The Reading Life

This week on The Reading Life: Rosemary James, founder of the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society and co-owner of Faulkner House Books, who’s behind Words and Music: A Literary Feast in New Orleans, and poet Niyi Osundare, whose new book is Random Blues. Susan also reviews Anne Lamott's Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.

This week on The Reading Life, Susan talks with Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club, and photographer David Spielman, whose new book is When Not Performing: New Orleans Musicians.

This week on The Reading Life: Tom Varisco, creator of Jackson Squared, poet Brad Richard, whose new collection is Butcher’s Sugar, and novelist Summer Wood, author of Raising Wrecker.

This week on The Reading Life: Rene Brunet and Jack Stewart, co-authors of There’s One in Your Neighborhood: The Lost Movie Theaters of New Orleans, and Ken Foster, whose new book is I’m a Good Dog: Pit Bulls, America’s Most Beautiful (and Misunderstood) Pet.

This week on The Reading Life: National Ambassador for Children’s Literature Walter Dean Myers, whose new book is All the Right Stuff, and historian Arthé Anthony, who is the author of Picturing Black New Orleans: A Creole Photographer's View of the Early Twentieth Century.

Both of them will be appearing at the Louisiana Book Festival at the State Capitol on October 28.

This week on The Reading Life, New Orleans First Lady Cheryl Landrieu, who'll be hosting the third annual Children's Book Festival October 20 at Latter Library.

This week on The Reading Life: The fabulous mystery novelist Attica Locke, whose new book is the Louisiana-set The Cutting Season, cartoonist Stephan Pastis, author of Pearls Freaks the #*%#: A Freaky Pearls Before Swine Treasury, who speaks to us from the cloakroom of a Greek restaurant in Chicago (really!), and New Orleans bookseller/novelist Michael Allen Zell, author of

On The Reading Life this week: John McCusker, author of Creole Trombone: Kid Ory and the Early Years of Jazz, and award-winning science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who will be the author guest of honor at the CONtraflow II fan conference this weekend.

This week on The Reading Life: poet Sharon Olds, author of Stag's Leap, John Shelton Reed, author of Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s, and Josephine Sacabo and Dalt Wonk, authors of Nocturnes.

This week on The Reading Life: Novelist T. Geronimo Johnson, author of Hold It Til It Hurts, and Madaline Herlong, whose new young adult novel is called Buddy.