Politics and Prose Presents

Grit & Gravity is the 11th volume of the Grace and Gravity anthology series, a literary journal devoted to women writers in the DC region. Grit & Gravity features 38 fiction and nonfiction pieces about personal triumphs, resilience, bravery in the face of danger, and ultimately, hope. In the past twenty-two years, the project has published eleven volumes of more than 300 local women writers. The project was founded by Richard Peabody and is now edited by Melissa Scholes Young.

Melissa Scholes Young is the author of the award-winning novels Flood and The Hive. She serves as Editor of Grace in Darkness, Furious Gravity, Grace in Love, and Grit & Gravity, anthologies by D.C. women writers. She is Professor in the Literature Department of American University.

Recorded 6/7/2025

Haunted by his youthful romance with Dara, gifted and sensitive violinist Adam must confront his past to find a way forward. At the Philadelphia graveside of his mother, Adele Pearl, wife and partner in a celebrated two-piano team, his father, Victor, mourns the loss of both his wife and musical career. As Adam reflects on their relationship, he realizes his mother was absent in ways that truly mattered. Struggling with the emptiness left by a series of failed relationships with talented women, Adam grapples with his connection to Dara, an English professor burdened by her own divorce and blind to what she lost in him. Martha Anne Toll's Duet for One weaves a poignant narrative of loss, connection, and the enduring hope that love can be found where life resides, following her acclaimed debut, Three Muses.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781646036004?ic_referral=u-44WbGLg_JFaFJpqw_xfJ1cEJJbPA0XVGdLyvWy_a8wM2pCo9K3rPKRlHyUq9uJTzIwJx1Ulq89A1UaYparQOtX9I9kzYcTbVzlV3mhhYh4xrPIB3K4S5oJ6YBm6s3XVQcP6A

Martha Anne Toll's debut novel, Three Muses, was shortlisted for the Gotham Book Prize and won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction. A book critic for NPR and The Washington Post, among others, Toll had a career in social justice after training as a classical viola player. She serves on PEN/Faulkner Foundation's board and lives in Washington, DC with her husband. They are the lucky parents of two adult daughters. Duet for One is Toll's second novel. 

Toll is in conversation with Anne Midgette, former classical music critic of The Washington Post, where she was a leading voice in her field. She has also written for The Wall Street Journal, Opera News, The Los Angeles Times, Town & Country, ARTnews, and others. She is working on a historical novel about the woman who built pianos for Beethoven.

This event features a violin performance by violinist  Kimberly Galva, who played with the highly selective Civic Orchestra under conductors Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pinchas Zukerman, and John Adams. Kimberly was a fellow with the Chicago Sinfonietta where she performed outreach concerts and played in the violin section. She now plays with orchestras across the DMV and has also given performances in Central America and Europe. Kimberly maintains a home studio of violin students and serves on the faculty at the Levine School of Music.

*recorded 5/6/2025

The story of John B. King, Jr's inspiring path to President Obama's Cabinet begins the day that his mother died. He insisted on going to school that day, knowing he would find comfort in his classroom. As he navigated living alone with a father dying from undiagnosed Alzheimer's, it was public school teachers who saved his life. King's teachers believed in him and saw his potential. They made school a safe, supportive, and engaging place where King could be a kid despite the challenges at home. While some might have dismissed a rebellious young Black and Puerto Rican teen whose life was in crisis, King's teachers and counselors gave him a second chance.

King went on to earn degrees from Harvard, Columbia, and Yale and committed his career to trying to do for other young people what educators did for him. Teacher by Teacher is an inspiring account of how dedicated educators--both King's own teachers and the phenomenal teachers who he has encountered throughout his career as a teacher, principal, and education policymaker--can profoundly shape the lives of their students. King's experiences constantly reinforce the role of schools as places of survival, healing, and hope.

