On February 6, National Book Festival Presents launched its winter/spring season with "Fearless: A Tribute to Irish American Women," featuring award-winning novelist Alice McDermott, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, and CBS anchor Margaret Brennan. As part of the event programming, staff from four Library divisions developed a display of items highlighting the impact of women of Irish heritage in the Americas.
Poet Maya Angelou’s debut memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is her most famous work, yet its title is not original to Angelou: She borrowed it from a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar that he composed, at least in part, in response to his employment at the Library of Congress.
This “Literary Treasures” post examines an audio recording from the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature featuring Dudley Randall reading his poems at the Library of Congress on October 23, 1975.
