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Louisiana Literati! Bryan Camp, Patty Friedmann Bernice McFadden and Kent Wascom

Event Type: Adults
Age Group(s): Adults
Date: 9/27/2018
Start Time: 7:00 PM
End Time: 9:00 PM
Description:
 Four local authors – Bryan Camp, Patty Friedmann, Bernice McFadden and Kent Wascom – discuss their latest books at 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 27, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie.

This event is free of charge and is open to the public. There is no registration.

This event is co-sponsored by the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, an annual five-day literary festival that occurs in the city of New Orleans each spring. The festival is dedicated to the Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright Tennessee Williams. Every year, it features several events related to the long career of Williams, as well as writing workshops, panel discussions, literary readings, stage performances, a book fair, music, writing contests, and other events.

Bryan Camp, The City of Lost Fortunes

The post–Katrina New Orleans of The City of Lost Fortunes is a place haunted by its history and by the hurricane’s destruction, a place that is hoping to survive the rebuilding of its present long enough to ensure that it has a future. Street magician Jude Dubuisson is likewise burdened by his past and by the consequences of the storm, because he has a secret: the magical ability to find lost things, a gift passed down to him by the father he has never known—a father who just happens to be more than human.

Jude has been lying low since the storm, which caused so many things to be lost that it played havoc with his magic, and he is hiding from his own power, his divine former employer, and a debt owed to the Fortune god of New Orleans. But his six-year retirement ends abruptly when the Fortune god is murdered and Jude is drawn back into the world he tried so desperately to leave behind.

Patty Friedmann, Where Do They All Come From?

Over the course of her novel-writing career, New Orleans writer Patty Friedmann also has written short stories that resonate with her darkly comic voice. This collection offers the best—some old, some new, some before Katrina, a few written after she unscrambled her mind from not evacuating for the storm. All deal, in one way or another, with the weighty loneliness of urban living.

She shares what might be her most memorable character, Jerusha Bailey, a mean old white woman who loses her husband’s ashes in a McDonald’s parking lot, and Darby, the smart girl who lives in a New Orleans gingerbread house but is tormented by her dumb brick-house-dwelling private school classmates.

Bernice McFadden, Praise Song for the Butterflies

Abeo Kata lives a comfortable, happy life in West Africa as the privileged nine-year-old daughter of a government employee and stay-at-home mother. But when the Katas' idyllic lifestyle takes a turn for the worse, Abeo's father, following his mother's advice, places the girl in a religious shrine, hoping that the sacrifice of his daughter will serve as atonement for the crimes of his ancestors. Unspeakable acts befall Abeo for the 15 years she is held in the shrine. When she is finally rescued, broken and battered, she must struggle to overcome her past, endure the revelation of family secrets, and learn to trust and love again.

Kent Wascom, The New Inheritors

In 1914, with the world on the brink of war, Isaac, a nature-loving artist whose past is mysterious to all, including himself, meets Kemper, a defiant heiress caught in the rivalry between her brothers. Kemper’s older brother Angel is hiding a terrible secret about his sexuality, and her younger brother Red possesses a capacity for violence that frightens even the members of his own brutal family. Together Isaac and Kemper build a refuge on their beloved, wild, Gulf Coast. But their paradise is short-lived; as the coast is rocked by the storms of summer, the country is gripped by the furor preceding World War I, and the Woolsack family’s rivalries come to a bloody head.

Library: East Bank Regional Library    Map
Location: Jefferson & Napoleon Rooms
Contact: Chris Smith
Contact Number: 504-889-8143
Presenter: Chris Smith