Free Library Podcast

In conversation with Adriana Trigiani 

The senior vice president and deputy publisher of Doubleday, Todd Doughty has worked for Penguin Random House publishing for more than 20 years. When the World Health Organization named COVID-19 a global pandemic, he decided that he had to find a way to recognize the commonplace joys many of us take for granted. As a result, Doughty wrote Little Pieces of Hope, a combination of thoughts, lists, illustrations, playlists, and exercises to remind readers of life's mundane and remarkable beauty.

''A comedy writer with a heart of gold'' (The New York Times), Adriana Trigiani is the bestselling author of 20 fiction and nonfiction books that have been published in 38 countries. She is also an award-winning filmmaker, playwright, and television writer and producer. Her forthcoming novel The Good Left Undone will be released in April 2022.

(recorded 10/14/2021)

In conversation with Mitchell S. Jackson

Keisha N. Blain's Set the World on Fire, a history of some of the early 20th century's leading Black nationalist women, won the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize and was named one of Smithsonian Magazine's best history books of 2018. With Ibram X. Kendi, she coauthored the #1 New York Times bestseller Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019. An associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, Blain is an editor for The Washington Post's ''Made by History'' section and is the president of the African American Intellectual History Society. In Until I Am Free, Blain combines biography and social commentary to share the enduring life and legacy of Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, and also offers a manifesto for those who wish to continue fighting for racial, voting, and women's rights.

Mitchell S. Jackson is the John O. Whiteman Dean's Distinguished Professor in the Department of English. Recipient of a 2021 Guggenheim fellowship, Jackson won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for his article about the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. His debut novel The Residue Years was recognized with a Whiting Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Prize. His nonfiction book, Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family, was named a best book of 2019 by NPR, Time and elsewhere.

(recorded 10/12/2021)

Dr. Temple Grandin is a philosophical leader and activist for both the animal welfare and autism advocacy efforts. She is a TIME Magazine Top 100 Hero, the author of more than 60 scientific papers, a sought-after public speaker, and professor of animal science at Colorado State University. Her semi-autobiographical nonfiction books Emergence, Thinking in Pictures, and The Autistic Brain inform scientists and a still largely uninformed general public about autism. The HBO movie based on her life, starring Claire Danes, received seven Emmy Awards. 

Psychologist Dr. Deborah Moore is the founder and director of Fall Creek Counseling Associates, a landmark practice that works with children, teens, and adults with autism. The author and coauthor of many scholarly and popular works on autism, gaming addiction, and internet addiction, she collaborated with Grandin on the 2016 book The Loving Push: How Parents and Professionals Can Help Spectrum Kids Become Successful Adults.

In Navigating Autism, Grandin and Moore use their decades of personal and professional experience to offer nine empowering strategies for those who want to successfully work with young people on the autism spectrum. (recorded 10/8/2021)

In conversation with Trudy Rubin, Worldview columnist, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Known for her testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives during Donald Trump's 2019 impeachment hearings, Fiona Hill has more than 30 years of experience in foreign policy. The Robert Bosch Senior Fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, she is a former National Security Council official and a former officer at the National Intelligence Council. Hill is the coauthor of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin and The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold, and she has written extensively on strategic issues related to Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In There Is Nothing for You Here, she traces her path as the daughter of a coal miner in northern England to her service to three U.S. Presidents. Hill examines the desperation impacting American politics and shows why expanding opportunity is the only long-term hope for our democracy.

Books provided by Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books

(recorded 10/7/2021)

In conversation with Reginald Dwayne Betts, essayist, poet, and author of the award-winning collection, Felon

An investigative reporter at The New York Times, Andrea Elliott won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for a series of articles on Sheik Reda Shata, an Egyptian-born imam living in Brooklyn. She formerly worked as a staff writer at the Miami Herald, where she covered immigration and Latin American politics. The winner of Columbia University's Medal for Excellence, the George K. Polk Award, the Scripps Howard Award, and a prize from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Elliott was a visiting journalist at the Russell Sage Foundation, an Emerson Fellow at New America, and received a Whiting Foundation Grant. Based on her 2013 five-part series for the Times on the plight of children experiencing homelessness in New York City, Elliot's debut book follows eight challenging years in the life of a girl guiding her siblings as they experience the effects of widening income inequality and a disappearing social safety net.

