This
past weekend the Foundation for a Historical Louisiana gave out its annual
awards to eight preservationists, including authors/historians Carl Brasseaux
and the late Sue Eakin.
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| Carl Brasseaux |
Eakin,
a scholar, educator, preservationist and storyteller is credited with securing
the republication of “Twelve Years a Slave,” the 1853 memoir by Solomon Northup
that was made into an Academy Award-winning movie in 2013. She first found the
book at age 12, and it was the subject of her master's thesis at LSU. After
years of research she published an authenticated version of the book in 1968
and two years before her death published an updated version with maps and
photos of the area around Cheneyville where the book was set.
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| Sue Eakin |
Eakin
also earned a master’s degree in journalism at LSU and taught history at
LSU-Alexandria. She earned a doctorate from UL-Lafayette at age 60.
Brasseaux
received the Cultural Preservationist Award and Eakin, who died in 2009, received
a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award.
Other
awards went to Vincent Caire Sr. of LaPlace, an historian, author and advocate for
the restoration of the Art Deco Shushan Airport, now Lakefront Airport in New
Orleans; The Historic New Orleans Foundation and its director, Priscilla
Lawrence; and to Nancy Vinci of St. Francisville for her efforts to preserve
architectural treasures of “Audubon Country” and the historic district of St.
Francisville.
New releases
On
June 24, 1973, an arsonist set fire to a New Orleans gay bar called the Up Stairs
Lounge, killing 32 people. The event stands as the deadliest fire in the
history of New Orleans and is said to be the largest mass murder of gay men in
America. Clayton Delery-Edwards, a graduate of USL, now UL-Lafayette,
recalls this tragedy, the news coverage that followed and the lack of outrage
from city officials in his book, “The Up Stairs Lounge Arson: Thirty-Two Deaths
in a New Orleans Gay Bar, June 24, 1973.” The case was never solved.
Tulane
professor Thomas Beller has published a biography on author J.D. Salinger (“The
Catcher in the Rye”) titled “J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist.” Publisher’s
Weekly calls the book, “an exceptionally well-researched, deeply felt, and
thoughtful exploration of the elusive author’s history.”
The
University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press has just published “African American
Home Remedies: A Practical Guide with Usage and Application Data” by Eddie L.
Boyd and Leslie A. Shimp. The book includes information obtained from two
studies conducted in affiliation with the University of Michigan to demonstrate
the use of more than 100 home remedies and herbs and their relation to
socio-demographic characteristics in the African American community.
Michael
Lewis of New Orleans, author of the bestseller “The Big Short” and “Moneyball,”
follows with “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt.” Flash Boys concerns a small
group of Wall Street men “who figure out that the U.S. stock market has been
rigged for the benefit of insiders and that, post–financial crisis, the markets
have become not more free but less, and more controlled by the big Wall Street banks,”
according to the book’s promotion.
Joseph
Boyden, who divides his time between Northern Ontario and New Orleans, sets his
latest novel “The Orenda” in the Canadian wilderness 400 years ago when Native
Americans and Europeans first meet. “The Orenda illuminates the shadowy
moment of our inception as a country,” the National Post said of the book. “It
forces us to bravely consider who we are. ‘The Orenda’ is much more than a
timely novel. It is a timeless one; born a classic.”
Summer reading
Sam
Irwin is a freelance writer and the author of “Louisiana Crawfish: A Succulent History
of the Cajun Crustacean.” He’s also a reader and he offers a great summer
reading list at LANote, Irwin’s blog. To view Irwin’s “Summer Reading List —
Heavy Books and Light Reading,” visit www.LANote.org.
Writing events
Festival
of Words is hosting a 12-hour Word Crawl on Sept. 13 throughout downtown
Lafayette, to coincide with that month’s Second Saturday ArtWalk. Area writers
will seek sponsors for their public readings at venues throughout town during
the 12 hours and money raised will be used to support the 2014 Festival of
Words literary celebration held annually the first weekend of November. For
more information, visit festivalofwords.org or call Clare Martin at (337) 962-5886.
The
Creative Minds Writers 2014 Conference will be from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday,
Aug, 9, at Woodland Park Baptist Church, 1909 J W Davis Drive in Hammond. The
keynote speaker is New York Times best-selling author Erica Spindler of New
Orleans. Other authors will conduct break-out sessions on a variety of genres.
For more information and to register, plus to check out the “Page-Turner
Contest,” visit http://www.creativemindswriters.com/.
Writing contests
The
deadline was the ninth Annual Dixie Kane Memorial Contest, sponsored by the
Southern Louisiana Romance Writers of America, has been extended until July 31.
The entry fee is $15 and the top prize is a guaranteed read by editors at The
Wild Rose Press. For information, visit http://solawriters.org/the-dixie-kane-memorial-contest/.
Heartla,
the Baton Rouge chapter of RWA, is also hosting a contest for romance novels of
all subgenres. The contest is open to published and unpublished authors ages 18
and up with the deadline to enter Aug 1. Awards include certificates and lapel
pins to first three finalists and the winner receives $25. For more
information, visit the chapter’s web site at http://www.heartla.com/heartbeat-2014-contest/.
Writing
contests not only support local writing organizations as fund-raisers but they
provide chances to be critiqued by qualified judges and sometimes prize money
or the opportunity to have work submitted to national publishers.
Book events
An
Evening of Comedy with author Christee Gabour Atwood will be from 6 p.m. to 8
p.m. Tuesday at the Westside Regional Library in Alexandria. The event is free.
Cheré Coen is the author of “Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana” and “Exploring Cajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana,” both from The History Press, and co-author of “Magic’s in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets.” Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.
