The Reading Life

This week on The Reading Life, New Orleans First Lady Cheryl Landrieu, who'll be hosting the third annual Children's Book Festival October 20 at Latter Library.

This week on The Reading Life: The fabulous mystery novelist Attica Locke, whose new book is the Louisiana-set The Cutting Season, cartoonist Stephan Pastis, author of Pearls Freaks the #*%#: A Freaky Pearls Before Swine Treasury, who speaks to us from the cloakroom of a Greek restaurant in Chicago (really!), and New Orleans bookseller/novelist Michael Allen Zell, author of

On The Reading Life this week: John McCusker, author of Creole Trombone: Kid Ory and the Early Years of Jazz, and award-winning science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who will be the author guest of honor at the CONtraflow II fan conference this weekend.

This week on The Reading Life: poet Sharon Olds, author of Stag's Leap, John Shelton Reed, author of Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s, and Josephine Sacabo and Dalt Wonk, authors of Nocturnes.

This week on The Reading Life: Novelist T. Geronimo Johnson, author of Hold It Til It Hurts, and Madaline Herlong, whose new young adult novel is called Buddy.

This week on The Reading Life: Dr. Michael Sartisky, president and executive director of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, and editor, with J. Richard Gruber and John Kemp, of the gorgeous new book, A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana.

Then we talk with poet Carolyn Hembree, whose new collection is called Skinny.

This week on The Reading Life: Tal McThenia and Margaret Dunbar Cutright, authors of  A Case for Solomon: Bobby Dunbar and the Kidnapping That Haunted a Nation.

And then we talk with Maureen O’Dwyer, who facilitates the Southern Literature reading group at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

This week on The Reading Life: Sharon Carter Sheridan and Jarvis DeBerry of the Poems and Pink Ribbons writing workshop for breast cancer survivors and those living with breast cancer.

Also, Susan welcomes Cornell Landry, whose new book is The Tiger and the Honey Badger Take on the Zoo; and Susan has some thoughts on reading about New Orleans after Katrina.

This week on The Reading Life: Sally Kenney, the Newcomb College Endowed Chair, Executive Director of the Newcomb College Institute, professor of political science at Tulane University, and the author of Gender and Justice: Why Women in the Judiciary Really Matter.

This week on The Reading Life: Daniel Wolff, author of The Fight For Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back, and Tom Wooten, author of We Shall Not be Moved: Rebuilding Home in the Wake of Katrina.

And we'll celebrate Julia Child's 100th birthday in books!