This book is about overcoming challenges and the mentors who help us make it through them. Teacher By Teacher should inspire students, parents, teachers, and everyone who believes in the transformative power of education. But more than that, this book examines the life-changing impact of mentorship, especially for those who are underserved by public institutions and social systems in America.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781538757772?ic_referral=ydNcNNKkuN4f8TZGht3yhy4kUERHY1yT_nVybtIQTbIwM9h1sTOvn2ddd0JCOcATVP1HZaRs3FcT2qBcGUWdq0gHVwtih56wRATZPMKuq2rxhIwjTHgBUNC-ApNfQwrkT1clNro

Dr. John B. King Jr. served in President Barack Obama's cabinet as the 10th U.S. Secretary of Education. Over the course of his extensive and influential career in public education, he has been a high school social studies teacher, a middle school principal, the first African American and Puerto Rican to serve as New York State Education Commissioner, a college professor, and the President and CEO of The Education Trust, a national education civil rights organization. Currently, King is the Chancellor of the State University of New York (SUNY), the nation's largest comprehensive system of public higher education. Both of King's parents were career New York City public school educators. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, an education researcher and former teacher, and has two daughters.

King is in conversation with Denise Forte. Forte is the President and CEO at The Education Trust, a national advocacy organization often described as “the most important truth teller” in American public education. As one of the country’s leading voices on education equity, Denise is on the forefront of engaging policymakers and diverse coalitions of advocates to advance progressive state and federal education legislation on behalf of students of color and students from low-income backgrounds. Her lifetime of service includes 20 years in senior congressional staff roles on Capitol Hill, and a stint in the executive branch, serving in the Obama administration as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary in the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development in the Department of Education. Denise has a B.S. in Computer Science from Duke University, and a M.A. in Women’s Studies from the George Washington University. She lives with her family in Washington, D.C..

*recorded 5/5/2025

Raising kids in America is difficult--no federally supported parental leave, a lack of mental health support, a crushing combination of workplace pressure and aspirational parental perfection, and the fresh hell that is the playgroup Facebook page. But what if there was another way? Parenting--and specifically motherhood--looks wildly different across nations. Please Yell at My Kids is an around the world journey and a practical guide to rethinking parenting. What can we learn from Brazilian birth parties, Singaporean grandparents, and Danish babies sleeping soundly outside of coffee shops? And how can that be integrated into the lives of American readers? Journalist Marina Lopes travels around the globe, interviewing parents and caregivers to provide practical, actionable ways to change the way we view parenting in the United States.

At the heart of many global approaches to parenting lies one simple, and not so simple thing: community. In America, parenting is, at best, a dual mission. But globally, parenthood is more often a team sport. From guiding caregivers through how to define their own non-negotiable values, to navigating tricky conversations with their in-laws, Please Yell at My Kids provides readers with the tools to build a community of care in their own lives and find a newfound joy in parenting.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780306834417?ic_referral=qcqhjwEVF-aeuI9YLa3PshYN7-he82RRX423knlRxhAwMzdIaXq8Tu8Nn6KCy98HPc2ix8pPjwzt40-xP9nHaqyUgkEjQ_PXIi__bWdTlv2GaWY8MzKi52wC3MBvSndTiv1PYrw

Marina Lopes is a Brazilian- American journalist who has written about feminism, caregiving, and motherhood across five continents. From 2016 through 2020, Marina covered Brazil for the Washington Post. 

Her reporting took her from the remote corners of Brazil's Amazon rainforest, where she interviewed female shamans challenging gender norms in their tribes, to Rio's gang-controlled favelas, where she spoke to mothers who lost their children to gun violence. In Brazil's Zika-infected northeast, she chronicled the devastation of the epidemic on families living in poverty. Her article on the spread of the Venezuelan diaspora in South America was nominated by the Washington Post for a Pulitzer Prize. She was also a 2019 recipient of an International Women's Media Foundation Grant for her coverage of sex trafficking rings in the Amazon. Her 2018 series on how gay Brazilians confronted the rise of homophobia in Bolsonaro's Brazil was nominated for a GLAAD award for outstanding newspaper article. 

Before joining the Post, she was a correspondent for Reuters in Mozambique. Her work has been published by the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the BBC, PBS, Vice, and others. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and two children.

Lopes is in conversation with Elvina Nawaguna. Nawaguna is a DC-based reporter, editor and educator. Born and raised in Uganda, Elvina’s journalism career has taken her from reporting a variety of beats in her home country and other parts of Eastern Africa to covering the economy, energy, environment and politics across the U.S. Elvina has also served as an adjunct professor at American University’s School of Communication. She has a master’s degree in mass communication from Arizona State University and a bachelor’s in mass communication from Makerere University Kampala. In her free time, enjoys traveling, photography, creative writing, especially  children’s books and short stories. Elvina lives in Washington, DC with her two sons, 16 and 7.

