In this podcast episode, 2025 WiR Mary Kay Carson interviews Kathy Sebastian, Children's Librarian at the Miami Township Library, Jill Keller, Youth Librarian at the Covedale Library (formerly West End), and Clair Schroeder, Branch Supervisor - Youth Services at the Groesbeck Library. Mary Kay and the librarians discuss the Library's Summer Reading program and what kids are currently reading.

In this podcast episode, 2025 WiR Mary Kay Carson interviews two regional children's book authors: Jennifer Sommer and Kerrie Hollihan.

Originally from Lexington, KY, Sommer currently lives in Dayton, OH. Hear Sommer read from Her Eyes Were on the Stars, her debut award-winning picture book. Sommer received degrees in Political Science as well as Interior Design and Architectural Technology before earning her Masters in Library Science. After two decades working as a children’s librarian, she returned to university to earn an MFA in Creative Writing for Children and Young Adults.

Hollihan is the award-winning author of nine nonfiction books for kids and teens. Her latest chapter book, Avery’s Pumpkin, saw her take a turn into fiction—but it’s an idea she has had in mind for over 30 years.

Hear from both authors as they read from their books and discuss the world of hybrid publishing with Carson.

In this podcast episode, 2025 WiR Mary Kay Carson interviews Christine Wilson, Executive Director of Women Writing for (a) Change.

Christine Wilson attended the University of Cincinnati for English, with a minor in Women's Studies and Poetry. She was awarded the English Department award for poetry collection. She's held manager and director roles, both in businesses and nonprofit organizations and has worked as an independent editor, always working to bring out the best in people and writing. Christine has facilitated and led retreats around the world for justice, writing, and youth including poetry craft classes at Women Writing for (a) Change.

In this podcast episode, 2024 WiR TaraShea Nesbit interviews Pepper Stetler, author of the upcoming “A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother's Reckoning with the IQ Test."

Pepper Stetler is Professor of Art History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She writes extensively on issues facing people with intellectual disabilities and their caregivers. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, The Progressive, the Ploughshares blog and Gulf Coast. She lives in Oxford with her husband and their daughter, Louisa. You can find her online at pepperstetler.com.

In this podcast episode, 2024 WiR TaraShea Nesbit interviews children's book author, artist, shop owner, and disability advocate Amy Webb. They discuss Amy's books, her work in disability advocacy, her experience co-writing with her daughter, the impact of her sticker shop, and more.

This podcast was recorded at the Downtown Main Library MakerSpace using the recording booth that anyone with a library card can reserve to create podcasts, record music, and more.

Amy's first children's book, When Charley Met Emma, teaches children about disability, friendship, and inclusion. The sequel, Awesomely Emma, recounts the children's field trip to the art museum. When Emma learns that there's no accessible front entrance, she and her classmates work together to make a change. Amy's third book, Emma's Awesome Summer Camp Adventure, co-written with her daughter Grace, was published this year. It tells the story of Emma's experience at an inclusive and accessible summer camp, highlighting the challenges all kids face and showcasing what an accessible summer camp space looks like. Amy founded The Sticker Shop, and more about Amy can be found on her website This Little Miggy.

In this episode of Inside the Writer's Head, TaraShea Nesbit talks with poet Yalie Saweda Kamara about her new book, Besaydoo, a book that Ross Gay describes as "a prayer for us all" and the New York Times Book Review highlighted the collection as "evoking ecstatic attention and generosity." In addition to sharing her insights about writing poems, Yalie offers listeners a writing exercise to try, one which inspired her terrific poem, "Mother's Rules," and talks about her polyvocal community writing project she is doing in Cincinnati as part of the 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.

This podcast was recorded at the Downtown Main Library MakerSpace using the recording booth that anyone with a library card can reserve to create podcasts, record music, and more.

Yalie Saweda Kamara is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, educator, and researcher from Oakland, California in the Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate. This fall, she joined the English Department of Xavier University as an assistant professor. She is also the editor of the anthology What You Need to Know About Me: Young Writers on Their Experience of Immigration and the author of A Brief Biography of My Name and When The Living Sing.

Yalie Saweda Kamara earned a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Cincinnati, an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University, Bloomington, and an MA in French Culture and Civilization from Middlebury College.

In between her studies, she worked in the field of social justice, specializing in educational access and arts facilitation. She has lived in France, Brazil, and the US and has a particularly soft spot, she says, for Oakland, Washington DC, Paris, and the Midwest. And this year, she was awarded the 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.

In the final episode of this season of "Inside the Writer's Head" Manuel Iris interviews renowned British poet and writer Fiona Sampson. They discuss Sampson's musical background informs her writing, how poetry challenges us to read in a different way, the secret coherence that often arises in poems, and more.

Fiona Sampson is a leading British poet and writer. Published in thirty-eight languages, she has published twenty-nine books. National honors include an MBE for services to literature, the Newdigate and Cholmondeley prizes, numerous awards from the Arts Councils of England and of Wales, Society of Authors, Poetry Book Society and Arts and Humanities Research Council, and Book of the Year selections. She has been a finalist for the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes multiple times. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, of the British Trust for Literary Romanticism, of the English Association, and formerly of the Royal Society of Arts. Alongside international poetry prizes in the US, Bosnia, India, and North Macedonia, she recently received the 2019 Naim Frashëri Laureateship, the 2020 European Lyric Atlas Prize, and, for Come Down, Wales Poetry Book of the Year 2021.

Manuel Iris talks with poet and academic Rossy Evelin Lima-Padilla. In this episode, Rossy shares how she crossed the border as an undocumented minor. Her struggle with the English language, and how her love for writing, literature, and community, gave her the strength to become a poet and professor in the United States.

Rossy Evelin Lima-Padilla is a United States-based Mexican writer, scholar, translator and activist. She has published her work in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies in Europe, North America and South America. Lima was recognized by the 2014 International Latino Book Awards for her work on Ecos de barro (2013). In 2015, she was recognized in Venice for her poem, Citlalicue with an International poetry award (Premio Internazionale di Poesia Altino). She was awarded the Orgullo Fronterizo Mexicano award given by the Institute for Mexicans Abroad in 2016. In 2017, she was awarded first place in the Concorso Internazionale di Poesia La Finestra Eterea in Milan in 2017. Poet Laureate of the United States, Juan Felipe Herrera, wrote that Migrare, mutare (2017) is "A magnificent set of poems, in a most appropriate time."