Free Library Podcast

Ross Gay is the author of The Book of Delights, a life-affirming collection of short lyric essays that reminds readers to appreciate so-called ordinary wonders, even during turbulent times. His several volumes of poetry include Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Be Holding, winner of the 2021 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award; and Bringing the Shovel Down. A writing professor at Indiana University, Gay has earned fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and Cave Canem. Inciting Joy explores the ways that people can inspire love and compassion by recognizing that which unites us.

Major Jackson is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at the University of Vermont, a core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars, and the poetry editor of the Harvard Review. He is the author of five books of poetry, including The Absurd Man, Holding Company, and Leaving Saturn, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares, among numerous other periodicals and journals. Jackson's many honors include the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. A Beat Beyond is a collection of essays, interviews, and notes that delve into the intellectual and spiritual aspects of poetry in order to understand its political, social, and emotional functions. (recorded 10/27/2022)

In conversation with award-winning journalist and broadcaster Tracey Matisak

Acclaimed for her ''balanced, perceptive, thoroughly researched and exceptionally well written'' (The New Yorker) nonfiction portraits of historical figures, Stacy Schiff won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for her biography Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), a narrative of the 52-year marriage of the legendary writer and his even more vivid wife. She is also the author of A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America; the Pulitzer Prize finalist Saint-Exupéry; Cleopatra: A Life; and The Witches: Salem, 1692. Her other honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Schiff's latest book examines Samuel Adams' transformation from the idle son of a wealthy U.S. colonial family to one of the Revolutionary War's significant firebrands. (recorded 10/26/2022)

In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6ABC Action News morning edition

Maggie Haberman was part of a team that won a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for its reportage of the investigations into then-President Donald Trump's, and his advisers', connections to Russia. She has also twice been part of a Pulitzer Prize finalist team: in 2021 for reporting on the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic and in 2022 for reporting on the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. A former political reporter for Politico, The New York Post, and The New York Daily News, she became a CNN political analyst in 2014. In Confidence Man, Haberman uses hundreds of sources and interviews-including many with Trump himself-to offer a definitive account of the former Oval Office occupant's chaotic campaigns, tumultuous term in office, and tortured post-presidency. (recorded 10/25/2022)

In conversation with Dorothy Roberts

Referred to by Jelani Cobb as ''a Dean of American journalism,'' Charlayne Hunter-Gault has chronicled some of the past half-century's most important moments in Black life, culture, and politics. Often the only Black woman in the newsroom, she wrote for The New Yorker and The New York Times, where in 1968 she established the paper's Harlem bureau. Also a broadcast journalist, Hunter-Gault served as a reporter and anchor for PBS's McNeil-Lehrer Newshour, NPR's chief Africa correspondent, and the South Africa bureau chief for CNN. Her many honors include two Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards, and honors from the National Urban coalition and the National Association of Black Journalists. Ranging from the Civil Rights Movement to Barack Obama's presidential election, My People is a definitive compilation of reportage and commentary that explores the Black American experience. 

Dorothy Roberts is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She is also founding director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society in the Center for Africana Studies and the author of several books that focus on health, social justice, and bioethics. Her most recent book is Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families-and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World. (recorded 10/24/2022)

In conversation with Laura McGrath, Assistant Professor of English at Temple University

The winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk ''is one of the great novelists of his generation'' (The Washington Post). Characterized by examinations of identity, tensions between the East and West, modernism's clash with tradition, and a fascination with the creative arts, his novels-translated into more than 60 languages-include The New Life, Snow, The Museum of Innocence, A Strangeness in My Mind, and My Name is Red, winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Pamuk is also the author of several works of nonfiction, essays, memoirs, and screenplays. Part detective story, part historical epic, part contemporary political parable, Nights of Plague follows the efforts of the residents of a fictional island belonging to the Ottoman Empire to halt the spread of a deadly illness.

