Lara Naughton to read at Octavia Books on Tuesday
Lara Naughton will read from her latest work The Jaguar Man at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, August 30, at Octavia Books (513 Octavia Street).
Naughton’s book has been called “a painful, provocative, and poetically cathartic memoir of survival” by Kirkus Reviews. Her journey through trauma and into healthing bends the limits of reality, using myth to process her experience and arrive at an incredible revelation – her belief that there is room for compassion for the self and for others even in the face of violence.
Lara Naughton is a New Orleans-based writer and teacher. She is Chair of the Creative Writing Department at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Naughton received a BA in literature from the University of Notre Dame and a MPW in writing from the University of Southern California. She has published poetry and nonfiction and was the recipient of the Alice Judson Hayes Fellowship in 2012 for work that addresses social justice and the Surdna Arts Teacher Fellowship in 2009 for her work as a teacher. As a documentary playwright, she has created work with groups such as AIDS Project Los Angeles, the Program for Torture Victims, and Resurrection After Exoneration. Her play, Never Fight a Shark in Water, toured the United States. As a certified Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) through The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, Naughton serves as the Director of CompassionNOLA and teaches workshops and trainings on mindfulness and compassion.