Sarah Piatt

That Critical Voice

by at

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

If I Had Made the World

by at

In this episode, Piatt researcher Sean E. Andres reads and explores Sarah Piatt’s poem “If I Had Made the World,” the poem that spurred his initial interest in her work. “If I Had Made the World” was published in the rare Washington, D.C. newspaper The Capital on 5 Nov. 1876.  Our podcast host Elizabeth Renker opens the episode with a short overview of the historical backdrop to the poem.

Recording date: 15 March 2023; date of Renker’s introduction: 20 September 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Discovering and Recovering Sarah Piatt

by at

This episode is a cross-post from our sibling podcast Voices of Excellence that explores research in progress at The Ohio State University, hosted by historian and professor David Staley. David interviews our podcast host Elizabeth Renker about her multiple projects designed to reclaim Piatt’s legacy as America’s lost great writer, among them The Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt Recovery Project, available free on the web.  They also discuss Elizabeth’s ongoing work on her biography of Sarah, the challenges of archival research, her views on the evolving nature of English departments, and her award-winning teaching methodologies.

Interview date: 2 October 2024

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Preface

by at

Who was Sarah Piatt? Why has she been rediscovered a century after her death in 1919? And what makes her America’s lost great writer? Professor Elizabeth Renker introduces listeners to Sarah as an innovative and fierce woman writer whose voice grappled with personal and social cataclysms and conventions during a tumultuous time in US and transatlantic history. 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

That New World

by at

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download