Louisiana authors range from those with a southern tradition to the French influences of New Orleans

Louisiana boosts some of the most critically acclaimed writers in American Literature. From authors born there, like Truman Capote, to those, such as William Faulkner, impacted by its rich character in a relatively short period of time.  Tennessee Williams who grew up in Mississippi and Missouri,  found a wealth of material to write about in New Orleans  Once a successful playwright, Williams adopted the state and divided his time between New York and Louisiana. 

Katherine Anne Porter called Baton Rouge home in her younger years, and Robert Penn Warren taught at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.  The state also boasts contemporary writers like Robert Olen Butler.  Though not a southern writer, Butler writes of life in Louisiana from a Vietnamese's point of view in the Pulitzer Prize award winning A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. 

Kate Chopin

... Kate married Oscar Chopin of New Orleans, a Creole cotton broker, and quite soon after her marriage and subsequent move to New Orleans, Louisiana, she gave ...

John Kennedy Toole

... in December, 1937. He earned his master's degree at Columbia University and taught at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. ...

Robert Penn Warren

... mater Vanderbilt. He taught there for three years before taking another position at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge.  ...

Katherine Anne Porter

Katherine Anne Porter was born in Indian Creek, Texas, in 1890. She grew up living in both Texas and Louisiana. ...

Walker Percy's
The Moviegoer

... sweetness and cruelty, God why do I stay here? In Louisiana people still stop and help strangers. Better to live in New York where life ...

Truman Capote

... was born in New Orleans in 1924 to a troubled family....

William Faulkner

... followed Anderson to New Orleans, where he began to write Soliders Pay, but he did not settle down there. 

Shirley Grau

... grew up in an integrated neighborhood in uptown New Orleans ...  She attended the Sophie Newcomb College — Tulane's women's division with plans to pursue a writing career.  .. She lives in New Orleans ... with her four children.

Bev Marshall

...holds degrees from Southeastern Louisiana University.  ...serves on the Board of Directors for the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival, is a member of the St. Tammany Writers Group and the co-founder of the Southeastern Louisiana University Writers Group.   She is also the Writer-in-Residence at Southeastern Louisiana University. Marshall lives with her husband in Ponchatoula, Louisiana.

Ernest Gaines

... was born in 1933 on the River Lake plantation in Pointe Coupée Parish, Louisiana, a hamlet in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, which is the setting of the majority of his fictional work.  ...holds the title of Writer-in-Residence at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette.

Michael Lee West

...was born in Lake Providence, Lousiana...

 

Did you know? 

~Louisiana is the only state in the union that does not have counties. Its political subdivisions are called parishes.

~Louisiana was named in honor of King Louis XIV.

~Metairie is home to the longest bridge over water in the world, the Lake Pontchartrain causeway. The causeway connects Metairie with St. Tammany Parish on the North Shore. The causeway is 24 miles long.

~Louisiana is the only state that still refers to the Napoleonic Code in its state law.