Politics and Prose Presents

She was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, the longest-serving labor secretary, and an architect of the New Deal. Yet beyond these celebrated accomplishments there is another dimension to Frances Perkins's story. Without fanfare, and despite powerful opposition, Perkins helped save the lives of countless Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.

"Immigration problems usually have to be decided in a few days. They involve human lives. There can be no delaying," Perkins wrote in her memoir, The Roosevelt I Knew. In March 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, Perkins was appointed Secretary of Labor by FDR. As Hitler rose to power, thousands of German-Jewish refugees and their loved ones reached out to the INS--then part of the Department of Labor--applying for immigration to the United States, writing letters that began "Dear Miss Perkins . . ."

Perkins's early experiences working in Chicago's famed Hull House, and as a firsthand witness to the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist fire, shaped her determination to advocate for immigrants and refugees. As Secretary of Labor, she wrestled widespread antisemitism and isolationism, finding creative ways to work around quotas and restrictive immigration laws. Diligent, resilient, empathetic, yet steadfast, she persisted on behalf of the desperate when others refused to act.

Based on extensive research, including thousands of letters housed in the National Archives, Dear Miss Perkins adds new dimension to an already extraordinary life story, revealing at last how one woman tried to steer the nation to a better, more righteous course.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780806543178?ic_referral=vtgvYfw1ulc3XglaZ0IlH78R-1xHjDgEM1_gpiYyW5swMyOgF-JOS-S32XHdCwB66eSIwoyfdh0iB7q32ohjvskiYmdJSnkaNEKHl-PRbPmtlZ51kXt6M7Lc-Z4VFyquSViTyw

Rebecca Brenner Graham is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University. Previously, she taught at the Madeira School and American University. She has a PhD in history and an MA in public history from American University, and a BA in history and philosophy from Mount Holyoke College. In 2023, she was awarded a Cokie Roberts Fellowship from the National Archives Foundation and a Rubenstein Center Research Fellowship from the White House Historical Association. Her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Time, Slate, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She can be found online at RebeccaBrennerGraham.com.

Graham is in conversation with Elisabeth Griffith, an author, activist, and expert on American women’s history.  Her biography of suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, In Her Own Right was hailed by both Oprah and the Wall Street Journal as “one of the five best books on women’s history.” Betsy’s new book, Formidable, is an “engaging, relevant, sweeping chronicle,” according to the New York Times. A graduate of Wellesley College with a doctorate from American University, Betsy worked to expand women’s rights and elect women candidates with the National Women’s Political Caucus and the Women’s Campaign Fund.  She has been teaching women’s history for forty years. A member of the Society of American Historians and Veteran Feminists of America, she has been a Kennedy Fellow at Harvard and a Klingenstein Fellow at Columbia.   Recently Betsy has been posting essays online about women’s lives past and present, called Pink Threads, on Substack.com.

When Black women and girls are targeted and murdered their cases are often categorized by police officers as "N.H.I." - "No Humans Involved." Dehumanized and invisible to the public eye, they are rarely seen as victims. In the United States, Black women are killed at a higher rate than any other group of women, but their victimhood is not covered by the media and their cases do not receive an adequate level of urgency.

Utilizing intensive historical research of cases in cities such as Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angles, Cheryl Neely calls attention to serial cases of Black female murder victims and a lack of police action. Neely approaches each case and story with detailed care. Instead of focusing solely on the killings and the murderers, she highlights the lives of the women and girls and their communities that never stopped fighting for justice. With media neglect and police indifference, Neely argues that because law enforcement is less likely to conduct serious investigations into the disappearances and homicides of Black women, they are particularly vulnerable to become victims.

Diving deep into the unseen and unheard, Neely uses personal interviews, court records, media reports, and analytical data to understand how and why Black women are disproportionately more likely to die from homicide in comparison to their white counterpoints. Sounding an urgent alarm, No Human Involved contends that it is time for Black women's lives to matter not only to their families and communities, but especially to those commissioned to protect them.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780807004562?ic_referral=3jng_R7PnWzq0Hq4IvONyprnRaygMylN1gyRAvMxRewwM1165G-Uyz8So-Fk00QRMv1rJEtmmoyeEaLIKhGzfH8uJrFCfinI913YF26pdQ3ZNynkfh23DZqq8U8wcPFe0UVHlw

Cheryl L. Neely is a sociology professor at Oakland Community College in Royal Oak, Michigan where she teaches courses in Sociology and Criminology. She is the author of You're Dead―So What?: Media, Police, and the Invisibility of Black Women as Victims of Homicide, which won the Gold Medal Midwest Book Award in 2016.

