Free Library Podcast

In conversation with Annie Liontas, author of Let Me Explain You and co-editor of the anthology A Manner of Being: Writers on their Mentors

Praised by Carmen Maria Machado as ''a sharp, flawless ... sexy and dark and strange and absolutely perfect'' debut novel, Rebecca Rukeyser's The Seaplane on Final Approach is about the increasingly elaborate erotic desires of a young woman working on a remote and chaotic Alaskan tourist island. A professor of fiction writing at Bard College Berlin and the recipient of the inaugural Berlin Senate Endowment for non-German literature, Rukeyser has published stories in a variety of publications, including ZYZZYVA, The Massachusetts Review, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading.

Annie Liontas' debut novel, Let Me Explain You (Scribner), was featured in The New York Times Book Review as Editor's Choice and was selected by the ABA as an Indies Introduce Debut and Indies Next title.  She is the co-editor of the anthology A Manner of Being: Writers on their Mentors.  Annie's work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Gay Magazine, BOMB, Guernica, McSweeney's, and elsewhere.  The Gloss, her interview series with women and genderqueer writers, is running at BOMB, The Believer, and Electric Literature.  Her informed memoir, Sex with a Brain Injury will be published in January 2024.  Annie is a member of The Claw, a Philadelphia salon for women and genderqueer writers. (recorded 6/9/2022)

Maxine Hong Kingston is the distinguished author of The Woman Warrior (winner of the 1976 Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction), Tripmaster Monkey and China Men. The Fifth Book of Peace is Kingston's own creation, based on the three "books of peace" that were lost to a fire in Chinese legend. In it, she combines her own narratives with those drawn from writing workshops with Vietnam veterans. The result is "a powerfully emotional book that moves through tragedy to peace of both mind and heart." (recorded 10/8/2003)

In conversation with volume editor, Viet Thanh Nguyen

Acclaimed for her contributions to feminism and Chinese American literature, Maxine Hong Kingston won the 1976 National Book Critics Circle General Nonfiction Award for her first book, The Woman Warrior, and the 1981 National Book Award for general nonfiction for China Men. Her many other books of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and essays include Tripmaster Monkey, The Fifth Book of Peace, and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life. A professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, Kingston is a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the National Humanities Medal, and a lifetime achievement award from the Asian American Literary Awards. Her latest work collects three of her classic books, a collection of essays about her time living in Hawaiʻi, and difficult-to-find writings in which she examines her creative process.

Viet Thanh Nguyen won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in fiction, the Dayton Literary Prize, and the Edgar Award for best first novel for The Sympathizer. His other work includes the novel The Committed, the story collection The Refugees, two books of nonfiction, and a children's book. The Aerol Arnold Chair of English and professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, he has earned fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. (recorded 6/8/2022)

In conversation with Liz Moore

Zakiya Dalila Harris is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller The Other Black Girl, a thriller in which a young Black editorial assistant slowly realizes there are more sinister forces in her publishing house than the microaggressions that hurt her career. It was chosen as Good Morning America and Read with Marie Claire book club picks, and was selected as one of the best books of 2021 by TIME, The Washington Post, Vogue, People, and NPR, among other media outlets. A former editorial assistant and assistant editor at Knopf and Doubleday, Harris has contributed essays and book reviews to Guernica and The Rumpus. The Other Black Girl is currently being adapted into a Hulu series.

Liz Moore is the bestselling author of Long Bright River, The Words of Every Song, Heft, and The Unseen World. A creative writing professor in the M.F.A. program at Temple University, her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Tin House and The New York Times, among other publications. (recorded 6/6/2022)

''The world's best green journalist'' (TIME), Bill McKibben gave one of the earliest cautions about climate change with his 1989 book The End of Nature. His many other bestselling books about the environment include Falter, Deep Economy, Eaarth, and Oil and Honey; as well as a novel, Radio Free Vermont, which imagines a group of Vermont patriots who decide to secede from the United States. Recipient of the Gandhi Prize, the Thomas Merton Prize, and the Right Livelihood Prize, McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the founder of the global grassroots climate campaign 350.org. Part memoir of an upbringing during which the promise of the U.S. seemed limitless to him, part history of the racial, economic, and environmental failings that have led to our current crises, his latest book bluntly asks, ''What happened?''

(recorded 6/2/2022)

In conversation with Benjamin Todd Jealous

A political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post since 2011, Robert Samuels has chronicled the impact of national policies and controversies from across the United States. He formerly worked at the Miami Herald, where he reported on politics, poverty, and crime. His work has earned the 2020 George Polk Award in Justice Reporting and a 2020 Peabody Award, among other honors.