*recorded 5/4/2025

Follow the fascinating growth and development of the world's largest museum and research complex during its first 60 years. The English chemist and mineralogist James Smithson never visited the United States, yet he bequeathed his estate to the country to establish the Smithsonian Institution. The rest is history, told in rich detail in Smithson's Gamble. This book reveals how, as it defined a role rooted in curiosity and exploration, the Smithsonian helped to shape the nation's developing identity.

The Smithsonian evolved from a small, narrowly focused organization into an institution leading the way in fields from astrophysics to zoology. Smithsonian researchers, and the hundreds of citizen scientists who they recruited, created a collection that documented the natural and human history of a continent. The American conservation movement and a national weather service are rooted at the Smithsonian. Smithson's Gamble is filled with fascinating characters, twists and turns, and moments of triumph and tragedy, complete with political machinations, a bit of backstabbing, accusations of murder, and the occasional scandal.

Tom D. Crouch, a Smithsonian veteran of almost 45 years, paints a robust picture of a unique American establishment and its lasting legacies. He chronicles the trials and errors of an increasingly complex institution and all the incredible joys and innovations resulting from Smithson's gamble.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781588347916?ic_referral=HTbuTS1Dd_wS3WZcVLDEAS4OB0DUOB22zMYCVuvQ8ZswMyeo4Io6JcrSXqSemYARX4EZmH4GhnOQbifCBfa-Sc-i-fniGQquclNJdkPibuhzhIESdyD5d9DWhttfV4GZ8koUQw

Tom D. Crouch is a curator emeritus of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. He has authored many books, including the award-winning The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright and Wings: A History of Aviation from Kites to the Space Age.

*recorded 5/4/2025

After winning independence in 1957, Ghana instantly became a target for home-grown opportunists and rapacious Western interests determined to snatch any assets that British colonialism hadn't already stripped. A CIA-funded military junta ousted the inspiring president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of hiding the country's gold overseas.

Into this big lie stepped one of history's most charismatic scammers, a con man to rival the trickster god Anansi. Born into poverty in Ghana and trained in the United States, John Ackah Blay-Miezah declared himself custodian of an alleged Nkrumah trust fund worth billions. You, too, could claim a piece--if only you would "invest" in Blay-Miezah's fictitious efforts to release the equally fictitious fund. Over the 1970s and '80s, he and his accomplices-including Ghanaian state officials and Nixon's former attorney general--scammed hundreds of millions of dollars out of thousands of believers around the world. American prosecutors called his scam "one of the most fascinating--and lucrative--in modern history."

In Anansi's Gold, Yepoka Yeebo chases Blay-Miezah's wild trail and discovers, at long last, what really happened to Ghana's missing wealth. She unfolds a riveting account of Cold War entanglements, international finance, and postcolonial betrayal, revealing how what we call "history" writes itself into being, one lie at a time.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781639735297?ic_referral=akeRCMKFTlDEKd3mwYYCHdG9xxj_oVP1U62RwJJ6kjswM3Ox8a67Gu_MqaQ7NfcRipRbKn629i2aoi6cbx9zqDvVyGv0qyTpbio9TYYJLKaFiHyfUhBefP2xV0w6u0EFH9r9Tg

Yepoka Yeebo's work has appeared in the Guardian, Huffington Post, the Atlantic, Bloomberg Businessweek and Quartz, among other publications. A graduate of Queen Mary, University of London and of Columbia University's School of Journalism, she divides her time between Accra, London and New York. Anansi's Gold is her first book.

Yeebo is in conversation with Marcia Chatelain, the Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America  won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize.