Neely is in conversation with Ian Shapira. Ian 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 1/25/2025

In beautifully melancholy stories of magical realism, the women and girls in Softie transform their bodies and test their sanity, trying to find meaning in the loneliest of places.

A former child star haunted by a past she can't remember. An Afro-French girl with an obsession for ear lobes. A loner whose only friend is hiding a terrible, otherworldly secret. Each of these stories shares situations that are sometimes fantastical, sometimes commonplace, but always strange. From a Corsican vacation town in its off-season to hospital rooms and a seedy hotel suite in Chicago, experience the every day come fully untethered from reality.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781959000310?ic_referral=HxsV7sS_YboX2jouZZf9nAqrSJ0QLz0ltedyCv-HliwwM74IWcuJjm3kVfxrFPI_3VMUeNwvDxVI8Rj-eGn1muClQjyDBFK3RNuWn0IsCtkjCCf9X0LSjZ6sRGe9JN2DiovsRw

Megan Howell is a DC-based writer. She earned her MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland in College Park, winning both the Jack Salamanca Thesis Award and the Kwiatek Fellowship. Her work has appeared in McSweeney's, The Nashville Review and The Establishment among other publications.

Howell is in conversation with Hannah Grieco. Grieco is the author of First Kicking, Then Not, forthcoming from Stanchion in 2025. She writes a literary column for Washington City Paper, edits prose at a variety of small presses and literary journals, and teaches literature at Marymount University. You can read her work in The Washington Post, The Independent, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, Brevity, Craft Literary, Poet Lore, Shenandoah, Fairy Tale Review, and more. Find her online at www.hgrieco.com and on most social media @writesloud.

*recorded 1/25/2025

Local denizens Jorge Goldstein (PhD, JD) and his daughter Thalia Goldstein (PhD), each writing separately, have - by coincidence - published interdisciplinary books within a few months of each other. Both books combine a science field with the arts and humanities. Their joint appearance at P&P to discuss their books promises to be a fun and fascinating presentation. Anyone interested in creativity, theatre, biology, psychology, education, entrepreneurship, law, or intellectual property, will find something to love in these books and this family.

As the artistic, social, and scientific worlds become more siloed, building bridges that cross boundaries and domains turns out to be ever more important. Moving beyond just one way of looking at the world is how we humans flourish creatively and invent new ways of understanding our lives and our societies. This presentation by a father and daughter pair will be focused on interdisciplinary topics.

PURCHASE BOOKS HERE: https://politics-prose.com/goldstein

Jorge is an expert in molecular biology and law, with a PhD in chemistry as well as a law degree. He began his career on the ground floor of the biotechnology revolution forty years ago. He is a partner in Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein, and Fox, PLLC, and the author of the casebook US Biotechnology Patent Law (Ninth edition, 2024). His PhD is from Harvard University and his JD is from George Washington University Law School. His book, Patenting Life: Tales from the Front Lines of Intellectual Property and the New Biology will be available from Georgetown University Press in January 2025.

Thalia is an expert in psychology and theater, with a PhD in developmental psychology from Boston College, and experience as a professional actress. She is director of the Applied Developmental Psychology Program at George Mason University. Her book, Why Theatre Education Matters: Understanding Its Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Benefits is available from Teachers' College Press since July 2024.

The Goldsteins are in conversation with Professor Shayna Maskell of George Mason University., who is a specialist on interdisciplinary topics. 

*recorded 1/25/2025

With a diverse set of contributors, including Oprah Winfrey, Stacey Abrams, and Branford Marsalis, HBCU Made celebrates the experience of going to a historically Black college or university. In moving essays, a wide range of alums share their accounts of how they chose their HBCU, their first days on campus, the dynamic atmosphere, and how they were shaped by their rigorous training.

A collection that brims with insight and school spirit, HBCU Made is a perfect gift for each generation of prospective students and graduates to come.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781643756011?ic_referral=yk8cuHdje3G40vBRr1aiKuxHFHtgDwjRk6dLT7G3aR8wM3mJbNV_OXoJPc0BD_JhDruJd31X1m5R_DDG4Uw7I7kW__9aKScjYPVmDaPPChp074rcl71P01SG35CJPCXi3IVYXQ

Ayesha Rascoe is the host of Weekend Edition Sunday and the Saturday episodes of Up First. Prior to her role as host, Rascoe was a White House Correspondent. She covered three presidential administrations. As a part of the White House team, she was also a regular on the NPR Politics Podcast. Before joining NPR, Rascoe spent the first decade of her career at Reuters, rising from a news assistant to an energy reporter to eventually covering the White House. While at Reuters, Rascoe covered some of the biggest energy and environmental stories of the past decade, including the 2010 BP oil spill. She's a proud graduate of Howard University.

