June 18, 2023

Archive

A Lyle Saxon Reader

Written by Lyle Saxon and edited by James Michael Warner Second-place winner of the 2019 IndieReader Discovery Award for Fiction! Lyle Chambers Saxon earned his writing chops while reporting for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. As a young man in the early 1920s, Saxon pursued an exhausting newspaper career, writing the stories and character sketches that gave him the skills to produce his later classics of Louisiana literature, such as Fabulous New Orleans, Children of Strangers and Lafitte the Pirate. First...

Up From the Ashes: Rebuilding the Cabildo

Fire is the mortal enemy of the city’s oldest neighborhood, but in the case of the 1988 Cabildo inferno, dedicated preservationists prevailed in the end. Originally published October 2019 in The French Quarter Journal. “I thought it was a joke when they called me.” Robert Cangelosi was in his office at the architectural firm Koch & Wilson when he received a phone call. It was May 12, 1988. And the Cabildo was engulfed in flames. “They called me, and I...

Book Review: Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing

Review originally published July 8, 2018. Jesmyn Ward’s 2017 book, Sing, Unburied, Sing (Scribner) is an engrossing novel of a Mississippi family struggling with issues of race, unemployment and threatened family breakup. It is a difficult book to put down. Set on the Gulf Coast and in the Mississippi Delta, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a story of thirteen-year-old Jojo, his grandfather Pop, grandmother Mam, mother Leonie and toddler sister Kayla. Jojo has a close relationship with Pop, whose years of...

Red beans and rice.

Best Red Beans and Rice in the World

  • June 14, 2023
  • /
  • Food

Originally published by Cultured Oak Press, August 14, 2018. It’s not just for Monday anymore!  New Orleans red beans and rice can be made anytime you have a day-long project from which you can take occasional breaks to stir the pot. The ingredients are easy to find and inexpensive. When I was in college, my buddy Mark and I decided that we were going to treat our friends to a red beans and rice dinner. The only problem: we didn’t know...

A newly installed plaque in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 marks the area where Suzanne Douvillier was reputedly buried. (Photo courtesy French Quarter Journal)

Danseuse du Roi: The Life of Suzanne Vaillandé Douvillier

Originally published in the French Quarter Journal, February 7, 2020. A mysterious dancer in the early 1800s mesmerized crowds and caused consternation by cross-dressing and challenging social norms. She led a life both romantic and tragic, the stuff of which epics are written. Yet, little is known about her birth and upbringing. In the ballet halls of 18th-century Paris, she was declared a child prodigy. Later, she became America’s first female choreographer, and among the first to perform a full...

The Last Forgeron

Originally published by Cultured Oak Press, June 17, 2018. Who created the wonderfully detailed iron balconies in New Orleans? In 1920, the last in a line of French Quarter forgerons put down his hammer. M. Charles Antoine Mangin, Jr., a Creole and fifth-generation iron monger, decided to retire because he could no longer find workers interested in learning this art. Each piece that came from his shop was unique and original. On June 6 that year, Times Picayune reporter Marguerite...