Free Library Podcast

''One of his generation's most inventive and gifted writers'' (New York Times), Mohsin Hamid is the author of Moth Smoke, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist; the novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist, named a Book of the Decade by The Guardian and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize; and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, ''a globalized version of The Great Gatsby'' (NPR). In Exit West, Hamid sets a love story of courage and escape against the backdrop of a country in the throes of civil war.

Social intellectual Pankaj Mishra's numerous books include From the Ruins of Empire, A Great Clamour, and Kashmir: The Case for Freedom. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, one of Foreign Policy magazine's top 100 global thinkers, and winner of Yale's Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, he has written political and literary essays for the Guardian, The New York Times, the London Review of Books, Poetry, the Wall Street Journal, and too many others to list. Age of Anger traces the origins of modern paranoid threats to the 18th century in a look at marginalized populations who became susceptible to demagogues, invented enemies, and empowerment through violence.  (recorded 3/9/2017)

The founder and head of the Rittenhouse Writers' Group for its nearly 30-year existence, James Rahn has made this venerable workshop one of America's longest running and most prestigious. His eponymous memoir of the group details not only his growth as a writer and teacher to hundreds of students, but also his life as a husband and father. This volume also includes 10 current and former members' short stories. This event will feature Rittenhouse luminaries Diane McKinney-Whetstone, author of the novels Lazeretto and Tumbling; and Tom Teti, a longtime member and former board member of the People's Light theatre.

(recorded 3/7/2017)

In conversation with Tracey Matisak

One of Advertising Age's industry-wide ''100 Best and Brightest,'' Valerie Graves is the nationally lionized creative director of such Fortune 500 accounts as Ford, AT&T, General Foods, and Pepsi. In a rise as improbable as it was meteoric, she broke barriers as the first black copywriter at a number of America's top advertising firms. Her award-winning career continued with such varied and distinguished positions as chief creative officer at two other agencies, senior vice president of creative services at Motown Records, and creative consultant to Bill Clinton. Pressure Makes Diamonds maps Graves' journey to success from her days as a teenage parent from a Michigan factory town. (recorded 10/19/2016)

A panel discussion on how the US election is portrayed to the world will reveal the views of foreign journalists and their post-election analyses. Chris Satullo, noted media figure, will moderate the conversation between Paul Koring of Toronto's The Globe and Mail; Andrei Sitov of the Russian News Agency, TASS; and Michael Wilner of The Jerusalem Post.   

(recorded 11/16/2016)

In conversation with Tracey Matisak

One of Advertising Age's industry-wide ''100 Best and Brightest,'' Valerie Graves is the nationally lionized creative director of such Fortune 500 accounts as Ford, AT&T, General Foods, and Pepsi. In a rise as improbable as it was meteoric, she broke barriers as the first black copywriter at a number of America's top advertising firms. Her award-winning career continued with such varied and distinguished positions as chief creative officer at two other agencies, senior vice president of creative services at Motown Records, and creative consultant to Bill Clinton. Pressure Makes Diamonds maps Graves' journey to success from her days as a teenage parent from a Michigan factory town. (recorded 10/19/2016)

A panel discussion on how the US election is portrayed to the world will reveal the views of foreign journalists and their post-election analyses. Chris Satullo, noted media figure, will moderate the conversation between Paul Koring of Toronto's The Globe and Mail; Andrei Sitov of the Russian News Agency, TASS; and Michael Wilner of The Jerusalem Post.   

(recorded 11/16/2016)

Congressman John Lewis is one of the key figures of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, and receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president. In March, a graphic novel trilogy, Lewis ''brings a whole new generation with him across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, from a past of clenched fists into a future of outstretched hands'' (President Bill Clinton). Book One, co-written with Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell, spans Lewis's youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the birth of the Nashville Student Movement. (recorded 11/12/2014)

Congressman John Lewis is one of the key figures of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, and receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president. In March, a graphic novel trilogy, Lewis ''brings a whole new generation with him across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, from a past of clenched fists into a future of outstretched hands'' (President Bill Clinton). Book One, co-written with Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell, spans Lewis's youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the birth of the Nashville Student Movement. (recorded 11/12/2014)

Acclaimed for creating cuisine that seamlessly blends Western ingredients with those of his native Japan, Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto is one of the culinary world's brightest stars. After working his way up to the position of head chef of the elite New York eatery Nobu, Morimoto opened his namesake establishment in Philadelphia in 2001. He has since opened restaurants in New York, Mumbai, Napa, and Waikiki, among other many other far-flung locations. In Mastering the Art of Japanese Home Cooking, Morimoto demystifies his country's cuisine through easily accessible and adaptable recipes built on common ingredients mixed with, of course, his signature irreverent twists. 

(recorded 11/9/2016)

The debut novel, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris was translated into 24 different languages, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won the 2008 PEN/Hemingway Award. Written in the stylistically challenging first-person plural, the novel captured the desperation of office workers as they faced downturns and layoffs in their company. In his new novel The Unnamed, Ferris follows a man who had the perfect job and the perfect family, until his undiagnosable disease, which forces him to drop what he is doing at any given moment and walk aimlessly for days on end, threatens to destroy them both.

Jonathan Dee is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, a frequent contributor to Harper's, and the former senior editor of The Paris Review. He is the author of four previous novels, including Palladio. From advertising's corrosive impact on society to the frenzy caused by media and celebrity, Dee ''is the kind of writer who thinks hard about contemporary realities and then builds sturdy, stately novels of ideas around them'' (New York Times). Of The Privileges, Dee's new novel, author Jonathan Franzen writes, ''Mr. Dee has given us a cunning, seductive novel about the people we thought we'd all agreed to hate. His case study of American mega-wealth is delicious.'' (recorded 1/28/2010)