Free Library Podcast

In conversation with Errin Haines, founding member and editor at large at The 19th, a new, nonprofit newsroom focused on the intersection of women, politics and policy.

Salamishah Tillet is the author of Sites of Slavery, an examination of how contemporary African American intellectuals utilize the subject of slavery to challenge African American exclusion from the narratives of American history. She is a contributing critic-at-large for the New York Times, the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark, and cofounder of the Chicago-based arts nonprofit A Long Walk Home. An amalgam of literary history, memoir, cultural criticism, and biography, Tillet's latest book explores the impact of Alice Walker's 1982 novel and the circumstances of its creation. (recorded 1/26/2021)

In conversation with Jennifer Weiner, bestselling author of numerous books including In Her Shoes and most recently Big Summer

Yellow Wife tells the harrowing story of an enslaved woman forced to barter love and freedom while living in the most infamous slave jail in Richmond, Virginia.

Sadeqa Johnson is the award-winning author of four novels, each exploring themes of marital fidelity, friendship, and the difficulties of connecting in modern life. Her accolades include being the recipient of the National Book Club Award, the Phillis Wheatley Award and the USA Best Book Award for best fiction.'' (recorded 1/25/2021)

In conversation with musician and novelist Wesley Stace, author of Misfortune, By George, Wonder Kid and most recently Out Loud with dancer and choreographer Mark Morris

An actor renowned as much for his versatility as his depth, Gabriel Byrne has portrayed King Arthur, Satan, Pope Gregory X, Lord Byron, a heartless Irish-American gangster, a Viking chieftain, D'Artagnan the Musketeer, and an ersatz Keyser Söze, among hundreds of other screen and stage roles. He earned a Golden Globe Award and two Emmy nominations for his role as a self-doubting psychotherapist on HBO's In Therapy, and was thrice nominated for Tony Awards for his roles in Eugene O'Neill's plays. In Walking with Ghosts, Byrne traces his path as a boy wandering the outskirts of working-class Dublin, to his entrance and expulsion from the Catholic seminary, to his days in amateur theater that launched a 40-year career.

Books will be mailed after the event.

Please allow 2 - 3 weeks for delivery. 

(recorded 1/21/2021)

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

''A nuanced analysis of White male America'' that ''deftly combines history and sociological study with personal narrative'' (Washington Post), Ijeoma Oluo's So You Want to Talk About Race took a frank look at America's institutionally racist political, economic, and social systems. A New York Times bestseller, it garnered wide critical acclaim and was named to a plethora of 2018's best-of-the-year lists. Named one of the Root's 100 Most Influential African Americans in 2017, Oluo has written for the Guardian, the Stranger, Time, and Elle, among other publications. In Mediocre, she investigates the costs and consequences of white male supremacy over the last 150 years of American history.

Closed captioning and ASL Interpretation will be provided.

Books will be mailed after the event.

Please allow 2 - 3 weeks for delivery. 

(recorded 1/19/2021)

In conversation with Daniel Torday, Director of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College, author of The Last Flight of Poxl West, Boomer1, and The Sensualist, and two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award.

''One of the most gifted, wickedly entertaining story writers around'' (New York Times Book Review), George Saunders won the Man Booker Prize for Lincoln in the Bardo, a kaleidoscopic tale of the 16th President's son's death and purgatorial afterlife. His surreal short story collections include the New York Times notable books Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline; and Tenth of December, a National Book Award finalist. A professor of creating writing at Syracuse University, Saunders is the recipient of Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships and has been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Pairing iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol with seven corresponding essays, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a meditative master class on what makes great fiction click. 

A signed book is included with the price of your ticket.

Books will be mailed after the event.

Please allow 2 - 3 weeks for delivery. (recorded 1/18/2021)

In conversation with author, journalist, and editor Larry Platt

After 20 years of managing and 57 years with one franchise, Tommy Lasorda still suits up in Dodger Blue every day. The embodiment of the American dream, Lasorda went from a scrawny, overlooked Italian kid of average ability to become one of the most successful managers in baseball history--a Hall of Famer who led the Dodgers to eight division titles and two world championships in his storied seasons as manager. (recorded 11/16/2007)

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

Katherine May's fiction and memoirs include The Electricity of Every Living Thing, Burning Out, and No-Stress Meditation. She was also the editor of The Best, Most Awful Job, an anthology of essays about motherhood. Her latest book is Wintering, a paean to how we muddle through life's inevitable fallow seasons and embrace the opportunities these moments offer. Melding lessons from literature, the natural world, and personal experience, it's referred to by Elizabeth Gilbert as ''every bit as beautiful and healing as the season itself.'' The former Programme Director for Creative Writing at Canterbury Christ Church University, May has published work in such varied periodicals as Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and the Times of London.

Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 12/10/2020)

In conversation with author, essayist, and radio host Solomon Jones.

Jerald Walker's recent How to Make a Slave and Other Essays was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award. A ''restless, brilliant'' collection that ''can alight on a truth without pinning it in place'' (New York Times), it examines such wide-ranging topics as the medical establishment's racial biases, the burden of cultural stereotypes, and other elements that speak to what it means to be a Black American male in this charged moment. A creative writing professor at Emerson College and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, Walker is also the author of Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption; and The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult.

(recorded 12/9/2020)

In celebration of thirty-five years of cartooning at the Philadelphia Daily News and Inquirer.

The first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, Signe Wilkinson is acclaimed for her distinctive and irreverent art. A widely syndicated cartoonist based at the Philadelphia Daily News since 1985, she previously worked as a freelance journalist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and an editorial artist for the San Jose Mercury News. She has also published two collections of her work and has contributed drawings to a variety of other publications and books. A former president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, Wilkinson is the recipient of four Overseas Press Club Awards, two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for Cartooning, and Moore College of Art & Design's Visionary Woman Award. Her latest book is Herstory: 19 Cartoons Celebrating the 19th Amendment.

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(recorded 12/3/2020)

In conversation with Khaliah Ali Wertheimer

Dubbed the ''Erin Brockovich of Sewage,'' Catherine Coleman Flowers is a hero of the environmental justice movement. She is the rural development manager at the Race and Poverty Initiative of the Equal Justice Initiative and the former founder and director of the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise. A crusader against the lack of basic sanitation in the rural United States, Flowers claims that these conditions foster an array of ancillary negative consequences. Waste tells the story of her transformation from country girl to student civil rights organizer to MacArthur Fellowship-winning frontline activist.

Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 12/2/2020)