Behind the scenes of the Free Library’s Author Events resignations and rebirth

The sold-out crowd in the 400-seat Free Library auditorium erupted into applause on a recent Wednesday evening as Bill Clinton, dressed in a dapper chocolate brown suit, walked across the stage to his cozy, leather chair.

Philadelphia was the former president’s second stop on a five-city book tour touting his memoir, Citizen: My Life After the White House. MSNBC host and Washington Post writer Jonathan Capehart moderated the easygoing conversation about the need for empathy in politics. The crowd was enthralled. “It was a great, great night,” said Anthony Espinal, 21, an attendee. “It doesn’t happen every night that you get to see a former president. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Clinton’s visit was the latest feather in the library’s Author Events’ cap. Introduced in 1994 as a way to sweeten the pot for prospective donors, Author Events has helped the Free Library Foundation raise millions of dollars for capital improvements and literacy programs like Read by 4th, Summer of Wonder, and One Book, One Philadelphia. Featured authors have included George Stephanopoulos, Sting, and Tamron Hall.

Five months ago, however, the future of Author Events was seemingly in jeopardy after its four-person staff offered their resignations and, within 24 hours, were summarily fired. Philly’s book community was frazzled. Donors stopped writing checks. Authors vowed never to return to the Free Library’s stage.

So, what happened?

The short answer is the Free Library Foundation’s new executive director, Monique Moore Pryor, arrived in the stacks in 2023 with new ideas for fundraising and plans to expand Author Events beyond Parkway Central, with an emphasis that included neighborhood collaborations and not just cocktail party-worthy events. And as often happens when organizations bring in new management, the old guard — in this case, the former Author Events team led by 24-year Free Library Foundation veteran Andy Kahan — clashed with the new boss.

The walkout came amid efforts to untangle the murky, decades-long relationship between the library and its foundation.

But it wasn’t the end of the Author Events program.

“Of course, I wish it hadn’t ended this way,” Pryor said. “But the show will go on. It must. The city of Philadelphia deserves nothing less.”

The Library Company of Philadelphia, the nation’s first library, founded by Ben Franklin in 1731, was more a private club than a public library, meaning members paid a yearly fee for the privilege of borrowing books. In 1891, William Pepper secured a $225,000 bequest from his wealthy uncle to make books accessible to everyday Philadelphians, establishing the Free Library Foundation. Three years later, the Free Library opened in three cramped rooms in City Hall. Parkway Central opened in 1927.

The Free Library would eventually be funded by the city with its own separate operations budget. Still, the Free Library and the Free Library Foundation operated as one for more than a century.

It wasn’t until 1988 that then Free Library president and executive director, Elliot L. Shelkrot filed incorporation papers establishing the Free Library Foundation as a separate nonprofit fundraising entity to manage capital campaigns and raise money for literary programs. Shelkrot established a board of directors made up of influential Philadelphians with ties to both new and old money in anticipation of embarking on major capital campaigns.

In 1994, Shelkrot introduced Author Events to bring attention to the library and woo the Free Library’s growing cadre of elite donors. Rubbing shoulders with celebrity writers was a great perk.

Shelkrot hired Kahan as the Author Events director in 2000. During the height of the Free Library Foundation’s million-dollar fundraising campaigns — from the early aughts through the teens — Kahan grew Author Events from a few dozen author conversations a year to more than 130, luring A-listers like Toni Morrison, Rachel Maddow, and Hillary Clinton. Author Events YouTube videos and podcast episodes reached more than 3 million people around the world.

Fast-forward to 2020, when Siobhan A. Reardon resigned as director and president of the Free Library amid allegations of racial discrimination. After a yearlong search, the Free Library’s board of trustees appointed Kelly Richards, director of the Muskegon Area District Library, as the library’s new boss the following October, and he started in January 2022.

During her 12-year tenure, Reardon controlled both the Free Library budget and the Free Library Foundation’s budget, muddling the two entities’ funds and responsibilities. The library and the foundation became so deeply entwined it was hard to see where one ended and the other began. When Richards became president, he was in charge of the Free Library Foundation, too.

To avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, the Free Library Foundation created an executive director role. Pryor, a West Philly native and former chief of engagement and external affairs at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, got the job.

“We needed someone looking after the foundation as a single entity, not just a side job to the running of a massive organization,” said Jeffry Benoliel, chairman of the board of the Free Library Foundation. “We brought Monique in to ‘right the ship’.”

Specifically, Pryor needed to bring the Free Library Foundation back in fiscal order, get more people coming to events after COVID-19, and find new streams of revenue for fundraising. There was also an immediate need to trim the staff. The last capital campaign, traditionally a major influx of fundraising, had ended in 2019. In 2018, the Free Library Foundation’s revenue was $28 million, according to its 990 tax forms. In the fiscal year ending June 2023, total revenue was $15 million.

With Richards and Benoliel’s blessing, Pryor began the arduous task of untangling library and foundation business, establishing herself as its leader.

Departments — like public relations — were moved from the foundation to the library, requiring longtime foundation employees to reapply for their jobs, now earmarked as city gigs. There was no assurance they would be rehired. Other employees, fed up with living under the dark cloud of job uncertainty, quit. When Pryor arrived, there were 89 full-time employees; now there are 67. For Kahan and the rest of Author Events staff, it added to a longtime unease.

