Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

April Ryan, White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks (AURN), gives readers a factual and compelling behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of race relations as it relates to the White House. Ryan interviewed important figures who have been involved in race relations, have been advisors to the White House, or have covered the White House. These include President Obama, President Bill Clinton, Laura Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Rev. T.D. Jakes, Stevie Wonder, and many more.As AURN’s White House correspondent, April Ryan is the only black female reporter covering urban issues from the White House, a position she has held since 1997. She hosts the daily feature, The White House Report, which is broadcast to AURN’s nearly 475 affiliated stations nationwide. Ryan grew up in and still resides in Baltimore.The Brown Lecture Series is sponsored by a generous gift from the Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Foundation.Recorded On: Thursday, February 5, 2015

When Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone was published in 2007, it soared to the top of bestseller lists, becoming an instant classic: a harrowing account of Sierra Leone’s civil war and the fate of child soldiers that “everyone in the world should read” (The Washington Post). Beah’s first novel, Radiance of Tomorrow, is a tender parable about postwar life in Sierra Leone. It features Benjamin and Bockarie, two longtime friends who return to their hometown after the civil war. They try to forge a new community by taking up their former posts as teachers, but they’re beset by obstacles. Radiance of Tomorrow is a powerful novel about preserving what means the most to us, even in uncertain times.Ishmael Beah is a UNICEF Ambassador and advocate for Children Affected by War; a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Advisory Committee; visiting senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution and Human Rights, Rutgers University; and president of The Ishmael Beah Foundation.Writer

Join us for the launch of Wes Moore’s new book, The Work. From the author of the bestselling The Other Wes Moore comes the story of how Moore traced a path through the world to discover the meaning of his life and how he found that meaning in service. He tells stories about the people he met along the way and the remarkable change makers who’ve found deep meaning in their work. Their lessons, as well as his own experiences, show that our truest work happens when our personal talents and ambitions meet the needs of the world around us.Wes Moore is a Rhodes Scholar who also served as an Army Officer in Afghanistan and worked as a special assistant to Secretary Condoleezza Rice at the State Department as a White House Fellow.Rev. Frank M. Reid introduces Wes Moore, and Marc Steiner moderates the conversation with Wes Moore.Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a generous gift from PNC Bank.Recorded On: Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Afghan-American Nadia Hashimi’s debut novel is a tale of powerlessness, fate, and the freedom to control one’s own fate. Set in Kabul, Rahima and her sisters can only attend school sporadically and can rarely leave the house. Their only hope lies in the ancient custom of bacha posh, which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of marriageable age. Nadia Hashimi lives in suburban Washington, DC where she works as a pediatrician.The Ivy Bookshop will have copies of the author's books for sale at a book signing following the program.Writers LIVE! programs are supported in part by a generous gift from PNC Bank. Recorded On: Wednesday, January 21, 2015

The Pratt Library’s annual King Commemorative Lecture presented by Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr.Born and raised in Oxford, North Carolina, Benjamin Chavis, Jr. desegregated his hometown’s whites-only public library, becoming the first African American to be issued a library card in the town’s history.  In 1965, while a college freshman, he became a statewide youth coordinator in North Carolina for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Council.Dr. Chavis and nine others (the Wilmington Ten), charged with conspiracy and arson in 1972 for their school desegregation protests, were convicted and sentenced. Eight years later the conviction was overturned, and they were released.In 1993 Dr. Chavis became the youngest executive director of the NAACP. He later served as the national director of the Million Man March and the founder and CEO of the National African American Leadership Summit.  With Russell Simmons, he co-founded the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network in 2001. Dr. Chavis currently se

