Author's  Schedule

Andrea Apuzzo, Chef-Proprietor of Andrea's Restaurant in Metairie, Louisiana, has prepared culinary dishes for such notables as Queen Elizabeth, President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, Clint Eastwood, Omar Shariff, Sophia Loren, and Tommy Lasorda. He has published three cookbooks, La Cucina di Andrea's, Andrea's Light Cookbook, and My Home is Your Home. Apuzzo belongs to many prestigious organizations such as The Confrerie de la Chaine des Rotisseurs, International Wine & Food Society, Vatel Club, Les Toque Blanches, GRI (Gruppo Ristoranti Italiani), and the James Beard Foundation. He has received the Wine Spectator of Excellence Award and the DiRona Excellence Award, and many more.

Author's Schedule

W. Lance Bennett is Professor of Political Science and Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor of Communication at the University of Washington, where he also directs the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement. The general focus of his work is how communication processes affect citizen engagement with politics. Publications include: Mediated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy; News: The Politics of Illusion, 7th ed.; and When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina. He has received the Ithiel de Sola Pool Award and Lectureship, and the Murray Edelman Career Achievement Award in Political Communication, both from the American Political Science Association.

As a project manager at the Center for Public Integrity, Jenni Bergal led a year-long investigation that resulted in the publication of City Adrift. She was a reporter for more than two decades at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, where she specialized in investigative projects about health care, social services and economic crime. She has won dozens of state and national awards, including the Worth Bingham Prize for Distinguished Reporting, the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, the National Press Club Consumer Journalism Award and the Clark Mollenhoff Award for Excellence in Investigative Reporting. She has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist twice — once in 1996 for beat reporting and again in 1999 for investigative reporting.

Elise Blackwell is the author of three novels (Hunger, The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish, and Grub) as well as numerous short stories and hundreds of pieces of nonfiction writing. Her debut was a Los Angeles Times "best book of 2003," all three of her books have been Book Sense picks, and her work has been translated into several languages. Raised in southern Louisiana, she holds an MFA from the University of California-Irvine and is on the English faculty of the University of South Carolina.

Sara Bongiorni is an experienced journalist who has worked at daily newspapers and regional business publications in California and Louisiana for the past decade. Her "beat" included international trade and its impact on local economies. Bongiorni has won local, state, and national awards for her articles, including a 2002 Best in Business award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for her part in a series on the impact of out-migration on the Louisiana economy. Many of her essays and articles have appeared in publications such as the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor and Shanghai Daily News.

John Ed Bradley is the author of several highly praised novels, including Tupelo Nights, My Juliet and Restoration. In September his memoir about his years as an LSU football player, It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium, was published by ESPN Books. A former staff writer for the Washington Post, Bradley has contributed feature stories to Sports Illustrated, Esquire, and GQ, and his work has been widely anthologized, appearing in volumes such as Best American Sports Writing, The Greatest Football Stories Ever Told and Sports Illustrated's Fifty Years Of Great Writing. A film based on his book Smoke is to be filmed in Louisiana in the spring of 2008.

C. Ray Brassieur is a cultural anthropologist with advanced degrees from Louisiana State University and the University of Missouri-Columbia, who specializes in the “folk cultures and culturally distinct lifeways” of the Atchafalaya Basin. Brassieur supervised exhibitions at the Folklife Pavilion, the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition, Nicholls State University’s Center for Traditional Louisiana Boat Building, and the U.S. National Park Service; as well as contributed writings to The Louisiana Folklife Festival: Celebrating the Bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase, Raised to the Trade: Creole Building Arts of New Orleans, and Louisiana Cultural Vistas.  He is currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Catharine Savage Brosman's poetry collections include Passages, Places in Mind, and The Muscled Truce, among others. She is also the author of two collections of nonfiction prose, The Shimmering Maya and Other Essays, and Finding Higher Ground: A Life of Travels. A native of Colorado and a longtime resident of New Orleans, she is a professor emerita of French at Tulane University. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Southern Review, South Carolina Review, Méasŭre, La Nouvelle Revue Française, Europe (Paris), Critical Quarterly, and Sewanee Review. Brosman’s newest collection of poetry, Range of Light, was published in March 2007.