*recorded 5/3/2025

A Genocide Foretold confronts the stark realities of life under siege in Gaza and the heroic effort ordinary Palestinians are waging to resist and survive. Weaving together personal stories, historical context, and unflinching journalism, Chris Hedges provides an intimate portrait of systemic oppression, occupation, and violence. The book includes chapters on:

• What life is like in Gaza City and Ramallah in the midst of approaching bombs and gunfire.
• The history of the dispossession of Palestinians of their land in relation to the ideology of Zionism.
• A portrait of Amr, a 17-year-old highschool student who is forced to evacuate his village with his family.
• Psychoanalysis of the state of permanent war that has led to the destruction of hospitals, telecommunications centers, governmental buildings, roads, homes universities, schools, and libraries and archaeological and heritage sites in Gaza.
• The ways in which the collective retribution against innocents is a familiar tactic employed by colonial rulers.
• A heartbreaking final chapter called "Letter to the Children of Gaza."

Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, is an Arabic speaker who spent seven years covering the conflict. He wrote the first section of the book when he was in Ramallah in July 2024. A Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, he is also the author of two bestselling books, War is a Force that Gives us Meaning and The Greatest Evil is War. In A Genocide Foretold he writes with an emotional depth that can only be achieved from spending many years on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank. A Genocide Foretold is a call to action, urging us to bear witness and engage with the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781644214855?ic_referral=lElnry1lV4wXBFulVyJuqExA-kcrmE8JViUMqvJrvAUwM5m6HFp0UkrxzLA-UP4c3cGUNGX_TLDAgJnu8V022shwg4o6rnsjxeJqhI0zL8Oo_5m8VWsmaoD2Y8tu4TLpUcEEoec

Chris Hedges is the former Pulitzer Prize-winning Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times. An Arabic speaker, he spent seven years covering the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, much of that time in Gaza. Author of 14 books, his most recent are The Greatest Evil Is War and Requiem for Gaza. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, and the University of Toronto. He has also taught for over a decade in the college degree program offered by Rutgers University in the New Jersey prison system. He holds a B.A. from Colgate University in English Literature and a Master of Divinity from Harvard University. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

*recorded 5/3/2025

This is the shocking true-life story of how PFAS--a set of toxic chemicals most people have never heard of--poisoned the entire country. Based on original, shoe-leather reporting in four highly contaminated towns and damning documents from the polluters' own files, Poisoning the Well  traces an ugly history of corporate greed and devastation of human lives.

We learn that PFAS, the 'forever chemicals' found in everyday products, from cooking pans to mascara, are coursing through the veins of 97% of Americans. We witness the pain of families who lost sisters and daughters, cousins and neighbors, after PFAS leached into their drinking water. We discover evidence that the makers of forever chemicals may have known for decades about the deadly risks of their products--because their own scientists have been documenting these dangers since the 1960s. And we see the failure of our government, time after time, to provide basic protections to its citizens.

It is impossible to read this searing exposé without being infuriated by the recklessness of corporate America. But readers will also be awed by the spirit of ordinary people who, while fighting for their own lives, took it upon themselves to fix a broken regulatory system. Heart-wrenching and maddening, stirring and uplifting, Poisoning the Well offers a unique window into the worst and best of human nature. It is essential reading for anyone concerned about the unfettered power of industry and the invisible threat it poses to the health of the nation--and to each of us.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781642833324?ic_referral=9YeadO8cZmS2IiipC5SAqhQfiop3SN6qvGaYDaMNkuYwM0dMnbTVsUuAmemcIDTW98jMM6RTASCDnsT6feNyhpHoRI4VFwEBbV1jPQGvNcEzFJ3PsuWS5egrjx0tDEjiEVTzpg

Rachel Frazin covers energy and environment policy for The Hill: that’s everything from climate change to gasoline prices to toxic chemicals to renewable and fossil energy. She is originally from South Florida, and she studied journalism and political science at (the very cold) Northwestern University. Previously, her work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Beast, the Tampa Bay Times, and The Palm Beach Post.

Frazin is in conversation with Miranda Willson, an environment reporter at E&E News, with a focus on water pollution, flooding and the EPA. She previously reported on energy policy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Prior to joining E&E News in 2020, she worked as a local reporter in Las Vegas. She graduated from Tufts University in 2017 with a degree in environmental studies and urban planning.

*recorded 5/2/2025

In the popular imagination, lethal injection is a slight pinch and a swift nodding off to forever-sleep. It is performed by well-qualified medical professionals. It is regulated and carefully conducted. And it usually provides a "humane" death. In reality, however, not one of those things is true.

