|
New Video: Pat MacEnulty & Time to Say Goodbye |
We continue our series of videos from the 2006 Virginia Festival of the Book with Pat MacEnulty.
In this 2-minute clip, MacEnulty, a North Carolina resident, describes her newest novel's plotline, which takes place in Charlotte. With her dark hair and dress, looking a bit mysterious herself, she describes the book as "noir mystery." Time to Say Goodbye is MacEnulty's third published novel, but her first stab at crime fiction.
|
|
|
New Video: N.M. Kelby & Whale Season |
Most of her life, N.M. Kelby has been a journalist. As a reporter, she has been shot at, spit at, and nearly drowned. "So, these days," she says, "I opt for joy."
On her website, Kelby says, "To write a novel is a joyous act. You show the reader what is possible in the world. You give hope. And humor. And understanding."
In this 2-minute video clip from the Virginia Festival of the Book, you can definitely see Kelby's joyous and cheerful side. She playfully describes the comedic tale of her latest book, Whale Season, wherein a 70-year-old Buddhist meets a serial killer and is determined to find the good within him.
|
|
|
New Video: Lee Meitzen Grue, New Orleans Poet |
Our newest addition to The Katrina Tapes series is the lovely New Orleans poet, Lee Meitzen Grue. In this two-minute video, Lee is embraced by the lush, tropical foliage of the courtyard at the Royal Orleans Hotel during the 2006 Tennessee Williams Literary Festival.
Lee shares her evacuation story, fighting back tears as she describes the loss of a beloved pet after the hurricane.
With Katrina, "Everybody lost something," Lee says, but she is determined to remain optimistic. Watch the video to see what Lee Grue considers the positive impacts of the storm.
|
|
|
New Video: Dorothy Allison & Bastard Out of Carolina |
Dorothy Allison joins us on a bright and sunny New Orleans day in late March 2006 at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival.
Despite the cheery weather, Allison shares a grim tale. In this 2-minute clip, Allison recounts a meeting with a reader who related all too well to the main character in her novel, Bastard Out of Carolina.
The book, which is a fictional account of violence and incest in a Southern working class family, is a national bestseller and was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992.
|
|
|
New Video: Joel Agee & In the House of My Fear |
Here is the first installment from our visit to Charlottesville, Virginia, in March 2006 for the Virginia Festival of the Book (VAbook.org)
In this 2-minute clip, author Joel Agee describes his attempts to delve into the mindset of his younger brother, who was plagued with debilitating mental illness.
The resulting book, In the House of My Fear, details Agee's own breakdown, and his eventual breakthrough, fixed against the background of the sex-and-drugs era of 1960s America.
In this clip, Agee's austere presence and somber recollection of the events that lead to this memoir give way to musings on the juxtaposition of art and life.
|
|
AuthorViews Summer Tour 2006 -- "The Revacuation" -- is more than a road trip... It's a relocation.
I've been evacuating New Orleans every summer since I arrived here in 1998. Last summer was too much. We've had electricity and gas and water and sewer and garbage and cable and phone and Internet for months now; we just seldom have them all at the same time.
New Orleans is jumpy -- wouldn't you be? We are facing 3 or more evacuations this summer. It is too hard to grow this business under those conditions. So we're not just going on the road, we're staying on the road.
AuthorViews will relocate its global headquarters to Port Townsend, Washington, on the scenic Olympic Peninsula. Tsunami warning signs were recently posted there -- I'm praying the deluge doesn't follow.
We'll be back for the New Orleans Bookfair on Halloween and, if the creek don't rise, to teach again at Tulane in January.
The only way to get all the video we need is to stay on the road. We've been doing it for years. We're finally getting good at it.
STEVE O'KEEFE
President, AuthorViews, Inc.
Tags:
Click to add your tags...,
|
|
|
New Video: Martha Ward & Marie Laveau |
We conclude our series, "The Katrina Tapes," with this extraordinary video of University of New Orleans professor and anthropologist, Martha Ward, discussing her book, Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau.
Laveau was a Creole hairdresser who worked in the French Quarter and lived in nearby Faubourg Marigny. She and her daughter, also named Marie Laveau, were renowned Voodooists. Both these women were sought out as healers and advisors and held prominent places in New Orleans society.
In this 2-minute clip, Ward, wearing colors as wild as her book's cover, talks about her research, including attending Voodoo ceremonies and touring St. Louis Cemetery #1. How much of Laveau is fact or fiction? Watch.
|
|
|
New Video: Abram Himelstein & Tales of a Punk Rock Nothing |
Abram Himelstein is a teacher in the New Orleans Public School System -- or was -- there is not much left of the System these days. He's also an organizer for the New Orleans Bookfair and the co-author, with Jamie Schweser, of Tales of a Punk Rock Nothing.
