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New Video: Elizabeth Underwood & Language as Art |
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Monday, 11 September 2006 |
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Today's video is the first from our AuthorViews Summer Tour to Austin in June. That's where we caught up with New Orleans artist Elizabeth Underwood at her studio in the IDEA building -- a renovated bread factory that has become a home to many who work in the creative arts.
In today's 2-minute video, Underwood talks about her use of language in art. An early and ardent blogger (see her New Orleans Gypsy blog), Underwood weaves words into her work, quite literally. The day we filmed, she was writing out in longhand the names of the dead from Hurricane Katrina.
Today, as the names of the dead from the World Trade Center attack are read aloud in New York and other cities around the world, we acknowledge the power of the ceremony and mourn the loss of innocents.
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New Video: Linda Salisbury & The Wild Women of Lake Anna |
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Friday, 08 September 2006 |
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Linda Salisbury references her own life to create The Wild Women of Lake Anna, the award-winning author's fourth book and the first in the Bailey Fish line of young adult novels. Salisbury and her husband live only a mile away from the book's main setting, Lake Anna.
Salisbury bases many of her characters on family and friends. In this 2-minute video, filmed at the 2006 Virginia Festival of the Book, she explains a particularly unique part of her family history that inspired one of the "wild women" of the book’s title.
The Wild Women of Lake Anna is a family affair in other ways, too. Salisbury's son, Christopher Grotke, did the illustrations for the book.
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New Video: Christopher David Murphy & In Winter's Time |
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Wednesday, 06 September 2006 |
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Today, we continue our series of authors from the 2006 Virginia Festival of the Book with Christopher David Murphy.
Murphy's In Winter's Time is the story of Conner James, who seemingly has the perfect life. The walls of his utopia crumble, however, when his father becomes terminally ill and a family secret comes to light. James is forced to re-evaluate the relationships throughout his life, all the way back to idyllic childhood.
Murphy talks about Winter's message in this 2-minute video, and explains his own philosophies of life's ups and downs and the lessons we learn about ourselves in the process.
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New Video: Linda Rainwater & The Second Milagro |
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Tuesday, 05 September 2006 |
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Linda Rainwater loves mysteries, travel, and Court TV. Add these together and you've got some of the inspiration for her first novel, The Second Milagro.
It's the fictional tale of Patricia Morelos and her adventurous son, who leaves Washington, D.C., and heads to Mexico. The 17-year-old runs off without his mother's permission to assist in rescue efforts at a disastrous silver mine cave-in. When Morelos' son is kidnapped, she soon realizes she will have to rescue him herself -- with no help from the authorities.
In this 2-minute video from the 2006 Virginia Festival of the Book, Rainwater talks about how she uses personal experience to build credibile scenes in the novel.
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New Video: Rexanne Becnel & The Payback Club |
We filmed Rexanne Becnel, an award-winning romance novelist, in her hometown of New Orleans at the start of our 2006 AuthorViews Summer Tour.
She told us about her latest novel, The Payback Club, which is also set in the Crescent City. It's the story of two women who form a friendship after getting dumped. Together, they hatch a plan to help each other get revenge on their exes.
In this 2-minute video, Becnel highlights some of her favorite scenes from the book, including the one where one of the characters discovers just how far her ex-husband will go to win the approval of his new, younger bride.
Becnel also reveals the book's intended message, which is quite different from what the title hints at.
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New Video: James Newton at the NOLA Bookfair |
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Wednesday, 30 August 2006 |
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Today's video is a holdover from the New Orleans Bookfair in 2005 and a new segment in our series called The Katrina Tapes. Filmed just days after a mandatory evacuation order was lifted, the series contains the poignant reactions of New Orleans' offbeat literary community to the destruction of their hometown.
Today's 2-minute segment features school teacher James Newton, whose parents met and married in New Orleans. Wanting to contribute directly to the recovery, Jim sought out a teaching position in the city.
In an update to this piece, Jim tells us that his efforts to become a teacher in New Orleans were rebuffed by the Louisiana Department of Education, which was still in shock and not reponding very well in those days. So Jim took a position with the heavily-damaged Jackson County, Mississippi, school district, which welcomed him with open arms.
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No Video: The Unknown Author |
It is one year today since Hurricane Katrina pushed half the Gulf of Mexico on shore. We at AuthorViews are unable to bring you Unknown Author's video.
Unknown Author couldn't make the New Orleans Bookfair last October because she passed in the flood waters. She couldn't attend the Virginia Festival of the Book, or catch our film crew in Santa Fe this summer, because she got away without doing an interview -- one we can't make up.
"Everyone is talented, original, and has something important to say," says Brenda Ueland, and we agree. Some people never got a chance to say it. That's a shame. Hurricane Katrina took some 1900 souls away from us, and we are smaller for it.
This disaster has inspired us at AuthorViews to up the ante. We filmed for free hoping some day publishers would pay us to do it. Now we refuse to let go. We want to film all authors, everywhere, and we resent losing even one.
Today, as we memorialize those who lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina, we also commit ourselves to try to help every author have their say before something takes them away. We thank you supporting this effort.
