Free Library Podcast

In conversation with Ketu H. Katrak, Professor in the Department of Drama at the University of California, Irvine, and author of the forthcoming book Jay Pather, Performance, and Spatial Politics in South Africa

Acclaimed Kenyan scholar and writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is the author of the novels A Grain of Wheat; Weep Not, Child; and Petals of Blood, among several other works of fiction, memoirs, children's books, and essays. The Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine, he has been awarded 12 honorary doctorates, was nominated for the Man Booker Prize, and is annually tipped to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In The Perfect Nine, Thiong'o spins a ''sinuous retelling'' of the origin of the Gĩkũyũ people of Kenya ''as an epic poem rivaling the Iliad in body count and surpassing it in whimsy'' (New Yorker).

Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 12/1/2020)

In conversation with Sarah Glover, veteran journalist and past president of the National Association of Black Journalists.  

In 1990, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Les Payne set out on a nearly 30-year crusade to write the most comprehensive biography of Malcolm X ever attempted. Through painstaking research and exhaustive interviews with anyone he could find who knew the human rights activist, he sought to separate fact from fiction in order to offer a revelatory and wholly new portrait of this uniquely American icon. A former editor at Newsday, syndicated columnist, and a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, Payne passed away in 2018 before completing his opus. His daughter and principal researcher Tamara Payne completed the work, which won the 2020 National Book Award for non-fiction.

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(recorded 11/12/2020)

In conversation with co-author Todd London, Head of the MFA Playwriting Program at the New School, School of Drama

A theater director in New York for more than 50 years, the legendary André Gregory has collaborated on film adaptations of his productions with the likes of Louis Malle and Wallace Shawn, with whom he made the 1981 cult classic My Dinner with André. His other work includes roles in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, Brian De Palma's Bonfire of the Vanities, and, most recently, Jonathan Demme's screen interpretation of Ibsen's The Master Builder. Not content with success in only two fields, he is also a painter, and the author of the play in verse, Bone Songs. In This Is Not My Memoir, Gregory takes a vertiginous trip through his memories of the wondrous places and remarkable people that have stirred him most.

Horace W. Goldsmith Endowed Lecture

Books may be purchased through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 11/23/2020)

Karen Russell's debut novel, Swamplandia!, the tale of a family's run-down alligator-themed Everglades amusement park, was a New York Times Best Book of the Year, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and a nominee for the Orange Prize. Her short story collections include Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Orange World and Other Stories, and St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. She is the Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University's MFA program, and her many honors include fellowships from the MacArthur and Guggenheim Foundations and the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novelette. A dystopian novella ''with a Swiftian sense of satire'' (Boston Globe), Sleep Donation tells the story of a corporate recruiter's battle against a lethal insomnia epidemic.

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''A superhero of rendering human consciousness and emotion'' (New York Times Book Review), Charles Yu is the author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, a romp through quantum space-time that was one of Time magazine's best books of the year. A recipient of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 Award, he has twice been nominated for Writers Guild of America Awards for his work on HBO's Westworld. A send-up and take-down of Tinseltown tropes and racial stereotypes, Interior Chinatown follows a protagonist who fights to see himself as the hero in his own life story. Yu won the National Book Award in Fiction for 2020.

Book and signed book plate available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop.

(recorded 11/19/2020)

Jess Walter's six acclaimed novels include the #1 New York Times bestseller The Beautiful Ruins, the National Book Award finalist The Zero, and Citizen Vince, winner of the Edgar Award. A former print journalist, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his coverage of the infamous Ruby Ridge standoff. His short stories have been chosen three times for the Best American Short Stories anthology, and his other short fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, McSweeney's, and Esquire, among numerous other publications. In his latest novel, Walter follows the fortunes of two brothers caught in the class upheavals of early-and eerily familiar-20th-century America.

(recorded 11/17/2020)

The nephew of a beloved neighborhood barber, West Philadelphian Antonio M. Johnson is the creator of You Next, a pictorial dive into one of African American men's most valued institutions. Part sanctuary, part cultural space, barber shops signify transformation, affirmation, and aspiration. Exploring these physical and intellectual salons all over the country, You Next is an amalgam of photos, essays, and interviews. A graduate of Baltimore's Morgan State University and now a resident of Atlanta, Johnson has seen his photos exhibited at the Hamilton Landmark Gallery in Harlem, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

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Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 11/18/2020)

In conversation with Simon Callow

Music critic for the New Yorker since 1996, Alex Ross is the author of the international bestseller The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. A trip down the rabbit hole of modern sound's biggest moments and personalities, it won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Ross is also the author of Listen to This, an essay collection ranging in topic from Mozart to Led Zeppelin. A 2008 MacArthur Fellow and a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, he is the recipient of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award and a Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center for his contributions to contemporary music. His latest book examines Richard Wagner's soaring music, vile politics, and complicated legacy.

Acclaimed British actor Simon Callow is best known for his roles in films such as Amadeus and Four Weddings and a Funeral, though he has appeared in scores of other movies, television shows, and stage plays. He has also directed a wide variety of stage productions of operas, musicals, and dramas for such institutions as the Old Vic, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Scottish Opera. An accomplished author, Callow has written at length about Charles Dickens, whom he has played on both stage and screen. He has also penned an acclaimed book on acting, biographies of Orson Welles, Oscar Wilde and Richard Wagner, and articles about classical music for Gramophone magazine.

Books available through the Joseph Fox Bookshop

(recorded 11/14/2020)

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

''A painful indictment of American inhumanity woven with threads of grace and love'' (Guardian) Issac J. Bailey's memoir My Brother Moochie offered a raw, first-hand account of the author's older brother's longtime incarceration for murder. The James K. Batten Professor of Public Policy at Davidson College, Bailey was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and taught journalism at Coastal Carolina University. His award-winning work has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time, amongst many other periodicals, and he has appeared on NPR, CNN, and MSNBC. Addressing such topics as Confederate iconography, police brutality, and white discomfort, Why Didn't We Riot? is an essay collection that explores what it means to be black in Trump's America. 

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(recorded 11/11/2020)

''A terrific writer who commands'' his historical subject matter with ''authority and panache'' (New York Times), H. W. Brands was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his bestselling biographies of Benjamin Franklin (The First American) and Franklin Roosevelt (Traitor to His Class). He explores such diverse subjects as Aaron Burr, Ronald Reagan, the California gold rush, Andrew Jackson, the Vietnam War, Bill Gates, and the second generation of American statesmen in his more than two dozen books that ''weave together keen political history with anecdote and marvelous sense of place'' (Boston Globe). Brands returns with the story of two towering figures of American abolitionism.

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Books and a limited number of signed book plates are available through The Joseph Fox Bookshop.

Pine Tree Foundation Endowed Lecture

(recorded 11/5/2020)

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

Acclaimed for exploring complicated sociopolitical aspects of identity within the Muslim American experience, Ayad Akhtar won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Disgraced, a play in which racial and cultural prejudices persist in so-called progressive climates. His other work includes the play Junk, the screenplay for the film The War Within, and American Dervish, a novel that follows a pre-9/11 Wisconsin Muslim family wrestling with faith and inclusion. Among other accolades, he has earned an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Nestory Award, fellowships from a wide array of institutions, an Obie Award, and two Tony nominations. In his new novel, Akhtar peers at the rifts of a post-Trump America through the lens of a dispossessed immigrant father and son.*

Books are available through The Joseph Fox Bookshop.

*Note: there is slight ring during the introduction which ends when the discussion begins.

(recorded 11/4/2020)