Foundation staff had been perceived among library staff as protected and favored. Foundation employees, many of whom spoke off the record, fearing negative comments would hamper attempts to find jobs in Philadelphia’s tight-knit nonprofit world, would disagree. They say they were undervalued and not given raises, cost of living or otherwise. Staff at one point sought to join the same union that represented Free Library employees, without success, leaving them without the same protections as their city employee peers.

Aside from those concerns, there was a difference in vision about what the Events program should be. Pryor, who grew up in the West Philly neighborhood known as the Bottom, wanted to find ways to bring more diverse audiences to Parkway Central. She also wanted to bring more authors to branch libraries, and ensure that all library branches benefitted from the foundation.

“There is this old adage of nonprofit organizations that if you build it they will come,” Pryor said. “After the pandemic, that just didn’t apply anymore. I quickly realized we had to expand our offerings and collaborate with more community partners. That was going to take more work.”

At no point was the Events program directly under threat, according to Benoliel, the foundation’s board chair. “Author Events wasn’t in danger of being on the chopping block,” Benoliel said. Still, it was a shift in approach.

Under Reardon, Author Events had free rein. Now, the “staff was being asked more questions and being held more accountable,” Benoliel said.

As for hosting events at branch libraries, Kahan said, his focus was on Parkway Central. Yet, he added, he was willing to work with the staff to bring more events to branches.

However, in the end, Kahan said, the Author Events staff offered their resignations because they couldn’t stomach the way their colleagues at the foundation were being treated.

“We didn’t feel like we had the support we needed,” Kahan said.

On June 3, the four-person Events team sent emails tending their resignations, giving four weeks notice. Within 24 hours, they were fired, before they were able to orchestrate a smooth transition, including briefing the remaining Free Library Foundation staff on Author Events matters.

Kahan is aware of the optics behind the walkout: an all-white Author Events staff quits, abandoning its newly installed Black leadership. He says his decision was a matter of confidence.

“I have looked inside of myself to answer this question,” Kahan said. “It was about trust. We simply didn’t trust the leadership.”

Kelly Woodland, cofounder of the Black Nonprofit Chief Executives of Philadelphia, an organization that provides career and emotional support for Black nonprofit leaders, says Black leaders are often put in positions where they are introducing new ideas to a board and a staff unfamiliar with the concerns of community they are committed to serve — communities they hailed from.

“Black leaders are often forced to unfairly prove they are trustworthy and competent,” Woodland said, and unfair assumptions can “marginalize their ability, their experience, and their expertise. I know Monique. She’s very, very competent, very thoughtful, and very strategic.”

To Woodland, it seems like Richards and Pryor — the first Black director and president of the Free Library and executive director of the Free Library Foundation, respectively — were left dangling on the glass cliff — a term that describes situations when Black people are hired in leadership positions to essentially clean up the financial and social messes of their white predecessors.

“When we get these opportunities, we often have to make lemonade out of lemons,” Woodland said, meaning they have to make hard calls and change business as usual. The existing employees can feel a certain ownership of the programs when change is in the air. When those changes come, they may take their ball and go home.

“Even though,” Woodland said, “it’s not their ball to take.”

The loss of Kahan’s experienced Author Events staff was a hit to the Free Library Foundation. Summer Author Events were all but canceled. Big-ticket author appearances that used to be a slam dunk for the Free Library when Kahan was at the helm — like Ta-Nehesi Coates, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Eve, all of whom promoted memoirs late summer and early fall — were guests not of the library, but of the Germantown bookstore Uncle Bobbie’s.

“I’d worked with them [Author Events] for years,” said Jennifer Weiner, a Philadelphia-based author whose most recent book is The Breakaway. Weiner has appeared on the Author Events stage several times and is not sure when or if she will return. “They were good at their jobs. They were professional. They were on top of every detail.

“My issue is there hasn’t been enough transparency. We just basically call these people rogue troublemakers who went off the deep end, replace them, and proceed as if nothing happened.”

To Pryor, the Free Library’s job is bigger than the razzle-dazzle of high-profile events. It’s ultimately about being a safe place for children and helping all Philadelphians improve their literacy in a city where, according to the Philadelphia School District, only 34% of students read at grade level.

The foundation and the library are working on a comprehensive strategic plan with the Roz Group, a Philadelphia-based consulting firm, to ensure branches, that for years have played second fiddle to the main branch, have adequate programming. Pryor is also working to bring more attention to existing programs at Parkway Central like its job training program and rare books collection. It’s part of the foundation’s mission to ensure the Free Library is for all Philadelphians.

Pryor appointed Jenny Bogoni, former executive director of Read by 4th, as the Free Library Foundation’s chief of community engagement and public programming. Daniel Blank, who holds a Ph.D. in literature from Princeton University, will lead the Author Events.

Snagging former president Clinton was Blank’s first coup. “When I saw that his memoir was out, I called his publicist and convinced him to come to Philly,” Blank said. Blank hosted Malcolm Gladwell in conversation with CBS anchor Michelle Miller in October at a Library Foundation event at Congregation Rodeph Shalom. More than 400 people were in attendance.

The real test, however, will be who Blank is able to line up for spring. He is working to reassure New York’s publishing industry that the Free Library is still in the events game. He’s confirmed Juan Williams, a journalist and author of New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement, and MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes, who will be touring behind his forthcoming book, The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource.

It is looking promising.

“Author Events is among our most important vehicles to reach the community,” Pryor said.

“It’s important. It’s ours. We are moving forward.”