Free Library Podcast

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''Almost unfairly gifted both as a writer of living, luminous prose and as a tireless researcher'' (Time), Richard Holmes is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy, and a knight in the Order of the British Empire. He is best known for his biographies of Romanticism's leading figures, including The Age of Wonder, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Royal Society Prize. This Long Pursuit is a meditation on the art of biography that fuses the author's own story as a biographer with a history of the genre that reveals how it expresses both fiction and fact.

Horace W. Goldsmith Endowed Lecture (recorded 3/21/2017)

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Chris Hayes is the titular host of MSNBC's news and opinion show All In with Chris Hayes. Formerly a frequent fill-in for Rachel Maddow and the host of the weekend morning show Up with Chris Hayes, in 2013 he became the youngest primetime cable news show host in the United States. An editor-at-large at The Nation, he is the author of Twilight of the Elites, ''one of the most compelling assessments of how soaring inequality is changing America'' (The Economist). In A Colony in a Nation, Hayes argues that racial parity hasn't improved in this country since the late 1960s. 

Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Endowed Lecture (recorded 3/23/2017)

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Roxane Gay's ''commanding debut'' (The New Yorker) novel An Untamed State, the tale of a willful Haitian kidnap victim, was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Prize for Fiction. She is also the author of the acclaimed essay collection Bad Feminist and the forthcoming memoir Hunger, and her other writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Best American Short Stories, and McSweeney's. Gay is also the founder of Tiny Hardcore Press and co-editor of PANK, a nonprofit literary arts collective. A story collection of the privileged and impoverished, the loved and forsaken, Difficult Women portrays a beautiful, haunting cross-section of modern America. (recorded 3/24/2017)

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A lexicographer for the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Kory Stamper discusses the subtleties of the English language in the venerable volume's popular ''Ask the Editor'' video series. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and The Guardian, among other periodicals. A medievalist by training, Stamper knows a number of dead languages, has lectured on lexicography around the world, and was notably responsible for explaining Merriam-Webster's recent addition of the term ''F-Bomb'' to the dictionary. In Word by Word, she opens up the complicated, obsessive, and fun world of dictionaries and the quirky people who shape the way we communicate.

(recorded 3/27/2017)

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In conversation with longtime broadcaster and journalist, Tracey Matisak

The Vice President of Business Innovation Google's [X], Mo Gawdat is a serial entrepreneur who has founded more than 20 businesses, started almost half of Google's operations worldwide, and sits on the boards of several tech, health, and consumer goods startups. He has spent the last 15 years making happiness his primary research focus, delving into the literature and science of this elusive pursuit. Ultimately, Gawdat formulated an equation for permanent happiness based on how the brain filters our joys and sorrows, an equation which would be put to the ultimate test after the sudden death of his son. Solve for Happy maps out this journey for lifelong contentment. 

(recorded 3/28/2017)

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In conversation with Dick Polman, "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania, and national political columnist at WHYY's Newsworks.org

The President and CEO of the non-partisan public policy think tank New America, Anne-Marie Slaughter is the author of the bestselling Unfinished Business, a ''mother of a manifesto for working women'' (Financial Times) that won widespread admiration for its broad-scale call for workplace change. Former Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department and former Dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, she is also the author of The Idea That Is America and A New World Order. In her latest book, Slaughter rethinks the complexities of international diplomacy in a post-Cold War world. (recorded 3/30/2017)

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In conversation with Jason Freeman, program associate, author events

Colum McCann won the 2009 National Book Award for Let the Great World Spin, a tale of 1970s New Yorkers marveling at a tightrope walker's death-defying feats. His other novels include Song Dogs, This Side of Brightness, and the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted TransAtlantic, a ''beautifully constructed tapestry of life'' (The Seattle Times) spanning centuries, oceans, and continents. Currently a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Hunter College in New York, McCann has written for The New Yorker, Esquire, and the Paris Review, among other publications. His new essay collection brings this vast accumulation of experience to bear in a pragmatic guide for aspiring writers. 

(recorded 4/3/2017)

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Employing ''agile prose and clever observations'' (New York Times Book Review), Lauren Grodstein is the author of four novels, including the New York Times bestseller A Friend of the Family and the Washington Post Book of the Year The Explanation for Everything. A professor of creative writing at Rutgers-Camden, Grodstein is also the author of the short story collection The Best of Animals. Our Short History tells a poignant and witty story of parenthood and sacrifice.

Philadelphia area native Tom McAllister is the author of the memoir Bury Me in My Jersey: A Memoir of My Father, Football, and Philly. He is an English professor at Temple University, editor at Barrelhouse, and cohost of the podcast Book Fight!, and his stories have appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015, among many other places. In The Young Widower's Handbook, a bereaved husband carries his late wife's ashes on a cross-country road trip replete with quirky characters and painful soul-searching. (recorded 4/4/2017)

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''Consistently engaging, sly, witty, understated...and written with simple elegance'' (The New York Observer), Wendy Lesser's many essay collections, works of fiction, and edited volumes include The Pagoda in the Garden, Room for Doubt, and Why I Read, a celebration of the transcendent power of the written word. Founder of the celebrated Three Penny Review, she has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her new book is a biography of one of the 20th century's most revered architects.

Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture

(recorded 4/6/2017)

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In conversation with Dr. James Peterson, Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University. MSNBC Contributor

An outspoken Christian reproductive justice advocate, Dr. Willie Parker is a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist who is one of the few abortion providers to women in Mississippi and Alabama. Chair-elect of the board of Physicians for Reproductive Health, winner of Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger award, and one of Ebony's Power 100 list, he has been profiled in NPR's Morning Edition, Esquire, and Slate, among other places. He is also the subject of the documentary film Trapped, a look at the legal battle to keep Southern abortion providers open. In Life's Work, Parker illustrates the complex realities of abortion in America. 

(recorded 4/12/2017)