Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans

Odd Words November 14, 2013

The coming week in literary New Orleans:

& Thursday at noon the New Orleans Museum of Art Book Club meets to discuss November’s selection Diane Arbus by Patricia Bosworth. This groundbreaking biography examines the private life behind Arbus’s controversial art. The book deals with Arbus’s pampered Manhattan childhood, her passionate marriage to Allan Arbus, their work together as fashion photographers, the emotional upheaval surrounding the end of their marriage, and the radical, liberating, and ultimately tragic turn Arbus’s art took during the 1960s when she was so richly productive. Bosworth’s engrossing book is a portrait of a woman who drastically altered our sense of what is permissible in photography.

& Thursday at 5:30 p.m. the Norman Mayer Library hosts a Writing Workshop Led By Youths. Upstairs in the teen area. Encouraging creative arts exploration through reading, engaging discussions, and group activities. Youth ages 12-17 are invited! Group limited to 15 participants.

& A 6 pm Maple Street Book Shop celebrates the publication of Nia Terezakis’s extraordinary book, Artful Feast: An Elegant Lifestyle for Dining with a signing. Join us in welcoming Nia. We’ll have champagne and hors d’Oeuvres. Nia Terezakis, M.D. grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, the daughter of Greek immigrant parents. Family recipes and holiday entertaining were important aspects of her Greek heritage

& Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. the Juju Bag Cafe, 5363 Franklin Ave., . presents a Spoken Word Showcase, with social hour from 5-7 and open mic starting at 7:30 p.m. Check whodatpoets.com for featured performers.

& From Nov. 6 through Dec. 20, the J. Edgar and Louise S. Monroe Library will host an exhibit of posters celebrating the 100th anniversary of the publication of Marcel Proust’s “Du Côté de Chez Swann” (“Swann’s Way”), the first volume of “À la Recherche du Temps Perdu” (translated into English as “Remembrance of Things Past”). It can be seen in the Library Living Room on the first floor. A cooperative effort between the library and the Department of Languages and Cultures, the exhibit is part of a series the French Consulate in New Orleans gave to French teachers at Loyola University New Orleans.

& New Orleans’s annual Children’s Book Festival will kick off at the newly renovated Latter Memorial Library Friday night with Twinkle, Twinkle, a night of music inspired by children’s literature by the Greater New Orleans Youth Orchestra at 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. The Festiva will continue Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. with free book, activities, free food, story telling, book signings and more.

& Saturday brings the Gold Mic Awards, hosted by WHODATEPOETS.COM. The WHODATPOETS present the Golden Mic Awards & Summit. On Saturday, Nov 16 workshops and forums will be held at Cohen High School. Poets from all over the region will participate. The Youth Chapter will participate as well. Later that evening Spoken Word Artists from all over the region will participate in a Formal Event called The Golden Mic Awards where poets will be awarded by the votes of other poets within the Whodatpoet Community. Workshops will include: Marketing & Branding, Business Management for Full Time Artists, The Art of Slamming, Hosting 101, and How To Structure A Masterpiece. The afternoon session will feature a Town Hall Meeting where all Female Poets will be separated from Male Poets. Both groups will have a keynote motivational Speaker. The groups will come together for a General Assembly and be dismissed in enough time to prepare for the Golden Mic Awards that evening.

The Golden Mic Awards will definitely be a Formal Event. Tuxedos and Gowns will be preferred attire but if you can’t afford tuxedos/gowns then where your most professional attire. No blue jeans, shorts, and streetwear. During the morning workshops, Poets will vote their nominees. A private committee of Non-Poets will tally the votes and the Golden Mics will be presented that night. The Registration for the Golden Mic Award & Summit is $20 per poet and it includes a Continental Breakfast, Registration Packet, and 2 seats for the Golden Mic Awards (poet plus a guest). Registration will begin at 8:30AM at Cohen on Sat. Nov 16.

& This Saturday brings he 12th Annual New Orleans Bookfair + Media Expo is FREE, all-ages, and will be full of independent authors, artists, small presses, local publications and much more! Featuring too many exhibitors to list here (ove r50), visit the web site for full details: http://www.neworleansbookfair.com/exhibitor-list/

& Story Time with Miss Maureen is a weekly feature at Maple Street Books at 11:30 am Saturday. This week I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie by Alison Jackson and Judy Schachner.

