Book Talks
10 a.m. to 10:45 a.m.
State Library of Louisiana, Capitol View Room
Hardlines: Rough South Poetry
Jack B. Bedell, Ashley Mace Havird, David Havird, Sheryl St. Germain, and William Wright

Noon to 12:45 p.m.
State Library of Louisiana, Capitol View Room
Down to the Dark River: Contemporary Poems About the Mississippi River
Jack Bedell, Darrell Bourque, Sheryl St. Germain, and Malaika Favorite

12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m.
State Capitol, Senate Committee Room F
Autobiography through Poetry and Prose
David Armand

1 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
State Capitol, House Committee Room 1
Poetry: A Survivor’s Guide
Mark Yakich

1 p.m. to 1:45 p.m.
State Library of Louisiana, Capitol View Room
A Conversation with David Kirby
David Kirby with Peter Cooley, moderator
David Kirby’s and Peter Cooley’s appearance made possible in part by Louisiana Cultural Vistas, the magazine of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.

11 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.
State Library of Louisiana, Capitol View Room
Louisiana Poets, Part I
Malaika Favorite, Ascension
Dixon Hearne, Plainspeak: New & Selected Poems
Alison Pelegrin, Waterlines: Poems
with Peter Cooley, moderator
Peter Cooley’s appearance made possible in part by Louisiana Cultural Vistas, the magazine of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.

2:45 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
State Library of Louisiana, Capitol View Room
Louisiana Poets, Part II
Carolyn Hembree, Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine and Other Ways to Escape a Plague
Diane Marquart Moore, A Slow Moving Stream
John Warner Smith, Soul Be A Witness
with Peter Cooley, moderator
Peter Cooley’s appearance made possible in part by Louisiana Cultural Vistas, the magazine of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.

3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Capitol Park Welcome Center, Meeting Room
WordPlay's Freshhhh Heat Teen Open Mic and Poetry Slam

Freshhhh Heat is a monthly open mic and poetry slam put on by Forward Arts' WordPlay Writing Project for teens ages 13 to 19. The poetry slam is a competition where poets are judged on a scale from zero to 10 on the merit of the writing and performance of their original works. The open mic is an opportunity for poets to perform in a noncompetitive format.

4 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Capitol Park Museum, First Floor
Celebrating the Gift of Les Cenelles in French Word and Song
Les Cenelles (published New Orleans 1845) is one of the most important publications of both Franco-Louisiana and Afro-American history.  Seventeen Louisiana poets, all French-speaking free men of color, contributed to the first anthology of African-American poetry in the history of the United States. Thanks to a grant by the Haynie Family Foundation, an original copy, one of five remaining today, will be housed at the State Library of Louisiana. This celebration will feature Louisiana French immersion students from around the state reading from Les Cenelles as well as their own original poems, accompanied by Zachary Richard, Louisiana’s first French Language Poet Laureate, and Louisiana French language poets Jean Arceneaux, Kirby Jambon, and Brenda Mounier and will feature David Torkanowsky on piano.
This program made possible in part by Louisiana Cultural Vistas, the magazine of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.