasha Daya
This singer, songwriter and producer is no stranger to the ears of many. Navasha is internationally known as lead singer and founding member of the Baltimore based nu-jazz band, Fertile Ground.

Fanon Hill
Recentlly the Co-Director of the Black Male Identity project, he is Co-Founder/Executive Director of The Youth Resiliency Institute (YRI). Musician, Cultural Arts Advocate, and Community Organizer, Fanon is author of the essay, "In the Indigenous Loop: Fela Anikulapo - Kuti."

Chris Pumphrey
Musician and Founder of the Baltimore Afrobeat Society

Recorded On: Monday, May 7, 2012

Mary Jo Salter was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and grew up in Detroit and Baltimore. She is Andrew W. Mellon Professor and Co-Chair of The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Her six volumes of poems include Henry Purcell in Japan (1985), Unfinished Painting (1989), Sunday Skaters (1995), A Kiss in Space (1999), Open Shutters (2004), and A Phone Call to the Future: New and Selected Poems (2008). She has also published a children’s book, The Moon Comes Home (1989), and is a co-editor of the fourth and fifth editions of The Norton Anthology of Poetry. She edited The Selected Poems of Amy Clampitt (2010).

Stephen Kampa has published poetry, critical prose, and reviews in journals such as the Southwest Review, Tampa Review, The Hopkins Review, Subtropics, Poetry Northwest, the Sewanee Theological Review, and River Styx. He is the winner of the 2011 River Styx International Poetry Contest, and his first book, Cracks in the Invisible, won the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and a Florida Book Awards' Gold Medal in poetry. He holds degrees from Carleton College and the Johns Hopkins University and has worked as a teacher and a musician.

Read a poem by Mary Jo Salter.
Read a poem by Stephen Kampa.

Mary Jo Salter photo credit: Michael Malyzsko.

Recorded On: Wednesday, May 2, 2012

On August 28, 1963, as Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, a civil rights victory occurred in Baltimore. Segregation finally ended at Gwynn Oak Amusement Park when 11-month-old Sharon Langley became the first African American child to ride on the park's classic merry-go-round. In Round & Round Together, Amy Nathan tells the story of that merry-go-round and the nearly decade-long effort to integrate Gwynn Oak Amusement Park.

Amy Nathan is the author of Yankee Doodle Gals, Count On Us, and Take a Seat--Make a Stand. She grew up in Baltimore where she went to Western High School.

Veterans of the Civil Rights movement in Baltimore who are featured in the book -- Lu Coleman, Charles Mason, John Roemer, Mary Sue Welcome, and Lydia Wilkins -- will share their memories of this historic time.

Recorded On: Thursday, April 26, 2012

Listen to scrumptious stories about food from the folk and fairy tale tradition.

Recorded On: Tuesday, April 24, 2012