Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

In his stunning forty-year career as a premier negotiator in the worlds of law, sports, business, and politics, Ron Shapiro has found that if there is a single key to a successful outcome, it is also the one we most often fail to turn. Because whether you are making a budget request, interviewing for a job, selling but holding your price, ending a relationship, or talking to children about divorce, success in those and other crucial situations lies in thoroughly planned, highly effective communication, and many of us just prefer to wing it.In Perfecting Your Pitch, Shapiro shows us why we need to stop winging it, if we want to start maximizing any message, with his system of scripting, outlined efficiently as the Three Ds: “Draft, Devil’s Advocate, Deliver.”"Advice from Ron Shapiro is money in the bank. If you want to learn how to deal with life and business communication challenges, then Perfecting Your Pitch is a must read." Ann Curry, NBC News National and International Correspondent and Anchor at LargeRec

Four women writers discuss the intersection of place, time and culture in literature and in the lives of women. The conversation will be moderated by Linda A. Duggins of Hachette Book Group.Misty Copeland (Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina), the first African-American soloist in the last two decades at the American Ballet Theatre, has written a memoir about her inspiring journey to become a professional dancer.Deborah Johnson (The Secret of Magic) writes about the postwar American South, its people, both black and white, at a time of wrenching yet hopeful change. She is the author of an earlier novel, The Air Between Us.Sujata Massey (The Sleeping Dictionary) won Agatha and Macavity awards for her Rei Shimura mystery series. Her new book is the first in a series of historical suspense novels featuring Bengali women and the independence movement in India.Lauren Francis-Sharma ('Til the Well Runs Dry) tells the story of a young Trinidadian woman, her two sons, the young policeman who loves her -- and the fa

Activities include looking at poems by professional poets which could stand to lose some lines, changing a word or two, and then applying the same principle to a poem of your own.Presented by Clarinda Harriss, Professor Emerita of English at Towson University.Recorded On: Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Marisela Gomez talks about her book, Race, Class, Power, and Organizing in East Baltimore, in which she examines the historical and current practices of rebuilding abandoned and disinvested communities in America. Copies of the book will be for sale at a book signing following the program.Recorded On: Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Activities discussed during this poetry event include reading and discussing examples of ekphrastic poems (poems about other works of art).Presented by Clarinda Harriss, Professor Emerita of English at Towson University.Recorded On: Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Activities discussed during this poetry event include picturing an actual family photo in your mind.Presented by Clarinda Harriss, Professor Emerita of English at Towson University.Recorded On: Wednesday, February 12, 2014

John Rizzo talks about his new book, Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA.Company Man is John Rizzo's insider memoir of his career at the CIA under eleven CIA directors and seven Presidents. During a crisis, said former CIA Director George Tenet, "You don't call in the tough guys; you call in the lawyers." From 1976 to 2009, John Rizzo was the lawyer they called. He made legal calls on virtually every major CIA issue of the past 30 years, from rules governing waterboarding and drones to answering for the Iran Contra scandal. Following 9/11 Rizzo was the CIA's top lawyer.(This event was originally scheduled for January 21, 2014.)Recorded On: Thursday, February 6, 2014

Janis Kearney's book, Daisy: Between a Rock and a Hard Place, chronicles the life of civil rights legend Daisy Gatson Bates, including her role in the 1957 Little Rock Central High School integration crisis. Bates served as co-publisher with her husband of the award-winning Arkansas State Press newspaper and as the first and only female state president of the NAACP. In 1959 Daisy Gatson Bates won the NAACP Spingarn Award, along with the members of the Little Rock Nine.Janis Kearney, a graduate of the University of Arkansas, served as personal diarist to President Bill Clinton from 1995-2001. She served as managing editor and later publisher of the Arkansas State Press newspaper. In 2003 she founded Writing Our World Press.Recorded On: Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Dr. Dolen Perkins-Valdez talks about Twelve Years a Slave, the story of Solomon Northup.Twelve Years a Slave, published in 1853 and the inspiration for the 2013 motion picture, tells the story of a free-born African American from New York State who was kidnapped into slavery in 1841. A new edition of Northup's memoir, edited and with an introduction by Dr. Dolen Perkins-Valdez, was issued in November.Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the author of the bestselling novel, Wench, for which she received the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. In 2011, she was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for fiction.Recorded On: Thursday, January 30, 2014

Kaid Benfield talks about his new book, People Habitat: 25 Ways to Think about Greener, Healthier Cities.With over 80 percent of Americans now living in cities and suburbs, getting our communities right has never been more important, more complicated, or more fascinating. Longtime sustainability leader Kaid Benfield shares 25 enlightening essays about the ecology of human settlement and how to make it better for both people and the planet.Kaid Benfield is Special Counsel for Urban Solutions at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, DC. He is also an adjunct professor at the George Washington University School of Law and a cofounder of the Smart Growth America Coalition.Presented in partnership with 1000 Friends of Maryland.Recorded On: Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Sarah Arvio’snight thoughts: 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis(Knopf 2013) is a hybrid book: poetry, memoir and essay. Her earlier books areVisits from the SeventhandSono: cantos(Knopf, 2002 and 2006). She has been awarded the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Guggenheim and Bogliasco Fellowships, among other honors. For two decades a translator for the United Nations in New York and Switzerland, she has also taught poetry at Princeton. A lifelong New Yorker, she now lives in Maryland, near the Chesapeake Bay. In a review ofnight thoughts, Grace Cavalieri writes, "Who does not love the nighttime mind with its full disclosure, lack of censor—metaphor, innuendo, enchantment, intensity? Sarah Arvio breaks the codes through psychoanalysis and converts her thoughts to poems. [...] From the uncomfortable silence of the psyche’s tundra, Arvio wrings out her truth."Lia Purpurais the author of seven collections of essays, poems and translations, most recently,Rough Likeness(essays)

