Sallie M. Bryan

That Critical Voice

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In this episode, we speak with Piatt researcher Sean E. Andres.  A secondary educator and marketing expert by training, Sean specializes in public history projects, with a particular focus on historically marginalized populations in the Cincinnati area.  Sean talks about how he initially found Sarah, compelled by her work speaking out against social norms of her time.  He reflects on connections between her poems and the deep history of Cincinnati and surrounding lands, where Sarah and her husband J.J. long made their family home, and about the practicalities and challenges of conducting original archival research.  

Interview date: 23 January 2023

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Sarah’s Antebellum Social Network: Kentucky Abolitionist Mattie Griffith

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In this episode, we speak with Joe Lockard, an associate professor of English at Arizona State University.  Joe is a specialist in nineteenth-century American literature, particularly the literature of U.S. slavery and early African American literature.  Joe talks about his groundbreaking research recovering the life and work of Mattie Griffith, a young Kentucky poet.  In the 1850s, when Sarah was breaking out as famous teen poet Sallie M. Bryan, she shared social circles with Mattie by way of their shared mentor, Louisville Daily Journal editor George D. Prentice.  Mattie’s hatred of enslavement led her to leave Kentucky for the North, where she published a pseudo-slave narrative titled Autobiography of a Female Slave—which made her famous in the abolitionist movement and a pariah back home.

Interview date: 2 February 2024

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That New World

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In this episode, we talk to pioneering Piatt scholar Larry R. Michaels.  In 1999, Larry published the first edition of selected works by Sarah since her death in 1919, That New World: Selected Poems of Sarah Piatt, 1861-1911.  Larry discusses how he initially found Sarah; why her voice is “like none of the others” of her time; his detective quest to discover more about her; and why she stands alongside Emily Dickinson as one of the “two giants.”

Interview date: October 10, 2017

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