300 episodes

The Free Library Podcast is an easy way to participate in the author events and lectures that take place at the Parkway Central Library. Visit Author Events to find upcoming events.

Free Library Podcast Free Library of Philadelphia

    • Society & Culture
    • 4.3 • 110 Ratings

The Free Library Podcast is an easy way to participate in the author events and lectures that take place at the Parkway Central Library. Visit Author Events to find upcoming events.

    Tamron Hall | Watch Where They Hide: A Jordan Manning Novel

    Tamron Hall | Watch Where They Hide: A Jordan Manning Novel

    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 with Tamron Hall, and a national news correspondent for NBC. While at NBC, she earned a 2015 Edward R. Murrow Award for her reportage on domestic abuse. Hall also partnered with Safe Horizon to launch The Tamron Renate Fund, which aids victims and families affected by domestic violence. A sequel to her 2022 bestselling crime fiction novel As the Wicked Watch, Watch Where They Hide follows intrepid journalist Jordan Manning as she uncovers the truth about a missing young mother.

    Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU!

    The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees.
    (recorded 3/15/2024)

    • 51 min
    Morgan Parker | You Get What You Pay For: Essays

    Morgan Parker | You Get What You Pay For: Essays

    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 graduate fellow, the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and the winner of a Pushcart Prize, Parker is the creator/co-curator of the Poets With Attitude reading series and is a member of The Other Black Girl Collective. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues, including The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, Best American Poetry, a Broadway playbill, and two Common albums. In You Get What You Pay For, she charts the generational and historical difficulties, traumas, and beauty of existing as a Black woman.

    Shantrelle P. Lewis is a multi-hyphen creative and scholar who accesses multiple disciplines to help elucidate African Diasporic history, aesthetics, culture and spirituality. After premiering at BlackStar Film Festival, her critically acclaimed directorial debut, In Our Mothers' Gardens, was released on Netflix via Ava Duvernay's Array. Her book, Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style, was published by Aperture in 2017. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, LA Times, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, NPR, BBC, Washington Post, Slate, The New Yorker and the Philadelphia Inquirer. She co-founded Shoppe Black with her husband and fellow Howard alum, Tony Oluwatoyin Lawson. As an initiated Lukumi Sango Priest, hoodooist and New Orleans native, Shantrelle can be found waxing poetic about all things African spirituality online and in person at the Beaucoup Hoodoo Shop, the annual Beaucoup Hoodoo Fest this October and within her community, ATRS Book Club.

    Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU!
    The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees.
    (recorded 3/13/2024)

    • 1 hr
    Kara Swisher | Burn Book: A Tech Love Story

    Kara Swisher | Burn Book: A Tech Love Story

    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 podcast, and co-executive producer of the Code conference, she is the author of aol.com and There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere, both of which explored AOL's position as an online cultural and business behemoth. Swisher is a former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and host of its Sway podcast, and has also written for The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, and The Washington Post. A scathing but balanced account of the tech industry and its founders, Burn Book employs Swisher's many decades of experience with Silicon Valley's most important figures, failures, and innovations.

    Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU!
    The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees.
    (recorded 3/12/2024)

    • 1 hr 7 min
    Xochitl Gonzalez | Anita de Monte Laughs Last: A Novel

    Xochitl Gonzalez | Anita de Monte Laughs Last: A Novel

    ''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 Award, it was named a best book of 2022 by The Washington Post, NPR, The New York Times, and TIME magazine. Gonzalez's nonfiction has appeared in Vogue, Allure, The Cut, and other periodicals, and her commentary writing for The Atlantic was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A tale of legacy, class, and art, Anita De Monte Laughs Last follows a first-generation Ivy League art student's quest to uncover the work of a brilliant but largely forgotten 1980s-era painter.

    Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU!

    The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 3/11/2024)

    • 58 min
    Tommy Orange | Wandering Stars: A Novel

    Tommy Orange | Wandering Stars: A Novel

    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 Leonard Prize, and the American Book Award. There There was also the 2020 One Book One Philadelphia selection. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, Orange teaches in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. In Wandering Stars, he revisits some of the characters from There There and paints new protagonists in America's past as he examines the tragic legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and the country's contemporary war on its indigenous peoples.

    Tailinh Agoyo is co-founder and director of We Are the Seeds of Culture Trust, a non-profit organization committed to amplifying Indigenous voices through the arts. She also hosts From Here, With a View, a podcast that honors the voices of Indigenous artists and educators, and is a co-founder of Project Antelope, an online marketplace platform developed by Indigenous business leaders for Indigenous artists. Her other work includes the children's book I Will Carry You and the photo collection The Warrior Project.

    Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU!
    The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees.
    (recorded 3/7/2024)

    • 52 min
    Marie Arana | Latinoland: A Portrait of America's Largest and Least Understood Minority

    Marie Arana | Latinoland: A Portrait of America's Largest and Least Understood Minority

    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 for allegory'' (The New York Times Book Review). Her other work includes the novels Cellophane and Lima Nights; a biography of Simon Bolivar that won the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Silver, Sword, and Stone, a narrative history of Latin America; and The Writing Life, a collection of her articles for The Washington Post. In Latinoland, Arana employs hundreds of interviews, a prolific body of research, and her own experiences as a Latina to present an encompassing portrait of America's fastest-growing minority group.

    Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU!
    The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees. (recorded 3/4/2024)

    • 1 hr

Customer Reviews

4.3 out of 5
110 Ratings

110 Ratings

MMorris_inPhilly ,

So grateful for this amazing resource

Thank you Free Library of Philadelphia for hosting so many amazing authors and for sharing the events on this podcast for those of us who can't be there in person. This is a wonderful series. The authors you feature are diverse as are their writings - politics, biography, novels, poetry... It's a great way to discover new authors and a wonderful way to hear again from those who are more well known.

Ginagina Smith ,

Dan Pfeiffer

Great segment: Dan & Alyssa are a great team. I look forward to reading his book.

Many years a supporter ,

Great talks both current and past

Free Library of Philadelphia author events began in the early 1990s. A few years ago, the older talks were added to the list of podcasts. All the talks are listed under the author/speaker in the library’s online catalog. These include talks by Susan Sontag, Chinua Achebe and Tony Morrison to name a few. This library is a major educational and cultural resource. Materials and on-line content are available free to anyone living, working or attending school in Pennsylvania and, for a small fee, people living outside the state as well.

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