Free Library Podcast

In conversation with Isaac Fitzgerald

Freelance journalist Chloé Cooper Jones was a 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing for ''Fearing for His Life,'' a profile of the man who filmed NYPD officers killing Eric Garner. Also a philosophy professor, she has published articles in a wide array of periodicals, including The Believer, GQ, Vice, and New York magazine. She is the recipient of the 2020 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and the 2021 Howard Foundation Grant from Brown University, and her work has been anthologized in The Best American Travel Writing and The Best American Sports Writing. A memoir about motherhood, disability, and underlying societal expectations, Easy Beauty follows Jones's painful literal and figurative worldwide journeys to reclaim spaces she'd been denied.

Isaac Fitzgerald appears frequently on The Today Show and is the author of the bestselling children's book How to Be a Pirate as well as the co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (winner of an IACP Award). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Boston Globe and numerous other publications. His debut memoir, Dirtbag, Massachusetts, is forthcoming in July, 2022. He lives in Brooklyn. (recorded 5/12/2022)

In conversation with Nathaniel Popkin

The ''rare writer who can combine keen, grounded, psychological observation with visionary headiness'' (Salon), Ken Kalfus is the author of the novels The Commissariat of Enlightenment, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, a National Book Award finalist; and Equilateral. His short story collections include Coup de Foudre, Thirst, and PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Pew Fellowship for the Arts, Kalfus's works have been translated into more than 10 languages. In 2 A.M. in Little America, Kalfus imagines a plausibly dystopian future in which young people from the United States are forced to emigrate to other countries because of large-scale civil unrest.

Nathaniel Popkin's many books of fiction and nonfiction include Everything is Borrowed, The Year of the Return, and To Reach the Spring: From Complicity to Consciousness in the Age of Eco-Crisis. He is co-editor of the literary anthology Who Will Speak for America?, was the fiction editor of Cleaver Magazine, and the writer/editor of the Emmy-winning documentary film series Philadelphia: The Great Experiment.  (recorded 5/11/2022)

One of the ''Indigenous novelists reshaping North American science fiction, horror, and fantasy'' (The New York Times), Rebecca Roanhorse is the bestselling author of the fantasy books Storm of Locusts, Trail of Lightning, and Race to the Sun. Inspired by pre-Columbian American cultures, her fantasy novel Black Sun was nominated for the 2021 Locus Award, 2021 Nebula Award, and the 2021 Hugo Award. Roanhorse's other work includes the Star Wars novel Resistance Reborn, contributions to Marvel Comics, and numerous short stories that have won Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards. Fevered Star is a sequel to Black Sun in the Between Earth and Sky series. (recorded 5/10/2022)

In conversation with Pam Jenoff

''A comedy writer with a heart of gold'' (The New York Times), Adriana Trigiani is the bestselling author of 20 books of fiction and nonfiction that have been published in 38 countries. These works include The Shoemaker's Wife; Very Valentine; Cooking with My Sisters; and Lucia, Lucia. Also an award-winning filmmaker, playwright, and television writer and producer, she directed the documentary Queens of the Big Time and wrote and directed the film adaptation of her debut novel, Big Stone Gap. Trigiani serves on the New York State Council on the Arts and is the founder of The Origin project, an in-school writing program in her home state of Virginia. Her latest novel, The Good Left Undone, follows three generations of Tuscan artisans struggling with a long-held family secret that emerges as the aged matriarch reflects on her family at the end of her life.

Pam Jenoff's New York Times bestselling novels include The Woman wth the Blue Star, The Lost Girls of Paris, The Orphan's Tale, and The Diplomat's Wife. A law professor at Rutgers University, she formerly served as special assistant to the Secretary of the Army, a diplomat for the State Department, and as a labor and employment attorney. (recorded 5/9/2022)

''One of the best thriller writers on the planet'' (Esquire), Don Winslow is the author of 22 bestselling crime novels that explore such broad-ranging topics as the socio-political underpinnings of the war on drugs, law enforcement, criminal hierarchies, and international politics. These books include  the Cartel Trilogy, (The Power of the Dog, The Cartel, and The Border), The Force, and Savages for which he wrote the screenplay for the Oliver Stone-directed film adaptation of the same name. Winslow formerly worked as a private investigator, antiterrorist trainer, arson trial consultant, and safari guide. In City on Fire, this ''master of thrills shows his range, and his bite'' (The New York Times) with a fictionalized account of the real-life warring Irish and Italian criminal organizations that have controlled the New England region for generations. (recorded 5/5/2022)

In conversation with Solomon Jones.

