Free Library Podcast

Rahul Mehta's  debut poetry collection, Feeding the Ghosts, explores the solace to be found in the everyday beauty sometimes overshadowed by larger calamity, as well as the author's identities, relationships, and culture. Also the author of the novel No Other World and the short story collection Quarantine, Mehta has contributed work to an array of publications, including the Kenyon Review, The Su...

In conversation with Jo Piazza Acclaimed for her ''knack for writing beautiful stories that speak to the anxiety of forging a new road for oneself'' (Bustle), Rebecca Serle is the New York Times bestselling author of One Italian Summer, In Five Years, The Dinner List, and the young adult novels The Edge of Falling and When You Were Mine. Serle also adapted her YA book series Famous in Love into a...

In conversation with Lexy Bloom ''A delicious new Gilded Age family drama-almost a satire-set in the leafy enclaves of Brooklyn Heights'' (Vogue), Jenny Jackson's Pineapple Street tells the story of three women navigating the shoals of forbidden love, gender expectations, family money, and too much tennis. A New York Times bestseller and a Good Morning America Book Club Pick, it was named a best b...

In conversation with author and Pennsylvania State Senator, Nikil Saval In Solidarity,  Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix  offer a comprehensive look at not just the popular and ethereal idea of solidarity, but how it can be used by political organizing movements to affect real societal change. Also a lively history of such movements from Ancient Roman revolts to Occupy Wall Street and BLM, it re...

In conversation with Kim Kelly A labor journalist who regularly contributes to In These Times magazine and The Guardian,  Hamilton Nolan  has written about inequality, politics, and class war for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Gawker, and Splinter, among other publications. He also regularly contributes articles about boxing to Defector. A member of the Writers Guild of America, East, Ha...

In conversation with Airea Dee Matthews Referred to by Nick Cave as ''exquisitely crafted fire bombs of incandescent rage,''  Nam Le 's 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem is a debut collection of verse that both honors and shatters the tropes of diasporic literature. Le is also the author of The Boat, a short story collection that takes readers to such places as New York City, Tehran, his birth...

In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6abc Action News morning edition. Tamron Hall is the Emmy Award-winning host and executive producer of the eponymous program Tamron Hall, ABC Disney's second longest running nationally syndicated talk show. Also the host of Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall on Investigation Discovery, she formerly served as an anchor for Today, the host of MSNBC Live wit...

In conversation with Shantrelle Lewis Morgan Parker  won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Magical Negro, a poetry collection that ponders the nuances of Black American womanhood. She is also the author of the young adult novel Who Put This Song On? and the poetry collections Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night and There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé. A Cave Canem graduat...

In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6abc Action News morning edition An award-winning journalist who has covered the business of the Internet since 1994, Kara Swisher is the host of the podcast On with Kara Swisher and the cohost of the Pivot podcast with Scott Galloway, both distributed by New York magazine. Also the cofounder and editor-at-large of Recode, host of the Recode Decode podc...

''Packed with richly imagined characters and vivacious prose'' (Esquire),  Xochitl Gonzalez 's debut novel Olga Dies Dreaming tells a tale of family secrets, Latinx politics in a gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood, and romance set against the backdrop of the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rican history. Winner of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize in Fiction and the New York City Book Awa...

In conversation with Tailinh Agoyo Tommy Orange  is the author of There There, a novel of ''pure soaring beauty'' (The New York Times) that tells the story of 12 interconnected Native Americans living in Oakland, California. A national bestseller and lauded by scores of publications as one of the best books of 2018, it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the John...

In conversation with Elisabeth Perez-Luna, contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer and former Executive Producer of Audio Content at WHYY   The inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress,  Marie Arana  is the author of the National Book Award finalist American Chica, a memoir about her childhood in Peru and the United States that was praised for its ''spareness, clarity, and passion f...

In conversation with Ali Velshi Barbara McQuade  is a legal expert for MSNBC and NBC News, and a co-host of the podcast #SistersInLaw. She teaches courses in criminal law, criminal procedure, national security, and data privacy at the University of Michigan Law School. The first woman to serve in her position, from 2010 to 2017 she was the U.S Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. Her ear...

