Free Library Podcast

The Author Events Series presents Roz Chast | The Two Saddest Kitchens: A Comics Conversation In Conversation with Jason Adam Katzenstein #1 New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Roz Chast teams up with her fellow New Yorker cartoonist Jason Adam Katzenstein to rip the Tupperware lid off what's really going on in their kitchens. ''I don't think I've ever laughed so hard.'' – Ruth Reichl...

The Author Events Series presents Roz Chast | The Two Saddest Kitchens: A Comics Conversation In Conversation with Jason Adam Katzenstein #1 New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Roz Chast teams up with her fellow New Yorker cartoonist Jason Adam Katzenstein to rip the Tupperware lid off what's really going on in their kitchens. ''I don't think I've ever laughed so hard.'' – Ruth Reichl...

The Author Events Series presents Yiyun Li | Music Against the Night: A Novel In Conversation with Weike Wang In Dublin, as the eighteenth century nears its end, a young musical virtuoso comes of age. John Field, an awkward and sensitive child, is preternaturally gifted, and his family has visions of him becoming the next Mozart. His talent takes him far-to England, France, and then Russia, where...

The Author Events Series presents Malcolm Gladwell | The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic In Conversation with Tamala Edwards Sheldon and Jill Bonovitz Lecture SOLD OUT Malcolm Gladwell returns with his most urgent book yet: a provocative investigation of America's epidemic of gun violence. The United States has far more homicides than any of its peers around the world. Why? I...

The Author Events Series presents Imbolo Mbue | Every Story is A Love Story In Conversation with Justin McDaniel From the New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers, a captivating novel about love lost-and the weight of regret What if I'd never gotten into that car? What if I'd pulled out of the driveway five minutes earlier, or ten minutes later? Three years ago, Wolo's wife was kil...

The Author Events Series presents Andy Beshear | Go and Do Likewise In Conversation with  Michael Smerconish SOLD OUT Join Governor Andy Beshear for a hopeful conversation about reclaiming faith as a force for good instead of harm and healing a divided nation through our shared values. Centered around his new book, GO AND DO LIKEWISE: How We Heal a Broken Country, Governor Beshear will share stori...

The Author Events Series presents Andy Beshear | Go and Do Likewise In Conversation with  Michael Smerconish SOLD OUT Join Governor Andy Beshear for a hopeful conversation about reclaiming faith as a force for good instead of harm and healing a divided nation through our shared values. Centered around his new book, GO AND DO LIKEWISE: How We Heal a Broken Country, Governor Beshear will share stori...

The Author Events Series presents Emily Wilson | Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea In Conversation with Merve Emre SOLD OUT In this sharp and often entertaining tour through antiquity, Emily Wilson--whose renditions of Homer's Odyssey and Iliad have captured a generation's imagination--explores the complicated terrain of reading and writing about the ancient past. Drawing on twenty years of scholarship a...

The Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation presents a night of words and conversation with Kevin Powell With this, his 17th book and his 4th poetry collection, Kevin Powell further cements his legacy as one of the most celebrated political, cultural, literary, and hip-hop voices in America. A Poem for Evangeline, And Other Songs, is a series of tender and skillfully constructed love letters to hi...

The Author Events Series presents Erin Riley | The Mighty WMMR In Conversation with John DeBella In the early 1980s, the scrappy radio station 93.3 WMMR was on the verge of a major takeover of the Philadelphia airwaves. Erin Riley, who had her finger on the pulse of new artists like Bon Jovi, whose music would define a generation, was hired as the station's Music Director in 1983. The Mighty WMMR...

The Author Events Series presents Jill Lepore | The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State In Conversation with Tamala Edwards Meelya Gordon Endowed Lecture Montgomery Auditorium is now sold out. We have opened a rush line for anyone interested in purchasing Auditorium tickets at the door for $5. Please register for the rush line. Inspired by Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, which ar...

The Author Events Series presents Geraldine Brooks | Memorial Days  In Conversation with Tamala Edwards Barbara Gohn Day Memorial Lecture A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey towards peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse. Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life,...

