Free Library Podcast

Watch the video here.

''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)

Watch the video here.

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)

Watch the video here.

In conversation with Buzz Bissinger, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of four books, including The New York Times bestsellers 3 Nights in August and Friday Night Lights.

Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce Jenner, is an Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete, reality television star, and businesswoman. When she came out in a 2015 television interview she also became the world's most famous transgender person. She subsequently received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the ESPYs, was named one of Glamour magazine's women of the year, and was listed by Time magazine as one of 2016's 100 most influential people in the world. Millions of viewers tuned into the E! network's I Am Cait, a docu-series chronicling Jenner's transition and its effect on her many relationships. From childhood to the present, The Secrets of My Life tells her singular story.

(recorded 4/28/2017)

Watch the video here.

''A master of perpetual storytelling'' (The New Yorker), Salman Rushdie is the author of a dozen novels, including Shame, The Satanic Verses, and Midnight's Children, winner of the Booker Prize in 1981 and the ''Booker of Bookers'' Prize in 1993. His other works include a short story collection, East, West, and four works of nonfiction, including the memoir Joseph Anton, which chronicles his time in hiding during the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa calling for his death. Rushdie's latest novel finds an enigmatic billionaire taking up residence in an exclusive Greenwich Village enclave.

''Adept at evoking complex psychological territory'' (The New Yorker), Claire Messud is the author of The Emperor's Children, a cutting portrait of life among Manhattan's junior intelligentsia that was long-listed for the Booker Prize. She is a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and a recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships, and her work has been thrice counted among the New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her other novels include When the World Was Steady, The Hunters, The Last Life, and The Woman Upstairs. In The Burning Girl, Messud tells of two inseparable friends who find their bond tested by adolescence.

(recorded 9/28/2017)

Watch the video here.

In conversation with Andy Kahan, director, author events

In addition to the reams of Cheech and Chong comedy albums and films he and his partner wrote and starred in, Cheech Marin, half of the eponymous Grammy-winning stoner comedy duo, has dozens of other film and television roles under his belt, including a starring role on the show Nash Bridges and voice credits in a slew of Disney animated films. His long-awaited memoir delves not only into his legendary entertainment career, but also how he dodged the draft, acquired an expansive collection of Chicano art, and became a self-made icon. (recorded 3/16/2017)

Watch the video here.

''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)

Watch the video here.

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)

Watch the video here.

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)

Watch the video here.

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)

Watch the video here.

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)