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VOLUME 9, ISSUE 1 CONTRIBUTORS

Bruce Allen is an artist, community activist, and educator. After earning the MFA at the University of Wyoming in 1981, he returned to his undergraduate institution, Centenary College, as an instructor, where he has served for the past thirty six years. You can link to his homepage at http://www.nwlaartists.org/community/1409-bruce-allen/profile.

Moira Crone is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer. Her dystopian novel, The Not Yet, was short-listed for the Philip K. Dick Award in 2013. A professor emeritus of Louisiana State University, she currently lives in New Orleans and has begun painting. You can link to her website here, http://moiracrone.com/

Anya Kamenetz is originally from New Orleans but is currently living in Brooklyn. She is a correspondent for NPR, a sought-after speaker, and an authority on education. Her newest book, The Art of Screen Time (PublicAffairs, 2018), is a guide for families in the digital age. You can link to her website here, http://www.anyakamenetz.net/about/.

Rodger Kamenetz is an award-winning author, poet, and teacher. His best-known book, The Jew in the Lotus, has been called a "revered text" by the New York Times and recounts the holy pilgrimage of rabbis to meet with the Dalai Lama. It became a PBS film of the same title first broadcast in 1999. Stalking Elijah (1997) won the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought. The History of Last Night's Dream (2007) was featured on Oprah Winfrey's Soul Series. Burnt Books (2010), a dual biography of Franz Kafka and Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, combines literature and religion in a hybrid text of fiction, biography, and memoir. Kamenetz's seven books of poetry include The Missing Jew and The Lowercase Jew. His most recent books of poetry are To Die Next To You (2013) and Yonder (2019). Kamenetz has degrees from Yale, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford and is a retired LSU Distinguished Professor and Sternberg Honors Chair Professor who focuses now on writing and helping others with Natural Dreamwork. You can link to his page here, http://rodgerkamenetz.com/biography.php.

M. L. Byrd, founding editor of the NOLA DIASPORA, knows what it means to miss New Orleans. She is currently teaching at Virginia State University.

 


VOLUME 8, ISSUE 2 CONTRIBUTORS

Ashley Mace Havird, the current Poet Laureate of Caddo Parish, Louisiana, has published three collections of poems, including The Garden of the Fugitives (Texas Review Press, 2014), which won the 2013 X. J. Kennedy Prize. Her poems and short stories have appeared in many journals including Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. Her novel, Lightningstruck (Mercer University Press, 2016), won the 2015 Ferrol Sams Award. Visit her at www.ashleymacehavird.com

David Havird is the author of two collections: Map Home (2013) and Penelope’s Design (2010), which won the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. He has new poems (and articles) in recent or forthcoming issues of The Hopkins Review, Literary Imagination, Literary Matters, and Nostos. He teaches at Centenary College of Louisiana.

M. L. Byrd, founding editor of the NOLA DIASPORA, knows what it means to miss New Orleans. She is currently teaching at Virginia State University.

Dorothy Kristin Hanna is a native of Shreveport, Louisiana.  She is an artist, dancer, and healer.


VOLUME 8, ISSUE 1 CONTRIBUTORS

Jefferson (Jeff) Hendricks is a Shreveport native who received his Ph.D. from The University of Illinois and returned to teach  English and film studies at his undergraduate alma mater.  He currently holds the George A. Wilson Eminent Scholars Chair of American Literature at Centenary College.

Rachel Jennings has published poems in La Voz de Esperanza, Appalachian Journal, Struggle, Blue Collar Review, RE:AL, Concho River Review, Red River Review, Nantahala Review, and the San Antonio Express-News. Her chapbook, Hedge Ghosts, was published at LaNana Creek Press in 2003. In 2008, she published a book of poetry, Elijah’s Farm, at Pecan Grove Press. She teaches composition and literature at San Antonio College and works with the Macondo Foundation, founded by Sandra Cisneros.

New Orleans native/Austin activist Abe Louise Young is the author of two chapbooks Heaven to Me (2016) and Ammonite (2010) and the free guide, Queer Youth Advice for Educators, and she is co-editor of Hip Deep: Opinion, Essays, and vision from American Teenagers. She just finished a week-long February 2018 residency at Smith College, reading poetry and exhibiting “Poet-to Poet: A Friendship in Letters.”

