Skip to content

Blog

The Forecast Calls for Books

JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.

Books & Bites Podcast, Ep. 111

This month, we discuss books where the weather plays a major role, one of the prompts on the Winter Books & Bites Bingo reading challenge.

From hurricanes to snowstorms, this episode has all the major weather events covered!

If you're participating in Winter Books & Bites Bingo, don't forget to turn in your bingo card by the end of March. Turn your card in at the Customer Service Desk to receive your bookmark or use the online entry form.

more: The Forecast Calls for Books

Locust Grove Oral History Interviews Available in the Kentucky Digital Library

In February 2019, the Jessamine County Public Library began recording oral history interviews with several current and former Jessamine County residents about their relatives who are buried in Locust Grove, an African-American cemetery in Nicholasville, Kentucky.

Condensed versions of the interviews were published as part of the Locust Grove Oral History podcast and later re-released as episode two of the Jessamine History Walks podcast.

Now the complete Locust Grove oral history interviews and transcripts are available in the Kentucky Digital Library (KDL). KDL aims "to enhance scholarship, research, and lifelong learning by providing access to shared digital archival collections in the Commonwealth of Kentucky."

These longer interviews help give researchers and community members a better understanding of Black life in Jessamine County.

more: Locust Grove Oral History Interviews Available in the Kentucky Digital Library

Prompt to Page with Shauna M. Morgan

A JCPL librarian interviews published writers about their favorite writing prompts. These exercises can help inspire, focus, and improve your creative writing.

Brought to you in partnership with the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.

Listen to Episode 53

 Poet Shauna M. Morgan understands that feeling "weighed down by all of those things happening around us" can make writing even more challenging.

For her, it helps to remember "that generations of my forebears created art in times of abject crises and bore witness to what was happening."

On episode 53, Shauna shares what she calls the "weight prompt." It will help you reflect on subjects that feel heavy to you as well as subjects that feel light. Listen below!

more: Prompt to Page with Shauna M. Morgan

Prompt to Page with Mary Anna Evans

A JCPL librarian interviews published writers about their favorite writing prompts. These exercises can help inspire, focus, and improve your creative writing.

Brought to you in partnership with the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.

Listen to Episode 52

While novelist Mary Anna Evans believes that studying writing is "very valuable," she also advises writers "to go out and live your life." She says that "all experience is useful" in writing.

And she should know. Mary Anna's books have drawn on her former engineering career and her interest in archaeology, among other experiences.

Mary Anna's favorite writing prompt will help writers of all backgrounds and genres explore setting. She's successfully used it with fiction and nonfiction students and even environmental architecture students. Listen below!

more: Prompt to Page with Mary Anna Evans

Listen Up: Audiobooks with Multiple Narrators

JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.

Books & Bites Podcast, Ep. 109

We're kicking off the Winter Books & Bites Bingo reading challenge with audiobooks read by multiple narrators! These multi-voiced productions make audiobooks even more engaging.

Tune into our action-packed choices: a YA dystopian novel, a horror/thriller hybrid, and a sweeping, historical Western.

more: Listen Up: Audiobooks with Multiple Narrators

Prompt to Page with Dorian Hairston

A JCPL librarian interviews published writers about their favorite writing prompts. These exercises can help inspire, focus, and improve your creative writing.

Brought to you in partnership with the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.

Listen to Episode 51

Poet and educator Dorian Hairston encourages all writers—from his high school students to adults—to make their writing fresh and new.

Dorian believes "if we can just find ways as artists to be interesting... we give ourselves a fighting chance at allowing love to blossom in our lives and surviving whatever we must."

Keep your writing interesting with help from Dorian's favorite writing prompts. He uses these exercises in his own work as well as with students. Listen below!

more: Prompt to Page with Dorian Hairston