Three young area writers who have received accolades for their work – Nick Mainieri, Kent Wascom and David Armand – will discuss their new books at 7 p.m., Thursday, June 8, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie.

This event is free of charge and is open to the public.

The Infinite, by Nick Mainieri

In this suspenseful debut set in post-Katrina New Orleans and cartel-plagued Mexico, two teenagers discover a temporary haven in each other. Jonah McBee has deep roots in New Orleans, but with hardly any family left, he half-heartedly plans to enlist in the army after high school. Luz Hidalgo, an undocumented Latina and budding track star, followed her father to Mexico after Hurricane Katrina. Both have known loss. Both are struggling to imagine a new future.

Everything changes when Luz discovers that she’s pregnant. In a moment of panic, her father sends Luz back to Mexico so her grandmother can help raise the baby. Devastated, Jonah decides to take a road trip with his best friend when he doesn’t hear from her.

Born in Miami, Florida, in 1983, Nicholas has also lived in Colorado and Indiana. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, he earned his MFA from the University of New Orleans. His short stories have appeared in the Southern Review, the Southern Humanities Review, and Salamander, among other literary magazines. He teaches writing and literature at Nicholls State University, Thibodeaux.

The Blood of Heaven, by Kent Wascom

The Blood of Heaven is an epic novel about the American frontier in the early days of the nineteenth century. It is the story of Angel Woolsack, a preacher’s son, who flees the hardscrabble life of his itinerant father, falls in with a charismatic highwayman, then settles with his adopted brothers on the rough frontier of West Florida, where American settlers are carving their place out of lands held by Spaniards and the French. The novel moves from the bordellos of Natchez, where Angel meets his love Red Kate, to Mississippi River plantations, where the brutal system of slave labor is creating fantastic wealth along with terrible suffering, and finally to the back rooms of New Orleans among schemers, dreamers, and would-be revolutionaries plotting to break away from the young United States and create a new country under the leadership of renegade founding father Aaron Burr.

The Blood of Heaven was named a best book of the year by the Washington Post and NPR. It was shortlisted for the David J. Langum Sr. Prize for Historical Fiction, and longlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan Award for First Fiction. Wascom was awarded the 2012 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Prize for Fiction.

My Mother’s House by David Armand

Set in the bucolic yet brutal South of his youth, My Mother's House is a memoir by novelist David Armand. It recounts the young author's early memories of being born to a schizophrenic mother, then given up for adoption, only to be raised in a home with an alcoholic and abusive step-father.

In this portrait of the people and places that shaped him, Armand paints his seemingly negative experiences with an understanding brush. As the reader follows Armand through his childhood and later into adult life--when he is reunited with his mother after she makes a failed suicide attempt--a surprisingly new world of hope and possibility is rendered, despite the overwhelming challenges of this reunion.

David Armand teaches at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he also serves as associate editor for Louisiana Literature Press. In 2010, he won the George Garrett Fiction Prize for his first novel, The Pugilist's Wife, which was published by Texas Review Press. His second novel, Harlow, was published by Texas Review Press in 2013. David's third novel, The Gorge, was published by Southeast Missouri State University Press; and his poetry chapbook, The Deep Woods, was recently released by Blue Horse Press. David is currently at work on his sixth book.

For more information regarding this exhibition, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at 504-889-8143 or wcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.