A strong week for N.O. book events

Clockwise from top left: Lorrie Moore, Jesmyn Ward, Ralph Angel, Andy Young, Talk That Music Talk, and Francisco Goldman

Lorrie Moore kicks of a strong week of literary events in New Orleans with a reading at 7 p.m. tonight, Monday, March 2, in the Lavin-Bernick Student Center on Tulane University’s campus. Moore is the author of five collections of short stories and two novels. Her most recent collection, Bark, was nominated for the 2014 Story Prize. Her novel, A Gate at the Stairs, was shortlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction and for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She has received numerous honors for her work. Author Zachary Lazar will moderate a Q&A after her reading. Read the Paris Review interview with Moore.

The 1718 reading series, organized by students at Tulane and Loyola, will host National Book Award-winner and Tulane faculty member Jesmyn Ward for a reading at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 3, at the Columns Hotel (3811 St. Charles Ave.). Ward won the 2011 NBA for her novel Salvage the Bones and is the author most recently of a memoir, Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Ward joined the Tulane faculty last fall. She commutes from her hometown, DeLisle, Mississippi. Read an interview with her in Guernica.

The University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop will host poets Ralph Angel and Andy Youngat 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 4, in room 140 of the Liberal Arts Building on UNO’s Lakeside Campus (map). Angel’s latest collection, Your Moon, won the 2013 Green Rose Poetry Prize. Exceptions and Melancholies: Poems 1986 – 2006 received the 2007 PEN U.S.A. Poetry Award, and his Neither World won the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. He has also published an award-winning translation of Federico García Lorca’s work, Poema del cante jondo/Poem of the Deep Song. Andy Young’s first collection, All Night It Is Morning, was recently released by Lavender Ink. She is the co-founder and co-editor with her husband Khaled Hegazzi of Meena Magazine, a bilingual literary journal based in New Orleans and Alexandria, Egypt. She teaches at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts. Read and listen to some of Angel’s work at the Poetry Foundation and read an interview with Young at Room 220.

Francisco Goldman will present his newest book, The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle, with a reading at 5 p.m. on Friday, March 6, in the Stone Auditorium of the Woldenberg Art Center on Tulane’s campus. Goldman is the author of five novels and one book of nonfiction. His previous novel, Say Her Name, won the 2011 Prix Femina Etranger. The Long Night of White Chickens won the American Academy’s Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. The Divine Husband was a finalist for The Believer Book Award. The Art of Political Murder won The Index on Censorship T.R. Fyvel Book Award and The WOLA/Duke Human Rights Book Award. Read a review of The Interior Circuit by New Orleans writer Jason Berry at the Daily Beast and an interview with Goldman at the Paris Review Daily.

Finally, the Black Men of Labor Social Aid and Pleasure Club will celebrate the publication of the Neighborhood Story Project‘s most recent release, Talk That Music Talk, with a concert at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 6, at Sweet Lorraine‘s (1931 St. Claude Ave.). Performers and dancers will include the Treme Brass Band and other groups featured in the book, which was co-edited by Rachel Breunlin and Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes and charts the ways in which New Orleans musical traditions have been passed down through generations. Read an excerpt from the book at Room 220. Barnes and Breunlin will also be presenting Talk That Music Talk with a more low-key event at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, March 3, at Octavia Books (513 Octavia St.).

This article was originally posted by Press Street: Room 220, a NolaVie content partner.