The Festival of Words rolls into its 11th year celebrating literary with three amazing authors and two days of memorable events Friday and Saturday, November 2 and 3, 2018, in Grand Coteau. Authors this year include Louisiana Poet Laureate Jack Bedell, Poet and songwriter Cornelius Eady and Rough Magic and award-winning author Ladee Hubbard. Festival events include creative writing workshops in the public schools and community centers, a community stage for open mics, “Drive-by Poetry” in grocery stores, boutiques and restaurants, and much more.
The Friday night event takes place at Chicory’s Café in Grand Coteau featuring poetry by Jack Bedell, a poetry/music performance by Cornelius Eady and Rough Magic with special guest D’Jalma Garnier and a reading by Ladee Hubbard from her award-winning novel.
On Saturday, Drive-by Poetry performers will recite poems in Grand Coteau and Sunset businesses while at the Thensted Center there will be an open mic and multiple creative writing workshops as well as a blackpot cook-off.
Authors
Jack Bedell is currently serving as the Poet Laureate of Louisiana. Bedell is a professor of English at Southeastern Louisiana University and the author of nine books, including “Call and Response” (with Darrell Bourque, 2010), “Come Rain, Come Shine” (2006), “What Passes for Love” (2001), “Bone-Hollow, True: New & Selected Poems” (2013), “Elliptic” (2016), and “Revenant” (2016). As editor of Southeastern's literary magazine “Louisiana Literature” since 1992, he has published numerous Louisiana poets. Bedell has taught creative writing to students of all ages, from the third-grade level to the graduate level over the last 30 years. Intimate and personable, his work reflects a familiarity with Louisiana life and its people. In addition, he has worked with the LEH's award-winning PRIME TIME Family Literacy Program as a storyteller and continues to promote the writing of his fellow Louisianans.
"Jack Bedell's love for Louisiana is evident in his work, and I'm confident that he will serve honorably as the state's poet laureate," said Gov. John Bel Edwards. "I want to thank the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities for leading this search, and I congratulate all of the nominees whose writings capture the heart of the people and places that make our state a unique and wonderful place to call home."
Cornelius Eady was born in 1954 in Rochester, New York. He is the author of several books of poetry, including the critically acclaimed “Hardheaded Weather” (Penguin, 2008), which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. His other titles are “Kartunes” (Warthog Press, 1980); “Victims of the Latest Dance Craze” (Ommation Press, 1986), winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets; “The Gathering of My Name” (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1991), nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; “You Don't Miss Your Water” (Henry Holt and Co., 1995); “The Autobiography of a Jukebox” (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1997); “Brutal Imagination” (Putnam, 2001); the mixed media book/CDs “Book of Hooks” (Kattywompus Press, 2013) and “Singing While Black” (Kattywompus Press, 2015). His work appears in many journals, magazines, and the anthologies “Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep,” “In Search of Color Everywhere” and “The Vintage Anthology of African American Poetry,” (1750-2000) editor Michael S. Harper.
With poet Toi Derricote, Eady is cofounder of Cave Canem, a national organization for African American poetry and poets. He is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Literature (1985); a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, (1993); a Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Traveling Scholarship to Tougaloo College in Mississippi (1992-1993); a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to Bellagio, Italy, (1993); and The Prairie Schooner Strousse Award (1994).Eady has taught poetry at SUNY Stony Brook, where he directed its Poetry Center; City College; Sarah Lawrence College; New York University; The Writer's Voice; The 92nd St Y; The College of William and Mary; Sweet Briar College; and The University of Missouri-Columbia. He a professor in the MFA program at SUNY Stony Brook Southampton.
In most of Eady's poems, there is a musical quality drawn from the blues and jazz. Indeed, many of his poem titles allude to traditional African-American hymns and modern musicians such as Thelonius Monk and Miles Davis. Eady is also available to perform with his literary band, Rough Magic, a New York-based band sprung from almost by "magic," a group of poet-musician-composers who share Eady's vision that text, melody, harmony, and rhythm all have an equally strong place in artistic expression. Rough Magic calls upon troubadour traditions and evokes the sounds and storytelling of blues greats like Muddy Waters, folk legends such as Woody Guthrie and the unexpected grooves and subject-matters of the Talking Heads. At the same time, band members hold a keen sense of innovation, as they are all working text-and-music makers engaged in building new combinations of words and sounds.