After working for many years as an independent writer, grant-writer, and editor, Young recently became Education and Training Director at TexasCASA. Her program will create learning programs that will reach 30,000 children in foster care across the state. In her own words, “I'm incredibly lucky and humbled to help shape what the grown folks will learn, and how, in the here and now, w[ith] this team of brilliant, committed people working to make life better for kids!”

M. L. Byrd, founding editor of the NOLA DIASPORA, knows what it means to miss New Orleans. She is currently teaching at Virginia State University.


VOLUME 7, ISSUE 2 CONTRIBUTORS

James Capozzi is an Assistant Professor of English at County College of Morris in New Jersey. He is the author of several books, including 89 Screenplays for Nightmare City, Universal Description of the Known World Without End and Country Album. His poetry has been published in more than 50 literary journals, and he is currently the associate editor of the Journal of New Jersey Poets and consulting editor for The Virginia Normal. He previously taught at Binghamton University, the University of Texas at Austin, Virginia State University and Bloomfield College.

Susan Dauer received her doctorate from The University of Texas at Austin and now teachers at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. She enjoys cooking & baking, quilting, video games, creative writing, books, other books, multiple godchildren, family, card and board games, movie musicals, and various other things, not necessarily in this order.

Tamara Fish is a teacher and administrator in the University of Houston Department of English. She has lived in Houston since 1999. Her home was flooded first on Memorial Day of 2015 and again in August 2017, when Houston received over 50 inches of rain as a consequence of Hurricane Harvey.

Dennis Formento, poet and sometime free-jazz/free-verse performer (Ed Barrett Trio, Frank Zappatistas), lives in Slidell, LA with his wife, artist, teacher, and yogini, Patricia Hart.  He is the publisher of Surregional Press. His latest undertaking is bringing Italian cantautore and tarantella traditions to New Orleans poetry; in this endeavor, he is collaborating with dancer Nanette Ledet. He organizes the New Orleans 100,000 Poets for Change readings.

Harvey Hix has published eleven poetry collections, including the 2014 As Much As, If Not More (2014). His prose works include As Easy As Lying: Essays on Poetry (2002) and Lines of Inquiry (2011). He has co-translated the work of Estonian poets and edited several anthologies, including Wild & Whirling Words: A Poetic Conversation (2004), New Voices: Contemporary Poetry from the United States (2008) and Made Priceless: A Few Things Money Can’t Buy (2012).

Hix’s awards include the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Grolier Prize, and the Peregrine Smith Award. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kansas Arts Commission, and the Missouri Arts Council. He currently teaches at the University of Wyoming.

Brad Richard was recognized as the 2015 Louisiana Culture Award for “Artist of the Year” in 2015. He is founder and Chair of Creative Writing Department at Lusher Charter School in New Orleans and Co-Director of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards/ Southeast Louisiana Writing Region. He has published three collections of poetry and was the winner of the 2010 Washington Prize. His work has been featured in numerous anthologies and journals. Richard has received many grants and awards, including the Century Swept Brutal/ Black Ocean Award in Excellence; a Louisiana Division of the Arts Artist Fellowship in Literature; the Poets & Writers, Inc., Writers Exchange Award in Poetry; and a Surdna Foundation Artist Teacher Fellowship.


VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 CONTRIBUTORS

Reine Dugas Bouton lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. She received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of New Orleans and her Ph.D. from the University of Southern Mississippi. Her areas of expertise include Modern American and British literature, travel writing, southern literature, and composition and rhetoric. She has published in Deep South, Big Muddy, and Dead Mule School of Literature. She teaches at Southeastern Louisiana University and is currently working on a novel.

Merry Byrd is the founder and editor of NOLA DIASPORA. She teaches composition, women’s studies, and environmental humanities at Virginia State University and serves as book review editor for the journal FEMSPEC. Her most recent non-fiction essay “Floods” appears in Situate.

Loren Graham was born and raised around Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. He studied as a writer and composer at Oklahoma Baptist University, and he received an MA in English from Baylor University and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Virginia. He has since taught English and creative writing in Virginia and in Montana. Poetry collections include Mose (Wesleyan, 1994), The Ring Scar (Word Poetry, 2010), and Places I Was Dreaming (CavanKerry, 2015). Graham won the Oklahoma Book Award for poetry in 2016.

Marie Reinecke Holmes was born and raised on the Esplanade Ridge in New Orleans. She went to college in Lafayette, LA and then moved briefly back to the Crescent City before settling in Petersburg, VA. She currently teaches at Dinwiddie High School and Virginia State University.

