Featured Speakers

Thursday, November 11

9:00 am
Keynote Address
— Maryland’s Governor Robert Ehrlich
or
— Lt. Governor Michael Steele
The Power of Diversity

9:45 am
Discoveries of Franco Fry
— Susan Poulin, Playwright
Susan Poulin recently wrote a highly acclaimed play, Franco Fry or Pardon My French! based on the history of her family. The play explores her sometimes humorous, sometimes treacherous path to reconnect with her Franco-American heritage. Her roller-coaster ride of self-discovery leads her to some surprising places from the origins of Franco-American Spaghetti to the textile mills of Skowhegan, Maine, from logging camps on the Canadian border to hypnosis to find the French in her head. She will share with us how she researched the material for the play over two years, traveling from Maine to Quebec and conducting interviews.
One of the “Ten Most Intriguing People in Maine” (Portland Magazine, November 2003) Susan Poulin is a Maine native and award-winning playwright and actress. She has been a featured performer at the Women’s Performance Festival at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, The Maine Festival, and the Minneapolis Fringe Theater Festival. Her essays have been heard on Maine and New Hampshire Public Radio.

12:45 pm
— Sharon and Eric May
Eric May, a former policeman and currently a business person, and his wife, Sharon, a prosecuting attorney in the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office, will share with us the passion for family history in the African American community that developed following Alex Haley’s Roots. As recent consumers of personal history services, they will also tell us how the experience has touched their family.

Saturday, November 13

8:00 am
Anguish in the Attic
— Rich Hollander
As a young boy in the 1950s, Rich Hollander, an only child, learned that his father’s entire family had been murdered by the Nazis during World War II. In 1986, when Rich was in his early 30s, his parents were killed in an automobile accident. While closing his parents’ home and recovering their personal items, he was shocked to discover original documents from Nazi Germany and personal letters so painful to read that he laid them aside for nearly a decade. Today Rich is sharing his heartbreaking family history in public for the first time. APH will learn how Rich dealt with the sudden passing of his parents, his shocking discovery, his ensuing emotional and intellectual struggle, how he finally made the decision to write his family story and what that process entailed.
Rich Hollander is a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun and an on-air reporter for WBAL-TV in Baltimore.

11:30 am
Finding Susan
— Molly Hurley Moran
Molly Hurley Moran will share her experience writing Finding Susan, a memoir about the life and tragic death of her sister, Maryland resident Susan Hurley Harrison. Finding Susan has been described as “advancing with the suspense and deft reportage of the true-crime genre and fueled by the poignancy of a literary memoir. . . It describes the nightmare-like limbo inhabited by families of missing loved ones with heartbreaking realism.” The author of two previous academic books, Moran had never before written a personal history. She will describe the emotional, creative, legal, and research challenges she confronted. She will also discuss how writing about a personal tragedy has helped her to heal.
Molly Hurley Moran is an associate professor of writing in the Division of Academic Enhancement at the University of Georgia. She is the author of Margaret Drabble: Existing Within Structures and Penelope Lively as well as numerous scholarly articles and book chapters.

Sunday, November 14

9:00 am
Why We Hate
— Lawrence J. Friedman
Lawrence J. Friedman will lecture on the subject of his latest book, Why We Hate: Psychological and Historical Perspectives on Racism, Sexism, and Antisemitism.
Lawrence J. Friedman, Ph.D., is a Professor of History and Philanthropy at Indiana University with a focus on intellectual and cultural history and American studies. He is the Director of Advocacy for the Indiana Association of Historians, founding chair of the Indiana Humanities Forum, and founding chair of the Indiana Civil Rights Coalition. His Ph.D. is from UCLA.