A panel of health experts and community leaders provide an update on Liberia after the Ebola crisis. Presented in partnership with Jhpiego.Panelists include: Dr. Chandrakant Ruparelia, Jhpiego Senior Health Advisor for HIV/AIDS and Infectious Diseases; Khatidja Naithani; and Morris T. Koffa, vice chair, Maryland and Liberia Sister State Program for Maryland and Bong Counties.Recorded On: Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Elmaz Abinader is an award-winning author, poet, and playwright whose works are inspired by the dislocation of her parents from Lebanon to the US, as well as dislocations, occupations, and disenfranchisement of other people in the Arab World and Diaspora. She has been a Fulbright Scholar to Egypt, has conducted writing workshops in Palestine, and has toured several countries with her one-woman plays. She is also a Professor of English at Mills College in Oakland, CA, where she specializes in creative nonfiction/memoir, poets of color, and pedagogy. She co-founded VONA Voices in 1999 with the mission to nurture developing writers of color. This House, My Bones, her new collection of poetry, is the 2014 Editor’s Selection in Poetry at Willow Books/Aquarius Press and has been praised by poet Patricia Smith as "a gorgeously scripted chronicle that probes the collective heart and the countries we inhabit when we dare to speak out loud."Kim Jensen is a writer, educator, and political activist whose books include Th

This annual Cave Canem poetry reading at the Pratt features Tim Seibles and Cave Canem fellows from the Baltimore-Washington area. Hosted by Reginald Harris of Poets House.Tim Seibles is the author of several collections of poetry, including Body Moves (1988), Hurdy-Gurdy (1992), Hammerlock (1999), Buffalo Head Solos (2004), and Fast Animal (2012), which won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and was nominated for a 2012 National Book Award. Seibles' honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, as well as an Open Voice Award from the National Writers Voice Project. In 2013 he received the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for poetry.Recorded On: Sunday, December 7, 2014

In her New York Times bestsellers, Unlikely Friendships and Unlikely Loves, Jennifer Holland opened our eyes to the rich inner lives of animals and the power of love and friendship. In her new book, she shares 37 true tales of animal heroism, stories of animals going above and beyond, often at great personal risk.Jennifer Holland is a contributing writer for National Geographic. She also writes for the Earth Touch News Network and other online science news organizations.Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a generous grant from PNC Bank.Recorded On: Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Blackballed is Darryl Pinckney's reflection on a century and a half of black participation in US electoral politics. In this combination of memoir, historical narrative, and contemporary political and social analysis, he investigates the struggle for black voting rights from Reconstruction through the civil rights movement, leading up to the election of Barack Obama.Darryl Pinckney, a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, is the author of a novel, High Cotton, and Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature.Mr. Pinckney's talk is part of the Brown Lecture Series, sponsored by a generous gift from the Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Foundation.Recorded On: Thursday, November 13, 2014

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward J. Larson recovers a crucially important -- yet almost always overlooked -- chapter of George Washington's life, revealing how Washington saved the United States by coming out of retirement to lead the Constitutional Convention and serve as our first president.Larson is university professor of history and holds the Hugh & Hazel Darling Chair in Law at Pepperdine University. His numerous books include Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize in History.Recorded On: Wednesday, November 12, 2014

New Orleans native Francesca Dumas is a quadroon, courted by moneyed white men. She leads a sheltered life of elegant gowns and lavish balls until a bullet shatters her dream world. While awaiting arrival of the Union Navy atop a Mississippi River levee on April 25, 1862, Francesca's lover is shot dead, and Francesca vows revenge.Bob Rogers, an IBMer for 33 years, is a former U.S. Army captain, a veteran of the Vietnam War, and a charter member of the Baltimore chapter of the 9th and 10th (Horse) Cavalry Assocation. He is the author of First Dark: A Buffalo Soldier's Story.Recorded On: Sunday, November 9, 2014

In Baron Wormser's new novel, set in Baltimore in 1962-63, Susan Mermelstein and her son Arthur journey from sheltered innocence through the contradictions and complexities of race, politics and history.Born in Baltimore, Baron Wormser is an award-winning poet and the former poet laureate of Maine. He teaches in the MFA program at Fairfield University. He has published nine poetry collections and is the author of The Road Washes Out in Spring: A Poet's Memoir of Living Off the Grid. Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a generous grant from PNC Bank.Recorded On: Thursday, November 6, 2014