Author's Schedule

Anita Bunkley has spent more than a decade writing fiction and nonfiction, while lecturing on topics related to career advancement, personal promotion, attitude adjustment, and making dreams come true. She is the author of eight novels, two novellas, two nonfiction books, and a short story written exclusively for the Internet. She is also an NAACP Image Award (2000) nominee for her contribution to the anthology, Girlfriends.

MaryKatherine Callaway is director of the Louisiana State University Press, a position she has held since July 2003. Before her move to Baton Rouge, Ms. Callaway worked for thirteen years for the Johns Hopkins University Press in Baltimore and London. She earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from the University of Georgia, and she also worked for the University of Georgia Press. Ms. Callaway is the sixth director in the LSU Press’s history, overseeing a staff of around forty and the publication of approximately 85 books per year.

Rosemary Poole-Carter, a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, lives in Houston, Texas. Her work includes What Remains, a mystery novel; Juliette Ascending, a young adult novel; Women of Magdalene, an historical suspense novel; Mossy Cape, a play for young audiences based on Southern folklore; and the adult dramas, The Little Death, set in the French Quarter of old New Orleans, and Inconvenient Women, set in a Louisiana asylum.

Toni McGee Causey is a member of Killer Year with a short story in their anthology, a major release forthcoming from St. Martin's Press on January 22nd, 2008. She was also a contributor to last year's non-fiction book, Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans. Causey lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She and her husband, Carl, are licensed general contractors and, in order to support her writing addiction, they run their own company, specializing in civil construction.

Christian Champagne is a graduate of New Orleans Public Schools and the University of New Orleans. He is a poet, playwright, comic and political satirist. He has been a member of two National Poetry Slam teams. His shows and performances include: “Citizen Numa,” “Cirque de Dosgris,” “Radio Free New Orleans,” and “Win, Place and Show” (with Larry Beron and Ronnie Virgets). His work has appeared in The Maple Leaf Rag, Yawp, Sinister Goat and other publications. He has also contributed to the New Orleans Press Club’s Gridiron Show.

Joshua Clark, founder of Light of New Orleans Publishing, edited an award-winning and bestselling anthology, French Quarter Fiction, as well as Judy Conner’s Southern Fried Divorce and other books. He regularly contributes fiction, travel, and photographs to various national publications from the Los Angeles Times to the Miami Herald, has covered New Orleans for Salon.com and NPR.

Rodney Clark is the son of Roger Clark, Clinton Clark's older brother. He is a graduate of Southern University and a retired supervisor with the Department of the Interior in New Orleans.

Barbara Colley is the author of the widely acclaimed Charlotte LaRue mystery series, seven romantic suspense novels, and one historical novella. She has been the recipient of several awards including the Oklahoma RWA National Readers' Choice Award and the Distinguished Artist Award, in honor of outstanding contributions to the literary arts in Louisiana. Maid For Murder, her first Charlotte LaRue mystery, was nominated for a 2003 Romantic Times Book Club Reviewers' Choice Award. Colley’s most recent novels are: Scrub-a-Dub Dead, the sixth novel in her Charlotte LaRue mystery series, and Rachel’s War, a saga of three generations of women bound by secrets and set against the backdrop of fifty years of American wars.

Beth Courtney is President and CEO of Louisiana Public Broadcasting, which comprises Louisiana’s statewide public television network and serves as the state’s educational technology resource center. She is an advocate and spokesperson for public broadcasting and has testified before congress on numerous occasions. Courtney was appointed to the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate in December 2003. Her term on the board expires in 2010.

