The Book ClubDrawing upon the overwhelmingly positive responses to communal reading endeavors at national, regional and local levels, the Louisiana Book Festival is pleased to continue as part of this year’s events the Louisiana Book Festival Book Club, an annual special event that invites participants to read a common text that explores key elements of Louisiana’s rich literature, history, and heritage and, in book club fashion, to discuss that text as a group as part of the state’s annual literary celebration. The 2009 Louisiana Book Festival Book Club selection is Same Place, Same Things, the short story collection by Tim Gautreaux, our 2009 Louisiana Writer Award recipient.
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Back by popular demand, our book club discussion leader again this year will be the esteemed Dr. Gary Richards, with whom many are familiar as a former facilitator for numerous Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities RELIC reading and discussion groups and Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival breakfast book discussion leader. Dr. Gary Richards is the author of Lovers and Beloveds: Sexual Otherness in Southern Fiction, 1936-1961 as well as numerous articles on twentieth- and twenty-first-century southern fiction and drama. He currently teaches U.S. and southern literature and culture, sexuality studies, and literary theory at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.