In this 2-minute video clip, Himelstein describes the traditional route of the self-published author: throw the books in the trunk of a car, get on the road, try to sell enough copies to cover gas and meals.
From this modest beginning, Tales of a Punk Rock Nothing has gone to over 20,000 copies in print. About 5000 of those copies turned back into pulp when Hurricane Katrina added thousands of gallons of water to the storage facility holding the books.
This is Himelstein's second video for AuthorViews. Be sure to check out his video for The Neighborhood Story Project -- an amazing program for helping students become publishers while capturing the history of their neighborhoods.
|
|
|
New Video: Robb Roemershauser & The Above Ground Zine Library |
Robb Roemershauser is the proprietor of the Above Ground Zine Library -- a zine retailer and distributor in New Orleans. He is also owner of a legendary zine collection.
I know Robb from his work at the Iron Rail Book Collective at 511 Marigny Street in New Orleans where Above Ground is now open most days from 1-7 p.m. Robb has been at every planning meeting for the New Orleans Bookfair I've attended. His contributions have helped make the Bookfair possible.
In this 2-minute video, Robb eventually spits out what happened to his Lakeview home -- and zine collection -- when a break in the nearby 17th Street Canal sent a wall of water crashing through the neighborhood. You don't want to miss this video.
|
|
|
New Video: Kyle Bravo and Hot Iron Press |
Kyle Bravo, proprietor of Hot Iron Press, was the man who organized the 2005 New Orleans Bookfair. Little did he know when he accepted that position that the Bookfair would arrive on the heals of the greatest natural disaster ever to hit New Orleans.
Hot Iron Press is a quality letterpress shop -- or was, anyway -- it's hard to do quality letterpress under 5 feet of water. Kyle and partner Jennie LeBlanc just celebrated the release of their new book, "Making Stuff and Doing Things (The How 2 Book)" from Microcosm Press. It's a collection based on the popular "How 2 Zine" and it's only $10 cheap so you should buy it and help them rebuild from Katrina!
Kyle Bravo and Jennie LeBlanc are still in Denton, Texas, but hopeful of returning to New Orleans in the near future. In this 2-minute video, Kyle talks a little about the Bookfair and a little more about what makes New Orleans so special. Just listen.
|
|
|
New Video: Barbara Rath, M.D. |
Dr. Barbara Rath came to the U.S. from Europe. She travelled to several cities in the states before landing in New Orleans. Like many Europeans, she felt more at home in this former French and Spanish colony than elsewhere in the states.
Dr. Rath works at Covenant House, a nonprofit group that shelters, feeds, and educates runaways and at-risk teens. When Katrina came, she was caught unprepared. In the aftermath, she sees patients at a free clinic while helping New Orleans heal its wounds.
We are grateful to have helpers like Dr. Rath here, and we are hopeful that New Orleans will continue to be a refuge for Europeans looking for a place that feels like home.
|
|
|
New Video: B.D. Blanchard is the Boocoo Man |
If you live hereabout, maybe you heard 'bout the Boocoo Man -- a big green fella, friendly, lives back'o'town, carries a snake? Maybe you never seen him? You gonna see him now, cher.
We captured the Boocoo Man at the New Orleans Bookfair. He says he was "thoroughly blessed" by Katrina, who ran 30 feet of water through his shack out back. Musta blowed him into the big city, 'cause here he is, creatin' a scene at the Bookfair.
Boocoo Man is also known as B.D. Blanchard -- children's book author, artist, illustrator, storyteller, performer, and player of some of the strangest musical instruments you never seen.
We promised you two green people this week. Here's the second one. Don't miss the Boocoo Man.
|
|
|
New Video: Elizabeth Underwood, Artist |
Photographer and installation artist Elizabeth Underwood lost everything to hurricane Katrina except her body. Taken were her home, her job, and her life's work.
In today's 2-minute video, Underwood looks like a schoolgirl with Post Katrina Stress Disorder: A stack of subversive texts tilted on her hip, the distracted look in her eyes of someone who only hours earlier got to see the pulp that used to be her property.
We were lucky to have Elizabeth Underwood in New Orleans for the last decade. We will be lucky to get her back again, soon. Her web site, which is loaded with Underwood's unsettling photography ("an exploration of the trauma survivor"), indicates Underwood will return to the Crescent City in the winter of 2006 "as part of a fine-arts fellowship to explore the psychological and aesthetic effects of the region's devastation."
You can start with your own video, Ms. Underwood. So should you, dear reader.
|
|
|
Home 
Click for Video
Click for video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
