March is Women’s History Month and the Free Library's Author Events podcast has scores of aptly-themed book talks!
To start you on your way, here are seven favorites from over the years. Once you’ve listened to these, try compiling your own lists!
Erica Armstrong Dunbar | Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona JudgeRecorded Feb 23, 2017
Named the first director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia, Erica Armstrong Dunbar is a professor of Black American Studies and History at the University of Delaware. She has contributed commentary to several documentaries, including Philadelphia: The Great Experiment and The Abolitionists, and is the author of A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City. In her new book, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, Dunbar tells the story of the young slave who risked her life to escape servitude under the first American President.
Recorded Dec 13, 2018
In conversation with award-winning journalist Tracey Matisak.
On the eve of the one-hundredth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand introduces children to ten suffragists who raised their voices for justice. With illustrations by New Yorker contributor and artist Maira Kalman, Bold and Brave profiles courageous visionaries including Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, and Alice Paul. Senator Gillibrand is also the author of the 2015 New York Times bestseller Off the Sidelines, "one of the most helpful, readable, down-to-earth, and truly democratic books ever to come out of the halls of power." (Gloria Steinem).
Brittney Cooper | Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower withRecorded Mar 5, 2019
In conversation with Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger
Examining the intersections of race, gender, and politics in a popular monthly Cosmo column, Brittney Cooper is also a professor of women’s and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University. Praised by Michael Eric Dyson as "the boldest young feminist writing today," Cooper is the author of Beyond Respectability, a map of the development of female African American intellectuals. Her newest book, Eloquent Rage, celebrates the power of anger, dispels stereotypes, and reminds women of the power they possess. Rebecca Traister is the author of All the Single Ladies, the New York Times bestselling book about the intersection of sex, economics, and emotions related to the growing number of single women in 21st-century America; and Big Girls Don’t Cry, an investigation of the 2008 American presidential election’s effects on women and cultural feminism. A writer-at-large for New York magazine, Traister has contributed to many other periodicals, including The Nation, Vogue, and The Washington Post.
Recorded Mar 13, 2017
"At once outrageous and compelling, fanatical and brilliant" (The Washington Post), Camille Paglia is the author of the 700-page seminal discourse on paganism, sex, and art, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. She is a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts, a regular contributor to Salon.com, and the author of Glittering Images, Break, Blow, Burn, Sex, Art, and American Culture, and Vamps & Tramps. In her new essay collection, Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism, Paglia employs her trademark fiery irreverence to celebrate and chastise modern feminism.
Margot Lee Shetterly | Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space RaceRecorded Nov 2, 2016
In her New York Times bestselling debut book, Margot Shetterly tells the story of four African American women whose mathematical calculations at NASA fueled America’s greatest achievements in space at the leading edge of the civil rights movement. A 2014 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow and Virginia Foundation for the Humanities grantee, Shetterly is the founder of The Human Computer Project, which aims to recover the names and accomplishments of all of the women who worked as mathematicians, scientists, and engineers at NASA from the 1930s through the 1980s. A film adaptation of Hidden Figures, starring Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer, was released in January 2017.
Madeleine Albright | Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948
Recorded May 11, 2012
The first woman to hold the position of United States Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright served in the Clinton administration from 1996 to 2000 and as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997. Called "a remarkable story of adventure and passion" by former Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel, Prague Winter is a moving and thoughtful memoir of Albright's formative years in Czechoslovakia during the tumultuous era of Nazi occupation, World War II, and the start of the Cold War. The author of four New York Times bestsellers, Albright is a Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.
Recorded Jan 13, 2004
After resigning from the University of Tehran because of oppressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to study Western literature in secret at her home. Reading Lolita in Tehran chronicles the journey of this group's meanderings through classics like Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Orwell's 1984, and of course Nabakov's Lolita. Nafisi has also written for the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic, and has appeared on several radio and television programs. Currently a professor at Johns Hopkins University, she lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children.
For more engaging and thought-provoking discussions with authors like the ones above, visit our Author Events schedule.
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