Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Embracing Sisterhood is a thought-provoking examination of black women’s intersecting challenges, tensions, and issues of class in the twenty-first century.  In this purported era of high-profile, mega-successful black women and growing socioeconomic diversity, Embracing Sisterhood seeks to determine where contemporary black women’s ideas of black womanhood and sisterhood merge with social class.  Katrina Bell McDonald is Associate Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, Co-director of the Center for Africana Studies at the Johns Hopkins University and an Associate of the Hopkins Population Center. Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.Recorded On: Tuesday, January 15, 2019

Elizabeth Spires (born in 1952 in Lancaster, Ohio) is the author of seven poetry collections: Globe, Swan’s Island, Annonciade, Worldling, Now the Green Blade Rises, The Wave-Maker, and, newly published,  A Memory of the Future. She has also written six books for children, including The Mouse of Amherst and I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and His Stone Carvings. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, American Poetry Review, and other magazines and anthologies.  She lives in Baltimore and is a professor at Goucher College where she co-directs the Kratz Center for Creative Writing.David Yezzi’s most recent books of poems are Birds of the Air and Black Sea, both from Carnegie Mellon. His verse play, Schnauzer, is forthcoming later this year from Exot Books. He is chair of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and editor of The Hopkins Review.​Read "The Streaming" by Elizabeth Spires.Read "Crane" by David Yezzi.Recorded On: Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Using gut-wrenching reportage, on-the-ground research, and personal accounts garnered from interviews with over 100 police and government officials around the country, Horace presents an insider's examination of police tactics, which he concludes is an "archaic system" built on a "toxic brotherhood" in The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, and Injustice in America's Law Enforcement. He dissects some of the nation's most highly publicized police shootings and crimes to explain how these techniques have had detrimental outcomes to the people that they serve. Horace provides fresh analysis on communities experiencing police brutality and disparate imprisonment rates due to racist policing such as Ferguson, New Orleans, Baltimore, and Chicago. Matthew Horace is a law enforcement and security contributor to CNN and The Wall Street Journal, and an internationally-recognized leadership expert in the field. http://matthewhorace.com/Ron Harris is a former reporter and editor for the Los Angeles Tim

Nic Stone will be in conversation with Rashad Staton, Youth Engagement Specialist for Baltimore City Public Schools.One Book Baltimore is a new initiative that provides opportunities for Baltimore City 7th and 8th graders, their families, and community members to connect through literature by reading the same book. This year’s book is New York Times bestseller Dear Martin by Nic Stone. Nic Stone is a native of Atlanta and a Spelman College graduate. After working extensively in teen mentoring and living in Israel for a few years, she returned to the United States to write full-time. Dear Martin, her first novel, is loosely based on a series of true events involving the shooting deaths of unarmed African American teenagers. Shaken by the various responses to these incidents—and to the pro-justice movement that sprang up as a result—Stone began Dear Martin in an attempt to examine current affairs through the lens of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s teachings.Rashad Staton is a proud product of Baltimore City Public

Drawing on path-breaking work in which she and her colleagues isolated significant communication effects in the 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns, the eminent political communication scholar Kathleen Hall Jamieson marshals the troll posts, unique polling data, analyses of how the press used the hacked content, and a synthesis of half a century of media effects research to argue that, although not certain, it is probable that the Russians helped elect the 45th president of the United States. Jamieson explains how by changing the behavior of key players and altering the focus and content of mainstream news, Russian hackers reshaped the 2016 electoral dynamic. While the goal of these hackers was division and not necessarily focused on a particular outcome, the data suggests that many voters’ opinions were altered by Russia’s wide-ranging and coordinated campaign.Kathleen Hall Jamieson is the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsy

Are you interested in screenwriting? Do you want tips and tricks on how to break into the screenwriting industry? Have you considered marketing strategies to become a successful screenwriter? Then join us for an exciting networking event and panel discussion with Q&A featuring local professors and screenwriters. Don’t forget to bring a pen and paper for notes, as well as business cards for networking!Panelists include:Joe Tropea, Curator of Films & Photographs and Digital Projects Coordinator at the Maryland Historical Society; former journalist, videographer, and editor for Baltimore¹s City Paper; co-creator of the documentaries Hit & Stay (2013) and Sickies Making Films (2018);Dina Fiasconaro, creator of the feature documentary Moms and Meds (2015), available on Amazon; co-founder of the Baltimore Chapter of Film Fatales; recipient of the “Generation Next” screenwriting grant; currently teaches Film & Moving Image at Stevenson University;David Warfield, feature credits include writer/directo

Porochista Khakpour's debut novel Sons and Other Flammable Objects was a New York Times Editor's Choice, one of the Chicago Tribune's Fall's Best, and the 2007 California Book Award winner in the 'First Fiction' category. Her second novel The Last Illusion was a 2014 "Best Book of the Year" according to NPR, Kirkus, Buzzfeed, Popmatters, Electric Literature, and many more. Among her many fellowships is a National Endowment for the Arts award. Her nonfiction has appeared in many sections of The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Elle, Slate, Salon, and Bookforum, among many others. Sick is Khakpour's grueling, emotional journey - as a woman, an Iranian-American, a writer, and a lifelong sufferer of undiagnosed health problems - in which she examines her subsequent struggles with mental illness and her addiction to doctor prescribed benzodiazepines, that both aided and eroded her ever-deteriorating physical health. A story of survival, pain, and transformation, Sick candidly examines the colossal impac