Ed Cullen's Attic Salt appears on the front of the Sunday People section of Baton Rouge's daily paper, The Advocate, as well as at www.2theadvocate.com. The column's name, which means "subtly humorous or poignant," gives Cullen a lot of latitude. An essayist on All Things Considered, National Public Radio's afternoon news and feature program from Washington, D.C., Cullen's commentaries can be heard at www.npr.org. Cool Springs Press published Letter in a Woodpile, a collection of his NPR essays and newspaper columns, last spring.

David Damrosch is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. He is the author of books on the Bible and on world literature, and is the general editor of The Longman Anthology of World Literature.

Elizabeth Davey has a Ph.D. in American Literature from Cornell University and is a Program Manager and Environmental Coordinator at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Author's Schedule

Randy Denmon is a graduate of La. Tech University and La. State University and currently lives in Monroe, Louisiana, where he is a partner in Denmon Engineering, Inc. Denmon’s first book, The Lawless Frontier was recently selected as a finalist for the Western Writers of America Spur Award, the Ben Franklin Award, and won the Silver Metal for Best Southern Fiction from the Independent Publisher. He currently has a second book, The Savage Breed, set for publication in July of 2008. Denmon is a member of the Writers League of Texas and the only Louisiana member of the Western Writers of America.

Irene S. Di Maio is the author of The Multiple Perspective: Wilhelm Raabe’s Third-Person Narratives of the Braunschwieg Period. She is Professor of German at Louisiana State University, where she is also a member of the Women’s and Gender Studies, Film and the Media Arts, Jewish Studies, and Atlantic Studies Programs.

Johnette Downing is an internationally recognized singer/songwriter who performs original children’s music inspired by her Louisiana heritage. When not touring the globe performing her “music for children with Louisiana spice,” she resides in New Orleans. Her first picture book with Pelican was Today Is Monday in Louisiana.

Pia Z. Ehrhardt lives in New Orleans with her husband and son. Her stories have been widely published in magazines including McSweeney’s Quarterly, the Mississippi Review, and Narrative Magazine, and anthologized in A Cast of Characters and Other Stories and the 2006 Norton Anthology Sudden Fiction: Short-Shorts from America and Beyond. She is the recipient of the 2005 Narrative Prize.

Author's Schedule

Pamela Binnings Ewen practiced law for twenty-five years, and previously wrote Faith On Trial, an acclaimed non-fiction book. Her first novel, Walk Back The Cat, is suspense fiction, a story of an Archbishop's fierce desire for revenge and the consequences. Her third book, The Moon in the Mango Tree, to be released in May 2008, is set in Siam and Europe in the 1920's, and is based upon the true story of her own grandmother, a woman forced to choose between a career and a deep abiding love in that glittering decade of change. Her newest manuscript, Dancing On Glass, was shortlisted as a finalist for the 2007 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition.

TJ Fisher — a French Quarter Bourbon Street resident anointed by the media as “a talented writer, outrageous and eccentric enough to represent New Orleans” — has been enamored with Louisiana's colorful culture, characters and customs since childhood. A writer, thespian and documentary filmmaker, Fisher has a passion for towns and people with vivid stories to tell. Fisher’s forthcoming New Orleans-based work of nonfiction Hearsay from Heaven and Hades: New Orleans Secrets of Sinners and Saints will be released in Spring 2008, and her third title Vieux Carré Chic: The Art of Overindulgent Home Décor hits bookshelves in Fall 2008. Fisher also has The Pearly Gates of Purgatory trilogy novel series and additional film/TV works in progress, all set in New Orleans.

Candace Fleming is the acclaimed author of numerous books, for children, including Ben Franklin's Almanac, an ALA Notable Book and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, as well as Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!, Gabriella's Song, and When Agnes Caws, all ALA Notable Books. She lives in a suburb of Chicago.

Author's Schedule

Ken Foster is the editor of two anthologies, including Dog Culture. His collection of short stories, The Kind I’m Likely to Get, was a New York Times Notable Book. His work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney’s, and The Believer. For more information, visit www.dogswhofoundme.com.

