Two years ago our guest Deedee Cummings decided she wanted to introduce a book festival to the city of Louisville, an event found in many other large cities but missing here. She and her team spent those two years planning and scheduling an event all about books and reading only to have 2020 happen, a terrible, no good, very bad year that has served as a wet blanket for most kinds of fun. Deedee was, of course, disappointed, but she was not deterred.

Our episode today was recorded during Banned Books Week, a weeklong annual event sponsored by the American Library Association to celebrate the freedom to read and bring awareness to both current and past attempts to censor books in libraries and schools.

We believe this topic is one that you can think about any time of the year, not just for one designated week so we wanted to explore the topic with our guest, Natalie McCall, a librarian and head of youth services at the Mill Valley Public Library in the Bay area of California. She is also the host of a podcast called Eight Books That Made Me where she has conversations with Young Adult authors about 5 books that influenced them growing up and 3 books they encourage readers to check out now.

Our guest this week, Ashley Blooms, grew up in rural Kentucky, was a John Grisham Writing Fellow at the University of Mississippi and worked for Tor.com, an online magazine that published a wide range of sci- fi/fantasy short stories, commentary, and pop culture. Her debut novel, Every Bone a Prayer, was published last month, has been recommended by NPR and Buzzfeed and has received praise from some of my favorite authors like Silas House and Alix Harrow. Ashley wants to make a space in Appalachian literature for more fantastical stories and not only the literary realism that is usually that trademark of the subgenre.

Our guest this week, Tabby Pawlitzki, is helping us continue our series on Global Readers. Once a season, we talk with a book lover who grew up in another country but has made the United States their home. In seasons 1 and 2 we talked to readers from Somalia and Ireland. In Season 3 we are exploring Germany. Fortunately Instagram has made meeting book-loving people who come from all over the world much easier which is how we connected with Tabby. She joined us remotely from her home in Los Angeles.

Our guest today, Kris Keppeler, is an actor and audiobook narrator who has narrated over 50 books in her career. She uses her own studio located in her home in Washington State. She is also a consultant for other people who want to do what she does, including authors who want to narrate their own audiobooks.

Our guest this week, Ellen Birkett Morris, has an affection for small things. She says she was born prematurely and was terribly small at birth. She wonders if this is where her fascination with beautiful things coming in small packages began. Ellen is the author of a book of poetry and a new collection of short stories called Lost Girls. What readers may notice about her stories is that though they are small in length, they are powerful in meaning. Each story focuses on a passing moment in the lives of the girls and women she writes about. Ellen says she loves dipping in and out of a person’s story to find the small snippet of time that packs an emotional punch.

Our guest today certainly does. When Clare Wallace visits a new place, she always looks for the closest used bookstore. This gave her the idea to open The Rosewater, aptly named after her favorite Kurt Vonnegut book, which she envisions as a comforting living room for everybody. Clare is the executive director of South Louisville Community Ministries, a nonprofit that provides emergency assistance for residents of South Louisville facing crisis, and she was looking for a visible way to do outreach in the neighborhood. The bookstore serves several purposes; to create a warm community space, to bring life to parts of the neighborhood that have seen hard times, to provide transitional employment for residents in crisis, and to offer a service that the neighbors want.

Our guest this week, Tamika, has been a middle school English/Language Arts teacher in Kentucky’s largest school district for 16 years. She is also a vibrant Bookstagrammer at her handle, @Thereadingroom444. Her goal is to make reading come alive to anyone who watches her feed. This summer she not only posted videos of her teaching tactics while reading Ibram X. Kendi’s book Stamped from the Beginning, but she also used her creativity to re-imagine book covers. Tamika is a voracious reader who is eager to share her love of literature and inspire excitement about finding books that you are passionate about.

Our guest this week, David Crosby, is a recent graduate of North Oldham County High School in Kentucky. He, like many kids growing up in the 21st century, had an undying affection for the Dave Pilkey Captain Underpants series of books. The Captain Underpants books revolve around two 4th grade boys who draw their own comic books that feature their superhero, Captain Underpants, who accidentally becomes real.

Do you read historical fiction or narrative nonfiction and wonder where your favorite authors do their research for the books you love? Our guest this week, Jennie Cole, is an archivist with the Filson Historical Society. An archivist is like a highly specialized librarian who takes care of historical materials such as letters, diaries, transcripts, photos, or even objects and organizes them to preserve them for the public use. And the Filson Historical Society is just a different kind of library; a research library of the history of our region.