Michael Francis McClure is an Associate Professor of English at Virginia State University. One of the editors of NOLA DIASPORA, he has also co-authored an apocalyptic novel, 2020, with Scott A. Leonard. Their nom de plume is Frank McArthur.

Esther Nelson teaches religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is the co-author (with Nasr Abu Zaid) of Voice of an Exile: Reflections on Islam and the co-author (with Kristen Swenson) of What is Religious Studies? A Journey of Inquiry. She writes regularly for the on-line journal Feminism and Religion.

Laura Simms is an award winning performer, writer, and educator advocating storytelling as compassionate action for personal and community transformation. She performs worldwide combining ancient myth and true life story for adult and family audiences. She is the Artistic Director of the Hans Christian Andersen Storytelling Center in NY and the founder of The Center for Engaged Storytelling. She has been a Senior Research Fellow for the International Peace institute at Rutgers University Newark under the auspices of UNESCO. As a spokesperson for storytelling she presents keynotes and workshops in conferences, villages, schools, universities and community events. She is a member of the Therapeutic Arts Alliance of Manhattan, and a senior teacher of Shambhala Buddhist meditation. Laura received the Brimstone Award for Engaged Storytelling, CHOICE award for best story collection and Sesame Street’s SUNNY DAYS award for work with children worldwide. Her most recent book is Our Secret Territory: The Essence of Storytelling (Sentient 2011). She is completing a new work: The Sanctuary of Story. Laura is the mother of best-selling author Ishmael Beah.


VOLUME 6, ISSUE 2 CONTRIBUTORS

Delilah Caldwell is a epistemologist and independent scholar in Richmond, VA.

Michael Francis McClure is an Associate Professor of English at Virginia State University. One of the editors of NOLA DIASPORA, he has also co-authored an apocalyptic novel, 2020, with Scott A. Leonard. Their nom de plume is Frank McArthur.

Steve Wiegenstein is the author of SLANT OF LIGHT and THIS OLD WORLD. He is a professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies at Columbia College.

Big Class is a nonprofit organization that creates opportunities for New Orleans youth ages 6-18 to write and be supported in their writing. With roots in a series of classroom projects in 2010, completed by first graders and led by Co-Founder and Executive Director Doug Keller at Lincoln Elementary in Marrero, LA. As word of the project spread throughout the city, teachers began to reach out to Doug about the need for similar projects in their classrooms. In 2013, Big Class opened the Big Class Studio and began operating as a year-round organization. Today, Big Class is in the process of becoming a chapter of 826 National, broadening their sphere of influence and impact to include even more of students, parents, teachers, and volunteers. Since 2011, Big Class has served more than 3,000 students in its programs (eighty percent of whom identified themselves as writers after their participation), and has released over 100 publications. Find out more about the organization and how you can help with gifts of time and money here: www.bigclass.org.

  • Open Studio is an after school program offered by Big Class and powered by dedicated volunteers. It is free of charge and open to young people school- and city- wide. In the spring of 2016 students were asked to describe "Mardi Gras after the Apocalypse." The stories by Keith Love, Kentrell Love, Eron Morgan, Big Charles Johnson, Charlecean Johnson, Alaila Young, and Amaya Smith are shared in WordPlace.
  • Since 2013, Antenna has helped to foster the growth of Big Class, an organization dedicated to cultivating and supporting the voices of New Orleans' writers ages 6-18. For "Mardi Gras After the Apocalypse", an exhibition in March of 2016, artists of the Antenna Collective created pieces inspired by the stories of students in the Big Class Open Studio, each imagining what Mardi Gras would look like after the end of days. Antenna artists who collaborate with Big Class include Amelia Broussard, Jane Cassidy, Amanda Cassingham-Bardwell, Vanessa Centeno, Ernest Littles, Natalie McLaurin, Rontherin Ratliff, Jacob Reptile, Bob Snead, Ashley Teamer, and Carl Joe Williams. Their works are shared in ArtSpace.

 


VOLUME 6, ISSUE 1 CONTRIBUTORS

Sharon Buzzard is an associate professor of English at University of Missouri-Columbia where she also directs a cross-disciplinary writing first year writing program serving 2500 students.

M. L. Byrd is an associate professor English at Virginia State and editor of NOLA DIASPORA. One of her favorite responsibilities is book reviewing!

James Capozzi is an Assistant Professor at Virginia State University and the newest member of NOLA DIASPORA's editorial team.  He is starting  student journal, VIRGINIA NORMAL.

