Free Library Podcast

In conversation with Airea D. Matthews

A ''powerful work of lyric art'' and ''tour de force indictment of the carceral industrial state'' (The New York Times Book Review), Reginald Dwayne Betts' poetry collection Felon won the NAACP Image Award, the American Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Also the author of two other poetry collections and a memoir, he received the 2019 National Magazine Award for his New York Times Magazine essay about his journey from prison inmate to Yale Law School. His other honors include a Guggenheim fellowship, a 2021 MacArthur ''genius grant'', and a Radcliffe fellowship from Harvard. Betts is the founder and executive director of Freedom Reads, a not-for-profit institution devoted to providing greater access to literature in prisons. Created in collaboration with visual artist Titus Kaphar, Redaction is a multimedia examination of the relationship between race and incarceration in America. 

Airea D. Matthews is the 2022-2023 Philadelphia Poet Laureate and directs the poetry program at Bryn Mawr College. Her collection Simulacra won the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Best American Poets, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, and VQR, among other journals. Her autobiographical poetry collection Bread and Circus will be published this spring. (recorded 2/27/2023)

Paul Harding won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Tinkers, ''an astringent meditation on loss, family ties, and the presence of the past'' (The Guardian) in which a dying elderly man wanders through the rooms of his life's large and quiet moments. He is also the author of the novel Enon and is an accomplished musician. The director of the MFA in Creative Writing & Literature at Stony Brook University, Harding is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. Based on the true story of one of the first integrated towns in the Northeast, This Other Eden tells the multigenerational story of an isolated island community off the coast of Maine.

Referred to by Yiyun Li as ''one of the most unique voices in American literature,'' Hanna Pylväinen is the author of the Whiting Award-winning debut novel We Sinners, the story of a devout but fragmented Midwestern family. A faculty member of Warren Wilson College's MFA writing program, she has earned fellowships from Princeton University's Lewis Center for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, among others. Her work has been published in numerous periodicals, including Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and The Wall Street Journal. In The End of Drum-Time, Pylväinen weaves the love story of a reindeer herder and a minister's daughter on the remote 19th century Scandinavian tundra. (recorded 2/23/2023)

Jamila Minnicks' debut novel Moonrise Over New Jessup tells the story of a 1950s-era, all-Black Alabama town that is resistant to desegregation and the opposing political viewpoints that threaten a young couple's burgeoning romance. Praised by Barbara Kingsolver for its dive into the ''deep complexity of the American Civil Rights movement'' by way of ''compelling characters and a heart-pounding plot,'' it won the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Minnicks has published work in the literary journals CRAFT, The Write Launch, and The Silent World in Her Vase, and her short story ''Politics of Distraction'' was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. (recorded 2/22/2023)

In conversation with Elias Rodriques

Referred to by Carmen Maria Machado as ''all blood and nerve and near-unbearable beauty,'' Joseph Earl Thomas' Sink is a coming-of-age memoir that chronicles the author's escape from an upbringing of deprivation and abuse to a geek culture in which he could build a family and community on his own terms. An excerpt of this work won the 2020 Chautauqua Janus Prize. His other writing has appeared or is forthcoming in n+1, The Kenyon Review, and Gulf Coast, among other literary journals, and he has received writing fellowships from the Fulbright program, Bread Loaf, and Tin House. A doctoral candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania, Thomas is the Director of Programs at Blue Stoop in Philadelphia and an associate faculty member at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. 

Elias Rodriques is an assistant editor of n+1 and author of the novel All the Water I've Seen is Running. His work has been published or anthologized in The Guardian, The Nation, and Best American Essays. (recorded 2/21/2023)

In conversation with Marc Lamont Hill

Professor emeritus of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. is a celebrated musicologist, composer, pianist, and music historian. He is the author of Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop and The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History and the Challenge of Bebop, the founder of the music blog Musiquology.com, and the former editor of the Music of the African Diaspora series at the University of California Press. Also a producer and bandleader, he has released numerous recordings, performed at venues around the world, written musical scores for various multimedia projects, and collaborated with museums and galleries such as The Whitney, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. In Who Hears Here?, Ramsey brings 25 years of his art, commentary, and scholarship to a collection of essays that explore the unique history of Black musical expression. (recorded 2/15/2023)

In conversation with Jennifer Weiner

Acclaimed for their explorations of marital fidelity, friendship, and the difficulties of connecting in modern life, Sadeqa Johnson's novels include And Then There Was Me, Second House from the Corner, and Yellow Wife, the harrowing tale of an enslaved woman forced to barter love and freedom while living in one of the Antebellum South's most infamous slave jails. A Kimbilio Fellow, former board member of the James River Writers, and a Tall Poppy Writer, she is the recipient of the National Book Club Award, the Phillis Wheatley Award, and the USA Best Book Award for best fiction, among other honors. In The House of Eve, Johnson follows two 1950s-era young Black women whose lives collide amidst taboo love affairs, ambition, and pregnancy.

