WNBA–NOLA member Nordette Adams interviews Mississippi Poet Laureate Beth Ann Fennelly!
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Miki Pfeffer on
“A New Orleans Author in Mark Twain’s Court”
July 23, 2020, 4:30 pm (CST)
At The Mark Twain House & Museum, Grace King, a Southern writer who was the Clemens family’s guest, helps set the table for tourist visitors. In a letter, she describes an 1887 meal: “Olives, salted almonds, and bonbons in curious dishes were on the table and decanters of quaint shape and color held the wine.” And on she goes, through the dessert.
King, author of short stories, novels, and volumes of New Orleans history, had more to say about Samuel and Livy Clemens and their family, and the Hartford Yankee scene. The city’s citizens “have the contented expression of face and speech of souls assured of salvation in the next life and prosperity in this,” she wrote home to her family. Served a lesser meal by a neighbor, she describes the “little floury balls in it, highly seasoned with salt and pepper…How these people live on so little is a mystery to me.” She broadens her observations to the world, the controversies of the day, her life as an independent woman.
The vivid correspondence of this opinionated author has now been brought out of the archives by Miki Pfeffer, independent scholar of Thibodaux, Louisiana, who has been painstakingly transcribing King’s letters since 2004. The result is A Connecticut Author in Mark Twain’s Court: Letters from Grace King’s New England Sojourns (LSU Press).
On Thursday, July 23, at 4:30 p.m. (CST) Pfeffer will share Grace’s wit, snark, and charm in the sixth of the Mark Twain House’s virtual “Trouble at Home” series. She will be interviewed by Twain house historian Steve Courtney.
Dr. Miki Pfeffer says she agrees with the adage that “historians are people who like to read other people’s mail.” A New Orleans Author in Mark Twain’s Court grew out of research for her previous award-winning book, Southern Ladies and Suffragists, on the literary side of the 1884 New Orleans World’s Fair. Dr. Pfeffer has been a Quarry Farm Fellow at Elmira College’s Center for Mark Twain Studies. Like King, she is a native of New Orleans, but she now lives serenely on Bayou Lafourche.
The Trouble at Home series is made possible by a 2020 grant awarded by Connecticut Humanities. Connecticut Humanities, a nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, supports cultural and historic organizations that tell the state’s stories, build community and enrich lives.
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Congratulations to Board Member Pam Ebel, a finalist in the Tennessee Williams Festival’s Very Short Fiction contest!
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Chapter Member
Anne Babson‘s latest book is
Messiah. Her play about gun culture in the South, entitled
Reenactment, was published in
Review Americana. 
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Chapter Member Liz Williams‘ new book is Unique Eats and Eateries of New Orleans. Liz is a founder and former president and CEO of the National Food and Beverage Foundation, which includes the Southern Food & Beverage Museum, the Museum of the American Cocktail, and the Boyd Hospitality & Culinary Library. She co-authored with Stephanie Jane Carter, The Encyclopedia of Law and Food. In 2013, AltaMira published New Orleans: A Food Biography, which was selected as the One Book, One New Orleans book for 2018. In 2016, her book, co-authored with Chris McMillian, Lift Your Spirits, was published by LSU Press.
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Chapter Member Linda Prout is a winner of the first-ever Todd H. Bol Awards for Outstanding Achievement.
From Little Free Library:
Linda Prout, a retired teacher, was one of the earliest Little Free Library ambassadors, using Little Free Libraries to build book access and a sense of community in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Since then, Linda has championed more than 200 book-sharing boxes, and she has partnered with everyone from schools to Boy Scouts to the Friends of the New Orleans Public Library, which has donated thousands of books to local Little Libraries. “Ripples from Little Free Libraries continue to spread throughout New Orleans,” she says.
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Chapter Treasurer Karen Kersting was awarded a scholarship to attend the 2019 Santa Barbara Writers Conference.
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Chapter Member Kathy Crighton‘s novel is The New Normal.
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Chapter Member Samantha Downing‘s debut novel My Lovely Wife was recently featured in Publishers Weekly. It was chosen as the LibraryReads #1 pick for March 2019.
Chapter Member Patty Friedmann‘s latest works are the novel An Organized Panic (the manuscript took second place in the Faulkner-Wisdom competition) and the short-story collection Where Do They All Come From?, which includes the best of her stories, some prizewinners and some new. She was recently awarded the Faulkner Society ALIHOT (A Legend in His/Her Own Time) Medal, presented by Robert Olen Butler.
Chapter Member Shaina Monet’s poems, titled “In Hamburg with The Negro Avenged,” “On Menzel’s Atelierwand,” and “In Madrid with Picasso’s Guernica,” which won the 2018 Iowa Review Award in poetry, will appear this month in the winter issue of The Iowa Review.
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Chapter Member Anne Boyd Rioux‘s Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters is one of The Daily Mail‘s Top Books of 2018. Library Journal also listed Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy as one of its Best Books for 2018. It was previously chosen as one of the best summer books of 2018 by Newsday. Anne’s book was published by Norton to coincide with the 150th birthday of Little Women, and has been reviewed widely, including at Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. Anne is also the editor of the new Penguin Deluxe Anniversary edition of Little Women.
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Chapter Member Sheila Cork was on this year’s committee for the MLA (Mississippi Library Association) Mississippi Authors Award, 2018, and announces that Jesmyn Ward won the fiction award for Sing, Unburied, Sing.
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Chapter Member, and one of the founding members,
Freddi Williams Evans, award-winning author, independent scholar, arts educator and community activist, has a new venture,
KNOW Card Games. The latter combines her expertise in history, culture and education. A
Humanities Hero by the
Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH), Freddi is the author of
Congo Square: African Roots in New Orleans and an international authority on the topic. She has also authored three historically based children’s books.
