Good afternoon and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Our guest today is Gregory Pardlo, author of Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America just published on April 10th by Knopf.

Gregory, before his incarnation as an author and memoir-ist wrote, and still writes, poetry. In 2015 Gregory won the Pulitzer Prize for his collection Digest. He has also held fellowships with the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. His first poetry collection was Totem.

Air Traffic is a memoir of a brilliant and charismatic father, Gregory’s and his ride and fall. In part because of that fall Gregory joins the Marines, travels across the world, returns to the States and gets a job at his family’s jazz club.

The memoir follows Gregory as he creates a life for himself that includes his family but isn’t defined by it. He also recovers from alcoholism and attempts to save his brother Robbie from the same fate.

Although Gregory describes many failures in his life that he regrets, he also shares the learning process that has evolved from those.

A lot of the story centers around the Delaware Valley, where you my listeners sit right now, so that will help ease you into the narrative and bring back familiar places and times.

And oh by the way, Gregory will be speaking at the Free Library downtown tomorrow April 24th at 7:30 PM. So visit the site now for the Library and get tickets if you haven’t done so already.