& This Saturday at 1 p.m. find out what is it about New Orleans that has always attracted and nourished the creative mind. The answer, according to Eugene Cizek, PhD, F.A.I.A in his introduction to Where Writers Wrote in New Orleans, is the original Creole architecture of the city that maximizes use of light and air, a tropical environment that offers, in his words, “the spirit of time, place and humanity.” Angela Carll includes restaurants, bars and other hangouts known for attracting a literary clientele. She filled the pages with fascinating facts and “secrets” of the hundreds of writers who immersed themselves in the city’s spirit. Read about natives, part-time residents or long term favorite sons from the city’s founding in 1718 to the present.

& Saturday at 1:30 pm Octavia Books hosts a children’s book event with favorite local children’s book author Dianne de Las Cassas and illustrator Holly Stone-Barker launch party for their new book, THE HOUSE THAT SANTA BUILT.

& The 1718 Society, a literary group of Loyola, Tulane and UNO students, is hosting a writing workshop this Sunday at noon at Rue De La Course

& Sunday at 12 p.m. Garden District Book Shop features Janet Wyman Coleman’s Eight Dolphins of Katrina: A True Tale of Survival. This story of the rescue of eight dolphins off the coast of Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina underscores the bonds between dolphins and their trainers, as well as those among dolphins themselves. After a 40-foot tidal wave destroys the dolphin pool at the Marine Life Oceanarium in Gulfport, eight dolphins disappear, presumably washed into the Gulf of Mexico. Via helicopter and boat, the trainers set out to search for the dolphins, who were raised in captivity and thus unaccustomed to feeding or protecting themselves

& Every Sunday at 3 p.m. he Maple Leaf Reading Series, the oldest continuous reading series in the south, founded by Everette Maddox, features guest poets and an open mic. This week’s reading is cancelled due to a conflict with the Saint’s game.

& Sunday is Slam and Spoken Word Day in New Orleans. WhoDatPoets.com lists five Spoken Word shows on Sunday nights. For phone numbers with more details on all these readings visit WHODATPOETS.COM. (I stopped listing all of the events because one venue’s name forced me to limit this post for readers over 21. Check WHODATEPOETS.COM for all the latest on slam and spoken word in New Orleans.

& UNO Press celebrates its resurgence with a catalog release party, announcing its slate of upcoming books. The party will take place at the publisher’s office located in the Liberal Arts Building at the University of New Orleans lakefront campus, LA Rm. 138 from 4:00 to 6:00 pm on Monday, November 18. Light refreshments will be provided. The party also marks the launch of the University of New Orleans Center for the Book, which will run a summer publishing institute and continue to publish books of local interest under the UNO Press imprint. Publisher Abram Himelstein will talk about the newest chapter of the press, including highlights from the Winter 2013/Spring 2014 list.Titles we will celebrate: The Tom Dent Reader edited by Kalamu Ya Salaam; Talk that Music Talk – a book exploring the traditional methods of teaching brass band music by UNO’s Rachel Breunlin and Bruce Sunpie Barnes; How We Do It – the history of Fi Yi Yi in words and pictures as recorded by UNO’s Jeffrey Ehrenrich and the Fi Yi Yi Mandingo Warriors; a book of Clementine Hunter’s early paintings introduced by Richard Gasperi; The Backstretch – an in-depth look at the people who make racing happen at New Orleans’ oldest horse track edited by the Neighborhood Story Project; Bouki Fait Gombo – a history of the slave community of the Whitney Plantation by Ibrahima Seck; Courting Pandemonium – the newest novel from UNO’s Fredrick Barton; and, Contemporary Austrian Studies Vol. 23 edited by Günter Bischof and Ferdinand Karlhofer

& Monday Octavia Books hosts a reading & signing with much-loved New Orleans poet Gina Ferrara featuring her new book, AMBER PORCH LIGHT. The poems in Gina Ferrara’s AMBER PORCH LIGHT occupy equal spheres of beauty and danger. Each holds its share of compressed energy, woven with images and lyricism, examining both the ordinary and the extraordinary, revealing what is possible when luminosity arrives in bursts.

& The Main Branch of the New Orleans Public Library hosts Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning teens & their Allies are invited to join in the book club conversation! We will provide paper and digital copies of a short story the week before; the subsequent discussion will be guided by the themes and issues explored in the reading. In the main auditorium at 4:00 p.m. Mondays.