Rascoe is in conversation with Delece Smith-Barrow, the Education editor at POLITICO. Prior to joining POLITICO, she was a senior editor for higher education at The Hechinger Report. She spent the 2016-2017 school year as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where she studied how top-tier universities were increasing the numbers of underrepresented minority faculty. Prior to joining The Hechinger Report, she was a reporter at U.S. News & World Report and a producer, writer and editor at The Washington Post. She received a bachelor's degree from University of Maryland--College Park and a master's degree from Georgetown University.

*recorded 1/21/2025

Born into slavery on a Mississippi plantation, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield has been raised in the safety of Philadelphia's Quaker community by a wealthy adoptive mother. Sheltered and educated, Eliza's happy childhood always included music lessons to nurture her unique gift: a glorious three octave singing voice that leaves listeners in awe. But on the eve of her twenty-fourth birthday, young Eliza's world is thrown into a tailspin when her mother dies.

Eliza's inheritance is contested by her mother's white cousins, leaving her few options. She can marry her longtime beau, Lucien, though she has no desire to be a wife and mother. Or she can work as a tutor for rich families. Her mother's dying wish was for Eliza to pursue her talent and become a professional singer, but that grand vision now seems out of reach.

When a chance performance on a steamboat to Buffalo, New York, leads to a surprising opportunity, fearless Eliza seizes her moment. Within a year she is touring America, singing to packed houses, and igniting controversy wherever she goes. In a country captivated by "the Swedish Nightingale" Jenny Lind, Eliza is billed by tour promoters as "the Black Swan." An unlikely diva, Eliza is tall, dark-skinned, and robust of figure compared to the petite European prima donna, but even the harshest critics can't deny Eliza's extraordinary gift. Menaced by racist crowds, threatened by slave-catchers who kidnap free Black people, Eliza lives a public life full of risk, but one which also holds the promise of great riches, and the freedoms those buy.

From the churches of Philadelphia to Queen Victoria's salon in Buckingham Palace, Eliza Greenfield will blaze her own path--with a voice that no listener will ever forget.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063322134?ic_referral=aTkzX0fWiTcUI4ru8MhQWQYuPjNM6hdmq_btommmxuIwM0HooNP67SCE6PsZGoAmDX42kao0MJrriohGhiN6OwhzGBJQRrfJRPbr1bTSTKtWarwzWT3cBJ1U1WiE17OTB9Rifw

Tiffany L. Warren is a novelist and screenwriter who has published over thirty novels. In addition to writing books, Tiffany has written and produced multiple musicals for the stage, as well as several book to film collaborations with BET.

Warren is in conversation with Victoria Christopher Murray. Murray is a New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty novels, including The Personal Librarian, a Good Morning America book club pick, and The First Ladies, Target's 2023 Book of the Year, both of which she coauthored with Marie Benedict. She is a NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Literary Work for her novel Stand Your Ground, which was also a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. She holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business.

*recorded 1/18/2025

The Arabic word sumūd is often loosely translated as "steadfastness" or "standing fast." It is, above all, a Palestinian cultural value of everyday perseverance in the face of Israeli occupation. Sumūd is both a personal and collective commitment; people determine their own lives, despite the environment of constant oppressions imposed upon them.

This anthology spans the 20th and 21st centuries of Palestinian cultural history, and highlights writing from 2021-2024. The collection of writing and art features work from forty-six contributors including:

• Dispatches from Hossam Madhoun, co-founder of Gaza's Theatre for Everybody, as he survives the post-October 2023 war on Gaza;
• Novelist Ahmed Masoud with "Application 39," a sci-fi short story about a Dystopian bid for the Olympics;
• Sara Roy and Ivar Ekeland with "The New Politics of Exclusion: Gaza as Prologue," an analysis of Israel's divide and conquer policies of fragmentation;
• Historian Ilan Pappé with a review of Tahrir Hamdi's book, Imagining Palestine, in which he unpacks the relationship between culture and resistance;
• Essayist Lina Mounzer with "Palestine and the Unspeakable," an offering on the language used to dehumanize Palestinians;
• And poetry by the next generation of poets who have inherited the mantle of the late Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008).

