More great publication news

Posted on August 30, 2019 by tadbartlett

Peauxdunquians have more great news to report on the publications front:

April Blevins Pejic‘s essay, “Genetic Driftwood,” will appear later this fall in the Massachusetts Review‘s 60th anniversary issue.
Lavinia Spalding‘s essay, “Cabin,” originally published by Longreads, is being reprinted by Lonely Planet; and her story, “How Korean Karaoke Saved My Life,” originall published by World Hum, was reprinted by the New Zealand Herald.
Susan Bennett Vallee‘s piece, “The Reality of Racism,” about Maurice Carlos Ruffin‘s debut novel, We Cast a Shadow, has been published by Vie magazine.
Anne Babson‘s poem, “September Bunker,” will be published in Curator magazine; and her poems “Before” and “Findings at the Reichstag” will be published by India-based Ethos.

Maurice also moderated a conversation with friend-of-Peauxdunque Sarah Broom, on the packed-house/standing-room-only occasion of the release of her book, The Yellow House. Much love to our whole literary community!

Waaaaayyyy up at the front, beyond the mass of folks who turned out for the release of Sarah Broom’s Yellow House, are Sarah and Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Aug. 28, 2019, at Garden District Books.

Appearances, readings, and publications, oh my.

Posted on June 20, 2019 by tadbartlett

Go see Maurice Carlos Ruffin reading with James Nolan at the Alvar branch of the New Orleans Public Library (913 Alvar Street) tonight from 6 to 8! Maurice will be reading from his novel, We Cast A Shadow, and James will be reading from his new book of poetry, Nasty Water.

Then on August 28, Maurice will be in conversation with Sarah Broom at Garden District Book Shop at 6 p.m., about Sarah’s critically acclaimed book, The Yellow House.

In the latest Peauxdunque publication news, look for Maurice‘s essay, “The Great American Press Release,” about his visit to the Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, in the fall issue of Oxford American. And Tad Bartlett‘s story, “Flock Apart,” will be published in New York City-based Litbreak in November; so look forward to more Peauxdunque goodness this fall!

A publication, a coordination, and a professoration

Posted on April 11, 2019 by tadbartlett

I know, it’s not a word, but the news in Peauxdunque will not be stopped by the mere limitations of language!

We’ll start big and work BIGger:

(1) Peauxdunque’s Larry Wormington (editor-in-chief of the Peauxdunque Review), has learned that his short story, “Last Known Tomorrow,” will be published by Redivider. The Boston-based literary magazine has previously published such luminaries as George Singleton and Billy Collins (and Maurice Carlos Ruffin), and Larry’s gives them good company.

(2) Kelly Harris DeBerry has been selected by Poets & Writers as their Literary Outreach Coordinator for New Orleans. P&W says of this new program, “As part of a pilot project funded by the Hearst Foundations, Literary Outreach Coordinators will be equal parts community organizers and local correspondents, responsible for increasing awareness of Poets & Writers’ tools and resources for writers with a special focus on the availability of grants through our Readings & Workshops Program. With extensive support from Poets & Writers, Outreach Coordinators will have a unique opportunity to strengthen the literary community and help writers in their city.”

(3) And (trumpets, fanfare), Maurice Carlos Ruffin has been named by LSU as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing! He will begin teaching in LSU’s MFA program this fall. We’re excited for him, and for his future students.

Publications and readings and nominations, oh my

Posted on April 6, 2019 by tadbartlett

Back in January we started off a new Peauxdunque year with an expanded cast of characters and the publication of Maurice Carlos Ruffin‘s debut novel, We Cast a Shadow. Since then, I’ve been mainly delinquent in sharing the TONS of good news about Peauxdunque publications and readings and prize nominations. So, first a picture of that long-ago January meeting, and then on to the good news:

The publication news:

Where to begin? Well, big news, Maurice sold his second book to Random House/One World, a collection of his searing short stories titled The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You. We’ll, of course, report on details such as the publication date as soon as we know, because you won’t want to miss this. Also, Maurice’s novel, We Cast a Shadow, is now in its second printing.

New Peauxdunque poet Anne Babson has had her poem “Altarpiece Diptych” accepted for publication by Canadian journal QWERTY. Her poem “My Afternoon with Laura Ingalls” will be in the next issue of Silk Road Review. Anne’s review of Melinda Palacio’s Bird Forgiveness is in the current Louisiana Literature. And her play Reenactment is in the latest issue of Review Americana.

Lavinia Spalding had her beautiful creative nonfiction piece “The Cabin” published by Longreads. Emilie Staat’s essay, “The Passenger,” was published in Gris-Gris. Susan Vallee will have a piece profiling We Cast a Shadow in the upcoming arts and culture issue of VIE Magazine. And Tad Bartlett’s short story, “Elysian Fields,” was published in the April 2019 issue of New Limestone Review.