& Beginning Monday the Jefferson Parish Public Library hosts a NaNoWriMo session in which writers come to the library and sit down to write their novels as part of National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is a fun, seat-of-the-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000-word (approximately 175-page) novel by 11:59:59 PM on November 30. Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—a raucous celebration. Participants start the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walk away novelists. Free of charge and open to the public.

& Do you think in verse that could become poetry? Do you imagine characters, dialogue, and scenes? If so, join the New Orleans Public Library Smith branch’s free Creative Writing Workshop. Every other Monday, beginning October 7, 5:30 – 7 p.m

& Monday the East Bank Fiction Writers Group meets at the Jefferson Parish East Bank Regional Library at 7 p.m.. The Fiction Writers’ Group is a support group for serious writers of fiction. We do not focus on poetry, essays or nonfiction. Events consist of critique sessions from group members, author talks and writing exercises. Free of charge and open to the public. Registration is not required

& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.

& Tuesday John Baron will be signing his book Concert Life in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans, Tuesday at Maple Street Book Shop. Until now, no study has offered a thorough history of this exciting and momentous era in American musical performance history. John H. Baron’s Concert Life in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans impressively fills that gap.

& Tuesday at 6 p.m. Garden District Books hosts Terry Tarnoff’s The Chronicle of Stolen Dreams. Nick Blake has just returned from the battlefields of Europe and is part of a lost generation trying to make its way in postwar America. As he sets out on a journey across the country, the summer of 1947 comes alive in a mind-bending, history-altering romp. Nick witnesses the birth of electric blues in Chicago, encounters the first members of the Beat Generation taking to the road, gets caught up with the original motorcycle gang invading small-town America, and is party to the first sightings of UFOs across the Midwestern skies. Along the way, he encounters a young Muddy Waters, an even younger Jack Kerouac, and a blues-loving, harmonica-playing alien named Jaxson Epsilon, the most unusual character of them all. Jaxson has a secret that is about to change the course of human history as he endeavors to alter the dreams of every man, woman, and child for generations to come.

& Every Tuesday night get on the list to spit at the longest running spoken word venue in New Orleans at Sweet Lorraine’s Jazz Club hosted by African-American Shakespear. Doors open at 7pm and the Mic pops at 8pm. It is $5 to get in.

& Wednesday Nik De Dominic and Michael Tod Edgerton will read their poetry 8 p.m., at the UNO Campus Art Gallery (on Harwood Drive). The reading will be followed by a booksigning and wine and cheese reception. This event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored in part by a grant from the Willson Center for the Humanities and Arts at the University of Georgia.

& The Blood Jet poetry reading series continues at B.J.’s Lounge at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, featuring poet Joseph Bienvenu will perform with musician Jeff Pagano and guitarist and songwriter Bones.

Odd Words November 7, 2013

The coming week in literary New Orleans:

& Thursday at 5:30 p.m. the Norman Mayer Library hosts a Writing Workshop Led By Youths. Upstairs in the teen area. Encouraging creative arts exploration through reading, engaging discussions, and group activities. Youth ages 12-17 are invited! Group limited to 15 participants.

& Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. the Juju Bag Cafe, 5363 Franklin Ave., . presents a Spoken Word Showcase, with happy hour from 5-7 and open mic starting at 7:30 p.m. Check whodatpoets.com for featured performers.

& Carolyn Kolb will be reading and signing her book, New Orleans Memories: One Writer’s City, Thursday, November 7th, at 6PM at Maple Street Book Shop. Refreshments will be served. Kolb provides a delightful and detailed look into the heart of her city, New Orleans. She is a former Times-Picayune reporter and current columnist for New Orleans Magazine, where versions of these essays appeared as “Chronicles of Recent History.” Kolb takes her readers, both those who live in New Orleans and those who love it as visitors, on a virtual tour of her favorite people and places.

& LadyFest Poetry Series presents its second performance Friday at 7:30 p.m. at Buffas Back Room. Readers include: Whitney Mackman, Gina Ferrara, Emily Ewings-Tramble, Alexandra Reisner, FreeQuency, Chanel Clarke, Alice Urchin, Laura McKnight, Ayanna Molina-Mills, and M.E. Riley.

