Free Library Podcast

In conversation with Larry Platt, co-founder/co-executive director of The Philadelphia Citizen and former editor of the Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Magazine and co-author of Life is Magic

Philadelphia Eagles long-snapper Jon Dorenbos played in two Pro Bowls and had an illustrious 14-year career in the NFL. Also a gifted magician, he was a finalist on the 11th season of America's Got Talent and is a frequent guest on The Ellen Show. Illusion and sleight-of-hand became an escape shortly after his father murdered his mother when he was 12 and he and his sister were thrust into foster care and then sent to live with a beloved aunt. From this early tragedy to success as a professional football player, magician, and motivational speaker, Life Is Magic is a memoir of Dorenbos's heartening journey.

(recorded 11/18/2019)

A staff writer for the New Yorker since 1992, Susan Orlean won wide acclaim for the 1998 New York Times bestseller The Orchid Thief, the story of a renegade Florida swamp plant poacher that was adapted into an Academy Award–winning film by Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze. Her many other books include Animalish, Saturday Night, and Rin Tin Tin, a nonfiction account of the beloved canine American icon. Orlean's latest book details the 1986 Los Angeles Public Library fire that consumed hundreds of thousands of books, a story writ small about the larger role this unique institution plays in American life.

Carole Phillips Memorial Lecture

(recorded 11/14/2019)

Saeed Jones is the author of the ''hard and glaring and brilliant'' (NPR Book Review) poetry collection Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. He is also the co-host of BuzzFeed's morning show AM to DM and was the website's former LGBT editor. How We Fight for Our Lives is a memoir of Jones's life as a young, black, gay man in the South searching for his place in the American landscape. 

The recipient of the Whiting Award for nonfiction, Clifford Thompson's writing has appeared in a diverse array of publications, including the Washington Post, the Village Voice, and the Wall Street Journal. The author of an essay collection, Love for Sale, and a novel, Signifying Nothing, he teaches writing at New York University and Sarah Lawrence College. In the tradition of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Thompson's latest book is ruminates on race in America amidst the tumult of Trump's America.

(recorded 11/12/2019)

In conversation with Emma Eisenberg, author of the forthcoming book The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia

Carmen Maria Machado's bestselling debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the National Book Award and is being adapted by the FX network as a feminist spin on Black Mirror. The Artist in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and a Guggenheim Fellow, her work has been published in the New Yorker, Granta, and Tin House, among other periodicals. Told with wit and bare self-reflection, In the Dream House is a candid account of Machado's relationship with a charming but psychologically abusive woman.

(recorded 11/7/2019)

In conversation with Lorene Cary, author of Black Ice, The Price of a Child, Ladysitting and the forthcoming Arden Theatre production of My General Tubman

Erica Armstrong Dunbar is the author of the National Book Award finalist Never Caught, the story of Ona Judge, a young enslaved person who risked her life to escape servitude under President George Washington. Named the National Director of the Association of Black Women Historians and the first director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia, she is the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University. Dunbar's latest book is a biography of the runaway enslaved person, abolitionist, Civil War heroine, conductor of the Underground Railroad, and women's suffragist known admiringly as ''Moses.''

 

(recorded 11/5/2019)

Paul Hendrickson's books include Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934–1961, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; Sons of Mississippi, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War, a National Book Award finalist. A creative writing teacher at the University of Pennsylvania for more than 20 years and a feature writer at the Washington Post for the two decades before that, he has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize six times. In Plagued by Fire, Hendrickson ventures behind the façade of America's most iconic architect to reveal a life marked by tragedy and family secrets.

(recorded 11/4/2019)

In conversation with Marty Moss-Coane, host of WHYY's Radio Times

The winner of two Academy Awards and three Primetime Emmy Awards, screen icon Sally Field is acclaimed for roles including a flying nun, a Depression-era Texas widow, a multiple-personality disorder sufferer, a union organizer, a soap queen, Spider-Man's aunt, Forrest Gump's mom, Mary Todd

Lincoln, and a runaway bride hitchhiker. She is also a longtime advocate for human rights, has served since 2002 on the board of directors of the international women's NGO Vital Voices, was honored by President Obama with the National Medal of Arts, and is an inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In Pieces is a memoir of Field's lonely but instructive childhood, her craft, and her most important roles: as a daughter, mother, and grandmother.

Production note: the sound is a bit distorted toward the beginning but it clarifies as the event continues. (recorded 11/1/2019)

In conversation with author events editor and producer Jason Freeman

Praised as ''an absolutely transformative figure'' by the late Anthony Bourdain, Sean Brock is the founding chef of the Husk restaurant group, which has four locations in South Carolina and Georgia. In 2015, he won the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook and the IACP Julia Child First Book Award for Heritage, an ingredient-guided curation of heirloom Southern cuisine. Brock was also nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on the television show The Mind of a Chef. A celebration of one of America's most cherished cuisines, South shares the ingredients, methods, and regional twists home chefs can use to create their own spins on age-old recipes.

Julie Dannenbaum Memorial Culinary Arts Lecture

(recorded 10/29/2019)

A columnist for the New York Times and a member of its editorial board since 1995, Gail Collins was the Gray Lady's editorial page editor from 2001 to 2007, the first woman to hold that position. Her books include America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines; Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics; and As Texas Goes ... : How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda. In her new book, Collins offers a history of American women and aging, drawing a bead on our evolving attitudes on the matter while proposing that for ladies of a certain age, the best is yet to come.

(recorded 10/29/2019)

In conversation with Michael Klein, editor/producer of inquirer.com/food and @phillyinsider

Originally a meeting place for South Philly's Abruzzi-American community, the members-only Palizzi Social Club is now one of America's hottest restaurants. Since owner and chef Joey Baldino took over in 2017, this mecca for Southern Italian fare has been named Eater Philly's #1 restaurant of the year and Bon Appetit's #4 Best New Restaurant. A proud South Philadelphian, Baldino is also the owner of Zeppoli, a Sicilian BYOB in Collingswood, New Jersey. Dinner at the Club coauthor and fellow South Philadelphian Adam Erace is a food and travel writer who has contributed to dozens of publications, including Food & Wine and Travel + Leisure. The recipient of awards from the International Association of Culinary Professionals, Erace is also the owner of Green Aisle Grocery, a two-location gourmet market in Philadelphia.

(recorded 10/28/2019)