Toluse Olorunnipa has been a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post since 2019. He previously reported on the White House, the first correspondent of native African and Nigerian descent to do so. A former political and policy reporter at Bloomberg News and crime, real estate, and natural disasters reporter at the Miami Herald, he is also currently an on-air contributor for CNN.

In His Name Is George Floyd, Samuels and Olorunnipa reveal how systemic racism led to tragic murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and inspired worldwide protests and policy changes. Referred to by Henry Louis Gates Jr. as ''an essential work of history,'' it uses hundreds of interviews and original research to tell George Floyd's story as a father, partner, friend, and man constantly in search of a better life.

The current president of the People for the American Way, Benjamin Todd Jealous teaches social innovation at The University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice. He is the former national president and CEO of the NAACP, the former executive director of the National Newspaper Publisher's Association, and was a visiting professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. The coeditor of the national bestseller Reach: 40 Black Men Speak of Living, Leading and Succeeding, he is an investor in social impact startups and advises Citizen, an app that provides real-time 911 alerts.

(recorded 5/24/2022)

In conversation with Adnan A. Zulfiqar

Haroon Moghul's many books include My First Police State, The Order of Light, and How to Be Muslim: An American Story, a ''profound and intimate'' (The Washington Post) memoir about life in the United States during the immediate aftermath of 9/11. A former member of the cohort of the Muslim Leadership Initiative, a fellow in Jewish-Muslim Relations at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, a Friday preacher, and public speaker, Moghul's writing investigates the topics of pop culture, faith, futurism, and philosophy. He has contributed essays to The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, Foreign Policy, and NPR's Fresh Air, among several other media outlets. In Two Billion Caliphs, Moghul uses his Muslim perspective to answer some of life's biggest questions and to address Islam's misunderstood past, its present challenges, and the hope it can offer for the future.

Adnan A. Zulfiqar is a legal historian working on Islamic law, criminal law and law in the Global South, with specific interests in legal obligation, jihad & revolution, policing and criminal codes. He previously helped draft and implement criminal codes in the Maldives and Somalia. He regularly provides expert media commentary for various outlets, is proficient in multiple languages and has spent over a decade in the Middle East, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. (recorded 5/19/2022)

In conversation with Liz Moore

Jason Rekulak's Edgar Award–nominated debut novel The Impossible Fortress tells a coming-of-age story of first love, old school computer programming, and the heist of a Playboy magazine that features Vanna White. Rekulak is the former publisher of Philadelphia-based Quirk Books, where he managed the acquisition of a number of, well, very quirky books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, the Edgar Award–winning novel The Last Policeman, and the literary mashup Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, among many others. A spin on the supernatural thriller, Hidden Pictures follows a nanny who becomes increasingly disturbed by the drawings created by her five-year-old charge.

Liz Moore is the bestselling author of Long Bright River, The Words of Every Song, Heft, and The Unseen World. A creative writing professor in the M.F.A. program at Temple University, her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Tin House and The New York Times, among other publications. (recorded 5/18/2022)

In conversation with Ramesh Ponnuru, editor of National Review

A senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Matthew Continetti works in the field of American political thought and history, with an emphasis on the Republican Party and the history of 20th-century conservatism. His books include The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Media Elite Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star and The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine. The founding editor of The Washington Free Beacon, the former opinion editor at The Weekly Standard, and currently a contributing editor at National Review and a columnist for Commentary Magazine, his writing has been published in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, among other places. In The Right, Continetti provides a survey of the U.S. conservative movement's evolution and intellectual history.

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for Bloomberg View, and a contributing editor to National Affairs. A visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute since 2012, he has been a commentator on a wide array of media outlets, including Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and PBS NewsHour, among many others. He is the author of The Party of Death and his articles have been published in numerous newspapers and magazines.  (recorded 5/17/2022)

In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award winning broadcaster and journalist

The United States attorney general from 2009 to 2015, Eric Holder is the first African American to hold that position. In his 30-year career in government he also served in the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section and as an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Currently the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, he also works as senior counsel at the law firm of Covington & Burling. He was named to Time magazine's list of most influential people, referred to by Legal Times as one of the greatest Washington, D.C. lawyers of the past 30 years, and honored by Columbia University, his alma mater, with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. In Our Unfinished March, Holder presents a history of the struggle for voting rights in the U.S. and offers an actionable plan to safeguard our most essential right in the midst of unprecedented attacks on U.S. democracy. (recorded 5/13/2022)