Biography

Edgar-winner Julie Smith is the author of twenty mysteries and a YA novel, most of them set in New Orleans and starring one or the other of her detective heroes, a cop named Skip Langdon, and a PI named Talba Wallis. (Both female, both tough and wily.) A long-time New Orleans resident, she's the editor of both New Orleans Noir, and New Orleans Noir II: The Classics. She's also written a couple of dozen short stories and essays. Her novel, New Orleans Mourning, won the Edgar Allan Poe award for best novel.

Schedule

11:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
State Capitol, House Committee Room 4
Discussion
A New Frontier: Electronic Publishing for the Digital Age

12:30 p.m. to 1:15 p.m.
State Capitol, House Committee Room 4
Discussion
New Orleans Noir

1:30 p.m. to 2:15 p.m.
Barnes & Noble Bookselling Tent
Book Signing

New Orleans Noir: The Classics

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each volume comprises stories set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city.

Classic reprints from: James Lee Burke, Armand Lanusse, Grace King, Kate Chopin, O. Henry, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Shirley Ann Grau, John William Corrington, Tom Dent, Ellen Gilchrist, Valerie Martin, O’Neil De Noux, John Biguenet, Poppy Z. Brite, Nevada Barr, Ace Atkins, and Maurice Carlos Ruffin.

From the introduction by Julie Smith:

"A glittering constellation of writers has passed through New Orleans—including Mark Twain, Sherwood Anderson, O. Henry, and even Walt Whitman, to name some of the not-so-usual suspects. Then there are the ones whose sojourns here are better known, the ones on whom we pride ourselves, such as Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Ellen Gilchrist, and James Lee Burke.

It was an anthologist’s feast—just about everybody who came to New Orleans wrote about it. But there were surprises as well . . .

If you’re from New Orleans, the neighborhood theme will resonate like Tibetan temple bells. And yet, surely every city has similar hoods, similar behavior patterns, similar travails—and has had them forever. ‘Indeed,’ wrote Voltaire, ‘history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.'”