Free Library Podcast Free Library of Philadelphia

Featuring: Lydia Abarça, Sheila Rohan, Marcia Sells, Karlya Shelton, and Khadija Tariyan (daughter of Gayle McKinney Griffith)

In conversation with Shelly Power, The Dr. Carolyn Newsom Executive Director, Philadelphia Ballet

Karen Valby's The Swans of Harlem tells the remarkable and-until now-rarely written about true story of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, a trailblazing troupe of Black men and women who performed some of ballet's most iconic works for the such audiences as the Queen of England, the White House, and Stevie Wonder. This history focuses on five foundational members of the group and their enduring bond, including Lydia Abarça, the first Black prima ballerina with a major international dance company, the first Black ballerina on the cover of Dance magazine, and an Essence cover star; and her equally accomplished friends, Gayle McKinney, Sheila Rohan, Marcia Sells, and Karlya Shelton. Valby is a frequent contributor to Vanity Fair, and has also published work in The New York Times, O Magazine, Glamour, Fast Company, and EW, where she spent fifteen years writing about culture.

Shelly Power brings to Philadelphia Ballet, formerly Pennsylvania Ballet, her experiences in various artistic and executive leadership roles at Prix de Lausanne in Switzerland and Houston Ballet Academy. Since joining Philadelphia Ballet in 2018, Ms. Power has restructured the organization's administrative functions with new, innovative partnerships, with the goal of promoting that ballet is for everyone. Ms. Power received a Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies, with a focus on business, psychology, and fine arts from the University of Houston. She furthered her education at Rice University's Leadership Institute for Non-Profit Executives and Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management's Advanced Certification in Non-Profit Management.

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 5/2/2024)

In conversation with Dr. Jason Karlawish

In partnership with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society

The clinical consulting director of support groups at The CaringKind (formerly The Alzheimer's Association), Dasha Kiper has an MA in clinical psychology from Columbia University. For the past decade she has worked with dementia patients, counseled caregivers, led support groups, trained and supervised mental health professionals, and counseled former caregivers who now lead support groups. Informed by her work as both a counselor and work as a caregiver herself, Travelers to Unimaginable Lands employs a wide range of compassionate stories to combat the myth of the so-called perfect caregiver. These ''moving and often surprising'' (The Wall Street Journal) case histories meld science and storytelling to show that caregivers don't just witness cognitive decline in their loved ones with dementia-they are its invisible victims.

Dr. Jason Karlawish is the author of The Problem of Alzheimer's: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It. A Professor of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Health Policy, and Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, he is Co-Director of the Penn Memory Center, where he cares for patients. He also serves on the board of directors for The Greenwall Foundation, a grant-based organization dedicated to expanding bioethics knowledge. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Forbes, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among other places.

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/30/2024)

In conversation with Beth Kephart

A ''master of illusion, and one of the best storytellers around'' (NPR), Amy Tan is the author of the beloved novels The Joy Luck Club, a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, for which she also co-wrote the film adaptation screenplay; The Kitchen God's Wife; The Hundred Secret Senses, and The Valley of Amazement. Her prolific body of work also includes the memoir Where the Past Begins, several other novels and works of nonfiction, two children's books, and essays and stories that appeared in scores of periodicals and anthologies. In The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Tan pecks out a thoughtful ode to birding and the hidden beauty that lives around us, nested together with her own soaring illustrations.

Renowned for her ability ''to generalize from her personal experience to the greater human one'' (The Washington Post), Beth Kephart is the author of more than 30 books across a wide range of genres, including poetry, young adult fiction, and, most notably, the memoir. These works include the award-winning how-to-guide Handling the Truth; A Slant of Sun, a National Book Award finalist; Love, an ode to all things Philly; and Wife | Daughter | Self, an interlocking essay collection about her various identities. A writing professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the co-founder of Junction workshops, she is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a Pew Fellowship, and the Speakeasy Poetry Prize, among other honors. Her latest book is an illustrated memoir, My Life In Paper.

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/29/2024)

In 2006, Bakari Sellers defeated a twenty-six-year incumbent State Representative to become the youngest member of the South Carolina state legislature and the youngest African American elected official in the nation. The state's 2014 Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, he currently heads the strategic communication and public affairs team at the Strom Law Firm in Columbia, South Carolina and works as a CNN political analyst. Recently named to TIME's ''40 Under 40'' list, he is the author of the New York Times bestseller My Vanishing Country, a memoir and historical analysis of the lives of America's often-overlooked black working-class, and hosts the Bakari Sellers Podcast, a twice-weekly show that addresses a variety of cultural and political topics. In The Moment, Sellers examines the politics and policies that most affect the future of Black Americans, including inequities in education, healthcare, and policing.

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/25/2024)

In conversation with Robert E. Hamilton, Head of Eurasia Research - Eurasia Program, Foreign Policy Research Institute

Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Endowed Lecture

The White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times, David E. Sanger has been a member of three Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist teams, including in 2017 for international reporting. His bestselling books include The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power; Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power; and The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age, which was adapted into an award-winning HBO documentary. Sanger is also a regular contributor to CNN and teaches national security policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In New Cold Wars, he offers an in-depth account of the United States' high-stakes struggles against two very dissimilar adversaries-Xi Jinping's China and Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Colonel (Retired) Robert E. Hamilton, Ph.D., is the Head of Research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Eurasia Program and an Associate Professor of Eurasian Studies at the U.S. Army War College.  In a 30-year career in the U.S. Army, spent primarily as an Eurasian Foreign Area Officer, he served overseas in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Germany, Belarus, Qatar, Afghanistan, the Republic of Georgia, Pakistan and Kuwait.  He is the author of numerous articles and monographs on conflict and security issues, focusing principally on the former Soviet Union and the Balkans.  He is a graduate of the German Armed Forces Staff College and the U.S. Army War College and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Military Academy, a Master's Degree in Contemporary Russian Studies and a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from the University of Virginia.

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/18/2024)

In conversation with Patrick Behrer, Research Economist, Development Economics, World Bank

How the subtle but significant consequences of a hotter planet have already begun-from lower test scores to higher crime rates-and how we might tackle them today. In Slow Burn, R. Jisung Park draws upon vast amounts of raw data and novel economics to examine the consequences of climate change on an astonishing array of social groups and institutions. An assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, environmental and labor economist he holds positions in the School of Social Policy and Practice and the Wharton School of Business. He has spent more than a decade investigating and writing about economic inequalities and outcomes created by climate change. A Rhodes Scholar, a research affiliate at the Institute of Labor Economics, and a faculty fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, Park has consulted with such organizations as the World Bank and the New York City Departments of Education and Health.

Patrick Behrer is an Economist in the Sustainability and Infrastructure team of the World Bank's Development Research Group. Behrer's work focuses on the economics of air pollution, climate change, and climate adaptation. His work has focused on the impacts of air pollution and climate change on human capital formation and the relationship between agriculture and air pollution. His work leverages big data from online and administrative sources and recent advances in satellite remote sensing technology. Prior to joining the World Bank in 2021, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in 2020 from Harvard University in Public Policy.

Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 4/17/2024)