Kayla Hardy’s The Quarter Queen (Ballantine Books, 2026) is a gripping, cinematic tale honoring the complexity and strength of mother-daughter relationships, and the breadth and beauty of the religious practice of Voodoo in antebellum New Orleans. Readers are immersed in the perilous, vibrant quarters of the slave-owning city, where languages and cultures blend, and competing […]
“When We Were Murderous Time-Traveling Women” by Ellen Morris Prewitt
September 22, 2026 by Leave a Comment
One of the aspects I love most about Southern literature is its deep sense of place. This novel is no different. New Orleans was a perfectly chosen setting for this genre-bending tale. Like the city itself, with its legends, ghosts, history, and beliefs, When We Were Murderous Time-Traveling Women by Ellen Morris Prewitt draws on elements of […]
“A Gathering Place” by Vicki Salloum
June 15, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Mississippi native and resident of New Orleans, Vicki Salloum has magically woven her Lebanese Catholic family’s colorful roots and traditions into a wonderful piece of literary fiction in her novel The Gathering Place (Silent Clamor Press 2025). Ordered by the Mother of God to start a business—an actual gathering place in post-Katrina New Orleans where […]
June Read of the Month: “NOLA Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy” by Brooke Champagne
June 4, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Part of the story behind Brooke Champagne’s astonishingly good essay collection, NOLA Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy (UGa Press 2024) is a dog. Well, not just Nola herself, the “brindled, emaciated pit-boxer” that Champagne and her husband adopted after Hurricane Katrina, but moreso her particular expression, born of jealousy and/or inadequacy, when […]
Gnostic Vibes: Revisiting Walker Percy’s “Love in the Ruins” (Part I)
October 10, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Essay by Louis Gallo All Percy quotations from Walker Percy, Love In The Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1971), first edition/first printing. The protagonist of Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins, the “Bad Catholic” of the novel’s subtitle, is a […]
“Rear View,” An Essay by Louis Gallo
July 24, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Essay by Louis Gallo A history with scandalous cameo personalities* While away in grad school I sent weekly book reviews to Vieux Carre Courier, an alternative, low-budget newspaper owned by lawyer Jim Derbes and his wife, Ginny. Jim was an old friend from my early teen years. We had met, weirdly enough, over the forty […]