Free Library Podcast

The popular anchor of Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace has reported on nearly every watershed national and international political event. During his 50-year career in journalism, he has earned three Emmys, the duPont-Columbia Silver Baton, and the Peabody Award. Wallace has interviewed seven presidents, was the first Fox News journalist to moderate a general election presidential debate, and in 2018 conducted a notably difficult interview with Vladimir Putin. In Countdown 1945, he looks at the meetings and machinations leading to the August 6, 1945, atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima.

(recorded 6/22/2020)

Architectural critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer for more than 20 years, Inga Saffron won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her sagacious critiques of urbanism, planning, and Philly's hyper-rapid transformation after a half-century slump. An Inquirer writer since 1985, she worked as the paper's suburban reporter and Eastern European correspondent, was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2012, and in 2018 was awarded the prestigious Vincent Scully Prize by the National Building Museum. Becoming Philadelphia is a collection of Saffron's most insightful newspaper columns.

(recorded 6/17/2020)

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

Stacey Abrams is the New York Times bestselling author of Lead from the Outside, a serial entrepreneur, nonprofit CEO, and political leader. After serving eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven as minority leader, Abrams became the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, where she won more votes than any other Democrat in the state's history. Over the course of her career, she has founded multiple organizations devoted to voting rights, training and hiring young people of color, and tackling social issues at both the state and national levels. Dedicated to civic engagement, her most recent endeavors include: launching Fair Fight to ensure every American has a voice in our election system, Fair Count to ensure accuracy in the 2020 Census and greater participation in civic engagement, and the Southern Economic Advancement Project, a public policy initiative to broaden economic power and build equity in the South.

Abrams received degrees from Spelman College, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and Yale Law School. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, she and her five siblings grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi and were raised in Georgia.

(recorded 6/16/2020)

A prolific book critic whose reviews appear in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times Book Review, Donna Rifkind was a 2006 finalist for the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle. The Sun and Her Stars is her ''marvelous, knowledgeable'' (Boston Herald) look at the life of Salka Viertel, the until-now unheralded German Jewish expat screenwriter and Garbo confidant who created a Hollywood haven for scores of European émigrés-including Albert Einstein, Arnold Schoenberg, and Bertolt Brecht, among myriad others-who had escaped the horrors of Nazi Germany.

(recorded 6/11/2020)

Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies and faculty associate in the Program in Law and Public Affairs and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton. She is the author of six books, most recently the award-winning titles, Breathe: A Letter to My Sons and Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry. She was born in Birmingham, Alabama and currently lives outside Philadelphia with her two sons.

Kiese Laymon is the Hubert McAlexander Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of the novel, Long Division, a collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, and the award-winning Heavy: An American Memoir. Laymon was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi.

(recorded 6/9/2020)

In conversation with Erica Armstrong Dunbar, award-winning author of Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge and She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman.

Lauren Francis-Sharma's acclaimed novel 'Til the Well Runs Dry tells the ''universally touching'' (New York Times) multigenerational saga of a sharp-tongued Trinidadian seamstress's travails and bittersweet triumphs. It was honored as the fiction selection of the 2015 Black Caucus of the American Library Association and one of O, The Oprah Magazine's ''10 Titles to Pick Up Now.'' She is also assistant director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the proprietor of the DC Writers Room. Her latest novel follows the journey of a rebellious young woman from Trinidad to a new life with the Crow Nation in 1830s Wyoming.

(recorded 5/28/2020)

In conversation with Andrea González-Ramírez, Senior Writer at GEN and an Ida B. Wells fellow at Type Investigations.  Read Ms. González-Ramírez's interview with Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.

Originally from Ecuador, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio became one of the first undocumented students admitted to Harvard University. Now a fellow at Laurene Powell Jobs's Emerson Collective and a doctoral candidate in the American studies program at Yale, she has written about race, culture, and immigration in a variety of publications, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, and n+1. In her new book, Villavicencio ventures beyond combustive political rhetoric and alarmist headlines to reveal the remarkable, relatable lives of undocumented Americans in every corner of the country.

(recorded 5/21/2020)

One of contemporary sci-fi/fantasy's most popular writers, Seanan McGuire won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards for the Wayward Children series of books. Also the author of, among other books, the October Day series and the InCryptid series, she writes science fiction/horror under the pen name Mira Grant and has published several works of nonfiction. She is currently writing the Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider comic series for Marvel. Her other honors include the 2011 Shirley Jackson Award and the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. In Middlegame, McGuire introduces a polyglot, his numbers-obsessed twin, and an alchemist who pushes them toward godhood. Imaginary Numbers is the ninth book in the sprawling InCryptid urban fantasy series.

*Production note: the interlocutor's audio is a bit muddled throughout but Seanan's audio sounds fine.

(recorded 5/14/2020)

A reporter for the New York Times for 25 years, Jennifer Steinhauer has covered the United States Congress since 2010. Her former assignments include Los Angeles bureau chief and New York City Hall bureau chief. The winner of the Newswoman's Club of New York Front Page Deadline Reporting Award in 2006 for her coverage of Hurricane Katrina, Steinhauer is the author or co-author of two cookbooks and a novel about the entertainment industry. The Firsts follows the diverse stories of the 87 women in the House and the 23 in the Senate-the largest number in American history-elected to the 116th Congress.

(recorded 5/12/2020)

Winner of the 2019 National Book Award for fiction, Trust Exercise follows a star-crossed suburban teen romance in a 1980s performing arts high school. Susan Choi's novels are known for excavating the hidden corners of the human heart and acclaimed for their ''nuance, psychological acuity, and pitch-perfect writing'' (Los Angeles Times). Her books include the Asian American Literary Award–winning The Foreign Student; American Woman, a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize; A Person of Interest, a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award; and My Education, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction. A creative writing teacher at Yale, Choi has earned Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships.

The author of nearly 30 books for young people and adults, Jacqueline Woodson has won three Newbery Honors, a Coretta Scott King Award and three Coretta Scott King Honors, and the 2014 National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming, a poetry collection about her upbringing in New York and South Carolina amidst the vestiges of Jim Crow. Her other books include After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Another Brooklyn, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Woodson's latest novel, ''a universal American tale of striving, failing, then trying again'' (Time), addresses a bevy of societal issues through the intergenerational saga of a family striving to escape the tug of history.

(recorded 5/7/2020)