Upcoming readings:

Cassie Pruyn will be reading on April 30 at the main branch of the East Jefferson Parish Public Library with Ben Morris, Brad Richard, Elizabeth Gross, Ben Aleshire, and Esme Franklin. A week before, on April 23, Anne Babson will be reading at the same location on a bill with Melinda Palacio, Allison Pellegrin, and Paris Tate.

Maurice Ruffin will be reading at the Argenta Reading Series in Little Rock, Arkansas, on April 25. This weekend (right now) he’s participating as the keynote speaker at the Muse and the Marketplace conference in Boston.

Prizes/nominations

A little tardy in announcing these, but Peauxdunque’s Larry Wormington received a Pushcart nomination from Elm Leaves Journal for his story “Balloon Animals“; and Tad Bartlett and Maurice Ruffin both received Pushcart nominations from members of the Pushcart Board of Contributing Editors for work they published in 2018.

Big writing conference weekend: Peauxdunquians appearing coast-to-coast!

Posted on March 26, 2019 by tadbartlett

It’s that time of year again, when writers across the land flock to spring conferences for that necessary writing recharge. This week and coming weekend, two of the biggest gatherings of writers will happen in Portland, Oregon at the 2019 AWP Conference, and in New Orleans at the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival. Peauxdunquians populate panels and readings at both, so we’re all in luck, from the South Coast to the West Coast.

At AWP, Peauxdunquian Maurice Carlos Ruffin will be almost everywhere at once. On Friday, March 29, 9:00 a.m. – 10:15 a.m., Maurice will be part of the panel, “Unspoken Intimacies: On Male Friendship, Romance, and Everything in Between,” in room B113 on Level 1 of the Oregon Convention Center. On Saturday, March 30, 2 p.m. – 5 p.m., Maurice will be part of the Krewe de Louisiane & Friends reading put on by Lavender Ink and River Writers, at the Big Legrowlski at 812 NW Couch Street (this reading will also feature one of the poets in the imminently released Issue 1 of The Peauxdunque Review, Christopher Romaguera). Then, somehow managing simultaneous appearance, on March 30, 4:30 p.m. – 5:45 p.m., Maurice will be part of the panel, “Match Game: How to Find and Work with Your Agent,” in Oregon Ballroom 203 on Level 2 of the Oregon Convention Center. Finally, on March 30, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m., Maurice will be part of the reading for the SEI Library Grand Re-Opening at the Center for Self-Enhancement at 3920 N. Kirby Avenue.

At the Tennessee Williams Festival, Anne Babson will moderate the panel, “Poets on Craft and Inspiration,” on Sunday, March 31, 1 p.m. – 2:15 p.m., in the Royal Ballroom at the Hotel Monteleone. Tad Bartlett will be on the panel, “How to Start and Maintain a Writers’ Group,” on Thursday, March 28, 2:30 p.m. – 3:45 p.m., at the Historic New Orleans Collection (533 Royal Street). And Claudia Gray will moderate the panel, “Writing Young Adult Fiction: It’s Not Just for Teenagers,” on Saturday, March 30, 11:30 p.m. – 12:45 p.m., at Muriel’s Jackson Square.

And, of course, at both conferences there will be almost-countless Peauxdunquians roaming around in attendance. And there will be so many friends of Peauxdunque on panels and in readings that I dare not try to start listing them all, for fear of forgetting one (but just a sample, because I can’t help myself: at Tennessee Williams Fest, we are looking forward to bumping brains and elbows with great friends George Bishop, Bryan Camp, Nancy Dixon, Abram Himelstein, Susan Larson, Daniel Jose Older, Hannah Pittard, Brad Richard, Nathaniel Rich, and Bryan Washington; we can’t even begin to list all the friends at AWP).

Mostly, though, we can’t wait to see YOU (yes, you), as we grow in community with all the writers around us.

Maurice’s book release party, and more Peauxdunquian publications and events!

Posted on January 21, 2019 by tadbartlett

The wait for the publication release of Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s We Cast a Shadow is almost over! In eight more days, on January 29, all those pre-ordered copies will hit folks’ mailboxes, and the shiny covers will hit bookstore shelves, and the release party will rock the Three Keys venue at the Ace Hotel in downtown New Orleans. So far, We Cast a Shadow has made “must read” and “most anticipated” lists put out by Barnes and Noble, Garden and Gun, New York Magazine’s Vulture Magazine, Fodor’s Go List, Book Riot, Southern Independent Booksellers’ Association, Southern Living, Cosmopolitan, LitHub, Augusta Chronicla, HuffPost, L.A. Times, BuzzFeed, The Millions, A/V Club, Parade Magazine, Poets and Writers, Nylon, PopSugar, Bookbub, Writers Bone, and Read It Forward. Starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, with more to come! So come celebrate with Maurice and Peauxdunque and everyone else in New Orleans from 6 to 9 p.m. at Three Keys at the Ace Hotel, January 29!