The essays, stories, poetry, art and personal narrative collected in Sumūd: A New Palestinian Reader is a rich riposte to those who would denigrate Palestinians' aspirations for a homeland. It also serves as a timely reminder of culture's power and importance during occupation and war.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781644214459?ic_referral=JZBDujvto5Uhklj3pBDPQa1xHfvLwHl_pSHab_Uxa0wwMyI3BKquqoGWm5tjG0oOxgh2fwtLNviIPZBwyZOEhHtCV02jsi67n05hJ1XhDn-d6kTRh3aeRS79L1E0yau4KAw6zQ

Malu Halasa, Literary Editor at The Markaz Review, is a Jordanian Filipina American writer and editor. Her latest edited anthology is Woman Life Freedom: Voices and Art From the Women's Protests in Iran (Saqi Books, 2023). Previous co-edited anthologies include: Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline (Saqi Books, 2014); The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie: Intimacy and Design (Chronicle Books, 2008); Kaveh Golestan: Recording the Truth in Iran (Hatje Cantz, 2005); and the short series: Transit Beirut: New Writing and Images, with Rosanne Khalaf (Saqi Books, 2004), and Transit Tehran: Young Iran and Its Inspirations, with Maziar Bahari, (Garnet Press, 2008). She was managing editor of the Prince Claus Fund Library, in Amsterdam; Editor at Large for Portal 9, in Beirut, and a founding editor of Tank Magazine, in London. She has written for The Guardian, Financial Times and Times Literary Supplement. Her debut novel, Mother of All Pigs (Unnamed Press, 2017), was described as: "a microcosmic portrait of ... a patriarchal order in slow-motion decline" by the New York Times. Her writing, edited anthologies, and exhibitions chart a changing Middle East.

Jordan Elgrably is an American, French and Moroccan writer and translator whose stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in many anthologies and reviews, including Apulée, Salmagundi, and The Paris Review. Editor-in-chief and founder of The Markaz Review, he is the cofounder and former director of the Levantine Cultural Center/The Markaz in Los Angeles (2001-2020). He is the editor of Stories from the Center of the World: New Middle East Fiction (City Lights, 2024). Based in Montpellier, France and California.

*recorded 1/24/2025

Creature Needs is a polyvocal call to arms about animal extinction and habitat loss that harnesses the power of literature and scientific research to move us, and stir our hearts and minds, toward action and change. A collection of new literary works by prominent writers paired with excerpts from recent scientific articles that inspired and informed them, this innovative anthology engages the collaborative, cross-disciplinary spirit and energy that is necessary to address the impact of humans on all other animals on our planet.

Divided into six sections representing the basic needs for survival--air, food, water, shelter, room to move, and each other--the stories and poems in Creature Needs vividly portray how these essential conditions are under assault through climate change, habitat loss, plastic and industrial pollution, and human intervention in natural landscapes. As the dominant species on Earth, humans not only control access to survival resources but we also overconsume and harm them. Rather than surrender to despair, the writers here believe that we have the power, if we choose, to change course and protect these resources.

A collaboration with the nonprofit organization Creature Conserve, Creature Needs is a path-setting fusion of literary art and scientific research that deepens our understanding of the interdependence between life and habitat, illuminating the stark choices we face to conserve resources and ensure that the basic needs of all species are met.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781517918316?ic_referral=uWadimcffU1CcXx3xhbuiP7y5IriXMgtYQLPeE78z8IwM_YlP87zatcuehKtQ9wKPnsHJL4IvNxgLMfmlPmMR7qfCZbGaYQwcrjd9g7A05wRCY4WewHJXTRqGQve_tFewdrgOw

Christopher Kondrich's third book of poems, Tread Upon, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2026. He is also the author of Valuing and the co-editor of Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation. His poetry and essays appear widely in such venues as the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, AGNI, The Believer, The Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, and The Yale Review. He is currently a faculty member for Eastern Oregon University’s low-residency MFA in Creative and Environmental Writing, and an Associate Editor for the literary magazine 32 Poems. 

Kyoko Mori’s new nonfiction book, CAT & BIRD, was published in March 2024 by Belt Publishing. She is the author of 3 other nonfiction books and 4 novels. Her essays and stories have appeared in The Best American Essays, Harvard Review, The American Scholar, Colorado Review, Conjunctions, and others. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at George Mason University and the Low-Residency MFA Program at Lesley University. Kyoko lives in Washington, DC with her cats, Miles and Jackson.

