Biography

David Armand teaches at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he also serves as associate editor for Louisiana Literature Press. In 2010, his first novel, The Pugilist's Wife, was published by Texas Review Press. He has since published two more novels and a collection of poetry. His memoir, My Mother's House, was published in March 2016. David is working on his sixth book, The Lord's Acre, as well as a second memoir.

Schedule

12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m.
State Capitol, Senate Committee Room F
Book Talk
Autobiography Through Poetry and Prose

1:15 p.m. to 2 p.m.
Barnes & Noble Bookselling Tent
Book Signing

My Mother's House: A Memoir

Set in the bucolic, yet brutal South of his youth, My Mother’s House is a memoir by novelist David Armand. It recounts the young author’s early memories of being born to a schizophrenic mother, then given up for adoption, only to be raised in a home with an alcoholic and abusive step-father. In this sharply-remembered portrait of the people and places that shaped him, Armand paints his seemingly negative experiences with a sympathetic and understanding brush. As the reader follows Armand through his childhood and later into adult life—when he is reunited with his mother after she makes a failed suicide attempt—a surprisingly new world of hope and possibility is rendered, despite the overwhelming challenges of this reunion.

"[Armand's] writing is reminiscent of Hemingway: straightforward descriptions of manly action punctuated by laconic dialogue."--New York Journal of Books

"Armand writes in a comfortingly familiar literary voice that blends Ernest Hemingway’s laconic but rhythmically complicated explorations of the mysteries of masculinity with William Faulkner’s more fabulist, Southern Gothic twang. It’s a heady, seductively intoxicating combination."--Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Deep Wood: Poems

Acclaimed novelist David Armand's first collection of poetry, The Deep Woods, contains fifteen poems that are at once deceptively simple, clear and colloquial, yet dense with meaning and universal significance. Drawing upon everyday incidents, Armand fashions poems of great lyrical beauty and potent symbolism that remind his readers of the importance of memory and of a shared language.