A couple Tennessee Williams Literary Festivals ago, I sat in the audience of a panel made up of notable UNO Creative Writing Workshop graduates. Talk quickly turned to the fact that panelist, Maurice Ruffin’s novel had just been announced as a Random House acquisition. And then, just as quickly, to the fact that no one … We Cast A Shadow: Book Launch At Ace Hotel
Is it still Lion in Winter if there are no signs of frost? Kalamu Ya Salaam’s Be About Beauty arrived in our inboxes as we sent New Orleans Griot: The Tom Dent Reader to the printer. New Orleans Griot was Kalamu’s tribute to his mentor, showing Dent in many of his roles in the … Kalamu Ya Salaam’s Be About Beauty:
Kiese Laymon in conversation with Maurice Carlos Ruffin discussing his book, Heavy: An American Memoir. Thursday, October 18, 2018, 6-7:30 PM. Garden District Book Shop, 2727 Prytania St. Kiese will sign books after the discussion. A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, … Kiese Laymon in Conversation with Maurice Ruffin
Milksop Codicil Spree MacDonald Slapering Hol Press, 2017 “Milksop,” meaning cowardly or indecisive person; and “codicil,” a legal addendum which in some way modifies a will. Spree MacDonald’s chapbook, winner of the 2016 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Contest, immediately asks a reader to consider the relationship between the interpersonal and institutional — and how that … Possibility as an exercise of analysis: A review of Spree MacDonald’s MILKSOP CODICIL
In “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, Gayatri Spivak critiques Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus; she writes: “theories of ideology cannot afford to overlook the category of representation in two senses…[t]hey must note how the staging of the world in representation…dissimulates the choice of and need for “heroes,” paternal proxies, agents of power.” Spivak’s distinction between these simultaneously … Confronting the surrounding, unbearable silence: A review of Lauren Levin’s The Braid
Dear Escape Artist Elizabeth Gross Press Street Press/Antenna, 2016 “Figures take shape,” Roland Barthes writes in A Lover’s Discourse, “insofar as we can recognize, in passing discourse, something that has been read, heard, felt.” Dear Escape Artist, an epistolary sequence poem by Elizabeth Gross joined with book artist Sara White’s ink drawings, assembles its addressee … The animating grief is unfixable: A review of Elizabeth Gross’ Dear Escape Artist
Lost City Museum Stacey Balkun ELJ Publications, 2016 Divided into two parts, Stacey Balkun’s Lost City Museum incorporates this division into what becomes an indispensible aesthetic whole, where seemingly unrelated images and moments—parties, mer-creatures, and museums (to name a few)—are bound by Balkun’s interrogative physics: Lost City Museum is a sensorium of motion, where conflict … Bound by interrogative physics: A review of Stacey Balkun’s Lost City Museum
The Community Book Center will host author Michael Allen Zell, DC Paul, Addie Citchens, and Nia Gates at 6 p.m on Wednesday, August 17, at their space at 2523 Bayou Road. Author Michael Allen Zell and actor/comedian DC Paul will perform a staged reading from Zell’s work Run Baby Run. Author Addie Citchens will premiere her … Community Book Center to host Michael Allen Zell, DC Paul, Addie Citchens, and Nia Gates on Wednesday
Mixed Company will host the New Orleans premiere of ASMARINA: Voices & Images of a Postcolonial Heritage, a documentary by Alan Maglio and Medhin Paolos from 4 – 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 18, at Cafe Istanbul (2372 St. Claude). Admission to the event is free. Based within the habesha community of Milan, ASMARINA explores the Eritrean/Ethiopian … Mixed Company to Host New Orleans Premiere of Eritrean/Ethiopian Documentary ASMARINA
Carolyn Hembree will guest host Banks Street Bar’s weekly Open Mic Night for poets from 7 – 9 p.m. on Thursday, June 9, at 4401 Banks Street. Sign up for reading begins at 6:30 p.m., and readers are encouraged to keep it under five minutes. This weekly series began in mid-May, and the event featured guest … Banks Street Bar hosts Open Mic Night for poets on Thursdays