Joelle Biele's newest book is Tramp (LSU Press, 2018);  she is also the author of White Summer and Broom and the editor of Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker: The Complete Correspondence. A Fulbright professor in Germany and Poland, she has received awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Poetry Society of America. Her essays and fiction appear in American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Black Warrior Review, Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, and New England Review. She has taught American literature and creative writing at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, Goucher College, the University of Oldenburg, Germany, and Jagiellonian University, Poland. She served as the 2017-2018 Howard County Poetry and Literature Society Writer-in-Residence.Ann Bracken is an activist with a pen. She has started over more times than she can count and believes that she possesses a strong gene for reinvention driving her desire for change. Ann’s changed her job and her mind, but never wavers from he

Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. A strict vow of secrecy nearly erased their efforts from history; now, through dazzling research and interviews with surviving code girls, bestselling author Liza Mundy brings to life this riveting and vital story of American courage, service, and scientific accomplishment.Liza Mundy is the New York Times bestselling author of The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Sex, Love and Family and Michelle: A Biography. She was a long-time reporter at the Washington Post and has contributed to numerous publications including TheAtlantic, TIME, The New Republic, Slate, Mother Jones, and Politico.

This collection of insightful and searing essays celebrates the vibrancy and strength of black history and culture in America. In We Can't Breathe, Jabari Asim disrupts what Toni Morrison has exposed as the "Master Narrative" and replaces it with a story of black survival and persistence through art and community in the face of centuries of racism. In these wide-ranging and penetrating essays, he explores such topics as the twisted legacy of jokes and falsehoods in black life, the importance of black fathers and community, the significance of black writers and stories, and the beauty and pain of the black body. What emerges is a rich portrait of a community and culture that has resisted, survived, and flourished despite centuries of racism, violence, and trauma.Jabari Asim was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. For eleven years, he was an editor at The Washington Post, where he also wrote a syndicated column on politics, popular culture and social issues. Since 2007 he has been the editor-in-chief of Cri

Geraldine Connolly was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. She is the author of a chapbook, The Red Room, and four full-length poetry collections: Food for the Winter (Purdue), Province of Fire (Iris Press), Hand of the Wind (Iris Press), and her new book, Aileron, published by Terrapin Books in 2018.Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Georgia Review, The Cortland Review, and Shenandoah. It has been anthologized in Poetry 180: A Poem a Day for American High School Students;  Sweeping Beauty: Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework;  and The Doll Collection. She has won many awards, including two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Margaret Bridgman Fellowship of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, a Maryland Arts Council fellowship, and the Yeats Society of New York Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Ted Kooser's "American Life in Poetry" project and has been broadcast on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac, as well as Grace Cavalieri's The Poet and the Poem.Doritt Carroll is a nati

The ;conversation with Tim Mohr will be moderated by WBAL-TV anchor Andre Hepkins.The story of East German punk rock is about much more than music; it is a story of extraordinary bravery in the face of one of the most oppressive regimes in history. It began with a handful of East Berlin teens who heard the Sex Pistols on a British military radio broadcast to troops in West Berlin in 1980, and it ended with the collapse of the East German dictatorship. When the East German punks became more numerous, more visible, and more rebellious, security forces—including the dreaded secret police, the Stasi—targeted them. They were spied on by friends and even members of their own families; they were expelled from schools and jobs; they were beaten by police and imprisoned. Instead of backing down, the punks fought back, playing an indispensable role in the underground movements that helped bring down the Berlin Wall.Rollicking, cinematic, deeply researched, highly readable, and thrillingly topical, Tim Mohr's Burning Do

On October 16, 1859, John Brown and his band of eighteen raiders descended on Harpers Ferry. In an ill-fated attempt to incite a slave insurrection, they seized the federal arsenal, took hostages, and retreated to a fire engine house where they barricaded themselves until a contingent of US Marines battered their way in on October 18.The raiders were routed, and several were captured. Soon after, they were tried, convicted, and hanged. Among Brown’s fighters were five African American men -- John Copeland, Shields Green, Dangerfield Newby, Lewis Leary, and Osborne Perry Anderson -- whose lives and deaths have long been overshadowed by their martyred leader and who, even today, are little remembered. Only Anderson survived, later publishing the lone insider account of the event that, most historians agree, was a catalyst to the catastrophic American Civil War that followed. Five for Freedom: The African American Soldiers in John Brown's Army is the story of these five brave men, the circumstances in which they