Patricia Gaitely is an associate professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University. A native of the UK, she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on literature and folklore and is currently writing a book on the fiction of
James Lee Burke.

Ashley Mace Havird grew up on a tobacco farm in South Carolina. She has published three collections of poems, most recently The Garden of the Fugitives (Texas Review Press, 2014), which won the 2013 X. J. Kennedy Prize. Her poems and short stories have appeared in many journals including Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, and in anthologies such as The Southern Poetry Anthology, IV: Louisiana and Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry. Her novel, Lightningstruck, won the 2015 Ferrol Sams Award and will be published by Mercer University Press in 2016. A recipient of a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship, she lives with her husband, the poet David Havird, in Shreveport, Louisiana. Visit her at www.ashleymacehavird.com.

Rob Laurence is a retired corporate denizen who is delighted to serve as Nola Diaspora's photographer for Mardi Gras 2016.

Steve Wiegenstein is the author of SLANT OF LIGHT and THIS OLD WORLD. He is a professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies at Columbia College.

 

VOLUME 5, ISSUE 2 CONTRIBUTORS

Sally Cole is a retired English teacher who lived in New Orleans for twenty-eight years before relocating to Tucson after Katrina. She has written about this in a memoir, Leaving New Orleans: An Unsettling Tale and about her hometown of Tempe, Arizona, in a local history/memoir called Alligators in the Baby Pool: Remembering Tempe Beach.

Katheryn Krotzer Laborde is a writer of prose. Her work has appeared in Poets&Writers, Callaloo, Fresh Yarn, Southern Journal of Linguistics, CrossRoads, and other journals and websites. Her book, Do Not Open: The Discarded Refrigerators of Post-Katrina New Orleans (McFarland), explores an odd and stunningly visual chapter of the New Orleans recovery story.

Catherine Loomis is an associate professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of New Orleans. She authored William Shakespeare: A Documentary Volume (2002) and The Death of Elizabeth I: Remembering and Reconstructing the Virgin Queen (2010) as well as essays on Shakespeare and early modern women writers. She has recently edited a collection, Shaping Shakespeare for Performance: The Bear Stage, on early modern English staging.

Christine Murphey has worked more than a decade with Environment Programs in New Orleans, first at Tulane and then at Loyola University. During this time she published poems and prose on south Louisiana in journals such as Negative Capability, Louisiana Literature, New Orleans Review, Michigan Review and North American Review.

Biljana D. Obradović, a Serbian-American poet and translator, has three collections of poems Little Disruptions (2012), Le Riche Monde (1999), and Frozen Embraces (2001). Her poems also appear in Three Poets in New Orleans (2000), and she has published Serbian translations of such writers as John Gery, Stanley Kunitz, Bruce Weigl, and Niyi Osundare. She is co-editor with Dubravka Djurić of the upcoming Cat Painter: An Anthology of Contemporary Serbian Poetry from the Sixties to the Present. Her poems have been translated into Serbian, Italian, Arabic and Korean. She is Professor of English at Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans.

Victor Valenzuela graduated from Miami High School in Oklahoma in 2000. He now works at his own studio, Arthead, and makes the occasional peregrinations to New Orleans, where he draws street scenes of the city and and sells them at Jackson Square.

Sister Frances Therese Whooley CCVI, a Sister in the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word - Houston, was born in 1915 in Ireland and passed in 2009 in Houston, Texas. Her first professional ministry was as a Registered Medical Records Librarian. She served in the Schumpert Hospital in Shreveport, the St. Frances Cabrini Hospital in Alexandria, and the St. Patrick Hospital in Lake Charles. In 1983 she became a patient representative and continued her fundraising and outreach ministries in the CHRISTUS - St. John Hospital in Nassau Bay, TX. Her artistic talent was shared generously, and her watercolors and oil paintings grace many an office and home. CHRISTUS - St. John, where Sister Frances worked in 2005, took in many
Katrina refugees.

 

VOLUME 5, ISSUE 1 CONTRIBUTORS:

M. L. Byrd is an associate professor English at Virginia State and editor of NOLA DIASPORA. One of her favorite responsibilities is book reviewing!

