Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

We kicked off the 2012 Adult Summer Reading Program by helping you find good reads this summer. Join us for our first live, online "What should I read next?" session with Pratt librarians.Recorded On: Saturday, June 2, 2012

Raised by a pro-black, pan-Afrikan single mother during the crack years of 1980s Washington, DC, and educated at Sidwell Friends School and Harvard University, Baratunde Thurston has over 30 years' experience being black. Now, through stories of his politically inspired Nigerian name, the heroics of his hippie mother, the murder of his drug-abusing father, and other details, he shares with readers of all colors his wisdom and expertise of "being black."Baratunde Thurston is the director of digital at The Onion, the cofounder of Jack & Jill Politics, a stand-up comedian, and a globe-trotting speaker. He was named one of the 100 most influential African Americans of 2011 by The Root andone of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company magazine. Recorded On: Thursday, May 31, 2012

Millions of readers and film-goers around the world have been thrilled by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the Stieg Larsson trilogy. In a series of short vignettes, Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson's life partner, tells the story of their 30-year romance; of Larsson's lifelong struggle to expose Sweden's neo-Nazis; of his struggle to keep Expo, the magazine he founded, alive; his difficult relationships with his immediate family; and the joy and relief he discovered writing the Millenium Trilogy.Eva Gabrielsson is an architect, author and political activist. In addition to working with Stieg Larsson on his writing projects, she is the coauthor of several books. As an activist, she works to stop violence against women. Recorded On: Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Launched in 2006, this free community writing workshop meets weekly at the Reentry Center in the Northwest Career Center. Baltimore writers and teachers from Coppin State, Johns Hopkins, Loyola, MICA and other area institutions nurture the creativity of adult students.Recorded On: Tuesday, May 29, 2012

In this memoir, Richard O'Mara, a former reporter, columnist, foreign correspondent and editor for the Baltimore Sun, writes about growing up in Philadelphia during the Great Depression. "Reading these engrossing essays, the reader is gripped by two emotions: admiration at the author's story-telling skill, and wonder ... that a young man with such a backgound ... could develop into such a skilled and remarkable writer." Betsy Olavarueth, editor, The Puerto Escondido Times Recorded On: Wednesday, May 23, 2012

The Jazz Exponents, a saxophone quartet, perform music from a real ‘golden age’ in jazz history, with tunes by greats like Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Horace Silver. Recorded On: Saturday, May 19, 2012

Lia Purpura is the author of seven collections of essays, poems and translations, most recently Rough Likeness. Her essays are full of joy in the act of intense observation; they're also deliciously subversive and alert to the ways language gets locked and loaded by culture. Rough Likeness finds worlds in the minute, and crafts monuments to beauty and strangeness.Lia Purpura is Writer in Residence at Loyola University, Baltimore, and teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program. Her awards include a 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (for On Looking), NEA and Fulbright fellowships, four Pushcart prizes, the AWP Award in nonfiction and the Beatrice Hawley award in poetry. Recorded On: Tuesday, May 22, 2012

In her debut novel, Meredith Goldstein tells the story of five singles at a friend's lavish wedding on the Chesapeake Bay. Their entertaining trials of heartbreak, loneliness, and relationship disasters are set against the joyous occasion of Bee's nuptials. Funny, romantic and unpredictable, The Singles takes you to the wedding festivities where the guests take center stage.Meredith Goldstein is an advice columnist and entertainment reporter for the Boston Globe. She writes the "Love Letters" blog and co-writes the paper's society column, "Names." Recorded On: Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Before the age of 12, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's life was shaken by the Nazi invasion of her native Prague, World War II, fascism, and the onset of the Cold War. Albright recounts her own experiences during this time, and those of her family, in Prague Winter. Drawing upon her memory, her parents' written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and newly-available documents, she offers a moving account of this tumultuous period. An intense personal journey into the past, it offers vital lessons for the future.Madeleine Albright served as U.S. Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001 and as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling books: Madam Secretary; The Mighty and The Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs; Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership; and Read My Pins.Madeleine Albright is interviewed by Sanford Ungar, president of Goucher College. Recorded On:

Over Time is as unconventional and wide-ranging as Frank Deford's remarkable career. Fresh out of Princeton in 1962, Deford joined Sports Illustrated. They called him "the Kid," and he made his reputation with dumb luck, discovering fellow Princetonian Bill Bradley and a Canadian teenager named Bobby Orr. In this charming memoir, Deford traces the entire arc of American sports writing and gives us a tour of great American sports literature.A Baltimore native, Frank Deford has written 18 books, won a Peabody and an Emmy, and read more than 1,500 commentaries on NPR's Morning Edition. He is senior contributing writer at Sports Illustrated and is a regular correspondent on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel on HBO. Among his many honors: he has been elected to the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters; has been voted U.S. Sportswriter of the Year six times; and was twice voted Magazine Writer of the Year by the Washington Journalism Review. Recorded On: Wednesday, May 9, 2012

 Facilitated by: Anthony McCarthyThe Anthony McCarthy Show is a one-stop show for the in-depth interviews and information on breaking news, politics, public policy, arts, and culture. The key difference between this show and others can be summed up in one word, experience.Panelists:Navasha DayaThis singer, songwriter and producer is no stranger to the ears of many. Navasha is internationally known as lead singer and founding member of the Baltimore based nu-jazz band, Fertile Ground. Fanon HillRecentlly the Co-Director of the Black Male Identity project, he is Co-Founder/Executive Director of The Youth Resiliency Institute (YRI). Musician, Cultural Arts Advocate, and Community Organizer, Fanon is author of the essay, "In the Indigenous Loop: Fela Anikulapo - Kuti."Chris PumphreyMusician and Founder of the Baltimore Afrobeat Society Recorded On: Monday, May 7, 2012