The 2018 Mencken Memorial Lecture presented by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post.Dana Milbank is a nationally syndicated op-ed columnist. Before joining the staff of the Washington Post in 2005, he served as a senior editor at the New Republic and a reporter with the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of three books, including the national bestseller Homo Politicus.Recorded On: Saturday, September 15, 2018

In 1844, Horace Wells, a Connecticut dentist, encountered nitrous oxide, or laughing gas -- then an entertainment for performers in carnival-like theatrical acts -- and began administering the gas as the first true anesthetic. His discovery would change the world, reshaping medicine and humanity's relationship with pain. But that discovery would also thrust Wells into scandals that threatened his reputation, his family, and his sanity -- hardships and triumphs that resonate in today's struggles with what hurts us and what we take to stop the hurt. In The Strange and True Tale of Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist: A Novel, Michael Downs mines the gaps in the historical record and imagines the motivations and mysteries behind Wells's morbid fascination with pain, as well as the price he and his wife, Elizabeth, paid -- first through his obsession, then his addiction.Michael Downs is the author of The Greatest Show: Stories (2012) and House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City (2007), which won the River Teeth

In his new book, America: The Farewell Tour, Chris Hedges provides a provocative examination of America in crisis, where unemployment, deindustrialization, and a bitter hopelessness and malaise have resulted in an epidemic of diseases of despair -- drug abuse, gambling, suicide, magical thinking, xenophobia, and a culture of sadism and hate.According to Hedges, America is convulsed by an array of pathologies that have arisen out of profound hopelessness, a bitter despair and a civil society that has ceased to function. The opioid crisis, the retreat into gambling to cope with economic distress, the pornification of culture, the rise of magical thinking, the celebration of sadism, hate and plagues of suicides are the physical manifestiations of a society that is being ravaged by corporate pillage and a failed democracy. As the society unravels, we also face global upheaval caused by catastrophic climate change.Hedges argues that neither political party, now captured by corporate power, addresses the systemic p

The 2018 Enoch Pratt Free Library / Little Patuxent Review Poetry Contest winner shares the stage with a contest runner-up, two contest judges, and a Little Patuxent Review contributor.Born in India and raised in Dubai, Poetry Contest winner Kanak (pronounced Kuh-nuck) Gupta is currently trying her luck in Baltimore, as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University. She likes reading, writing, and living stories (and poetry).Runner-up Rachel E. Hicks’s poetry has appeared in Saint Katherine Review, Welter, Off the Coast, Gulf Stream Magazine, and other journals. She also writes essays and fiction, and works as a freelance copy editor. An associate editor at Del Sol Press, she also served as the 2018 Poetry Out Loud Regional Coordinator for the Maryland State Arts Council. After living in eight countries -- most recently China -- she now resides in Baltimore. Her career has included teaching (high school English and homeschool) and volunteering with an international relief and development agency. Find her onlin

The Third Hotel by Laura van den Berg is a propulsive, brilliantly shape-shifting novel. A widow tries to come to terms with her husband’s death -- and the truth about their marriage -- in this surreal, mystifying story of psychological reflection and metaphysical mystery. Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, she finds her husband, Richard, standing outside a museum. He’s wearing a white linen suit she’s never seen before, and he’s supposed to be dead. Grief-stricken and baffled, Clare tails Richard, a horror film scholar, through the newly tourist-filled streets of Havana, clocking his every move. As the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, Clare finds grounding in memories of her childhood in Florida and of her marriage to Richard, revealing her role in his death and reappearance along the way. Laura van den Berg is the author of two story collections, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us and The Isle of Yout

Addiction is too often viewed only through the prism of sadness and pain.  At this event, you are invited to imagine the greater possibilities as we celebrate the creativity and optimism of the writers from The Imagination Lab.The Imagination Lab is the brainchild of Karen Reese, Executive Director of Man Alive, Inc.—the first and longest running methadone maintenance clinic in Maryland.  The lab was created to explore and nurture the creative talents of those in medication-assisted treatment for substance use disorders. The program is hosted by Don Riesett, an accomplished writer and international business executive, who has for the past four years volunteered his time with The Imagination Lab.  The writers he has guided will share creative non-fiction selections of which they are rightfully proud.Their work lends credence to Albert Einstein’s famous quote:  “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.”  Work by collagists attending a Vision Board class will be on display as well.     Re

Curtis Black is no stranger to scandal. Throughout the decades, he has done much in the public eye, both good and evil. But what most people don't realize is that Curtis has been hiding a horrific childhood that has affected him in countless, unspeakable ways. His buried past returns in an unwelcome visit when his estranged sister becomes alarmingly ill and his youngest child, twelve-year-old Curtina, becomes the kind of problem daughter that he never imagined she could be. This is only the beginning. The horror of Curtis's childhood secrets, as well as Curtina's wild and rebellious behavior, takes a critical toll on Curtis and the entire Black family. All the public scandals they've experienced over the years now seem like child's play compared to the turmoil they are facing in private. Who could have known that the deepest wounds would come from within?Kimberla Lawson Roby is the New York Times bestselling author of the highly acclaimed Curtis Black series. She lives with her husband in Rockford, Illinois.W