Secrets of the Killing State pulls back the curtain on this clandestine punishment practice, presenting a view of lethal injection that states have worked hard to hide. Botched executions are a part of this story, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. For all the suffering that we see, there is also suffering that we don't see. Indeed, the story told here is even bigger than the executions themselves, for behind the scenes is where it unfolds. Fake science, torturous drugs, inept executioners, prison problems, and decades of state secrecy have created an execution method hard-wired to go wrong in countless ways.

The story of lethal injection is a story of gross incompetence, law breaking, torturous deaths, and a stunning indifference to the way in which human beings die at the hands of the state. These are the secrets of the killing state--all that we know from litigation files, scientific studies, investigative journalism, autopsy reports, interviews, and scholarship across a number of fields. Death penalty expert Corinna Barrett Lain uses this groundbreaking journey into the dark reality of lethal injection to shine a light on the American death penalty more broadly and show that the state at its most powerful moment is also the state at its worst.

We are now over 45 years into the lethal injection era, and most Americans still have no idea what states are doing in their name. It's time they found out.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781479832965?ic_referral=hw7wZTS-WulE9Y1YrooMgIBd8hynC9_z83xVUBeJGFcwMzeINf138Wgwuj6WKOlHUVZCJ47mRvYINL6I-fzgNRY05Qv_wnrHsYdiVEYH_saajSkvxnuqbyDx6xg95DjCYTNiGw

Corinna Barrett Lain is S. D. Roberts & Sandra Moore Professor of Law at University of Richmond School of Law.

Lain is in conversation with Mark Joseph Stern, a senior writer covering courts and the law for Slate and a regular MSNBC contributor. Based in Washington, D.C., he has covered the U.S. Supreme Court, federal appellate and district courts, and state and local courts since 2013. Mark holds a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and is a member of the Maryland Bar. He is the author of The Roberts Court Arrives, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. 

*recorded 5/2/2025

Mitch Caddo, a young law school graduate and aspiring political fixer, is an outsider in the homeland of his Anishinaabe ancestors. But alongside his childhood friend, Tribal President Mack Beck, he runs the government of the Passage Rouge Nation, and with it, the tribe's Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel. On the eve of Mack's reelection, their tenuous grip on power is threatened by a nationally known activist and politician, Gloria Hawkins, and her young aide, Layla Beck, none other than Mack's estranged sister and Mitch's former love. In their struggle for control over Passage Rouge, the campaigns resort to bare-knuckle political gamesmanship, testing the limits of how far they will go--and what they will sacrifice--to win it all.

But when an accident claims the life of Mitch's mentor, a power broker in the reservation's political scene, the election slides into chaos and pits Mitch against the only family he has. As relationships strain to their breaking points and a peaceful protest threatens to become an all-consuming riot, Mitch and Layla must work together to stop the reservation's descent into violence.

Thrilling and timely, Big Chief is an unforgettable story about the search for belonging--to an ancestral and spiritual home, to a family, and to a sovereign people at a moment of great historical importance.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668046463?ic_referral=innkY9Px6niDzrgd47kyIvxsm_N--I-Rn94hReAftdQwM0UOYUy41YJyy86Z2geeSo0COwmxOELol7gwDQlWfoPD30luHPM7i1SJC1jLQEfeiPfJlDdM1_roV_esTg3xJ33co2M

Jon Hickey earned his MFA at Cornell University and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the Sewanee Writers Conference, and he is an enrolled member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. His short fiction has appeared in Massachusetts Review, Gulf Coast Online, Virginia Quarterly Review, Meridian, and The Madison Review. Jon lives in San Francisco with his wife and two sons.

Hickey is in conversation with Ian Shapira. Shapira has been a staff writer at The Washington Post since 2000. He was on the Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for the paper's coverage of the Virginia Tech mass shooting. His recent stories on racism, sexism, sexual assault and hazing at the Virginia Military Institute won a George Polk award from Long Island University and the Paul Tobenkin award for reporting on discrimination from Columbia University. Over the years, he's also written extensively about the lives and deaths of CIA operatives who have died in the line of duty, especially those who perished in the Afghanistan war. Shapira lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, two daughters, and their dog Merlin. 

*recorded 5/1/2025