Patty Friedmann is the author of five other novels including Eleanor Rushing and Side Effects. She is also a contributor to the short story collection, New Orleans’ Noir. With slight interruptions for education and natural disasters, she has always lived in New Orleans.

Victor Gischler is the author of four hard-boiled crime novels. His debut novel Gun Monkeys was nominated for the Edgar Award. His short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Damn Near Dead and These Guns For Hire as well as periodicals such as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Out of the Gutter, The Mississippi Review, Demolition Magazine and elsewhere. He earned a Ph.D. in English at the University of Southern Mississippi where they beat him with rolled up newspapers and fed him raw liver. His work has been optioned for TV and film. His fifth novel Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse was recently accepted by the Touchstone/Fireside imprint of Simon & Schuster.  He lives in Baton Rouge with his wife and son.

Chad Gracia is a theater producer, dramaturge, and consultant specializing in the geopolitics of the Middle East. He has edited six verse plays and writes extensively on theater. Gilgamesh: A Verse Play, Gracia's adaptation for stage of the Epic of Gilgamesh, was created in collaboration with the poet Yusef Komunyakaa and published in December 2006.

Louisiana photographer Greg Guirard was born in St. Martinville, LA and moved to the western edge of the Atchafalya Basin at age 2, with his parents and grandparents (all Cajun ancestry). Educated at LSU with a bachelor's degree in Agronomy and a Master's in English, he has taught English at college and high school levels for 14 years. Guirard has also worked as a carpenter, furniture maker, farmer, cattleman, crawfisherman, sawmill worker, boat driver, publisher, editor, screen actor, technical advisor to films, lecturer, and songwriter. His publications include Seasons of Light in the Atchafalaya Basin; Cajun Families of the Atchafalaya; The Land of the Dead Giants; and Atchafalaya Autumn.

Barbara Hambly is the author of The Emancipator’s Wife, a finalist for the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction. She is also the author of Fever Season, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and seven acclaimed historical novels. She lives in Los Angeles, CA.

John Maxwell Hamilton is Hopkins P. Breazeale LSU Foundation Professor and dean of the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University. He has been a journalist in the United States and abroad, worked on the staff of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and held a political appointment in the Agency for International Development during the Carter administration. He is the author or coauthor of five books.

C.S. Harris is the bestselling, award-winning author of more than a dozen mysteries, thrillers, and historical romances (written under the name Candice Proctor). A scholar of the French Revolution and 19th-century Europe, she has lived much of her life in Europe, the Middle East, and Australia. Her most recent works are Why Mermaids Sing, the third in her critically-acclaimed Sebastian St. Cyr Regency mystery series, and her up-coming release, The Archangel Project, a contemporary political thriller set in post-Katrina New Orleans and written under the name Steven Graham.

Greg Herren is the author of six mystery novels set in New Orleans, including Mardi Gras Mambo and Murder in the Rue Chartres. He lives in the Lower Garden District of New Orleans and refuses to relocate. Ever.

Sara Shipley Hiles is a freelance journalist who specializes in environmental issues. She also covers science, health, and other issues. Her work has taken her from Louisiana's chemical corridor to the Douglas fir forests of the Northwest and the mining towns of Peru. During her 14-year journalism career, she also has worked as a staff reporter for newspapers including The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, The Statesman-Journal of Salem, Ore., The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky., and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She has won awards for both news and feature writing. She lives in Bowling Green, KY.

Jed Horne, a metro editor of The Times-Picayune, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his part in the paper’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina. His book Desire Street: A True Story of Death and Deliverance in New Orleans was nominated for the 2006 Edgar Award for nonfiction crime writing. He lives in the French Quarter with his wife.

Peter Huggins received his MFA from the University of Alabama. A poet and writer of fiction for children, he has published three books of poems, Necessary Acts, Blue Angels, and Hard Facts. His picture book Trosclair and the Alligator is an Accelerated Reader Book and will be featured on the PBS television series, Between the Lions. Huggins was awarded a literature fellowship in poetry from the Alabama State Council on the Arts for 2006. He has been President of the Board of the Alabama Writers' Forum and is a member of the Society of Children' Book Writers and Illustrators.

