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Bill Lavender

Home Featured Authors & Panelists Featured Participant Lineup 2026 Bill Lavender

Bill Lavender is a poet, editor, and publisher who has lived and worked in New Orleans, Louisiana, since 1975. In 1995 he founded Lavender Ink and its translation imprint Diálogos. Today Lavender Ink/Diálogos has more than 250 books in print. He is also co-founder of the New Orleans Poetry Festival. The author of 14 books of poetry and a novel, he has spent his career at the intersection of writing, translation, and independent publishing.

 

Schedule

Will be posted when available.

city of god

Bill Lavender's city of god is a poetic reading-through of St. Augustine's magnum opus with comparisons to contemporary American life and politics. This book-length, 300+ page poem, described as a "monumental epic" by Adeena Karasick and "a masterpiece" by Cynthia Hogue, uses Augustine's reflections on the sacking of Rome by Alaric in 410 to reflect on the attempted insurrection in Washington in 2021 and other aspects, both personal and political, of the modern world, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the history of slavery in the U.S., and the daily struggle of homeless people in the poet's city of New Orleans. Other poets have compared the work to models as diverse as Dante and Dave Chappelle, Pound's Cantos and the great Roman satires of Juvenal and Martial.