Free Library Podcast

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A cofounder and former publisher of Apogee Journal and a contributing editor for Literary Hub, Zinzi Clemmons has had work published in a variety of literary magazines, including Zoetrope: All Story, The Paris Review Daily, and Transition. Raised in Philadelphia to a South African mother and an American father, Clemmons teaches in Los Angeles at The Coleburn Conservatory and Occidental College. Her debut novel, What We Lose, tells the story of Thandi, a young woman caught between cultures as she struggles with love, unexpected motherhood, and the loss of the person who shaped her the most.  (recorded 7/13/2017)

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In conversation with Dena Heilik, Department Head of Philbrick Hall, the fiction department of the Central Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia. 

Kevin Hearne is the author of the New York Times bestselling Iron Druid Chronicles, the ancient-Celtic-meets-contemporary-mayhem action-adventure series featuring 2,000-year-old Atticus O'Sullivan. In his latest adventure, the immortal Irishman dodges traps in ancient Egypt and soul-stealing demons at a Kansas carnival.

Chuck Wendig's many works include the YA Heartland series, Blackbirds, and the Atlanta Burns books; the Emmy-nominated digital narrative Collapsus; a popular blog, terribleminds.com; and several celebrated books about writing. Wendig's New York Times bestselling Star Wars: Aftermath trilogy tells the canon story of the events that occurred between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.

Fran Wilde's Nebula Award-nominated debut novel, Updraft, won the 2016 Andre Norton Award and the Compton Crook Award. Cloudbound is the second installment in the inventive Bone Universe saga, a series that explores a lofty society of towers populated by residents who strap on wings and soar the skies in search of their destinies.

(recorded 7/14/2017)

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Paula Poundstone's decades-long stand-up comedy career has included multiple HBO specials, an Emmy Award, two comedy albums, and an American Comedy Award for Best Female Stand-Up. Renowned for her self-effacing wit and cheeky observations, she is a frequent panelist on NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me and a recurring guest on A Prairie Home Companion. She is the author of There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say and has contributed articles to The Los Angeles Times, Glamour, and Mother Jones. In her new book, Poundstone embarks on a series of diverse adventures in search of long-term happiness.

Barbara Gohn Day Memorial Lecture

(recorded 5/11/2017)

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In conversation with Joel Nichols, Data Strategy & Evaluation Administrator, Strategic Initiatives

Acclaimed for his ''unparalleled inventiveness'' (Chicago Tribune), China Miéville is the author of a score of fantasy novels, comics, novellas, short story collections, Marxist nonfiction, and essay collections. Associated with the ''New Weird'' writing movement, his books include This Census-Taker, Railsea, The City & The City, and Perdido Street Station. A contributor to The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, and a founding editor of the quarterly Salvage, he has won the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. In October, Miéville plunges into the extraordinary 1917 political tumult that led to the creation of the world's first socialist state.

(recorded 5/16/2017)

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As NPR's science correspondent, David Baron received awards from the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, among many other organizations. He is the author of 2005's The Beast in the Garden, the harrowing story of the clash between suburban sprawl and mountain lions in Colorado. In his new book, Baron, a committed eclipse chaser, details the 19th-century celestial and terrestrial drama of a coast-to-coast total solar eclipse in which three distinctly American personalities-including a ruthless young Thomas Edison-jockey for discovery amidst the last days of the Wild West. (recorded 6/15/2017)

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In 2013 NSA contractor Edward Snowden shook the pillars of the worldwide intelligence community when he revealed a trove of highly classified information that exposed astonishingly widespread mass U.S. surveillance overreach on a variety of international and domestic levels. Labeled a hero and whistleblower by some, he was formally charged with espionage and has been granted asylum in Russia, where he lives in an undisclosed location. In this one-of-a-kind interview, Snowden will discuss these revelations along with the current status of the surveillance state with Jeremy Scahill, investigative journalist, co-founder of the online journal The Intercept, and author of the bestselling books Blackwater, Dirty Wars, and The Assassination Complex.

(recorded 9/11/2017)

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A ''fiction pioneer, toying with fresh ways of rendering experience and emotion'' (NPR), Nicole Krauss is the bestselling author of the acclaimed novels Man Walks into a Room, The History of Love, and Great House. Named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists and The New Yorker's ''20 Under 40,'' she is the winner of the Saroyan Prize for International Literature and a finalist for the National Book Award, among many other honors. In Forest Dark, Krauss interweaves the disparate paths of an older lawyer and a young novelist searching for transcendence in an Israeli desert. 

Nathan Englander is the author of the story collections For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. In addition to his widely anthologized short fiction, he is the author of the novel The Ministry of Special Cases, a play titled The Twenty-Seventh Man, and works that have appeared in The New Yorker and The Washington Post, among other places. In his new novel, Englander illustrates the Israeli–Palestinian conflict via a political thriller that hinges on the complicated relationship between a guard and his secret prisoner. (recorded 9/14/2017)

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, Stephen Greenblatt is widely acclaimed as the father of New Historicism, which strives to understand works of literature within their historical and social contexts. His other books include the New York Times bestselling Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, Hamlet in Purgatory, and Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture. A two-time Guggenheim fellow and former president of the Modern Language Association, Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. The Rise And Fall of Adam and Eve delves into the boundless creation story of the founding parents of all humanity.  (recorded 9/15/2017)

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''A daring chronicler of our most profound anxieties and human desires'' (Washington Post), Tom Perrotta is the author of some of the most popular and critically acclaimed novels of our time, including Election, which was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon; Little Children, which was adapted into a film for which he won an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay; and The Leftovers, named to several prominent best-of-the-year lists and adapted by HBO into a popular TV series. In Mrs. Fletcher, Perrotta tells the story of an empty-nester whose placid life is upended by an anonymous salacious text message. (recorded 9/19/2017)

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In conversation with Meg Wolitzer, bestselling author of The Interestings among many novels.

A writer for The New Yorker for more than three decades, Adam Gopnik is the author of Paris to the Moon, Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life, and The Table Comes First, an ''unapologetically intelligent yet charmingly witty'' (The Atlantic) bite into the deeper truths of food culture. A three-time recipient of the National Magazine Award and a winner of the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting, Gopnik was decorated with the French Republic's medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. At the Strangers' Gate is a memoir of his 1980s move to a peculiar New York that is both romantically familiar yet light years from today's incarnation.

(recorded 9/22/2017)