This Tuesday, August 30, a special coming together of the writing tribes (and those who love them, or at least dig them) will occur at Three Keys (at the Ace Hotel, 600 Carondelet Street, NOLA), as six best-selling and award-winning writers will present work at a benefit reading for Peauxdunque founding member Terri Sue Shrum. In May, Terri was diagnosed with inoperable stage-4 pancreatic cancer. Since then, Terri has begun chemotherapy treatments at the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University in Atlanta, and writers nationwide have come together to help with an active fund-raising campaign to help Terri with her out-of-pocket treatment-related expenses. From 7 to 9 p.m. on August 30, we’ll continue that, with tunes spun by DJ Sep (Giuseppe Catania) and an evening emcee’d by Nick Fox. Admission is free, and donations will be accepted at the door and throughout the evening; RSVP here.

Our sixth featured writer is M.O. (“Neal”) Walsh. M.O. Walsh was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He is the author of the story collection, The Prospect of Magic, and the novel, My Sunshine Away, which was a New York Times bestseller and won the Pat Conroy Book Award for Fiction. His stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Oxford American, The Southern Review, and others. He currently directs the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans. Many thanks to Neal for joining our line-up Tuesday, along with Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Bill Loehfelm, Kelly Harris-DeBerry, Nick Mainieri, and Gian Smith.

M.O. Walsh