It's My Debut!

What do Tamela Julia Gordon, Annell López M.A. Nicholson, Vanessa Saunders, Ery Shin, and Sheila Sundar have in common? They all published their first book in 2024! In a conversation facilitated by Christine Kwon, they will discuss their work, their paths to publication, and more.

Free and open to the public; donations gratefully accepted. Donations support One Book One New Orleans' year-round community literacy outreach.

The Andre Callioux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice is accessible to community members who require mobility-related ADA accommodations. Parking near the venue is free, though somewhat limited. The nearest RTA stop is at N. Broad and Columbus.

MEET THE AUTHORS

Tamela Julia Gordon is a writer and community organizer whose work has been featured in the Washington Post, Essence, POPSUGAR, TheGrio, and more. Her 2024 book, Hood Wellness: Tales of Communal Care from People Who Drowned on Dry Land, draws on elements of memoir, self-help, humor, critical race theory, and devastatingly honest storytelling. The book is a deep exploration of people forced to overcome harrowing circumstances with little more than communal support and the will to get well. The book continues to garner critical acclaim, earning starred reviews from The National Library Association’s Booklist and Kirkus Reviews. Tamela splits her time between Harlem and Miami and is currently working on her next book while touring to promote Hood Wellness.

Annell López is the winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and the author of the short story collection I’LL GIVE YOU A REASON (Feminist Press). A Peter Taylor Fellow, her work has appeared in Guernica, American Short Fiction, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Common, Brooklyn Rail, Refinery29 and elsewhere. López received her MFA from the University of New Orleans. She is working on a novel.

M.A. Nicholson is a New Orleans poet, journalist, editor, and educator whose writing appears in Best New Poets 2022, Tilted House Review, Diode Poetry Journal, New Orleans Review, Bear Review, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection Around the Gate was selected for the Hilary Tham Capital Collection. An alumna of Loyola University and a M.F.A. graduate from the University of New Orleans—where she served as Associate Poetry Editor for Bayou Magazine—M.A. was the recipient of the 2021 Andrea-Saunders Gereighty Academy of American Poets Award and is the co-founder of LMNL Arts, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting writers and fostering community through readings, workshops, festivals, anthologies, and more. She spends most of her days teaching creative writing at The Willow School. Connect with M.A. at www.michellenicholsonpoetry.com

Christine Kwon is the author of A Ribbon the Most Perfect Blue, which won the Cowles Poetry Book Prize (Black Lawrence Press 2023). She lives in New Orleans with her family.

Vanessa Saunders is a writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her experimental novel, The Flat Woman, won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize and will be published by Fiction Collective Two and University of Alabama Press. Her writing has appeared in magazines such as Seneca Review, Los Angeles Review, Passages North, and other journals. She currently works as a Professor of Practice at Loyola University New Orleans.

Ery Shin was born in Ames, Iowa, and raised in Manhattan for the first decade of her life, then Seoul for the second. She is the author of Gertrude Stein’s Surrealist Years, a study of Stein’s later experimental gestures and their philosophical implications within Hitler’s Europe. Spring on the Peninsula is her debut novel.

Sheila Sundar is the author of the novel, Habitations. Her writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. She is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Mississippi, and lives in New Orleans.

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