Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Singer, songwriter, and arranger Adam Kolbe Jones is active in the Baltimore, Washington, and Minneapolis/St. Paul areas. His largely acoustic folk rock debut album, “Ladies and Gentleplums,” was released in early 2011, and features songs in a joyful and gentle Americana-inspired style.

Recorded On: Saturday, January 7, 2012

Learn all about the French secrets to joie de vivre. Jamie Cat Callan traveled all over France, interviewing hundreds of women to find their secrets to living a well-balanced life, enjoying more with less, and keeping stylish and sexy through middle age and beyond. Here are few of those secrets: cultivate a secret garden; walk everywhere; consume less and enjoy more; flirt a la francaise; and wear beautiful lingerie everyday. Jamie Cat Callan is the author of French Women Don't Sleep Alone which has been translated into ten languages.

Recorded On: Wednesday, January 4, 2012

As part of the Pratt Library's Mencken Day, author, journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens presented the 2006 Mencken Memorial Lecture at the Central Library of the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

The British-American writer Christopher Hitchens, the masterful rhetorician, intellectual and atheist, died Thursday December 15, 2011 at the age of 62.

Recorded On: Saturday, September 9, 2006

An ambassador and special envoy on Afghanistan (1989 - 1992), Peter Tomsen developed close relationships with Afghan leaders, including President Hamid Karzai and Ahmad Shah Masood, and has dealt with senior Taliban, warlords, and religious leaders involved in the region's conflicts over the last two decades. Drawing on his experiences and knowledge of the region, plus a rich trove of never-before-published material, Tomsen sheds new light on the American involvement in the long and continuing Afghan war.

Recorded On: Thursday, December 8, 2011

Talking About Race, an ongoing series co-sponsored by the Open Society Institute-Baltimore and the Pratt Library 

Touré's newest provocative book, Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now, was acclaimed by the New York Times as "one of the most acutely observed accounts of what it is like to be young, black and middle-class in contemporary America." Benjamin Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP, calls the book "a fascinating conversation among some of America's most brilliant and insightful Black thinkers candidly exploring Black identity in America today. Touré powerfully captures the pain and dissonance of Black Americans' far too often unrequited love for our great nation."

Touré is a cultural critic for MSNBC, as well as the host of a couple of shows on Fuse-TV: "Hip Hop Shop" and "On the Record." A contributing editor at Rolling Stone, his articles appear regularly in publications ranging from the New York Times to the Village Voice to the New Yorker.

Michael Eric Dyson, University Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University, wrote the foreward to Toure's book.

Recorded On: Monday, December 5, 2011

Recorded On: Saturday, December 3, 2011

Iain Haley Pollock is the author of Spit Back A Boy, winner of the 2010 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, selected by Elizabeth Alexander. Pollock teaches English at Chestnut Hill Academy.
(www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/spit_back)

Derrick Weston Brown is the author of Wisdom Teeth (2011).He serves as poet-in-residence at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC.
(www.pmpress.org/content/article.php?story=DerrickWestonBrown)

Khadijah Queen is the author of two poetry collections, Conduit and Black Peculiar, which won the 2010 Noemi Book Award for Poetry.
(http://khadijahqueen.com//home.html)

Evie Shockley is the author of two books of poetry, the new black (2011)and a half-red sea.  She teaches African American literature and creative writing at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
(www.redroom.com/author/evie-shockley)

Recorded On: Sunday, December 4, 2011

Harriet Lynn, local theater and sports activist, will moderate a discussion with African-American tennis pioneers, Leon Bowser, Joseph Parham, Sr. and Jean Powell. This discussion follows the documentary, Tennis, Everyone!  based on oral history interviews with tennis pioneers conducted by Ms. Lynn and sponsored by the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks. The panelists will share their experiences about the integration and advancement of the sport at Druid Hill Park. 

Recorded On: Thursday, November 17, 2011

Recorded On: Saturday, November 12, 2011

Recorded On: Saturday, November 19, 2011