& Eminent jazz journalist and critic Stanley Crouch will present his new biography of Charlie “Bird” Parker, Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker, at 6 p.m. this Friday, Nov. 8, at the Community Book Center (2523 Bayou Road). Crouch’s new biography—the first half of what will become a two-part project—has been roundly praised as a nearly novelistic retelling of Parker’s life, work, and the world in which he ascended to jazz greatness.

& Zella Palmer Cuadra will be discussing the people and recipes featured in her book, New Orleans con Sabor Latino, Friday, November 8th at 6 p.m. at Octavia Books. New Orleans con Sabor Latino is a documentary cookbook that draws on the rich Latino culture and history of New Orleans by focusing on thirteen New Orleanian Latinos from diverse backgrounds. Their stories are compelling and reveal what for too long has been overlooked. The book celebrates the influence of Latino cuisine on the food culture of New Orleans from the eighteenth century to the influx of Latino migration post-Katrina and up to today

&  Also on Friday at 6 p.m. Garden District Books will host Jon Meacham featuring his book Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Lion presents a richly detailed portrait of the third President that considers his early life, roles as a Founding Father and considerable achievements as a master politician.
Meacham lets us see Jefferson’s world as Jefferson himself saw it, and to appreciate how Jefferson found the means to endure and win in the face of rife partisan division, economic uncertainty, and external threat. Drawing on archives in the United States, England, and France, as well as unpublished Jefferson presidential papers, Meacham presents Jefferson as the most successful political leader of the early republic, and perhaps in all of American history. This is a ticketed event. Admission tickets are $5.00, and include a coupon good for $5.00 off the purchase of any Jon Meacham book. Tickets can be purchased in advance at the book shop, over the phone, or at the door.

& Join artist Willie Birch, the Hot 8 Brass Band, and author Matt Sakakeeny to celebrate the launch of Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans, starting at 8 p.m. at Sweet Lorraine’s (1931 St. Claude Ave.). Roll With It is a firsthand account, chronicled by Sakakeeny, of the lives of members of the Hot 8, Soul Rebels, and Rebirth Brass Bands that lays out their efforts in art, work, and life in the context of a changing New Orleans and the long tradition in which their music exists. Artist Willie Birch contributed artwork for the cover and throughout

& Friday at 1 p.m. Garden District books also hosts Zella Palmer Cuadra’s New Orleans con Sabor Latino: The History and Passion of Latino Cooking. a documentary cookbook that draws on the rich Latino culture and history of New Orleans by focusing on thirteen New Orleanian Latinos from diverse backgrounds. Their stories are compelling and reveal what for too long has been overlooked. The book celebrates the influence of Latino cuisine on the food culture of New Orleans from the eighteenth century to the influx of Latino migration post-Katrina and up to today.

& The literary journal THERMOS’s editors will all be in New Orleans Nov. 7-9 to host the second annual Poetry Exchange Project Symposium at Tulane University and at other locations in the city, culminating in the Hunter Deely Memorial Reading
featuring Carroll Beauvais, Megan Burns, Carrie Chappell, Peter Cooley, Nik DeDominic, Melissa Dickey, Cassandra Donish, Maia Elgin, Rebecca Morgan Frank, Elizabeth Gross, Michael Jeffrey Lee, Kay Murphy, Brad Richard, Dan Rosenberg, Zach Savich, Shelly Taylor, Jay Thompson, Afton Wilky, and Mark Yakich. A complete list of Friday events can be found here on the THERMOS blog, thermosmag.wordpress.com.

& Join Octavia Books at the Saturday Crescent City Farmers Market at 9 a.m. for a siging with Zella Palmer Cuadra featering her new cookbook, New Orleans con Sabor Latino: The History and Passion of Latino Cooking. Her book is a documentary cookbook that draws on the rich Latino culture and history of New Orleans by focusing on thirteen New Orleanian Latinos from diverse backgrounds. Their stories are compelling and reveal what for too long has been overlooked. The book celebrates the influence of Latino cuisine on the food culture of New Orleans from the eighteenth century to the influx of Latino migration post-Katrina and up to today

& Story Time with Miss Maureen is a weekly feature at Maple Street Books at 11:30 am Saturday.