And more good Peauxdunque publication news abounds. Lavinia Spalding has had a beautiful non-fiction piece about life and love and eviction in a cabin in Utah accepted by Longreads, which will run later this month or in February. And Emilie Staat‘s essay, “The Passenger,” was just published in the latest issue of Gris-Gris.

In addition, writer and photographer L. Kasimu Harris has four new shows that include his photography opening in the next few weeks:Dandy Lion (Re)Articulated Black Masculinity is now on view, from January 18 to April 8, at the Hammonds House in Atlanta. Harris will debut three photographs for the (Per)Sister: Incarcerated Women of Louisiana exhibition at the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University, opening on January 19 and on view until July 6. Truth, By Any Means Necessary is a solo exhibition of Harris’s work at Grambling State University’s Dunbar Gallery. This exhibition opens January 29 and runs until February 26. And four photos from Harris’s War on the Benighted Series continue to travel with the Race & Revolution: Still Separate, Still Unequal exhibition, from January 29 to April 6 at the Woskob Family Gallery of Penn State University.

Peauxdunque everywhere

Posted on October 14, 2018 by tadbartlett

It is I, keeper of the Peauxdunque website, long delinquent in my duties here. Part of my excuse is very good, as we here in the land of Peauxdunque have been busy working on Issue 1 of the Peauxdunque Review and, in the course of that, administering the 2018 Words and Music Writing Competition. The Review is on track to come out in December 2018, with a fabulous line-up of writers and writings in Issue 1, alongside some brilliant in-house-generated, soon-to-be-regular-feature columns. The Competition has resulted in a slate of winners and runners-up that we will announce this week, who are already populating the production schedule for Issue 2 of the Review (slated for late spring/early summer of 2019). But enough about that! You’re here to hear about what’s new for Peauxdunquians, and there is plenty:

First up, Peauxdunquian writer and photographer-extraordinaire L. Kasimu Harris, who just recently completed a summer-long run as a featured artist in the NOMA “Changing Course” show, last week published an incisive column about how the new Southern photography show at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art is providing a long-necessary disruption of the white-male-centric curation of the art-photography world. Read it here (and now), from The Bitter Southerner (“How the Ogden Museum is Desegregating Southern Photography”).
Next, Peauxdunque travel writer Lavinia Spalding will be appearing at Garden District Book Shop this Tuesday, October 16, to interview Apricot Irving and discuss Apricot’s memoir, The Gospel of Trees. Lavinia is the series editor of The Best Women’s Travel Writing, author of Writing Away, and co-author of With a Measure of Grace and This Immeasurable Place. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Post Road, and numerous travel magazines and anthologies.
While on the subject of things happening this coming week, there’s all of the everything happening for founding Peauxdunquer Maurice Carlos Ruffin in advance of the January release of his debut novel from One World/Random House, We Cast a Shadow (pre-order at that link).
- First, this Wednesday, October 17, Maurice will be presenting at the main (Loyola Ave.) branch of the New Orleans Public Library on “New Orleans 300: Ancestral Suits,” delving into he life of Patrina, Wild Queen of the Red Hawk Hunters, the first woman to lead a Mardi Gras Indian tribe. He’ll also read from various works, including the upcoming novel.
- The next day, Thursday October 18, Maurice will be at Garden District Book Shop interviewing Kiese Laymon on Kiese’s New Orleans stop on the book tour for the critically lauded memoir, Heavy. A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family that begins with a confusing childhood—and continues through twenty-five years of haunting implosions and long reverberations. YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS THIS.
- Next up for Maurice will be a busy Thursday, October 25; at noon that day he will be reading from the new novel at the Delgado Reading Series, then at 7 that evening he will be featured alongside Rita Bullwinkel at the Dogfish Reading Series.
- The next week, on Tuesday, October 30, Maurice will be in Brooklyn, featured alongside Fatimah Asghar at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, again reading from the new novel.
- All of this, as we said up top, is in advance of the release of We Cast a Shadow. The novel recently received a starred/boxed review from Publishers Weekly! Go read that, then you can register at Good Reads for an advance-copy giveaway.
WHEW. That was a lot. but we’re not done …
Peauxdunquian James (Drew) Jordan, recently moved to Georgia for the creative writing Ph.D. program at Georgia State, has recently learned that his story, “Residue,” will be published by venerable journal Quarterly West, and will be out later this month!
And Peauxdunque’s Tad Bartlett has recently had two works published. His novella, Marchers’ Season, is the sole featured work in Issue 26 of Storylandia, available from amazon.com here. And Tad’s short story, “When Czechoslovakia Was Still a Country,” has been included in the relaunch issue of Green Briar Review, just released yesterday.

