MARTHA BARNETTE
I’ll shape a presentation to fit your event, your goals, and your audience.
Some favorite topics:
Falling in Love with Language
Every word lover has a story about how that fascination began. For Martha, it began with frustration: Struggling to learn Ancient Greek, she was about to give up when she met an elderly tutor who taught her to look at Greek—and English—in a completely new way. Her studies with the professor sparked a longtime fascination with language, and eventually led to a career in public radio and decades spent uncovering the hidden stories inside everyday words. Warm, witty, and deeply personal, her talk celebrates curiosity, the joy of lifelong learning, and the teachers who change lives.
The Secret Life of Words
Why do we call a striped cat a tabby? How did the word spam ever come to mean “junk mail”? What’s the origin of “saved by the bell”? With the same warmth and wit you’ve come to expect from the popular public radio show “A Way with Words,” Martha shares the remarkable stories behind ordinary expressions and what they reveal about history, language, and culture.
There Oughta Be a Word for It
What do you call that mad scramble to clean before guests arrive? Those frozen chunks of ice in your wheel wells? Who decided that a group of bunnies should be called a fluffle? Join Martha for a lively, interactive exploration of the gaps in the English language, the endlessly creative ways humans fill them, how new words make their way into dictionaries, and why some coinages endure while others vanish almost as quickly as they appear. She’ll discuss the deeply human need to name our experiences—and some things that turn out to have wonderfully precise names already.
The Curious Science of Beautiful Words
What’s the most beautiful word you know? A new survey of American poets ranked diaphanous, mellifluous, and ethereal near the top. But what makes a word beautiful? J. R. R. Tolkien insisted that the loveliest phrase in English was cellar door. Henry James was fond of “summer afternoon.” Martha shares what linguists can tell us about why certain words delight us, and how sound, meaning, and memory combine to create words we love to say and hear.
Testimonials
"Martha Barnette sparkled as our Sacramento commencement speaker. She was the kinetic center of the ceremony. Her sincerity and straightforwardness allowed our graduates to connect to her and to her words. And because she is such a mistress of words, the audience was, at turns, enthralled, amused, and educated."
-- Patricia Potter, President, National University
"What a joy it was to have Martha Barnette as the keynote speaker at Ferrum College’s Women’s Leadership Conference! She is a terrific, engaging, and animated speaker. Her insight is keen, her wit is quick, and her intellect adds both depth and dimension to her presentation and her interactions with participants. Martha notices. She pays attention and is attuned to the nuances of the audience and to the culture of a place, choosing to learn about it and immerse herself. She is not a fly-in/fly-out speaker, but a partner in assuring an event’s success. Faculty, community members, and students alike were energized and enlivened by her interactions with us. Her presence with us was a gift, indeed."
-- Leslie T. Lambert, Ph.D., Provost/Executive Vice President, Ferrum College, Ferrum, Virginia
"I had the pleasure of arranging for Martha to speak at the international conference of the International Public Management Association for Human Resources. She was terrific — knowledgeable, relevant, engaging and funny. And she did her homework, making sure that her remarks were focused just right for this group. As a result, she immediately connected with the audience, and her speaker evaluations couldn’t have been better. I enthusiastically recommend Martha as a speaker, and hope we can bring her back to a future event."
-- Robert Lavigna, Assistant Vice Chancellor-HR (Director of HR), University of Wisconsin-Madison
"As Emcee for the annual Women’s Hall of Fame event, you were positively brilliant—connecting with each of the award winners, and with the highly diverse audience, following the elaborate script and still offering your wit with words. All of the organizers offer their hearty thanks."
-- Bonnie Scott, Chair, Department of Women’s Studies, San Diego State University
I also do presentations with my amazing radio co-host Grant Barrett, so if you'd like to book the A Way with Words team, we can make that happen, too.