Exciting Events in 2020!

WNBA members and friends attended a screening of Little Women just days after its opening in late December. Afterwards the group engaged in a lively discussion led by member Anne Boyd Rioux—University of New Orleans professor, scholar, and author of, among other books, Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters.  The discussion touched on the film’s ambiguous ending, feminism, casting, costuming, chronology, and more!   We are so grateful to Anne Boyd Rioux. Please check out her book if you haven’t already. We had such a great time that we hope to host another movie event, perhaps for the upcoming Emma. Stay tuned!

    

Coming Up:  Friday, January 10, 6 – 8 PM: King Cake Party/ Annual Social

We’ll be asking for RSVPs and then give the address for the party, which will be at the residence of Board Member Pam Ebel.

Our annual Holiday Book Drive will benefit the New Orleans Chapter of GiGi’s Playhouse, a non-profit resource center for the Down Syndrome community. Slated to open in Spring 2020, GiGi’s Playhouse New Orleans will offer educational, physical fitness and life skills programs free-of-charge. They’ve provided us with a list of both proprietary and general access literacy materials for their programs; the materials cover all ages. The list will be sent out separately in a few days with more information on how to participate in this special Book Drive.

We Celebrated National Reading Group Month (again!) on November 21!

WNBA-NOLA members and representatives from local book clubs got together to discuss what else but BOOKS!  We enjoyed socializing at a new venue:  Pelican Publishing, an imprint of Arcadia Publishing, Launch Pad in New Orleans.   We focused on book clubs, then listened to a Great Group Reads panel of WNBA  members who gave interesting and valuable tips on finding that best read!  Panelists included Andrea Panzeca, Kristen Knox, Sheila Cork and Susan Larson.  Missed the meeting?  You can view the Great Good Reads list here: https://wnba-books.org/the-2019-great-group-reads-list-has-arrived/

2019 Pinckley Prize Winners Celebrated!

Megan Abbott and Sarah St. Vincent, this year’s recipients of the 2019 Pinckley Prizes for Crime Fiction, were honored at a special event on October 10 at the Louisiana Humanities Center in New Orleans. The Pinckley Prizes partner with the Women’s National Book Association of New Orleans, of which Diana Pinckley was a founding member.  The judges this year were novelist J.M. Redmann, author of the Mickey Knight and Nell McGraw series; Constance Adler, author of My Bayou, New Orleans Through the Eyes of a Lover; and music and culture journalist Alison Fensterstock, editor/co-author of The Definition of Bounce.

                                                                                                      

Fun at Culture Collision!

Members and non-members enjoyed networking and fun at Culture Collision August 28 at the Ogden Museum of Art.

           

Tour of Paper Machine!

Members and friends enjoyed a really interesting tour of Antenna’s Paper Machine on Saturday, June 1 in New Orleans Lower 9th Ward.  We toured the facility, viewed amazing book creations in its Artist Book Collection, and learned about the center’s community efforts and student outreach.  We gazed in awe at the overhead kinetic sculptural print machine!  Finally, we got a hands-on lesson in creating and printing our own cards, including choosing the message, paper, colors and type face.  See below photos of members setting the type and taking turns on the printing press!  Check out the message on our custom-printed cards!  Many thanks to Paper Machine artists Jessica Peterson and Yuka Petz.

Paper Machine is a 5000 sq ft print shop in the Lower 9th Ward housing a range of traditional and cutting edge print technologies, to enhance, amplify, and explore New Orleans’s rich printing heritage while providing significant opportunities for artists and residents of the Lower Ninth Ward and beyond.  https://www.papermachine.works/

                                                                                                                                                      

 

                               

                                              

WNBA-NOLA Names New President at Annual Business Meeting May 21

Andrea Panzeca was named WNBA-NOLA president at our Annual Business Meeting held May 21, Tuesday, at Mid-City Library.  Andrea is the author of poetry chapbooks Rusted Bells and Daisy Baskets and Weird… Joe Pesci. She earned an MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of New Orleans, where she was associate nonfiction editor of Bayou Magazine. Her awards include the Carol Gelderman Award for Nonfiction Thesis, the Andrea Saunders Gereighty/Academy of American Poets Award, and two Pabst Cultural Endowment Scholarships. Her poetry and prose has appeared in Ellipsis and her scholarly essay “Naturalism and the Florida Setting in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston” appeared in Excavatio. She grew up in Merritt Island, Florida, and lives in New Orleans. She’s taught with arts organizations including KID smART, the Contemporary Arts Center, and Lelia Haller Ballet Classique.  http://www.andreapanzeca.com/about

At the meeting we thanked outgoing president Nina Calvo for her great ideas, energy and access to her beautiful home for chapter events! Participants at the meeting also welcomed new members and brainstormed plans for an exciting year of meetings and events.  Stay tuned for more info!

 

Highlights of our April 9 Chapter Meeting

We were wowed by the book presentation by Dr. Jane Pinzino, Coordinator for Scholarly Resources for the Humanities at Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. Dr. Pinzino gave us a behind-the-scenes look at Tulane’s Rare Books Collection.

Special Collections’ Rare Books unit preserves approximately 100,000 titles dating from a leaf of the Gutenberg Bible (ca. 1456) to recent first editions. These include a wide range of formats, from miniatures no larger than one inch high, to volumes forty inches tall; from five-hundred year-old books in as fine a condition as the day they were printed to twentieth-century first editions crumbing from the acidity of their paper.  https://library.tulane.edu/libraries/rare-books