The Reading Life With Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich And Omar El Akkad

By Susan Larson

Published May 16, 2017 at 1:30 PM CDT

Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich and Omar El Akkad

This week on The Reading Life: Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body: A Murder, A Memoir, describes reconstructing the 1992 murder of 8 year-old Jeremy Guillory by Ricky Langley in Iowa, LA, and interweaving it with her own personal history. Journalist-turned-novelist Omar El Akkad, author of American War, talks about his choice of Louisiana as a setting for his vision of a second American Civil War in 2074.

**Lagniappe Audio**

trl_051617_alexandria_marzanolesnevich_outtake_finishing_the_book.mp3

Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich talks about finishing her book.

trl_051617_omarelakkad_outtake_what_was_like_to_finish.mp3

Omar El Akkad discusses about how it felt to finish "American War."

Susan Larson

The Reading Life in 2010, Susan Larson was the book editor for The New Orleans Times-Picayune from 1988-2009. She has served on the boards of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival and the New Orleans Public Library. She is the founder of the New Orleans chapter of the Women's National Book Association, which presents the annual Diana Pinckley Prizes for Crime Fiction.. In 2007, she received the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities lifetime achievement award for her contributions to the literary community. She is also the author of The Booklover's Guide to New Orleans. If you run into her in a local bookstore or library, she'll be happy to suggest something you should read. She thinks New Orleans is the best literary town in the world, and she reads about a book a day.

See stories by Susan Larson