The Author Events Series presents Ben Crump | Worse Than A Lie First 100 people to arrive onsite receive a free copy of the book. It's the night of November 4, 2008. America's first Black president has just been elected. And fifty-three-year-old Hollis Montrose-a Black ex–police officer from the suburbs of Chicago-has become the latest victim of a brutal attack. As the result of a traffic stop gon...

The Author Events Series presents Amitav Ghosh | Ghost-Eye In Conversation with Brooke O'Harra Past and present collide in a novel about a girl who might just be a "case of the reincarnation type." Varsha Gupta wants fish for lunch. Her family is shocked; the three-year-old has never tasted fish in her life. The Guptas are strict vegetarians and don't allow it inside their Calcutta mansion. But Va...

The Author Events Series presents Danielle Allen | Radical Duke An explosive, deeply revisionist work that reveals how a renegade English Duke and Thomas Paine, the firebrand polemicist, almost brought the American Revolution to Britain. When Danielle Allen discovered a parchment of the Declaration of Independence buried away in Sussex, England, little did she know that she had stumbled onto a lar...

The Author Events Series presents Matt Haig | The Midnight Train In Conversation with Katy Waldman When your life flashes before your eyes, where would you stop? No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there. The chance to re-live the moments that meant most. To see what kind of person you really were. For Wilbur his best days were with Maggie, the love of his life. On his...

The Author Events Series presents Barbara McQuade | The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government In Conversation with Zane Memeger In The Fix, McQuade draws on her decades of experience as a federal prosecutor to reveal how systems of organized crime and political opportunism exploit the levers of power-using corruption, cruelty, and chaos as tools to dominate institutions...

The Author Events Series presents Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. | America, U.S.A.  In Conversation with Senator Cory Booker SOLD OUT Celebrated public intellectual Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. presents a groundbreaking analysis of the vicious cycles of American history and the country's enduring refusal to face its true nature-especially at the moments when national anniversaries steer us back toward the mythology...

The Author Events Series presents Jodi Kantor | How to Start Join Jodi Kantor and Michael Solomonov for a discussion of the question: how, in these challenging times, can anyone discover and begin their life's work? Jodi Kantor's groundbreaking reporting has toppled media magnates, sparked reform worldwide, and foretold many of the unsettling changes we see in the workplace today. But before all o...

The Author Events Series presents Annette Gordon-Reed | Jefferson on Race: A Reader In Conversation with Patrick Spero, Ph. D Among America's Founding Fathers, none was more deeply, personally, or controversially entangled with race and slavery than Thomas Jefferson. The man whose Declaration of Independence proclaimed that ''all men are created equal'' enslaved more than 600 people of African des...

The Author Events Series presents M Lin | The Memory Museum: Stories In Conversation with 'Pemi Aguda Stretching from the present day to the near future, from China to America and beyond, M Lin's piercing and melodious debut captures the spirit of China's One-Child Generation as its characters navigate homes and cultures, hopes and contradictions, survival and resistance. These frank, tender, and...

The Author Events Series presents Bob Spitz | The Rolling Stones: The Biography In Conversation with Dan DeLuca  All great music is a threat. What left is there to say about The Rolling Stones? A hell of a lot, it turns out. Bob Spitz has brought his indefatigable energy and five decades of experiences in the fields and hollows of rock 'n' roll to bear on his five-year journey to reexamine one of...

The Author Events Series presents Sheinelle Jones | Through Mom's Eyes In Conversation with Mike Jerrick Montgomery Auditorium is now sold out. We have opened a rush line for anyone interested in purchasing Auditorium tickets at the door for $5. Please register for the rush line. The rush line will be available on a first come, first served basis. Guests will be asked to line up in the Lobby prior...

The Author Events Series presents Chanda Prescod-Weinstein | The Edge of Space-Time In Conversation with Airea D. Matthews In her highly acclaimed debut, distinguished cosmologist and particle physicist Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shared with her audience an abiding sense of wonder at the cosmos, while imagining a world without the entrenched injustice that plagues her field. Now, in The Edge of...

The Author Events Series presents Senator Cory Booker | STAND In Conversation with Cherri Gregg SOLD OUT Join U.S. Senator Cory Booker for a timely and hopeful conversation about our shared American ideals. Centered around his new book, STAND, Senator Booker will share stirring personal reflections and powerful stories of leadership that will challenge us to reclaim our national story and work tog...