Recently read, a New Orleans writers round up: Anya Groner, Adrian Van Young, Tad Bartlett, and Maurice Carlos Ruffin
byCountless writers in New Orleans are ever plucking away at their keyboards, conducting research or interviews, or simply probing their memories and inner lives to create worthwhile work. Much of this is published online, scattered disparately throughout cyberspace. Here are a few things we at Room 220 read recently that compelled us to gather them together and share.
The New York Times published “Is There a Doctor in This Marriage?” by Anya Groner, who teaches writing at Loyola, in their Modern Love column. The essay shows the writer reckoning with the responsibilities of being married to a doctor. The piece was adapted from Airplane Reading, an anthology due out this winter from Zero Books.
This month, Groner also has an essay on Beth Ann Fennelly in A Manner of Being: Writers on Their Mentors, as well as an essay reflecting on public health a century after Typhoid Mary’s quarantine at Guernica.
Adrian Van Young, who teaches at Tulane University and Bard Early College, explores the appeal of Christmas horror flicks in “‘Krampus’ Is the Latest Anti-Christmas Movie for Jews and Gentiles Alike” at Vice. Van Young’s serialized interactive novella, A New Orleans Murder Mystery, can also be heard (yes, heard) online at The Lineup.
Van Young’s “Ruidoso, Carrizzozo, Ruidoso,” was nominated for the 2016 Pushcart Prize by Heavy Feather Review. Maurice Carlos Ruffin also received a nod for his short story, “The Boy Who Would Be Oloye,” which appeared in The Massachusetts Review. For non-fiction, Tad Bartlett‘s piece, “Head Space,” was nominated by The Writing Disorder.