Ladee Hubbard was born in Massachusetts, raised in Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands and currently lives in New Orleans with her husband and three children. She received a B.A. from Princeton University, a Ph.D. from the University of California-Los Angeles, and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has published short fiction in the Beloit Fiction Journal and Crab Orchard Review among other publications and has received fellowships from the Hambidge Center, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Hurston/Wright Foundation. She is a recipient of a 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award.
“The Talented Ribkins” is Hubbard’s debut novel, a fresh and exciting new voice in literary fiction. Inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois' famous essay, this marvelously inventive novel tells the story of Johnny Ribkins, a 72-year old African-American antiques dealer from Florida who was born with a unique talent: he can make perfect maps of any space he walks through.
2018 Festival of Words Schedule
Friday, Nov. 3
Artists: Jack Bedell, Cornelius Eady and Rough Magic, Ladee Hubbard
Event: Poetry, music and prose reading + Q and A and Book/CD signing
Time: 6:30 — 9:30 p.m.
Location: Chicory’s Coffee and Cafe, 219 E Martin Luther King Drive, Grand Coteau
Saturday, Nov. 4
Unless otherwise stated, all events on this date take place at The Thensted Center, 268 Church St., Grand Coteau, LA 70541
Presenters: Bruce Coen and Friends
Event: “Drive-by Poetry”
Time: 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Location: MLK Drive, Grand Coteau in cafes and gift shops, and on the streets
Host: Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson
Event: Community Stage featuring Rip the Mic open mic Chef Talk and Black Pot Cook-Off
Time: 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Event: Awards Ceremony for Youth of Creative Writing Contest
Time: 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 a.m.
Event: Drive-by Poetry at Chicory’s with Authors
Time: 11—12 p.m.
Workshops
Artist: Cornelius Eady and Rough Magic
Event: Poetry Writing Workshop “Music-inspired Poetry”
Time: 9:30 a.m. to 11:20 p.m.
Artist: Ladee Hubbard
Event: Novel Writing Workshop “Crafting Your Novel”
Time: 1:10 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Artist: Jack Bedell
Event: Poetry Writing Workshop “Memory and Place in Poetry”
Time: 3 p.m. to 4:50 p.m.
Drive-by Poetry
One of the highlights of the annual Festival of Words is the Drive-by Poetry, where students from St. Landry Parish bring poetry into cafés, grocery stores and boutiques. The event gives students the opportunity to become familiar with a contemporary poet and to try their hand with “street performance.”
This year’s drive-by poetry includes students from the Magnet Academy of Cultural Arts and Sunset Elementary, who will arrive armed with poems and ready to shoot words into the air, entertaining casual shoppers and diners on several dates.
Schedule
Monday, Oct. 29
Brew and Scoop
415 Creswell Lane
Opelousas
Time: 3-5 p.m.
Students from Magnet Academy of Cultural Arts (MACA)
Tuesday, Oct. 30
Java Square
103 W Landry St, Opelousas, LA 70570
Time: 3-5 p.m.
Students from Magnet Academy of Cultural Arts (MACA)
Saturday, Nov. 3
Throughout Grand Coteau and Sunset.
Time: 9 a.m. -- 1 p.m.
MACA and Sunset Elementary Students
(337) 804-2482.
The Festival of Words is also supported in part by a Grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council as administered by the Acadiana Center for the Arts. The festival also receives support from the Jazz and Heritage Foundation and the St. Landry Parish Commission. The Festival of Words appreciates partnerships with Acadiana Writing Project, Lyrically Inclined, Nunu’s and many volunteers and sponsors.
Louisiana Book News is written by award-winning author Chere Dastugue Coen, who writes Louisiana romances and mysteries under the pen name of Cherie Claire. Her first book in each series is FREE to download as an ebook, including "Emilie," book one of The Cajun Series, "Ticket to Paradise," book one of The Cajun Embassy series and "A Ghost of a Chance," the first Viola Valentine mystery.
Tyler Bridges, author of an updated book titled “The Rise and Fall of David Duke,” and Robert W. Fieseler, author of “Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation,” will discuss their books at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 1, 2018, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie.