(recorded 10/6/2021)

In conversation with Richard Rothstein

Sheryll Cashin's NAACP Image Award–nominated books on racism and inequality include The Failures of Integration, The Agitator's Daughter, and Place, Not Race. The Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Civil Rights and Social Justice at Georgetown University, a contributing editor at Politico, and a member of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, Cashin formerly worked as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and in the Clinton's White House. White Space, Black Hood, which Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. referred to as ''riveting and beautifully written'' and ''meticulously researched'', uses two decades of data to expose the ways in which the U.S. government fostered inequality through the creation of impoverished Black spaces and affluent white spaces.

A distinguished fellow of the Economic Policy Institute and a senior fellow (emeritus) at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Richard Rothstein is the author of the bestselling book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America and is a former national education columnist for The New York Times.

(recorded 10/5/2021)

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

Publishing industry veteran Christine Pride has held a variety of editorial positions at Doubleday, Simon & Schuster, and Crown, among other publishing companies. In this capacity she has championed and edited a number of New York Times bestselling memoirs and inspirational stories. Also a freelance editorial consultant, teacher, and coach, Pride writes the ''Race Matters'' column for the popular blog Cup of Jo.

A journalist, editor, and podcast host, Jo Piazza is also the author of seven novels, including Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win, If Nuns Ruled the World, and Fitness Junkie. Her other writing has been widely published in a variety of places, including The Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, and Slate. She formerly served as a managing editor for Yahoo! Travel, the executive news director for the print and digital editions of In Touch Weekly, and the senior digital editor at Current TV.

Pride and Piazza's collaborative novel tells the dual-perspective story of two lifelong friends, one Black and one white, whose bond is forever changed when the latter's police officer husband is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager.

Books provided by Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books

(recorded 10/4/2021)

In conversation with Sapphire

The National Poet Laureate of Scotland from 2016 to 2021, Jackie Kay is the author of the celebrated poetry collections Life Mask, Off Colour, and The Adoption Papers, winner of the Scottish Arts Council Book Award. She is also the author of Red Dust Road, a coming-of-age memoir of being a mixed race adopted daughter of communists in 1970s Scotland, as well as several plays, children's books, and the novel Trumpet, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize. A fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, she is the chancellor of the University of Salford in Manchester, England. In her latest book, Kay combines history with personal narrative to offer a layered account of the life of the ''Empress of the Blues'' Bessie Smith.

Sapphire is the author of the acclaimed novel Push, which was adapted into the Academy Award–winning film Precious. She is also the author of the novel The Kid and three collections of poetry. (recorded 9/30/2021)

In conversation with Meg Wolitzer

An ''American literary treasure'' (The Boston Globe), Hilma Wolitzer is the author of the novels In the Flesh, The Doctor's Daughter, and Ending, which served as the inspiration for Bob Fosse's celebrated film All That Jazz. Her other work includes four children's books, a nonfiction account of fiction workshops, two screenplay adaptations of her novels, and stories and reviews published in Esquire, The New York Times, and Ploughshares, among other periodicals. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, she has taught writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Columbia University, and New York University. Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket is a career-spanning collection of Wolitzer's short stories, including the title story, which was her first published work, that catapulted her from suburban homemaker to ''poet of domestic detail'' (Ms.).

Hilma Wolitzer's daughter, bestselling novelist Meg Wolitzer, is the author of 14 novels, including The Wife, The Position, and The Female Persuasion. She has taught writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Princeton University, and Skidmore College. Her work has been adapted into three feature films. 

(recorded 9/29/2021)

In conversation with Tyler Kepner 

''Arguably the best pure long-form sportswriter in the land'' (Chicago Sun-Times), Joe Posnanski is the bestselling author of six books, including in-depth accounts of golf legends Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus, the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, and baseball coaching great Buck O'Neil. Currently a columnist for The Athletic, the co-host of The Poscast weekly baseball podcast, and a prolific sports blogger on his popular website, he is a former columnist for Sports Illustrated and The Kansas City Star. Posnanski won two Sports Emmy Awards for his coverage of the 2014 and 2016 Olympics and he has been honored as National Sportswriter of the Year by five separate organizations. In his newest book, Posnanski tells the story of baseball through 100 biographies of some of the sport's greatest players.

The national baseball writer for The New York Times since 2010, Tyler Kepner is the author of K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches and The Phillies Experience: A Year-by-Year Chronicle of the Philadelphia Phillies.

(recorded 9/28/2021)