Elizabeth Kay Harris is an Associate Professor of English and Director of Women's Studies at the University of Southern Mississippi. She recently gave the plenary address at the University of Northern Iowa's "Culture and the Medieval King" conference and presented a paper at the Georgetown School of Law's "Law and Humanities" conference. Her essay, "The Precognition of Crime: Treason in Medieval England and Terrorism in Twenty-first Century America" is forthcoming. She lived in Biloxi at the time of Hurricane Katrina.

Michael McClure is an award-winning amateur photographer who uses his camera as an exercise in being open to the particulars of the world, large and small, and in keeping balance in the midst of an all-too-often-tyrannical busy-ness.

JoAnn Pavletich is Associate Professor and Assistant Chair of the English Department at the University of Houston-Downtown. As a VISTA volunteer in New Orleans in the late 1970s, she worked at the Lafitte Housing Project in Treme and was often a participant in and user of St. Mark’s community-based efforts to make New Orleans a more equitable and just city.

Arthur Pfister is a New Orleans native. A prolific poet and short story writer, he specializes in spoken word and jazz collaborations. He is now teaching in Connecticut, but he enjoys a steady performance travel schedule that allows him to return to the Crescent City. Pfister's most recent book is My Name is New Orleans. Several of his works and an introduction to a new short fiction collection were featured in the Katrina 2012 issue of NOLADiaspora.

Trine Wilson is a native Vermonter with a great love of traveling!!   She feels blessed to be able to visit many beautiful areas and to share  what catches her eye along the way.   Much of what she shares is from her garden in Westford where she often lies, macro lens attached to her Canon, a cup of coffee left forgotten nearby!

Joyce Zonana, whose memoir, DREAM HOMES, is available from The Feminist Press, is a Professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College branch of The City University of New York.  She is a frequent contributor to NOLA DIASPORA.


VOLUME 4, ISSUE 2 CONTRIBUTORS:

Matthew Burns teaches writing and literature at SUNY Cobleskill in upstate New York. His poem “Rhubarb” won the 2010 James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review, and his other poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Graze, Quiddity, Folk Art, Ragazine, Spoon River Poetry Review, Memoir (and), Camas, and others.

M. L. Byrd, founding editor of the NOLA DIASPORA, knows what it means to miss New Orleans. She is delighted to add reviewing to her NOLA DIASPORA duties!

James Capozzi is an Assistant Professor at Virginia State University and the newest member of NOLA DIASPORA's editorial team.  He is starting  student journal, VIRGINIA NORMAL.

Jimmy Descant was born and raised in New Orleans.  He is a folk artist who works with found objects and is perhaps best-known for his high-tech, rocket ship creations.  All of his work is informed by a bitingly incisive, liberal, and ultimately altruistic social vision.  During 2014, he has participated in two groups shows, one in Virginia and one at the Ogden in New Orleans.  One of his pieces, "Slaven" was just purchased by NCIS-NEW ORLEANS and will be featured in an office on the show.

John R. Holmes received his master's degree from The University of Louisiana, Lafayette and taught at The University of New Orleans for several years before returning to school to complete the PH.D.  He currently teaches at Virginia State University.

Julie E. Hudson is an associate professor of English at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, TX, where she advises the student literary journal.

Terrance L. Lewis is an Associate Professor of History in the Department of Social Sciences at Winston-Salem State University.  From 1991 until Hurricane Katrina, he held the same position at Southern University at New Orleans.  His areas of specialization are Twentieth Century European and American Cultural History and Modern World History.

Michael McClure is an Associate Professor of English at Virginia State University. One of the editors of NOLA DIASPORA,he has edited a textbook on mythology and co-authored an apocalyptic novel, 2020, with Scott A. Leonard. Their nom de plume is Frank McArthur.  He is currently at editing a collection of essays about surviving--and thriving in--academic careers.

Esther Nelson, one of NOLA DIASPORA's editors, teaches in the Religious Studies program within the School of World Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. She co-authored VOICE OF AN EXILE:  REFLECTIONS ON ISLAM with Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd.

Joyce Zonana, whose memoir, DREAM HOMES, is available from The Feminist Press, is a Professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College branch of The City University of New York.  She is a frequent contributor to NOLA DIASPORA.


VOLUME 4, ISSUE 1 CONTRIBUTORS:

James Capozzi is an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia State University. He was born in West Milford, NJ.  His first book, Country Album, won the New Measure Poetry Prize and is published by Parlor Press.  

Jamie Chiarello is originally from Virginia. As a self-taught artist her influences range from partaking in local figure drawing groups to the happenstance of imagination. She moved to New Orleans in 2004 and has been selling her paintings on the street at Royal Street & Pirates Alley ever since.