Mary Jo Salter was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and grew up in Detroit and Baltimore. She is Andrew W. Mellon Professor and Co-Chair of The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Her six volumes of poems include Henry Purcell in Japan (1985), Unfinished Painting (1989), Sunday Skaters (1995), A Kiss in Space (1999), Open Shutters (2004), and A Phone Call to the Future: New and Selected Poems (2008). She has also published a children’s book, The Moon Comes Home (1989), and is a co-editor of the fourth and fifth editions of The Norton Anthology of Poetry. She edited The Selected Poems of Amy Clampitt (2010).Stephen Kampa has published poetry, critical prose, and reviews in journals such as the Southwest Review, Tampa Review, The Hopkins Review, Subtropics, Poetry Northwest, the Sewanee Theological Review, and River Styx. He is the winner of the 2011 River Styx International Poetry Contest, and his first book, Cracks in the Invisible, won the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and a Florida Book Awards' Gold

On August 28, 1963, as Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, a civil rights victory occurred in Baltimore. Segregation finally ended at Gwynn Oak Amusement Park when 11-month-old Sharon Langley became the first African American child to ride on the park's classic merry-go-round. In Round & Round Together, Amy Nathan tells the story of that merry-go-round and the nearly decade-long effort to integrate Gwynn Oak Amusement Park. Amy Nathan is the author of Yankee Doodle Gals, Count On Us, and Take a Seat--Make a Stand. She grew up in Baltimore where she went to Western High School.Veterans of the Civil Rights movement in Baltimore who are featured in the book -- Lu Coleman, Charles Mason, John Roemer, Mary Sue Welcome, and Lydia Wilkins -- will share their memories of this historic time. Recorded On: Thursday, April 26, 2012

Listen to scrumptious stories about food from the folk and fairy tale tradition. Recorded On: Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Poet, professor, lecturer on black culture and literature, women's liberation, peace and racial justice, Sonia Sanchez is the author of more than 18 books. These include: Homecoming; Wounded in the House of a Friend; Shake Loose My Skin; and Morning Haiku. She has won numerous awards including a 1985 American Book Award for Homegirls and Handgrenades and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award for 1999. Sonia Sanchez has lectured at more than 500 universities and colleges in the United States and has traveled extensively, reading her poetry from Africa to Europe to Australia. She was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University where she also held the Laura Carnell Chair in English. In December, 2011, Sonia Sanchez was selected as Philadelphia's first Poet Laureate.Tony Medina, two-time winner of The Paterson Prize for Books for Young People, is the author/editor of 16 books for adults and young readers, the most recent of which are I and I, Bob Marley; My Old Man Was Always on the Lam (2011 Paterson Poetry Pr

Record unemployment and rampant corporate greed, empty houses but homeless families, dwindling opportunities in a paralyzed nation -- these are the realities of America, land of the free and home of the new middle-class poor.In The Rich and the Rest of Us, award-winning broadcaster Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West, one of the nation's leading public intellectuals, take on the "p" word -- poverty. They challenge all Americans to re-examine their assumptions about poverty in America -- what it really is and how to eradicate it. Recorded On: Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Best remembered for his landscape architecture, from New York's Central Park to Boston's Emerald Necklace to Stanford University's campus, Olmsted was also a Civil War hero, fervent abolitionist, crusading journalist, and an early voice for the environment. Most of all, he was a social reformer. He didn't simply create places that were beautiful in the abstract. An awesome and timeless intent stands behind Olmsted's designs, allowing his work to survive to the present day. Justin Martin is a former staff writer for Fortune magazine and the author of Greenspan: The Man Behind Money and Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon.  Recorded On: Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Session ThreeReading and writing poems that borrow their form and/or subject areas from other countries, including non-Western countries: (from Japan, haiku; from France, villanelles; from Italy, sestinas; from Malaysia, pantoums; from Persia, ghazals). The Instructor: Clarinda Harriss is a professor emerita of English at Towson University whose poems and short fiction are widely anthologized. Her most recent books are Air Travel, Mortmain, and Dirty Blue Voice.  Recorded On: Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Session TwoReading and discussing blank verse, a la Shakespeare (and many contemporary poets); reading and writing sonnets (sure, sonnets have been around since the Renaissance, but they're still alive and kicking); then bending the standard blank verse or sonnet "rules" when you write YOUR poem. The Instructor: Clarinda Harriss is a professor emerita of English at Towson University whose poems and short fiction are widely anthologized. Her most recent books are Air Travel, Mortmain, and Dirty Blue Voice.  Recorded On: Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Session OneReading and writing poems that make strong use of sounds to carry the meaning: luscious-, funny-, or ugly-sounding words; rhythms that tell the tale; echoes (rhyme, repetition). The Instructor: Clarinda Harriss is a professor emerita of English at Towson University whose poems and short fiction are widely anthologized. Her most recent books are Air Travel, Mortmain, and Dirty Blue Voice.  Recorded On: Wednesday, April 4, 2012