& Saturday at 1 p.m. Octavia Books hosts a storytime and a signing with Sylvaine Sancton celebrating her debut children’s picture book, Some Birds. With gentle humor and a skilled eye, author/photographer Sylvaine Sancton captures birds of South Louisiana at rest and at play in their natural habitat. Featuring funny and fresh photographs of great blue herons, wood ducks, brown pelicans, black swans, and more, this charming book is for the young and the young at heart. An accessible glossary discusses the habits and habitats of each bird species included in the pages

& Saturday at 4 p.m. Garden District Books presents mystery writer Kay Kendall’s Desolation Row, the tale of the wife of a draft-dodger accused of the murder of a fellow war-resistor in Canada. The Mounties are convinced they have their man, but Austin Starr is not. Once courted by the CIA, and a lover of mystery and espionage novels, Austin launches her own investigation into the murder. When ominous letters warning her to stop her sleuthing turn into death threats, Austin must find the real killer or risk losing everything. Her love—and her life—are on the line.

& Every Sunday at 3 p.m. he Maple Leaf Reading Series, the oldest continuous reading series in the south, founded by Everette Maddox, features guest poets and an open mic. This week features a group reading by contributors to the latest issue of Xavier Review, a special issue featuring persons who teach in the English Dept — poets Bilijana Obradovic, Anya Groner, Hannah Saltmarsh, Ralph Adamo, and others, fiction writers Jay Todd, Bob Skinner, Mark Whitaker, essays by David Lanoue, Nicole Greene, and others.

& Sunday is Slam and Spoken Word Day in New Orleans. WhoDatPoets.com lists five Spoken Word shows on Sunday nights. For phone numbers with more details on all these readings visit WHODATPOETS.COM. (I stopped listing all of the events because one venue’s name forced me to limit this post for readers over 21. Check WHODATEPOETS.COM for all the latest on slam and spoken word in New Orleans.

& The Main Branch of the New Orleans Public Library hosts Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning teens & their Allies are invited to join in the book club conversation! We will provide paper and digital copies of a short story the week before; the subsequent discussion will be guided by the themes and issues explored in the reading. In the main auditorium at 4:00 p.m. Mondays.

& Beginning Monday the Jefferson Parish Public Library hosts a NaNoWriMo session in which writers come to the library and sit down to write their novels as part of National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is a fun, seat-of-the-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000-word (approximately 175-page) novel by 11:59:59 PM on November 30. Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—a raucous celebration. Participants start the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walk away novelists. Free of charge and open to the public.

& Do you think in verse that could become poetry? Do you imagine characters, dialogue, and scenes? If so, join the New Orleans Public Library Smith branch’s free Creative Writing Workshop. Every other Monday, beginning October 7, 5:30 – 7 p.m

& Monday the East Bank Fiction Writers Group meets at the Jefferson Parish East Bank Regional Library at 7 p.m.. The Fiction Writers’ Group is a support group for serious writers of fiction. We do not focus on poetry, essays or nonfiction. Events consist of critique sessions from group members, author talks and writing exercises. Free of charge and open to the public. Registration is not required

& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.

& Tuesday at 6 p.m. Octavia Books offers an evening with Frank de Caro presenting and signing his new book, STORIES OF OUR LIVES: Memory, History, Narrative, a memoir that explores why all our stories matter. Featuring an array of colorful personal stories from Frank de Caro’s life and years of field research as a folklorist, Stories of Our Lives is part memoir and part exploration of how the stories we tell, listen to, and learn play an integral role in shaping our sense of self.

& Every Tuesday night get on the list to spit at the longest running spoken word venue in New Orleans at Sweet Lorraine’s Jazz Club hosted by African-American Shakespear. Doors open at 7pm and the Mic pops at 8pm. It is $5 to get in.

& Wednesday the Jefferson Parish Library and The Tennessee Williams Festival feature Coffee and Conversation, an author event featuring Poppy Tooker. On her popular radio show of this name, Tooker has captured amazing oral histories about the food of Louisiana. This book brings those words to the page, including interviews with Chef Leah Chase, Randy Fertel of Ruth’s Chris, the Roman Candyman, Creole kosher cook Mildred Cover, and more. Recipes and portraits by local photographer David Spielman garnish this addition to Louisiana food literature.

&&nbspThe Blood Jet poetry reading series resumes at B.J.’s Lounge at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, featuring Josh Wexler, pianist & M. E. Riley, poet.