Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Saving Washington: The Forgotten Story of the Maryland 400 and The Battle of Brooklyn  blends real-life historical figures and events with richly developed fictional characters. On a marshy Brooklyn battlefield on August 27, 1776, four hundred men from Baltimore, Maryland assembled to do battle against a vastly superior British army. The novel follows young Joshua Bolton and his childhood friend Ben Wright, a freed black man, as they witness British tyranny firsthand, become enraptured by the cause, and ultimately enlist to defend their new nation in a battle that galvanized the American nation on the eve of its birth.

Chris Formant is a student of history and former president of a multi-billion-dollar global business. This is his second novel.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Tuesday, August 20, 2019

The 2019 Enoch Pratt Free Library / Little Patuxent Review Poetry Contest finalists read along with one of the contest judges and one winner of the Poetry Contest in previous years.

Jalynn Harris, the 2019 Poetry Contest winner, is a Baltimore native currently pursuing an MFA at the University of Baltimore where she is the inaugural recipient of the Michael F. Klein Fellowship for Social Justice. She is also the founder of SoftSavagePress, a press dedicated to promoting works by Black people. She received her BA in Linguistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work has appeared in Transition, Gordon Square Review, Super Stoked Words, and Scalawag Magazine.

Tom Large, 2019 Poetry Contest finalist, studied English literature at Swarthmore College and finished an MA in the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars before shifting to the School of Medicine to train as a psychotherapist. Since 1977, he has been in private practice here in Baltimore. Although he has read and loved poetry since he was a teenager, he only began writing his own poems about five years ago. His wife, Elizabeth, and he have been married for 51 years and live in Baltimore City. They have one daughter and two granddaughters.

Sara Burnett, 2019 Poetry Contest finalist, is the author of the chapbook Mother Tongue (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Poet Lore, SWWIM, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland and an MA in English Literature from the University of Vermont. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her family.

Joseph Ross, who won the Poetry Contest in 2012, is the author of four books of poetry: Raising King (forthcoming in 2020), Ache (2017), Gospel of Dust (2013), and Meeting Bone Man (2012). His poems have appeared in many places including The Los Angeles Times, Xavier Review, Southern Quarterly, Poet Lore, and Drumvoices Revue. In the 2014-2015 school

Steven Leyva, Little Patuxent Review editor, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and raised in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 2 Bridges Review, Fledgling Rag, The Light Ekphrastic, Cobalt Review, and Prairie Schooner. He is a Cave Canem fellow, the winner of the 2012 Cobalt Review Poetry Prize, and author of the chapbook Low Parish. Steven holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore, where he is an assistant professor in the School of Communication Design.

Read "Phillis Wheatley questions the quarter" by Jalynn Harris and "If Mamie Till Was the Mother of God" by Joseph Ross.
Read "Bell Buoy" and "Hands" by Tom Large.

Pictured clockwise from top left: Jalynn Harris, Tom Large, Steven Leyva, Sara Burnett, Joseph Ross.

Recorded On: Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Kim Paris Upshaw presents The Silent Women’s Club.

In Sunshine and Daniel: Seeking Grace in Lost Motherhood, Kim Paris Upshaw takes us on a journey from loss to love, walking hand in hand with these women, our sisters. With each step along the pages of this unique storytelling-Bible study experience, these special mothers learn to be free from the shame, guilt and sadness of their loss to receive God's amazing grace, peace and love in their lives again.

Kim Paris Upshaw lives in greater Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her husband, Michael. Once weakened with the grief and shame of past choices, Kim desperately searched for answers and help after the loss of her children. During her quest for relief, she discovered great purpose from her pain. Passionately, Kim now shares how God's favor strengthens lives. Although she's a lawyer from 9 to 5, Kim makes up for it as a gospel recording artist and songwriter the rest of the day.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Learn about Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Alexandrian Library), located in Baltimore's Sister City, Alexandria, Egypt. Presented by Heba El-Rafey.

Heba El-Rafey is the Director of Public Relations and International Communications at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA), following a career with the organization that has spanned nearly 18 years, and in various leadership capacities. She is co-currently responsible for overseeing the BA Youth Activities Program which focuses on capacity building and engaging of young Egyptian; as well as being the main link with the International Friends of the BA Network. She has extensive hands-on experience in creating and engaging in cultural activities, event management and creating platforms for dialogue.