(recorded 10/20/2022)

Tom Felton became internationally famous for his role as the bleach-blond bad guy Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movie series. More than a decade after the premiere of the last film in the series, he and the other performers continue to cast a spell over fans around the world as an enduring pop culture phenomenon. Before his villainous turn at Hogwarts, he acted in such beloved films as The Borrowers and Anna and the King, and has followed up on his success in the wizarding world with roles in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Belle, The Flash, and The Forgotten Battle, among many other film and television projects. This year he made his West End theater debut in 2:22 A Ghost Story. In Beyond the Wand, Felton reflects on the highs and lows of navigating fame at a young age, living as a normal teenager through it all, and the lasting friendships he enjoys with his Harry Potter co-stars. (recorded 10/19/2022)

The 24th United States Poet Laureate, Ada Limón is acclaimed for her explorations of the ''frightening mysteries and hopeful uncertainties of the everyday'' (The New York Times Book Review). Her many poetry collections include the National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Carrying; Bright Dead Things, a finalist for the National Book Award; and Big Fake World, winner of the Pearl Poetry Prize. The host of American Public Media's podcast The Slowdown, Limón has contributed poems to The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and the Harvard Review, among many other publications. The Hurting Kind is a collection of verse that ponders the filaments of joy, loss, and hope that connect us all. (recorded 10/17/2022)

Religion scholar Reza Aslan is the author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Zealot, ''a lucid, intelligent page-turner'' (Los Angeles Times) that sifts through centuries of mythmaking to present a clear account of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. His other books include No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award and selected as the best book of the year by the Financial Times and the Los Angeles Times; How to Win a Cosmic War: Confronting Radical Religions; and Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized Age. His new book recounts the story of a U.S. missionary who fought for democracy in early 20th century Iran.

(recorded 10/13/2022)

One of academia's leading authorities on African American literature, enslavement, gender studies, and the ways in which marginalized people are excluded in historical narratives, Saidiya Hartman is a University Professor at Columbia University. Her works include Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals; Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route; and numerous essays on feminism, film, and photography. Currently a member of the editorial board at Callaloo and a MacArthur fellow, Hartman has earned Fulbright, Rockefeller, and Guggenheim fellowships. A revised and updated edition of her ''audacious'' and ''provocative'' (The Nation) 1997 historical exploration of the lives of several Black women in Harlem and Philadelphia in the 1890s, Scenes of Subjection seeks to turn away from the ''terrible spectacle'' and toward the forms of routine terror and quotidian violence characteristic of slavery, illuminating the intertwining of injury, subjugation, and selfhood even in abolitionist depictions of enslavement.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is the Leon Forrest Professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University. Formerly a professor of African American Studies at Princeton University for eight years, her books include From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, How We Get Free, and Race for Profit, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in history. Taylor has been named one of the hundred most influential African Americans in the United States by The Root and Essence Magazine named her among the top one hundred ''change makers'' in the county. She has been appointed as a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians by the Organization of American Historians.A guest on such outlets as Democracy Now!, The Intercept, and All Things Considered, she has contributed opinion pieces to The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Paris Review, among many other periodicals. (recorded 10/12/2022)

Yiyun Li's ''remarkable'' (The Washington Post) debut fiction collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Guardian First Book Award. Her other work includes the novel The Vagrants, the story collection Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Windham-Campbell Prize, Li teaches writing at Princeton University and is a contributing editor for A Public Space. A story of obsession and friendship, her new novel follows a woman's mental journey back to the war-ravaged French village of her youth.

Acclaimed for their ''moments of joy and pure magic'' (Los Angeles Times), Elizabeth McCracken's seven books include Bowlaway, The Giant's House, Thunderstruck & Other Stories, and The Souvenir Museum, a story collection that was longlisted for the National Book Award. A former faculty member at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently the James Michener Chair for Fiction at the University of Texas at Austin, McCracken has earned the PEN New England Award, three Pushcart Prizes, and an O. Henry Prize, among other honors. Her latest novel finds a woman wrestling with grief, history, and her craft as she takes a trip to her recently departed mother's favorite city. (recorded 10/6/2022)