In conversation with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor In Sito,  Laurence Ralph  explores the murder of San Francisco teen Sito Quiñonez and his family's long-reverberating grief and grace. Ralph, the stepfather of Sito's half-brother, tells this story both as an academic who has studied violence and class, as well as someone enmeshed within this family. His other books include of Renegade Dreams: Living Th...

In conversation with Tamala Edwards, anchor, 6abc Action News morning edition. Co-promoted by the American Constitution Society The Scott Waugh Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences Division, Professor of Sociology & African American Studies at UCLA, Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter  coined the term ''Black Lives Matter.'' His books include Black Citymakers: How The Philadelphia Negro Changed Urban Americ...

In conversation with Zoe Sivak Maura Cheeks  is the author of Acts of Forgiveness, a debut novel that imagines a contemporary moment in which our government has approved reparations for Black Americans-but only if they can prove they are the descendants of enslaved people. Based on a feature-length article she produced during a masthead reporting residency at The Atlantic, R. Eric Thomas calls the...

In conversation with Airea D. Matthews Phillip B. Williams  is the author of two acclaimed poetry collections, Thief in the Interior, which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award; and Mutiny, which was a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection and the winner of a 2022 American Book Award. A creative writing professor in New York University's MFA creative w...

In conversation with award-winning journalist and broadcaster Tracey Matisak Screen icon  Billy Dee Williams  is perhaps best known for his role as Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars movies The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker. His dozens of other film appearances, which date back to the 1950s, include roles in Lady Sings the Blues, Brian's Song, Mahogany, Nighthaw...

In conversation with Bill Marimow ''Perhaps the finest reporter in America'' (The Miami Herald),  Calvin Trillin  has written more than 400 nonfiction and comic articles for The New Yorker since 1963. His book include U.S. Journal and Killings, collections of his columns from between 1967 and 1982. A former Time columnist and syndicated columnist at The Nation, Trillin wrote and performed two one-...

In conversation with award-winning journalist and broadcaster, Tracey Matisak Paul Alexander 's bestselling and acclaimed biographies include portraits of James Dean, Sylvia Plath, John McCain, and J. D. Salinger, the last of which served as the basis of a documentary that appeared on HBO, PBS, and Netflix. Alexander's nonfiction has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including the Los An...

In conversation with Ellen Yin A New York Times bestselling children's author and illustrator,  Grace Lin  earned the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, the Theodor Geisel Honor for Ling and Ting, and the Caldecott Honor for A Big Mooncake for Little Star. Her novel When the Sea Turned to Silver was a National Book Award Finalist. Recognized by former President Obama's administra...

In conversation with novelist and musician Wesley Stace  Paul Lynch  won the 2023 Booker Prize for Prophet Song, a ''brilliant, haunting'' and ''crucial book for our current times (The Guardian) that tells the dystopian but plausible tale of a family caught in the clutches of an increasingly authoritarian Ireland. His other novels include Red Sky in Morning, featured on NPR and named a best book o...

In conversation with Shantrelle Lewis Ruha Benjamin  is the author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, a ''galvanizing'' and ''inventive and wide-ranging'' (The Nation) look at how new technologies reinforce social inequities; and Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, a pragmatic yet poetic vision of the ways in which our minor everyday choices can add up to...

In conversation with Jeannine Cook, owner of Harriett's Bookshop and Ida's Books Shayla Lawson  is the author of This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope, a ''whip-smart'' (People) essay collection about politics, pop culture, politics, and history. Named one of the most anticipated books of 2020 by numerous periodicals, it was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Aw...

In conversation with Niela Orr A ''hilarious, uncomfortable and compulsively readable story about race and class'' (TIME),  Kiley Reid 's novel Such a Fun Age tells the story of a young Black babysitter and her well-intentioned but misguided employer. A New York Times bestseller, a Reese's Book Club Pick, and named one of the best books of the year by a slew of publications, it was longlisted for...