Baltimore authors

We’ll go On the Record to look at ways to come to grips with the legacy of lynching in Maryland--the outlook for the state’s ‘truth and reconciliation’ commission, and a book tracing a trial that was surrounded and permeated with the threat of lynching.

We’ll go On the Record with Shawn Nocher, whose latest novel portrays what looks at first like a picture-perfect family in Roland Park. But they’re sorting through long-buried secrets about the sister with disabilities who was sent away and need a new way to be family.

Civil rights leader and former candidate for governor Ben Jealous reaches deep into personal episodes and his family’s history … to argue that the only path to rebuilding the American Dream is white and Black people working together. The book is: Never Forget Our People Were Always Free.

We’ll go On the Record with sociology professor Gregory Smithsimon. His book Liberty Road looks at the many factors and people involved when African-Americans broke the color-barrier to build middle-class suburbs in Baltimore County.

Shawn Nocher’s latest novel, set in Roland Park, is a family story on edge. When a young sister with developmental disabilities was sent away, shame and secrets were buried. What will happen now that she’s grown, and may come back? Who is her family now?

Lawyer Rabia Chaudry is an accomplished advocate who helped clear Adnan Sayed of murder charges. But for decades she struggled with her weight, pushing against loving but misguided messages from her Pakistani family. We discuss her delightful memoir 'Fatty Fatty Boom Boom.'

We’ll go On the Record with April Ryan, to hear about her new book Black Women Will Save the World. For most of the decades Ryan has covered presidents, no other Black women were in the press room. She writes about pressures on Black women … and their superpowers.

Journalist Baynard Woods descends from two families, the Baynards and the Woodses, who once enslaved hundreds of Black people. His new memoir, Inheritance: An Autobiography of Whiteness, traces how he came to realize his responsibility for the system of privileges they set up.

Why do so many of us struggle to make friends as adults? Psychologist Marisa Franco says it’s shaped by how secure we feel, how often we reach out to start connections, and how faithfully we show up to BE a friend. Her new book is Platonic.

What D. Watkins learned on the streets of East Baltimore, in addition to how to hustle, was that a real man must always mask his true feelings. That’s a lie, Watkins says in his latest memoir, Black Boy Smile. We hear Watkins take on the truth behind the lies.