Ailish Hopper is the author of Dark~Sky Society, selected by David St. John as runner-up for the New Issues prize, and the chapbook, Bird in the Head, selected by Jean Valentine for the Center for Book Arts prize. Individual poems have appeared in journals including Agni, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Tidal Basin Review, among other places. Hopper has received support from the Baltimore Commission for the Arts and Humanities, the Maryland State Arts Council, the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. She teaches at Goucher College.Melanie Henderson was born and raised in Washington, D.C. She is an alumnus of Howard and Trinity Universities. Prior to earning an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, she studied poetry at the Voices Summer Writing Workshops (VONA) in San Francisco, CA. Her debut collection of poems, Elegies for New York Avenue, won the 2011 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quar

Susan Katz Miller grew up with a Jewish father and a Christian mother and was raised Jewish. Now in an interfaith marriage herself, she is one of the growing number of Americans who are electing to raise children with both faiths, rather than one or none.Susan Katz Miller is a former Newsweek reporter and former US correspondent for New Scientist. She blogs on interfaith families for Huffington Post and OnBeingBoth.com.Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a generous grant from PNC Bank.Recorded On: Wednesday, November 5, 2014

For millions of people worldwide, nurses are the difference between life and death, self-sufficiency and dependency, hope and despair. Saving Lives highlights the essential roles nurses play in contemporary health care and how this role is marginalized by contemporary culture. Examples drawn from television, advertising,and news coverage show how the media reinforces stereotypes that fuel the nursing shortage.Founder and executive director of The Truth About Nursing, Sandy Summers practiced nursing for many years. She has master's degrees in nursing and public health from Johns Hopkins University. Harry Summers is a lawyer who practices in Washington, DC; he serves as senior advisor to The Truth About Nursing. Recorded On: Monday, October 27, 2014

The Prince of Los Cocuyos is a poignant, funny, and inspiring memoir from Richard Blanco, the first Latino, and openly gay, poet to read at a presidential inauguration. In it he explores his coming-of-age as the child of Cuban immigrants and his attempts to understand his place in America while grappling with his burgeoning artistic and sexual identities.Richard Blanco has received numerous awards and honors, including an honorary doctorate from Macalester College and being named a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. His award-winning books include City of a Hundred Fires, Directions to the Beach of the Dead, and Looking for the Gulf Motel. Recorded On: Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Born in Leningrad in 1972, Gary Shteyngart came to the U.S. seven years later. His loving but mismatched parents dreamed that he would become a lawyer or Wall Street player, something their curious, diminutive, distracted son was not cut out to do. Shteyngart shares his American immigrant experience with self-deprecating humor and moving insights in Little Failure. Gary Shteyngart is the award-winning author of Absurdistan (selected as one of the 10 best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review and Time) and The Russian Debutante's Handbook, winner of the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction.Recorded On: Friday, October 24, 2014

Donald Miller's new book, Supreme City, is the story of Manhattan's growth and transformation in the 1920s and the brilliant people behind it. Chronicling the era immortalized by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Miller shows how Midtown Manhattan was transformed into the entertainment and communications center of New York and a business district that rivaled Wall Street.Donald Miller is the bestselling author of nine books, the John Henry MacCracken Professor of History at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, and one of the most respected authorities on World War II and U.S. history. His book on Chicago, City of the Century, was the basis for an award-winning PBS series of the same name, and another PBS documentary, Victory in the Pacfic, was based in part on his book D-Days in the Pacific. HBO is currently making his book Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany into a miniseries produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.Recorded On: Wednesday, October 22, 2014

In the tradition of Elizabeth George, Louise Penny, and P. D. James, New York Times bestselling author Deborah Crombie delivers a powerful tale of intrigue, betrayal, and lies that will plunge married London detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James into the unspeakable darkness that lies at the heart of murder.Deborah Crombie's first Kincaid/James novel, A Share in Death, received Agatha and Macavity nominations for Best First Novel of 1993. Her fifth novel, Dreaming of the Bones, was a New York Times Notable Book for 1997 and won the Macavity award for Best Novel.Local mystery author Marcia Talley will moderate the conversation with Deborah Crombie.Recorded On: Monday, October 20, 2014