Walter Isaacson is the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute. He has been the Chairman and CEO of CNN and the Managing Editor of Time Magazine. He is the author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and of Kissinger: A Biography and is the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. His biography of Albert Einstein - Einstein: His Life and Universe - was released in April 2007.

Gary Joiner is an assistant professor of history at Louisiana State University in Shreveport and the director of the Red River Regional Studies Center at LSUS. His books include One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: The Red River Campaign of 1864 and Through the Howling Wilderness: The 1864 Red River Campaign and Union Failure in the West. He is also the coeditor, with Marilyn S. Joiner and Clifton D. Cardin, of another volume in the Voices of the Civil War series, No Pardons to Ask, nor Apologies to Make: The Journal of William Henry King, Gray's 28th Louisiana Infantry Battalion.

An attorney and former Louisiana state senator, Bill Jones participated in the family business of ranching and learned to cowboy at an early age. Following college, he worked for two years in the cattle business then attended LSU law school, receiving a J.D. in 1974. He wrote this book to preserve the history of Louisiana’s open range days. Jones practices law and runs cattle in Ruston, Louisiana.

River Road Recipes

Deborah Ousley Kadair is a graduate of Louisiana State University and holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts.  She is also a certified Montessori teacher and currently teaches the 4^th grade.  Her love for her students and the culture of Louisiana has inspired her to write and illustrate regionally themed books. Kadair has authored and illustrated two titles, There Was An Ol’ Cajun and Grandma’s Gumbo and has collaborated with Johnette Downing to illustrate two of her song Down in Louisiana and the award winning Today is Monday in Louisiana.  Mrs. Kadair and her family currently reside in Austin, TX.

Rodger Kamenetz is the author of the landmark international bestseller The Jew in the Lotus and the National Jewish Book Award-winning Stalking Elijah. His five books of poetry include The Lowercase Jew --he has been called “the most formidable of the Jewish-American poets”. His memoir, Terra Infirma, has been described as “the most beautiful book ever written about a mother and son.”

J. Gerald Kennedy is William A. Read Professor of English at Louisiana State University.

David Kirby has received many honors for his work, including the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and Pushcart Prize XXV. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Florida Arts Council. Kirby is the author or co-author of twenty-two books, including the poetry collections The Ha-Ha, The House of Blue Light, and The Traveling Library and the collection of essays, What Is a Book? His verse has appeared in such publications as The Kenyon Review, Southern Review, and Ploughshares. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, Kirby writes regularly for The New York Times Book Review, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The San Francisco Chronicle.

Yusef Komunyakaa, recipient of the 2007 Louisiana Writer Award, is a professor in the creative writing department at New York University. He has won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and been awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

Bill Lavender teaches at the University of New Orleans and is the director of the Low Residency Creative Writing program and coordinator of the Madrid Summer Seminars. Lavender's most recent books of poetry include I of the Storm, While Sleeping, look the universe is dreaming, and Guest Chain. He is the editor of Another South: Experimental Writing in the South. His writings have appeared in numerous print magazines including Jubilat, New Orleans Review, Gulf Coast Review, Skanky Possum, YAWP, and Fell Swoop, and web publications including Exquisite Corpse, E•ratio, CanWeHaveOurBallBack, Moria, Baddog, Poets Against the War, Big Bridge, and Nolafugees.

Author's Schedule

Regina G. Lawrence is the Kevin P. Reilly, Sr. chair in political communication in the Manship School of Mass Communication at LSU.  Her research focuses on how the news media cover public affairs.  In addition to co-authoring When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina, she is the author of The Politics of Force, a study of news coverage of policing. She has also authored numerous articles on media portrayals of issues ranging from terrorist attacks and school violence to welfare reform and the obesity epidemic.