Maggie Covert received her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in Interdisciplinary Sculpture with a Concentration in Book Arts. She was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her home has made a large impact on her art, as the culture, vitality and architecture are hard to escape. Since 2006, Maggie has been exploring the ideas of losing the contributing factors that make a place home. She currently resides and runs her business, WalkingMan Studios, in the Audubon area.

Stephen Duplantier is an artist and writer from New Orleans, 7th Ward, just off old Bayou Gentilly. He also resided in the drained swamp on the west side of the old Shell Road halfway to Milneburg,along the route of the old Smoky Mary. He now lives in Costa Rica on the side of a mountain at the edge of a cloud forest. He edits, designs, and publishes NEOTROPICA.

Dennis Formento, poet and sometime free-jazz/free-verse performer (Ed Barrett Trio, Frank Zappatistas), lives in Slidell, LA with his wife, artist, teacher, and yogini, Patricia Hart.  He is the publisher of Surregional Press  (Ungulations: Ten Waves Under the Hoof, by Amy Trussell and A. di Michele, and Fattening Frogs for Snakes by John Sinclair.) In 2014, Paper Press will publish Cineplex, poems dating from 2011 to 2013. The sequence “Water” has been published as a limited edition hand-made book by Red Mare Press (also featured in Big Bridge #17). His latest undertaking is bringing Italian cantautore and tarantella traditions to New Orleans poetry; in this endeavor, he is collaborating with dancer Nanette Ledet. He organizes the New Orleans 100,000 Poets for Change readings.

Michael Francis McClure is an Associate Professor of English at Virginia State University. One of the editors of NOLA DIASPORA, he has also co-authored an apocalyptic novel, 2020, with Scott A. Leonard. Their nom de plume is Frank McArthur.

Native New Orleanian Claire Sexton is a print and pattern designer based in LA. She is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design and currently works at a design house in Echo Park.

Joyce Zonana is a Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York.  She has published numerous academic and personal essays in a variety of journals and is a regular book reviewer for Lilith Magazine.  Her memoir, Dream Homes: From Cairo to Katrina, an exile's journey, was published by The Feminist Press.

M. L. Byrd, founding editor of the NOLA DIASPORA, knows what it means to miss New Orleans. She is currently teaching at Virginia State University.

 


 

VOLUME 3, ISSUE 2 CONTRIBUTORS:

J. P. Andreason is a graduate student at the University of New Hampshire.  He worked with Common Ground Relief in New Orleans in 2008. 

Louis James Braquet III is a 26-year-old native New Orleans artist working primarily in acrylic, oils, and ink. At the age of 3, he witnessed the appearance of a gorgon on his grandparents' farm in Hammond, La, and has been creating visual, literary, and musical art ever since this first experience of fear and self-awareness. He attended NOCCA (New Orleans Center for Creative Arts). His influences are wide-ranging, including pre-historic cave art, ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Indian art, mythology, and religion, the Flemish masters, Italian Renaissance, Pre-Raphaelite, Surrealist, Cubist, and modernist thought and art.  He’s won numerous awards for his art, psychoanalytical writing, and poetry.

Arwen Avery Byrd is a New Orleanian, who received her B.A. in film production and interdisciplinary studies from in Chapman University in Orange, CA.  (She entered that program one week before Katrina hit the city.) She currently works for La Hacienda Films in Los Angeles.

James Capozzi is an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia State University. He was born in West Milford, NJ.  His first book, Country Album, won the New Measure Poetry Prize and is published by Parlor Press.  

Grant Cassidy is a native of Shreveport and a graduate of Tulane.   He currently lives and works in New Orleans in finance, while pursuing his writing craft.  Of particular interest to him is the nineteenth century vignette.

Bonnie Maygarden is a New Orleans native, the daughter of musician and historian Ben Maygarden and environmental educator/activist Dinah Maygarden.  She is currently an MFA candidate at Tulane University.  She is represented by the Martine Chaisson Gallery in the city.  Her work approaches paint as both light and mirror. This concept stemmed from explorations with surface and its contradictions: reflection and distortion; form and void; color and light; truth and deception.