''One of the biggest names in popular fiction'' (USA Today), Jennifer Weiner is the beloved number-one New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels-including Good in Bed, All Fall Down, Mrs. Everything, and In Her Shoes. She is also the writer of two YA books about a diminutive Bigfoot and an essay collection titled Hungry Heart, an intimate and honest meditation on yearning, fulfillment, and her many identities.  (recorded 2/9/2023)

In conversation with Mark Bowden

A Los Angeles Times columnist for the past 22 years and former columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Steve Lopez is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, and is the winner of the H.L. Mencken, the Ernie Pyle, and Mike Royko Awards for his contributions to journalism. He is also the author of the One Book, One Philadelphia selection The Soloist, a national bestseller which was awarded the PEN USA Literary Award for Nonfiction for its tender portrayal of a former music prodigy who struggled with mental illness. The book was later made into a feature film starring Robert Downey, Jr. Lopez's other work includes the novels Third and Indiana, The Sunday Macaroni Club, and In the Clear, two collections of columns, and on-air reporting for KCET-TV in Los Angeles, which garnered him three local Emmys. Framed through the author's own ambivalence about retirement, Independence Day follows people across a wide spectrum of jobs, backgrounds, and identities to help provide insight into one of life's pivotal moments.  

Mark Bowden is the author of 15 bestselling books of investigative journalism, including Blackhawk Down, adapted by Ridley Scott into a popular film; Killing Pablo, winner of the Overseas Press Club's Cornelius Ryan Award for book of the year; The Three Battles of Wanat, a collection of his best long-form essays; and Hue 1968, the story of the Vietnam War's bloodiest battle as told by participants from both sides. His forthcoming book Life Sentence: The Brief and Tragic Career of Baltimore's Deadliest Gang Leader will be published in April. (recorded 2/8/2023)

In conversation with Michael Simmons and Robert Saleem Holbrook

Dan Berger is the author of the James A. Rawley Prize winning Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era, an ''illuminating'' (The Nation) reevaluation of 20th century African American activism through the prism of mass incarceration. A professor of comparative ethnic studies and associate dean for faculty development and scholarship in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell, he has published op-eds and other work about critical race theory and social justice in a variety of newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals. In Stayed on Freedom, Berger tells the story of the until-now unheralded Black Power activists Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons. 

Alongside Zoharah and countless other organizers and activists, Philadelphia-raised Michael Simmons has fought for social justice and human rights for more than 55 years. His work includes time with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, imprisonment for draft resistance during the Vietnam War, assistance in the fair housing movement, and participation in the anti-Apartheid Movement. He spent more than two decades as a human rights organizer in Central Europe, both with the American Friends Service Committee and independently.

Robert Saleem Holbrook is the executive director of the Abolitionist Law Center. (recorded 2/7/2023)

A professor of education, philosophy, and political science at the University of Pennsylvania, Sigal R. Ben-Porath is the co-author of Making Up Our Mind: What School Choice Is Really About, and is the author of Free Speech on Campus and Citizenship Under Fire: Democratic Education in Times of Conflict, among other works. She is an executive committee member of the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy and is a former fellow-in- residence at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. In Cancel Wars, Ben-Porath offers a balanced examination of the polarized condition of campus politics, explains how these formerly neutral spaces became battlegrounds in our current culture wars, and shares a guide for opposing sides to bridge their differences and encourage civic trust even beyond the boundaries of academia. (recorded 1/25/2023)

In conversation with award-winning journalist and broadcaster Tracey Matisak

''A public intellectual with much to offer about teaching (and unlearning) history'' (The Washington Post), Clint Smith, in his bestselling book How the Word Is Passed, takes the reader on a tour of monuments and landmarks that tell an intergenerational story about the continuing legacy of slavery in the United States. A staff writer at The Atlantic, he is also the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent, which was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award. Smith has earned fellowships from a variety of institutions, including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Art for Justice Fund, and the National Science Foundation, and his essays, poems, and scholarly work have been published in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and The New Republic, among other publications. A former National Poetry Slam champion, his poetry collection, Above Ground, will be published in March 2023. (recorded 1/26/2023)