Naturally New Orleans

How does New Orleans shape the literary work of authors born or raised here? In this multi-disciplinary conversation moderated by Maurice Carlos Ruffin, four writers explore that question. Join Larry Bagneris (memoir), Ambata Kazi (novel), Karisma Price (poetry), and Blake Sanz (short story) as they discuss the influence of this city on their work.

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

The Andre Cailloux 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 PANELISTS

A native New Orleanian, Larry Bagneris began his civil rights activism as a student at St. Augustine High School. He graduated from Xavier University of Louisiana and moved to Houston, Texas, where he was a two-term president of the city’s Gay Political Caucus, chairperson of Gay Pride week, and, in 1979, founder of Houston’s Gay Pride parade. Bagneris returned to New Orleans in the 1990s and became a lobbyist for the NO/AIDS Task Force. He served four mayoral administrations as executive director of New Orleans’s Human Relations Commission before retiring in 2018. He is the author of "Call Me Larry."

Ambata Kazi is a writer and editor born and raised in New Orleans with a long lineage in the city. She received a Master of Arts in English and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans. Her fiction writing has been featured in Carve, Torch Literary Arts, Muslim American Writers at Home, CRAFT, midnight & indigo, and other publications. Her first novel, Far Away from Here, published with SparkPress in August 2025. She is the senior editor at Sapelo Square, an online multidisciplinary journal that centers Black Muslim histories and contemporary realities Her website is ambatakazi.com.

A native New Orleanian, Karisma Price is an assistant professor of English at Tulane University. A poet and screenwriter, she is the author of I'm Always So Serious (Sarabande Books, 2023) which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice Pick. Her work has appeared in publications including Poetry, Indiana Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, and elsewhere. She is a 2025 Whiting Award Winner in Poetry, a Cave Canem Fellow, a 2023 winner of the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review, and was awarded the 2020 J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize from the Poetry Foundation. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University.

Blake Sanz is the author of The Boundaries of Their Dwelling (U. Iowa Press, 2021), chosen by Brandon Taylor as the winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award. His work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Ecotone, The Missouri Review, Joyland, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. Former fiction editor of The Florida Review, he has received fellowships and scholarships from the Sozopol Fiction Seminars, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Jentel Artist Residency, and other literary organizations.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of National Bestseller, The American Daughters, as well as The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, a One Book One New Orleans selection, which was longlisted for the Story Prize. His debut, We Cast a Shadow, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize. All three books were New York Times Editor’s Choice selections. Ruffin is the winner of the Iowa Review Award in fiction and the Louisiana Writer Award. Ruffin is an associate professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University.

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