Carlie Trosclair was born and raised in New Orleans.  She is an installation artist who uses malleable materials such as fabric and wallpaper to re-create interior spaces into re-imagined realities. A NOCCA graduate, she earned a BFA from Loyola University New Orleans, an MFA from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, and is a Fellow of the Community Arts Training Institute (MO). In 2013, she will have solo exhibits at the Hartnett Gallery in Rochester and the Antenna Gallery in NOLA.

Christopher Varlack is a lecturer at Morgan State University in Baltimore.  His current writing projects are lyric essays, which blend poetic expression with traditional non-fiction forms.  He is interested in the ways that literature can preserve and reclaim the past while shedding light on current struggles.

Sarah Woodward, Guest Editor for this edition, is a New Orleans native who spends her days as a muralist, arts educator, gallery owner, and activist in San Francisco. Her passion for arts and culture is rooted in the spirit of her hometown. Her artistic career began in high school, when she attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA). Moving to California to attend her first year at Stanford University two weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit, Sarah’s heart never left home and in 2007, she created a sculptural, public art installation on Stanford's campus to raise awareness about the storm and its aftermath. She later worked with an art therapist in New Orleans helping children affected by the storm. Her commitment to New Orleans, the arts, education, creativity, and social justice continues.


VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1 CONTRIBUTORS:

December--DC to her friends--was born and raised, "born and glazed," a New Orleanian, deep within the city's gumbo pot of music and culture. Challenged emotionally as a young child, she felt she had no one to reach out to. The people around her were self-abosrbed, cleaning their own mirrors and seeking their own reflections; so she began writing. When she went to elementary school was introduced to poetry, the artist realized, "Oh, that's what I do". Then melodies met words, and she has been making music ever since. A model and aspiring actress, December looks forward to more opportunities to becoming...

Rachel Jennings received the 2002 Rockefeller Foundation Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. She has published poems in La Voz de Esperanza, Appalachian Journal,Struggle, Blue Collar Review, RE:AL, Concho River Review, Red River Review, Nantahala Review, and the San Antonio Express-News. Her chapbook, Hedge Ghosts, was published at LaNana Creek Press in 2003. In 2008, she published a book of poetry, Elijah’s Farm, at Pecan Grove Press. Currently, she teaches composition and literature at San Antonio College and works with the Macondo Foundation, founded by Sandra Cisneros.

Michael Francis McClure is an Associate Professor of English at Virginia State University. One of the editors of NOLA DIASPORA,he has also co-authored an apocalyptic novel, 2020, with Scott A. Leonard. Their nom de plume is Frank McArthur.

Professor ARTURO (aka Arthur Pfister) is a Spoken Word artist, educator, performer, editor and speechwriter. ARTURO, one of the original Broadside poets of the 1960s, Pfister is a native New Orleanian who relocated to Connecticut (to be near friends and family) after Hurricane Katrina and the levee break.  Pfister is featured in our Katrina 2012 issue.  His newest book, Eritrean Princess, is now available from Louisiana-focused publisher, Margaret Media.

Wystan Rail is a free-lance editor and writer living in a Caddo Lake cypress swamp near Uncertain, Texas.  She is delighted to be somewhat settled after several post-Katrina moves.

Laura Simms is an award-winning writer, performer, and educator based in New York. She uses storytelling as compassionate action for personal and community transformation.

Joel Simpson is a Brooklyn-based freelance photographer, musician, and writer. He lived in New Orleans for 27 years and studied piano with Ellis Marsalis and Henry Butler.

Rachel N. Spear is currently a faculty member in the Expanded Composition program at the University of Southern Mississippi. She received her doctorate from Louisiana State University in Comparative Literature, an interdisciplinary program, where she fused composition, literary, and pedagogical studies to focus on trauma writing. Her primary research interests include writing pedagogy, trauma studies,pedagogical theory, and the expressive arts.

r david wilson: Born in Montana in 1958, David has had a lifelong love affair with language and art. He has worked as a translator and Spanish teacher since the 80’s—now dedicating all of his time to making art. Frequent visits to Latin America have fed his interests in figurative work and landscape combined with an infatuation with color and texture. His work is shown at the Dana Gallery in Missoula and Art Fusion in Bigfork.

Joyce Zonana is a Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York. She has published numerous academic and personal essays in a variety of journals and is a regular book reviewer for Lilith Magazine. Her memoir, Dream Homes: From Cairo to Katrina, an exile's journey, was published by The Feminist Press.She lived in New Orleans for fifteen years and guest-edited the inaugural issue of Nola Diaspora.