Sofia Samatar is a writer of fiction and nonfiction, including the memoir The White Mosque, a PEN/Jean Stein Award finalist. Her works range from the World Fantasy Award-winning novel A Stranger in Olondria to Opacities, a meditation on writing, publishing, and friendship. Samatar is Roop Distinguished Professor of English at James Madison University, where she teaches African literature, Arabic literature, and speculative fiction.

"The kid was objectively a tiny worm, even worse, a worm with my nose." Welcome to Sarah Hoover's unflinching take on motherhood and its expectations in which the beatific narrative women have been fed--one of immediate connection to your child followed by a joyful path of maternal discovery--turns out to be not quite true. In The Motherload, Hoover provides a candid, funny, and sobering look at the journey women undertake as expectant mothers and wives from the early days of pregnancy through labor and beyond.

Like most of us, Sarah Hoover grew up imagining a certain life for herself--career, love, marriage, children--and when Hoover moved from Indiana to New York City to study art history, the life she'd imagined began falling into place. She got her degree, landed a job in a gallery, made friends, and went on some exceptionally bad dates. She also met interesting artists, one of whom became her future husband (a whirlwind romance, theirs, exciting even with its imperfections). But when Hoover got pregnant, the life she imagined began to unravel.

She felt like an imposter in her own body. She grew distant from her friends and husband. She suffered from anxiety, fear, guilt, and shame. She also experienced trauma at the hands of one of her doctors--a stark trigger. And eventually, when her son was born, there was no... joy. Instead, she felt "disoriented, lonely, and like none of my clothes fit." Why was she seeing and hearing things that weren't there? Why was she so angry and miserable when she had everything she thought she wanted? Why was the life she'd built falling apart?

It took her months to discover that she was suffering from severe postpartum depression. And it took even longer to trace all the threads that came to inform her experience.

At its core, The Motherload is about learning to forgive yourself for not being what you've been told you must be and for not loving the way you've been told you should. It's about the uniquely female experience of constantly grappling with expectation versus reality, no matter your circumstance, and a rejection of the cultural idea of the mother as a perfect being. It is a moving, exciting, roller coaster ride, and a propulsive addition to the canon of women's literature.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668010136?ic_referral=ec7sB-31eR6V_8GksxmNDEcBASubWmST4gxlq6QyBucwMw5u03usHH0ZTyMGk9_kN4nAghPnDTCErJJx2kOm13Uy3XKq8F_NyWzQyY_kkpwWkIOEc3DCfC862lvK_7KJTOU5Zg

Sarah Hoover holds a master's degree in cultural theory from Columbia and a BA in art history from NYU. Her writing has been featured in Mother Tongue, The Strategist, and Vogue. The Motherload is her first book.

*recorded 1/23/2025

On July 30, 1902, tens of thousands of mourners lined the streets of New York's Lower East Side to bid farewell to the city's chief rabbi, the eminent Talmudist Jacob Joseph. All went well until the procession crossed Sheriff Street, where the six-story R. Hoe and Company printing press factory towered over the intersection. Without warning, scraps of steel, iron bolts, and scalding water rained down and injured hundreds of mourners, courtesy of antisemitic factory workers. The police compounded the attack when they arrived on the scene; under orders from the inspector in charge, who made no effort to distinguish aggressors from victims, officers began beating up Jews, injuring dozens.

To the Yiddish-language daily Forverts ( Forward), the bloody attack on Jews was not unlike those that many Russian Jews remembered bitterly from the old country. But this was America, not Russia, and the Jewish community wasn't going to stand for such treatment. Fed up with being persecuted, New York's Jews, whose numbers and political influence had been growing, set a pattern for the future by deftly pursuing justice for the victims. They forced trials and disciplinary hearings, accelerated retirements and transfers within the corrupt police department, and engineered the resignation of the police commissioner. Scott D. Seligman's The Chief Rabbi's Funeral is the first book-length account of this event and its aftermath.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781640126183?ic_referral=p3qUQSkkUQ_vO34EGhtg6MCQ963QgEHpeRNeV8yZKMMwM9CCdJKtIc_JZH3GbrwGQgbUTh-Bvx4e6ZGT4yF1DrWukl_AHS25n88quuupZrovv6ASZQX_IS23I-m_ciix_SMofA

Scott D. Seligman is a writer and historian. He is the author of numerous books, including The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots That Shook New York City (Potomac Books, 2020), the award-winning The Third Degree: The Triple Murder That Shook Washington and Changed American Criminal Justice (Potomac Books, 2018), and The First Chinese American: The Remarkable Life of Wong Chin Foo.

*recorded 1/22/2025