Recorded On: Thursday, July 25, 2019

Baltimore, one of the South’s largest cities, was a crucible of segregationist laws and practices. Through the example of Baltimore, Maryland, David Taft Terry explores the historical importance of African American resistance to Jim Crow laws in the South’s largest cities. Terry also  adds to our understanding of the underexplored historical period of the civil rights movement, prior to the 1960s. Along the way, African Americans worked to define equality for themselves and to gain the required power to demand it. They forged the protest tradition of an enduring black struggle for equality in the urban South.  By the 1960s that struggle had inspired a national civil rights movement.

David Taft Terry is an assistant professor of history at Morgan State University.

Recorded On: Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Elizabeth Schmidt discusses her new book, Foreign Intervention in Africa After the Cold War, and refugee resettlement in Baltimore with Akalu Paulos.

Elizabeth Schmidt is a professor emeritus of history at Loyola University Maryland. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and has written extensively about US involvement in apartheid South Africa, women under colonialism in Zimbabwe, the nationalist movement in Guinea, and foreign intervention in Africa from the Cold War to the war on terror. Her books include: Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror; Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946-1958; Mobilizing the Masses: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Nationalist Movement in Guinea, 1939-1958; Peasants, Traders, and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870-1939; and Decoding Corporate Camouflage: U.S. Business Support for Apartheid.  

Since the mid 1980s, Akalu Paulos has been an active participant in development programs as a practitioner, consultant and researcher, working for public, non-profit, and international multi-lateral governmental organizations in Ethiopia. In the last 13 years in the United States, Akalu’s career has largely focused on refugee resettlement and training in Baltimore, under a program funded by the US Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. In his capacity as the Refugee Program Manager for Baltimore City Community College since July 2012, he has facilitated the linguistic, economic and civic integration of more than 4000 refugees resettled in Baltimore. He earned his masters in Development Studies from the University College Dublin, in Ireland, and has extensively written and spoken on issues of human rights, gender, governance, and civil society at international conferences in four continents.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Jericho Brown is the author of the collection The Tradition. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown’s first book, Please, won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. His poems have appeared in Buzzfeed, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Time, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry anthologies. He is an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Celebrate Juneteenth with Sheri Booker as she reads from her collection, One Woman One Hustle.

A vibrant and uplifting collection of poems, One Woman One Hustle addresses the issues of today's young women. At the forefront of this collection are verses addressing self-identity, self-love, and the self-assurance needed to survive the current societal climate. With the world as her backdrop, Booker uses verse to tell the stories of women that look and love like her. She also addresses loss, pain, and survival. Parts autobiography and other parts anthropologic observations, the poems in this book pull the strings that control your heart, mind, and soul. This special edition includes over 30 new poems and spoken word pieces of empowerment.

Sheri Bookerhas a BA in political science from Notre Dame of Maryland and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College. She is a writer, poet, spoken word artist, and teacher.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Renee Brooks Catacalos is in conversation with Rev. Heber Brown III, founder of Black Church Food Security Network.

In The Chesapeake Table, Catacalos examines the powerful effect of eating local in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC. Hooked on the local food movement from its early days, Catacalos opens the book by revisiting a personal challenge to only buy, prepare, and eat food grown within a 150-mile radius of her home near Washington, DC.

Renee Brooks Catacalos is the former publisher of Edible Chesapeake magazine and former deputy director for Future Harvest - Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture. She is now Member and Strategic Partnerships Manager for the national philanthropy serving organization Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders. She also serves as a member of the Steering Team for the Chesapeake Foodshed Network, a regional food systems initiative. www.reneeeatslocal.com

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Thursday, June 13, 2019

Dan Rodricks is a long-time columnist (and podcast host) for The Baltimore Sun, and a local radio and television personality who has won several national and regional journalism awards over a reporting, writing and broadcast career spanning five decades. Rodricks has written some 6,000 columns for the Sun, and along the way he many times revealed his love of nature and of fishing. Rodricks embraced fly fishing in the early 1990s, and that style of fishing opened doors to new relationships with people and places--and one place in particular, the “secret” creek in Pennsylvania that, once allowed to recover from harmful over-fishing, became a trout paradise again.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Wednesday, June 12, 2019