VOLUME 2, ISSUE 2 CONTRIBUTORS:

Crystal Kile, a former NOLA resident, is an independent scholar in the Chattanooga, Tennessee area.

Elaine Kolp, a former New Orleanian, is a bookkeeper with the National Storytelling Network in Johnson City, Tennessee.

JoAnn Pavletich is an Associate Professor and Assistant Chair of English of at the University Houston, Downtown.

Arthur Pfister, a poet, fiction writer, Spoken Word artist, and educator, is a New Orleans native. He relocated to be near friends and family after Katrina and is currently an Instructor of English at Norwalk Community College in Norwalk, CT.

Stephen Rockenbach is an Associate Professor of History at Virginia State University. His specialization is military history, and he plays traditional folk music on the banjo.


VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1 CONTRIBUTORS:

Clare Daniel is a doctoral student in American Studies at the University of New Mexico.

Stephanie Elder: Establishing herself as a New Orleans artist, Stephanie focuses primarily on the communicative power of art to channel the essence of individuals and community. She finds that art offers a kind of bridge to empathy and understanding unlike anything encountered elsewhere. Stephanie is currently studying studio art and pursuing all mediums and avenues to art in hopes of finding more ways to champion the people and community of New Orleans.

Lynda Frese: Originally from Rhode Island, Lynda Frese has made her home in South Louisiana since1986. The artist has lived and worked in France, Italy and Costa Rica as an artist-in-residence, as well as in her studio on the gulf coast. She teaches photography in the Visual Arts Department at University of Louisiana in Lafayette.

Her artwork presents hybrid worlds combining images and artifacts from ancient sites with zones of wilderness. Her recent book Pacha Mama: earth realm combines photography with egg tempera painting and explores notions of death and rebirth by considering the way Nature teaches us, feeds us, cleans us and mends us through time.

Haze & the Transients: Fun, refreshing, and just a little quirky, Haze & The Transients,www.hazeandthetransients.com, is a female-fronted acoustic band based in Richmond, Virginia. The band features two strong vocalists who alternate lead and harmony roles, backed by acoustic guitars, upright bass, piano, and a stripped-down drum kit. Refusing to be pigeon-holed into a single genre or mood, their music encompasses upbeat folk-pop tunes like Van Morrison’s “Come Running”, the driving alt-country of Kathleen Edwards’ “Back to Me”, the laid-back blues of Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason”, the rollicking swing of April Smith's "Wow and Flutter", the heart-wrenching pathos of Patty Griffin’s “Making Pies”, the percussive mayhem of K.T. Tunstall’s “Black Horse and a Cherry Tree”, and a surprisingly sultry rendition of The Police’s “Roxanne”. Ever-popular original tunes include "Bookstore Crush" and "Margarita Song (for a Republican)". The band focuses on playing truly great songs, some well-known, many obscure, but with a consistent strong emphasis on melody, harmony, and intelligent lyrics. This is a band that is in it for the pure love of music, and they are equally at home playing intimate venues, outdoor festivals, or on their own back porch.

Members: Kirsten Hazler - vocals/guitar, Jolie Harrison - vocals, Chris Ludwig - lead acoustic and electric guitars, John Dacey - electric and upright bass, Johnny Towns

William Ashanti Hobbs: After graduating from Florida A&M University as an undergraduate Graphic Arts major in 2000, Hobbs went on to graduate with a doctorate in Creative Writing from Florida State University in 2004. He now teaches Creative Writing at Florida Memorial University. Hobbs has contributed most recently to the Gale African American Almanac (11th edition). Hobbs is married to Dr. Tameka Hobbs and has two sons, Ashanti and Amiri. The martial arts lover is learning guitar, golf and, as always, is working on various writing projects.

Arthur Pfister is a New Orleans native. A prolific poet and short story writer, he specializes in spoken word and jazz collaborations. He is now teaching in Connecticut, but he enjoys a steady performance travel schedule that allows him to return to the Crescent City. Pfister's most recent book is My Name is New Orleans. His works, and an introduction to a new short fiction collection, will be featured in the Katrina 2012 issue of NOLADIASPORA.

Niyi Osundare is a prolific poet, playwright, and literary scholar. He was born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria. Having served as a professor and also Department Head of English at the University of Ibadan for eight years, Osundare and his family moved to the United States to allow one of his daughters the chance to broaden her education. He has been an English professor at the University of New Orleans since 1997. His most recent poetry collection is entitled City Without People.

Photo by Alexey Sergeev