STEVE O'KEEFE
President, AuthorViews, Inc.
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What Is New Orleans? Unforgettable. |
I went back to New Orleans a week after Katrina to get my video camera, among other things, but I couldn't shoot. My staff will tell you I don't know how to work the camera. Truth is, I had it locked and loaded but couldn't pull the trigger. I didn't want to remember New Orleans that way.
All my computer records and insurance photos from that time were wiped out, too, during the evacuation. My computer can forget those days, not me.
Katrina provided the perfect opportunity to get out of New Orleans. It's not an easy place to live and it's not a good place to do business. But I couldn't let her go. New Orleans has a soul that is very deep and very old. After the hurricane, everyone was more thoughtful, helpful, and humble.
New Orleans is one of North America's oldest cities, the kind of sacred place that any European or Asian government would spend a fortune to protect. Yet the United States Government is basically ready to write this city off and replace it with housing and jobs elsewhere, as if everything were interchangeable.
But New Orleans is unique. No one who has lived there, few who have visited, can ever forget her. Many of us wish we could lose the whole past year; we can't. It's part of New Orleans like yellowjack and yankees.
New Orleans deserves levees of steel, not mud, so she can lay safely behind them and heal. Please don't let her go, America -- please don't let her go.
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New Video: Elizabeth Underwood - Remembering Katrina |
In our series, "The Katrina Tapes," we brought you a gripping video of New Orleans artist Elizabeth Underwood just hours after she had returned from viewing the devastation to her home and her life's work.
In today's 2-minute video, we caught up with Underwood in Austin, Texas -- her temporary home -- where she was preparing a Katrina memorial for a group show at The Dougherty Arts Center. I watched as Underwood wrote by hand all the names of those who died in Hurricane Katrina. Listen to how she used the list in her memorial installation.
In a ritual at the Dougherty Arts Center tomorrow, August 29, beginning at 9:30 a.m., Underwood and volunteers will recite all 1900 names. Her memorial service is just one of the thousands of Katrina anniversary events being held throughout the world.
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New Video: A Date with Filmmaker David White |
AuthorViews turned around the camera on filmmaker David S. White at the 2005 New Orleans Bookfair. Like the other people in our "Katrina Tapes" collection, David had just returned to the city and has that Post-Traumatic look most of us carried that day.
Imagine being a budding filmmaker, working for years and finally getting a film accepted for viewing at a major film festival, then having all that wash away in front of your eyes. It's unbelievable the amount of trauma Katrina wrought -- even for those whose possessions were not drowned under eight feet of toxic saltwater.
Today, David S. White stands at the brink of a dream fulfilled. On Thursday, August 31, 2006 -- weather permitting -- his latest film, Sex Between Us, will debut at the Howlin' Wolf club in New Orleans. Again, weather permitting, his short film, The Date, will premiere at the New Orleans Film Festival in October.
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New Video: Verita Thompson on Humphrey Bogart |
We're very pleased introduce you to the delightful Verita Thompson, author of the memoir Bogie & Me, who shares her recollections about life with film star Humphrey Bogart.
Thompson was Bogie's hairdresser and lover for more than a decade. She is joined here by screenwriter Dean M. Shapiro, who is working on a screenplay based on the book. This video was filmed in New Orleans, where Ms. Thompson and Mr. Shapiro reside.
In this 2-minute video, Ms. Thompson tells how she and Bogart destroyed an antique bed at a 4-star hotel -- along with other surprising anecdotes about one of the greatest actors in the history of moving pictures.
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New Video: Joshua Clark & Louisiana in Words |
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Wednesday, 23 August 2006 |
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Joshua Clark is becoming a great collector of Louisiana lore. Editor and publisher of the seminal anthology, French Quarter Fiction, Josh returns to AuthorViews this week to preview his forthcoming collection, Louisiana in Words.
On my first trip back to New Orleans after Katrina, the city was under mandatory evacuation orders and largely deserted except for National Guard troops and relief workers. Rolling down Bourbon Street on my way out of town, who should I see but Josh Clark, tape recorder in hand, gathering as much first-hand testimony as his batteries would permit.
Louisiana in Words is not a transcript of those observations -- a treasure trove that chronicler Clark will no doubt publish some day. Rather, the book contains extremely short contributions from people in all walks of life -- well-known writers to unknown farmers -- from all over the Great State of Louisiana.
In this 2-minute video, filmed in the Bywater District of New Orleans, the mellifluous Mr. Clark reveals the origins of Louisiana in Words, and gives a sneak preview of its contents.
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New Video: Robert Smallwood & The Five People You Meet in Hell |
Robert Smallwood looks like any local you'd see strolling through New Orleans' French Quarter on a hot summer day, sporting a guayabera shirt and Panama hat.
But the French Quarter sights that Smallwood recounts in The Five People You Meet in Hell are anything but typical. The book is a chronological account of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath and his personal experiences during that time.
On the other hand, many of the books' stories are the kind that take place "only in New Orleans." In this 2-minute video clip, filmed in New Orleans in June 2006, Smallwood tell us about swapping a "disembodied" finger for a six-pack of beer.
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