Jen Michalski talks about her new book, The Tide King.The Tide King won the 2012 Big Moose Prize. She is the author of two collections of fiction, From Here and Close Encounters, and a collection of novellas, Could You Be With Her Now. In 2013 she was named one of "50 Women to Watch" by the Baltimore Sun and won a "Best of Baltimore" for Best Writer from Baltimore Magazine.Sponsored by the Friends of the Enoch Pratt Free Library.Recorded On: Sunday, January 26, 2014

The Pratt Library's annual King Commemorative Lecture, presented by Dr. Jamal Harrison Bryant.Dr. Bryant, founder and leader of Baltimore's Empowerment Temple Church, is a third generation preacher with a 21st century approach. He is a graduate of Morehouse College, Duke University, and The Graduate Theological Foundation. Dr. Bryant is the author of four books, including World War Me, which won the African American Publishers Award.With Russell Simmons and Ben Chavez, Dr. Bryant led the "Occupy the Dream" movement in January, 2012, to raise awareness about economic inequity in the black community. He was later elected president of the Empowerment Movement, an interdenominational alliance to advocate civil rights and the agenda of the black church. Recorded On: Saturday, January 18, 2014

Wally Lamb's new novel is a richly-layered exploration of a complicated family navigating dramatic changes in the present as it struggles to make sense of a thorny past. Epic in scope, yet intimate in its probing of its characters' inner lives, We Are Water bears all the hallmarks that have made Lamb's books contemporary classics. Wally Lamb is the author of four previous novels. His first two works of fiction, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, were New York Times bestsellers and selections of Oprah's Book Club. Lamb edited two volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women's prison in Connecticut, where he has been a volunteer facilitator for 15 years.Recorded On: Thursday, January 16, 2014

Vocalist Pia Leinonen and guitarist Joni Tiala combine the rich tradition of Finnish folksong with a "retro" sensibility, creating a magical acoustic experience. Recorded On: Tuesday, January 14, 2014

James Carville and Mary Matalin talk about their new book, Love & War: Twenty Years, Three Presidents, Two Daughters and One Louisiana Home.Twenty years after their bestselling All's Fair: Love, War, and Running for President, James Carville and Mary Matalin, the nation's best-known, most romantically mismatched and provocative political couple, return with a look at how they -- and America -- have changed in the last two decades.Recorded On: Friday, January 10, 2014

Baltimore authors Rafael Alvarez and Dean Bartoli Smith talk about the writing life in Baltimore and their new books.Rafael Alvarez' new collection of Baltimore stories, Tales from the Holy Land, charts the secret histories of tugboat men, junk collectors, beautiful women, short order cooks and an artist who captures it all in house paint on the sides of abandoned buildings.In Never Easy, Never Pretty: A Fan, A City, A Championship Season, Dean Bartoli Smith writes about the Baltimore Ravens' 2012-13 season, winning Super  Recorded On: Wednesday, January 8, 2014

In a compelling tale of unsolved murder and Internet prostitution, award-winning investigative reporter Robert Kolker delivers a haunting and humanizing account of the true-life search for a serial killer still at large on Long Island. In 2010 Shannan Gilbert went missing in the oceanfront community of Oak Beach. Seven months later four bodies, all wrapped in burlap, were found alongside a nearby highway, but none of them was Shannan's. All four women, like Shannan, were petite, in their twenties, came from out of town to work as escorts, and advertised on Craigslist and Backpage. Robert Kolker presents the first detailed look at the shadow world of escorts in the Internet age where making a living is easier than ever and the dangers remain all too real.Robert Kolker is a New York magazine contributing editor and a finalist for the National Magazine Award. He writes frequently about issues surrounding criminal justice and the unforeseen impact of extraordinary events on everyday people.  Recorded On: Wednesda

As an urban folk art, painted screens flourished in Baltimore. In her new book, Elaine Eff looks at this iconic Baltimore tradition through the words and images of dozens of self-taught artists. Many screen artists trace their creations to the capable and unlikely brush of one Bohemian immigrant, William Oktavec. In 1913, this corner grocer began a family dynasty and inspired generations of artists who continue his craft to this day.The Painted Screens of Baltimore is illustrated with 300 black and white and colored photographs.Elaine Eff is a curator and filmmaker and the authority on painted screens. She has chronicled and conserved living culture as the folklorist for the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland. Recorded On: Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Reginald Harris of Poets House in New York hosts this annual reading by Cave Canem poets Kyle G. Dargan and Amber Flora Thomas.Kyle Dargan is the author of three collections of poetry, Logorrhea Dementia (2010), Bouquet of Hungers (2007) and The Listening (2003). For his work, he has received the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Dargan has partnered with the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities to produce poetry programming at the White House and Library of Congress. He is currently an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at American University and the founder and editor of POST NO ILLS magazine.Amber Flora Thomas is the recipient of several major poetry awards, including the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize, Richard Peterson Prize and Ann Stanford Prize. Her published work includes Eye of Water (2005) which won the Cave Canem Prize and The Rabbits Could Sing (2012). She is assistant professo