Lawrence Jackson's award-winning books include The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, biographies of Chester Himes and Ralph Ellison, and a memoir about his family history, titled My Father's Name: A Black Virginia Family after the Civil War. A Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and history at Johns Hopkins University, he is also the founder of the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts and a recipient of a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship. Shelter is an essay collection that begins with Jackson's initial struggle to make Baltimore his home and how his later adoption of the Charm City became a means to reexamine his personal history.

An award-winning Philadelphia Daily News columnist and morning host for 900 am WURD radio in Philadelphia, Solomon Jones is the author of the Essence bestselling novel The Bridge, as well as the critically acclaimed books Pipe Dream, Ride or Die, Payback, and Ten Lives, Ten Demands: Life and Death Stories, and a Black Activist's Blueprint for Racial Justice. He is also a blogger and frequent on-air commentator for NPR-affiliate WHYY and is the founder of Words on the Street Literacy Program and the Rally for Justice Coalition. (recorded 5/4/2022)

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

''A national treasure'' (Vanity Fair), Margo Jefferson won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her memoir Negroland, an examination of her upbringing and education amongst a small segment of privileged Black society in the United States. She is also the author of On Michael Jackson, an analysis of Jackson's cultural legacy as a pop star and celebrity. A former longtime theater and book reviewer for Newsweek and The New York Times, she won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for her cultural criticism. Her essays and reviews have been published in a variety of other periodicals, including Vogue, Harper's Magazine, and New York Magazine, among many others. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation grant, Jefferson currently teaches writing at Columbia University. In Constructing a Nervous System, she brings to life the family members, artists, athletes, intellectuals, and activists who have influenced her the most.  (recorded 5/4/2022)

In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award winning broadcaster and journalist

The host of BET News, Black News Tonight, and UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill is the Steve Charles Chair in Media, Cities, and Solutions at Temple University. His books include Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond and Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics. Hill is the owner of Philadelphia's Uncle Bobbie's Coffee & Books and is the founder and director of the People's Education Center, a Germantown-based nonprofit organization devoted to community education.

Todd Brewster is the co-author, with Peter Jennings, of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Century. His other work includes the books Lincoln's Gamble and In Search of America, and articles published in Vanity Fair, Time, and Life, where he served as a senior editor. Currently the senior visiting lecturer in journalism at Mount Holyoke College, he taught journalism at Temple University, was a Knight fellow at Yale Law School, and was the founding director of the Center for Oral History at West Point. Brewster is also the executive producer of the awardwinning documentary Into Harm's Way.

In Seen and Unseen, Hill and Brewster analyze the role of visual media in the ongoing struggle for racial justice while examining what makes this moment unique in the overall history of civil rights movements in the United States.  (recorded 5/2/2022)

In conversation with Mitchell Orenstein, Department Chair and Professor of Russian and East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania

In 2019, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was the focus of international interest when then-President Donald Trump and his allies targeted Yovanovitch amidst their efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden's family. This scandal led to the first impeachment proceedings against Trump, a major aspect of which was Yovanovitch's impassioned and steadfast congressional testimony. The child of parents who fled Nazi and Soviet atrocities, she has served in numerous senior State Department positions, including U.S. ambassador to Armenia, U.S. ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, under secretary of state for political affairs, and principal deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. Yovanovitch retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2020 and is currently a diplomat in residence at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. Lessons from the Edge uses experiences from her life and career to offer lessons about the ways in which corruption can endanger democracy. (recorded 4/28/2022)

To launch the 20th annual program season of One Book, One Philadelphia, join us for a conversation with Quiara Alegría Hudes, author of My Broken Language--the 2022 One Book featured title--and Lilliam Rivera, author of Never Look Back, the 2022 One Book youth companion title.

After their discussion, students from the Curtis Institute of Music will perform an original work of music inspired by My Broken Language. (recorded 4/27/2022)