Biography

Mona Lisa Saloy, PhD, author, folklorist, educator, and scholar of Creole culture in articles, documentaries, and poems about Black New Orleans before and after Katrina, is currently Conrad N. Hilton Endowed Professor of English at Dillard University and Louisiana Poet Laureate. Her first book, Red Beans & Ricely Yours, won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Her second, Second Line Home, celebrates New Orleans Black Creole culture.


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Schedule

Discussion
A Conversation Between Louisiana Poet Laureates: Mona Lisa Saloy and John Warner Smith

Presentation
The Louisiana Poet Laureate Presents Louisiana Poets
with Gina Ferrara, David Havird, Rodger Kamenetz, Julie Kane, Dorie LaRue, Cleopatra Mathis, Patrice Melnick, Mona Lisa Saloy, and Martha Serpas

Second Line Home: New Orleans Poems

In this celebration of life in death, Mona Lisa Saloy captures the solemn grief, ongoing struggle, and joyous processions of New Orleans after the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina. She knows the music of the neighborhood spoken and sung in affirmation of what is genuine and hopeful, as well as the despair of destruction that nature and politics heaped upon The Crescent City. Saloy's details of down-home activities and use of local expressions convey the many cultures and voices of this unique place. In this ode to New Orleans there is joy and hope, and a passionate call to join the resilient Second Line.