Free Library Podcast

In conversation with M. Nzadi Keita, Poet-in-Residence, Associate Professor; co-coordinator, African-American/Africana Studies at Ursinus College, and author of Brief Evidence of Heaven: Poems from the life of Anna Murray Douglass

Referred to by Maya Angelou as ''a lion in literature's forest,'' living legend Sonia Sanchez is the author of numerous plays, children's books, a story collection, and nearly 14 collections of poetry, including the American Book Award winner Homegirls and Handgrenades. A luminary of the Black Arts Movement, she served as the Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women's Studies at Temple University, was named Philadelphia's very first Poet Laureate in 2012, and has lectured at more than  500 colleges and universities. Her many honors include the Wallace Stevens Award Prize, the Langston Hughes Poetry Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the  Cleveland Foundation. Collected Poems represents five decades of Sanchez's art and devotion to the causes of Black liberation and women's rights.

Books with signed book plates available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 4/13/2021)

In conversation with Don Winslow, New York Times bestselling author of The Border, The Force, The Cartel, Power of the Dog, Savages, and Broken, his new collection of six short novels.

Blake Bailey is acclaimed for his ''meticulously researched, judicious, and critically perceptive'' (Boston Globe) biographies of some of the 20th century's most complicated writers, including John Cheever, Charles Jackson, and Richard Yates. His many honors include the National Book Critics Circle Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fFellowship, and his memoir, The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography. Through Bailey's exclusive access to Philip Roth and Roth's archivescoupled with complete independence, Bailey's latest book charts Philip Roth's arc from lower-middle-class Newark, New Jersey to his position as one of America's towering literary figures.

Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 4/12/2021)

NOTE: SIGNED BOOKS ARE NOW SOLD OUT. ALL TICKETS BOUGHT AFTER 5:50 P.M (EST) ON EVENT DAY ARE FOR ENTRY WITH AN UNSIGNED BOOK INCLUDED.

PURCHASE TICKETS

In conversation with musician, novelist, and teacher Wesley Stace

''One of rock's MVPs since the mid-Sixties'' (Rolling Stone), Richard Thompson is a beloved singer, songwriter, and guitarist. His prolific body of work includes 18 solo studio albums, eight seminal duet albums with his former wife Linda Thompson, and five albums with Fairport Convention, the band he formed at the age of 18 in his native London. He's been a guest musician on albums by artists ranging from Crowded House to Loudon Wainwright III, and his songs have been covered by Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, and REM, among too many others to name. Beeswing is a reflection on the spirit of a special cultural era, a candid look at life on the road and in the studio, and the story of Thompson's emergence as a major presence on the British folk rock scene.

Books will be mailed after the event. Please allow 2 - 3 weeks for delivery.

(recorded 4/8/2021)

In conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel

Introduced by Virginia Sanchez

Quiara Alegría Hudes won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Water by the Spoonful, a story of ''shimmering, sustaining warmth'' (New York Times) that follows an Iraq War veteran struggling for purchase after returning home. She also co-wrote the acclaimed musical In the Heights with Lin Manuel-Miranda, which has been adapted into a soon-to-be-released film. A playwright in residence at Signature Theater in New York, her other plays and musicals include the award-winning Yemaya's Belly, Barrio Grrrl!, and Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue, a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. In My Broken Language, Hudes tells the lyrical story of her Philly barrio upbringing, the muse-like influence of her extended Puerto Rican family, and how she transformed her obsession with stories into celebrated, finely wrought art.

Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright Paula Vogel's many works include Indecent, How I Learned to Drive, and Don Juan Comes Home From Iraq. Three awards have been named in her honor: the Paula Vogel Award for playwrights given by The Vineyard Theatre, the Paula Vogel Award from the American College Theatre Festival, and the Paula Vogel mentorship program. The founder of Brown University's playwriting program and the former O'Neill Chair at Yale School of Drama, she has also taught theater writing to incarcerated women, community organizations, and aspiring scribes across the world.

