The Deerfield Public Library Podcast

Marina Shifrin, writer of Pickled Herring, and Bryan Simpson and Taylor Simpson, creators of Creating Things. This conversation was recorded as part of a special live podcast and film screening event we held last month at the Library. The filmmakers—who grew up here in Deerfield—all traveled home to share their films and an illuminating panel discussion with an audience of community members, frien...

The Best That You Can Do (Soft Skull Press, 2024) by our guest Amina Gautier, one of the most prolific and acclaimed short story writers working today. She lives in Chicago. The Best That You Can Do is a beautiful and wide-ranging collection, made up of what Gautier calls "very short fiction"—most of the 58 stories span only a few pages. This distilled form gives us lyrical explorations of Afro-Pu...

A conversation with Dr. Jennifer MacLure , Assistant Professor of English at Kent State University, on the occasion of the publication of her book, The Feeling of Letting Die: Necroeconomics and Victorian Fiction (Ohio State University Press, 2023). (Our conversation is also occasioned by our Library's Classics Book Discussion current tackling of Bleak House , Charles Dickens' massive 1853 masterp...

For our final day of Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition, we reveal the unknown lineage story of the composer Robert Savage (whose "AIDS Ward Scherzo" is our excerpted music this year) and and his connection to poet John Ashbery. While preparing the music for this year, our pianist Daniel Baer discovered a 1982 piece by Savage "Chaconne," dedicated to John Ashbery. For the last month, while we've bee...

Amanda Gunn reads a poem by Judy Grahn and the poem "Like This" from Amanda's new book Things I Didn't Do With This Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2023).  Quick Note: for today's episode, Amanda Gunn chose a long poem by the living poet Judy Grahn as her lineage work—while Judy Grahn is not a "poet of the past" Amanda's passion about this poem and this great figure of our current age was irresistible,...

Megan Fernandes reads a poem by Federico García Lorca and "Paris Poem Without Clichés" from Megan's just-released book, I Do Everything I'm Told (Tin House, 2023) Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own.  Megan Fernandes is a poet living in NY...

Randall Mann reads a poem by Karl Tierney and ""Wi-Fi" from Randall Mann's new book  Deal: New and Selected Poems  (2023, Copper Canyon Press). Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. A queer poet, critic, and medical writer, Randall Mann is...

Jameson Fitzpatrick reads a text by Gertrude Stein and a poem "The Genius of Wives I Have Sat With" from Jameson's chapbook Mr. & (Indolent Books, 2018). Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own.  Jameson Fitzpatrick is the author of the poetry...

Alicia Mountain reads a poem by Pat Parker and "Rewinding the Lesbian Sex Scene on a Flight to Denver" originally published in American Poetry Review. Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own.  Alicia Mountain is the author of Four in Hand (BOA...

Chen Chen reads a poem by Justin Chin and "The World's Italianest Resturant" from Chen's new book, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions, 2022); the poem first appeared in bath magg ( bathmagg.com/chenchen2/ ). In this special longer episode, Chen Chen shares (in conversation with Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno) his reflections on the importance of libraries being for eve...

K. Iver reads a peice by David Wojnarowicz and their poem "Central Park" originally published in Bat City Review, Spring 2023. Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.  Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, follo...

Tara Skurtu reads a poem by Elizabeth Bishop and "Morning Love Poem" from from her debut collection The Amoeba Game (Eyewhere Publishing, 2017), and first published in the Minnesota Review. Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own.  Tara Skurtu...

Armen Davoudian reads a poem by James Merrill and "The Yellow Swan" from Armen's chapbook Swan Song (Bull City Press, 2020), originally published in Literary Matters, 11.3.  Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own.  Armen Davoudian is the auth...

Rachel Mennies reads a poem by Muriel Rukeyser and "Feburary 26, 2017" from Rachel's book The Naomi Letters. Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own.  Rachel Mennies is the author, most recently, of THE NAOMI LETTERS (BOA Editions, 2021). Her...

Maggie Millner reads a poem by Adrienne Rich and Section 2.9 from Millner's new book Couplets. Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own.  Maggie Millner is the author of Couplets (FSG, 2023). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris...

Derrick Austin reads a poem by Robert Hayden and "Black Docent." Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own.  Derrick Austin is the author of Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and Trouble the Water...

Richie Hofmann reads a poem by Walt Whitman and "Reconciliation."  Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own.  Richie Hofmann is the author of two books of poems, A Hundred Lovers (2022) and Second Empire (2015). His poetry appears recently in T...

For this third season of the program, we are shaking things up with a new format: Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition. In each podcast episode, we asked a contemporary queer poet to read a work of influence by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past followed by an original poem of their own. Our participating poets also discuss the poem they chose and how their own work responds, offering an educational oppor...

Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022) is the new memoir by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky. Robert is the author of numerous poetry collections. Robert Pinsky is a celebrated poet, essayist, translator, teacher, and speaker. He served as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 1997-2000, during which time he founded the popular Favorite Poem Project . He is the autho...

We're sharing the recording of the special in-person interview we held earlier this month with New York Times bestselling author—and Deerfield resident—Lisa Barr. Our conversation was recorded live in front of an enthusiastic audience of fans, family, friends, book clubs, book bloggers, and neighbors.   Lisa Barr's novel Woman on Fire (2022) tells the story of the contemporary pursuit of a single...

This month on the Deerfield Public Library Podcast, I am very pleased to share a conversation with acclaimed critic Merve Emre on the beloved Italian writer Italo Calvino, known for his genre-defying stories and novels like Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler. Merve Emre is a contributing writer at The New Yorker, associate professor of English at Oxford University, and currentl...

We have the honor of presenting a fascinating conversation with world-famous pianist Seymour Bernstein . You may know Seymour as the subject of the widely acclaimed 2015 documentary Seymour, an Introduction , directed by Ethan Hawke. The film tells Seymour's inspiring story of abandoning his solo concert career at age 50, and, at the end of the documentary, performing again in his 80s. Yet, as we...

Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil (University of Chicago Press, 2017) by   Deborah Nelson, the Helen B. and Frank L. Sulzberger Professor of English and chair of the Department of English at the University of Chicago. Deborah Nelson's fascinating book Tough Enough looks at a group of challenging 20th century writers (and a photographer)—Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, Mary Mc...

Chicago-based poet and writer Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué is the author most recently of the poetry collection Madness (Nightboat Books, 2022). Gabriel was one of our Queer Poem-a-Day poets earlier this year. Madness takes the form of a book of selected poems by a fictional poet named Luis Montes-Torres (1976-2035) and contains academic and biographical introductions, diaries, and, of course, poems. Remar...

Benjamin Garcia's first collection, THROWN IN THE THROAT, won the National Poetry Series and the Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize, in addition to being a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He works as a sexual health and harm reduction educator in New York's Finger Lakes region, where he received the Jill Gonzalez Health Educator Award recognizing contributions to HIV treatment and preven...