Peauxdunquians continue to travel and write in search of the Word and all its magic. Emily Choate has recently completed a residency at the Hambidge Center in Georgia, and continues to write insightful and beautifully rendered reviews at Chapter16.org. Denise Moore continues to work her writing and words in the improv world with the improv comedy group Black Girl Giggles, who just recently appeared at the Diversity in Comedy Festival in Los Angeles. And Tom Carson, as always, who thought he could rid himself of us by moving out to California, continues to pound home the cultural and political harrows of the day with razor wit and grace.

Stay tuned for the next post, where I might remember all the things I forgot …

Two more stellar publications, plus Peauxdunque at the Jambalaya Writers’ Conference

Posted on February 28, 2018 by tadbartlett

No sooner did we report on the last round of Peauxdunque publication news, than two more wonderful items dropped in. April Blevins Pejic will have her creative non-fiction piece, “Clusters and the Cosmos,” published in Cimarron Review; and Drew Jordan‘s essay, “Pop’s Pocket Knife,” will be published by The Bitter Southerner! Both are beautiful pieces of work, so keep your eyes open for them.

This Saturday, March 3, Peauxdunque will join the list of featured presenters at the Jambalaya Writers’ Conference in Houma, Louisiana, put on by the Terrebonne Parish Library. Peauxdunquians on the roster include Marti Dumas and Maurice Carlos Ruffin. They join a number of luminaries, including Bill Loehfelm, Ladee Hubbard, Tom Piazza, James Nolan, Yuri Herrera, Katy Simpson Smith, Joshilyn Jackson, and R.L. Stine.

More Peauxdunque publication news

Posted on February 19, 2018 by tadbartlett

A new year, and new publication news by Peauxdunquians:

Maurice Carlos Ruffin will shortly commence his stint as the nonfiction columnist for Virginia Quarterly Review, reviewing and essaying about current and recent nonfiction books. His first column will cover material from When They Call You a Terrorist, by Patrice Khan-Cullors and asha bandele; Political Tribes, by Amy Chua; and Armed in America, by Patrick Charles.
Drew Jordan will have two poems published in the Summer 2018 issue of Still:The Journal.
Tad Bartlett will have his short story, “Boone’s Farm from a Sprite Bottle,” published in Issue 234 of Crack the Spine.
Andrew Kooy, in conjunction with the upcoming publication of his story, “Clap Your Hands,” by Apex, has also been selected for an author interview by Apex and for production of his story for Apex‘s podcast!

Always more news coming, so keep watching this space, and our Facebook page for links to web-content versions of these pieces as they go live.

Words and Music, the Gray Lady, the Radio, and some more publications

Posted on December 6, 2017 by tadbartlett

Peauxdunque, despite its moniker, is a bustling place these days!

First up, tomorrow the Words and Music writers’ conference, put on by the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society, kicks off at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans. On the opening day, Thursday December 7, Tad Bartlett will chair a “Words and Music Writers Alliance” session at 3 p.m., featuring a remembrance of Peauxdunque founding member Terri Sue Shrum, and readings of new works by Peauxdunquians Emily Choate, J.Ed. Marston, Alex Johnson, and others. Please come join us, and stay for the rest of this excellent conference!

And last week featured two different recognitions of Peauxdunquians’ work by The New York Times! First, The New York Times Book Review featured a stellar review of The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 11: True Stories from around the World, edited by Peauxdunquian Lavinia Spalding. “The latest book’s editor, Lavinia Spalding, hungry for travelers who ‘go with an open heart’ and have ‘the inclination to practice human kindness, a sincere intention to build pathways of understanding and a willingness to be transformed,’ read nearly 500 submissions before settling on the 31 stories that make up this diverse collection.” Then, the NYT featured “Kings of the Confederate Road,” the essay and photo feature collaboration by Tad Bartlett, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, and L. Kasimu Harris published by The Bitter Southerner, in its weekly “What We’re Reading” round-up.

On the grand old wireless contraption known as the radio, Peauxdunquian poet (and historian!) Cassie Pruyn was featured on NPR’s The Reading Life, discussing her brand new, just released lyrical history book, Bayou St. John: A Brief History. Cassie will also be reading and signing her newest book at Octavia Books on Sunday, December 10, at 2 p.m. (513 Octavia Street, NOLA).

Finally, there’s a slew of new publication news coming out of Peauxdunque for upcoming fiction and non-fiction: Tad‘s short story, “Porches,” will be published in January 2018 by Gris-Gris literary journal. Andrew Kooy has two upcoming publications: his short story “clap your hands” will run in an upcoming issue of Apex, and his nonfiction piece “George, WA” will run in the June 2018 issue of Bird’s Thumb. Finally, James Drew Jordan will see two of his stories–“The Man Who Played with Satchmo” and “Starland, Washington”–run in New South.

WHEW!