Co-sponsored by Power Street Theatre

Books with signed book plates are available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 4/7/2021)

Pine Tree Foundation Lecture

In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist

''A renaissance man...driven by a joyful desiredrive to discover'' (The Times of London), Walter Isaacson is the author of definitive and internationally bestselling biographies of Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Kissinger, and Albert Einstein. He is also the author of The Innovators, a century-spanning saga of the people who created the computer and the internet. Former CEO of the Aspen Institute, chairman of CNN, and managing editor of Time magazine, he currently co-hosts the PBS show Amanpour & Co. and teaches History at Tulane University. In The Code Breaker, Isaacson describes how Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues are revolutionizing humanity's fight against disease by hacking evolution itself.

Each book-with-ticket purchase includes a signed book plate. Please allow two-to-three weeks for delivery. Books will ship after the event.

(recorded 4/6/2021)

In conversation with Deb Perelman

Reem Kassis is the author of The Palestinian Table, a guide to Middle Eastern cooking woven together through recipes, regional history, and three generations of family traditions. Praised by fellow Philadelphian Michael Solomonov as ''an incredible cookbook,'' The Palestinian Table won the 2018 Guild of Food Writers First Book Award and was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Cookbook Award. Born and raised in Jerusalem, Kassis is a graduate of the Wharton School and a former business consultant, and has contributed to periodicals such as the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. In The Arabesque Table, she returns with a collection of recipes that celebrates Arab cuisine's diverse history and dynamic present.

Deb Perelman is the creator of the long-running Smitten Kitchen blog, a no-fuss cooking resource that has spawned legions of followers and two bestselling cookbooks. She has also appeared in Martha Stewart Living, Parenting, and NPR, among other places.

Signed books will be available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 4/5/2021)

In conversation with Bob Mankoff, cartoonist, cartoon and humor editor for Esquire, and former cartoon editor, The New Yorker

Across the political spectrum, throughout history, the U.S. public has demanded the suppression of ideas and images that allegedly threaten our nation. However, the biggest danger comes not from speech but from censorship. In their new book, Jonathan Zimmerman and Signe Wilkinson chart the history of free speech in the U.S. and argue for its renewed importance amidst contemporary challenges to the First Amendment.

Jonathan Zimmerman is the Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor in Education at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading scholar on the ways in which schools and universities address controversial topics such as free speech, sex, and religion.

Signe Wilkinson is a widely syndicated cartoonist and the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning., Formerly based at The Philadelphia Inquirer, she is the recipient of three Overseas Press Club Awards, and two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for Cartooning.

Signed books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 4/1/2021)

Deborah Willis, Ph.D., is the author of Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present; Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present; and Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs, among other books. University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, she is the recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships. In addition to exhibiting her work all over America, Willis has curated numerous photography exhibitions, served as a museum consultant, and has appeared in and consulted on several media projects. In her new book, Willis offers a far–ranging but intimate photographic essay about Black experiences in the U.S. Civil War.

Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 3/30/2021)

Ellis Wachs Endowed Lecture

In conversation with Tracey Matisak, award-winning broadcaster and journalist

Kate Masur is the author of An Example for All the Land, a Lincoln Prize finalist that examined Washington, D.C.'s role as a 19th century laboratory for civil rights policy and justice. She is also the author of numerous academic articles and essays that focus on how Americans viewed race, abolition, and equality during this era. Praised by David W. Blight as a ''masterpiece of scope, insight, and graceful writing,'' Until Justice Be Done is a history of the fight against racist American laws and institutions-Southern and Northern-in the decades before the Civil War.

Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 3/25/2021)

In conversation with Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh, The Queen of the Night, and How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, and associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College

Viet Thanh Nguyen won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Sympathizer, the ''intelligent, relentlessly paced and savagely funny'' (Wall Street Journal) tale of a South Vietnamese army captain who immigrates to Los Angeles and reports on his fellow military exiles to the Viet Cong. The novel was also awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction and the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, among many other honors. Nguyen is also the author of Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, a nonfiction companion to The Sympathizer, and the acclaimed short story collection The Refugees. An English professor at the University of Southern California, he has earned fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. With The Committed, Nguyen has created a literary thriller and a novel of ideas that continues the story of the The Sympathizer's main character titular sympathizer as he experiences the delights and dangers of Paris. (recorded 3/23/2021)