Celebrating the Written Word

Featuring Louisiana Poet Laureate Alison Pelegrin, this event will be held on Saturday, October 12 from 2-4 p.m. at the Hammond Regional Arts Center in conjunction with the Tangipahoa Parish Library’s annual book festival. With support from The Friends of Sims Memorial Library, this special programming at HRAC offers attendees a unique opportunity to engage with one of Louisiana’s celebrated literary figures.

The event will include a reading by Pelegrin, followed by an interactive Q&A session where the audience can explore her inspirations and insights. A book signing by Pelegrin will follow the reading and Q&A session. To complement the event, Jacmel Inn’s owner Alfonso Flores and award-winning mixologist Julia Cervini will serve specially crafted cocktails with literary themes.

Pelegrin is the author of Our Lady of Bewilderment (LSU 2022), Waterlines (LSU 2016) Hurricane Party (Akron 2011) and Big Muddy River of Stars (2007), which won the Akron Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Individual Artist Grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and an ATLAS Grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, The Bennington Review, and elsewhere, and several are available as free printable broadsides at Broadsided Press.

With the exception of the three years, she left to earn an MFA degree in poetry at the University of Arkansas, Alison is a lifelong resident of Louisiana (Covington by way of Gretna). She and her husband Bryan Davidson have two grown children and too many animals, including a klutzy goofball rescue dog named Otis. Alison is Writer-in-Residence at Southeastern Louisiana University where she has taught English for more than twenty years.

For more information, visit Pelegrin’s website.

Celebrating the Written Word is free and open to the public.