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Chapter Member
Melinda Palacio (shown below at Octavia Books for the New Orleans book launch of her latest poetry collection
Bird Forgiveness) was interviewed by Chapter Member
Steve Beisner for the Figure of Speech show on WRBH’s Radio for the Blind: hear the interview on
Soundcloud. Chapter Member
Susan Larson also interviewed Melinda on
NPR’s WWNO.
Chapter Member Constance Adler led a session on Guided Meditation and the Creative Process at East Bank Regional Library in Metairie. Constance is the author of the memoir My Bayou, New Orleans Through the Eyes of a Lover. Her stories have appeared in numerous publications that include Oxford American, Utne Reader, Spy Magazine, Bayou, and Blackbird. Her profile of Mardi Gras float designer Henri Schindler in Gambit Weekly was honored by the Louisiana Press Association with a first place award in feature writing.
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Congratulations to Chapter Member Chris Smith! His story “Aloha, Ollie Bell” is a runner-up to the contest winner of this year’s Saints and Sinners Short Fiction Contest. It’s included in the anthology Saints and Sinners 2018: New Fiction from the Festival.
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Board Members
Susan Larson and
Dawn Ruth Wilson have written chapters in
New Orleans: The First 300 Years. Susan’s chapter is “Literary Heritage” and Dawn’s is “Education”. Dawn writes a monthly education column for
New Orleans magazine. The book is published by Pelican Publishing.
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Chapter Member
Laura Lane McNeal‘s first published novel
Dollbaby, a 2015 Pat Conroy Award Finalist, was recently optioned for film by Alison Eastwood (Clint’s daughter) and Gulfstream Productions. Announcement from the Hollywood Reporter coming soon!
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Read two poems by Chapter member
Alexandra Reisner in the latest issue of
Knicknackery.
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Chapter Member Andrea Panzeca is the author of poetry chapbooks Rusted Bells and Daisy Baskets and Weird… Joe Pesci.
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Chapter Member
Kathy Schrenk‘s middle-grade novel is
A Dog Steals Home.
Chapter Member
Gina Ferrara is the focus of the feature
The Whole Story in the latest
WNBA Bookwoman newsletter. Chapter members
Susan Larson and
Melinda Palacio talk about and review Gina’s work in the feature. You can also listen to Susan interview Gina
here.
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READ Posters from our May 2016 meeting:
Many thanks to Meghan Kelly, Country Day Lower School librarian, and Mary (Meb) Norton, Country Day School Director of Libraries, for hosting our meeting and for creating a fun
poster-making activity! Each member was asked to bring and pose with a copy of her favorite book. Pictured below are Membership Chair
Sara Woodard with
My Reading Life by Pat Conroy, and Chapter Member (and Little Free Library Ambassador)
Linda Prout with
The Little Free Library Book by Margret Aldrich.
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Chapter Members’ Holiday Book Traditions:
from Member Miki Pfeffer: Last year’s Christmas card was fun to create. My book tree is topped with my own Southern Ladies and Suffragists; Julia Ward Howe and Women’s Rights at the 1884 New Orleans World’s Fair.
from Membership Chair Sara Woodard: Every year, I take out these faded holiday books, hand-written and illustrated by my two sons many years ago, and place them under the tree. (Yeah, they really love that!) I also add some local books, like the Cajun Night Before Christmas!
from Secretary Teresa Tumminello Brader: My Dickens Village started small and has grown (too!) big, but it remains centered around the story of A Christmas Carol (other Dickens’ novels are also represented). Though its details may change from year to year, I strive to keep the display as historically and literarily accurate as possible.
from Treasurer Karen Kersting: We observe the Advent tradition in my house with the Autumn/Winter volume of Phyllis Tickle’s “Divine Hours”. This book includes an entire section specifically arranged for the 4 weeks before Christmas. The selections of songs, prayers and quotes provides an opportunity for some reflective quiet in the midst of all the other preparations and celebrations. In the photo is an image of our Advent wreath & the book. It has become an oddly humorous family tradition that I can NEVER seem to find 3 purple candles of either the same size nor all in the exact same shade of purple. One year, I had no choice but to buy 4 white candles and embellish them with the correct-colored ribbon!
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Co-founding Chapter member and Past-President
Susan Larson‘s essay about the
A Christmas Carol Read-Aloud tradition of the Dickens Fellowship of New Orleans is available near the end of the archived December 20th broadcast of
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Our Members Recommend
A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg
The Alaskan Laundry by Brendan Jones
Hollywood South: Glamour, Gumbo, and Greed by Linda Thurman
Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild
A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman
Fairendale series by R.L. Toalson
The Goldfinch by by Donna Tartt
The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks by Terry Tempest Williams
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante
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Constance Adler, head of the Bayou Writing Workshop, taught two 2016 WNBA writing contest prize-winners: Nicole Eiden and Rita Juster.
Anne Boyd Rioux’s Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist was reviewed in The New York Times Book Review.
Susan Larson has co-written New Orleans’ Literary Landmark: Hotel Monteleone, detailing its role in several famous authors’ lives and works.
Laura Mullen’s widely reviewed and praised eighth book, Complicated Grief, is a hybrid collection of poetry, prose, memoir and essay.
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WNBA-NOLA Social Media:
We look forward to hearing about your books/events/projects.
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Note: We now have an email account for Social Media so if you do not use Facebook or Twitter please email us with your book/event/project news: socmedctee@gmail.com
