Joshua Clark Reading Launches Tom Dent Congo Square Lecture Series
New Orleans, LA -The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation’s Tom Dent Congo Square Lecture Series begins its 2008 season on March 4 with Joshua Clark, who will read from his acclaimed memoir, “Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life In It’s Disaster Zone.” The presentation will be from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Jazz & Heritage Gallery, located in the Foundation’s offices at 1205 North Rampart Street. The event is free and open to the public.
Called a combat memoir, a survival tale, a love story between all of us and our city, “Heart Like Water” is now a finalist for the 2007 National Book Critics Circle award. Clark will read from and discuss his work, including the oral histories, interviews and anecdotes that run though his own narrative of the storm and its ten-week aftermath. He will also discuss what is happening now with the people featured in the book, and what they can teach us about the future. “Heart Like Water” is about the civility that remains when civilization is gone, the humor and, most of all, the hope.
The book has been praised by author Andrei Codrescu as “the great non-fiction New Orleans novel.”
Clark, editor of Light of New Orleans publishing company, never left New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. He banded together with fellow holdouts in the French Quarter, pooling resources and volunteering energy in an effort to save the city they loved. When Katrina hit, Clark, a key correspondent for National Public Radio during the storm, immediately began to record hundreds of hours of conversations with its victims, not only in the city but throughout the Gulf: the devastated poor and rich alike; rescue workers from around the country; reporters; local characters who could exist nowhere else but New Orleans; politicians; the woman Clark loved, in a relationship ravaged by the storm. Their voices resound throughout this memoir of a unique and little-known moment of anarchy and chaos, of heartbreaking kindness and incomprehensible anguish, of mercy and madness as only America could deliver it.
Paying homage to the emotional power of Joan Didion, the journalistic authority of Norman Mailer, and the gonzo irreverence of Tom Wolfe, Joshua Clark takes us through the experiences of loss and renewal, resilience and hope, in a city unlike any other. With lyrical sympathy, humility, and humor, Heart Like Water marks an astonishing and important national debut.
Future events in the Tom Dent Congo Square Lecture Series include:
April 1: Tom Sancton reads from “Song For My Fathers,” his book about growing up with and learning to play music from the jazz elders at Preservation Hall. A panel discussion on “Preservation Hall Memories” will follow. 7 p.m., free
May 13: Dr. Michael White presents on “Teaching Kids Life Lessons Through Jazz.” A performance featuring White and the Hot 8 Brass Band will follow. 7 p.m., free.
June 10: Author Bruce Spizer presents on “The Beatles Are Coming: The Birth of Beatlemania in America.” 7 p.m., free.
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, Inc. is the nonprofit organization that owns the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival presented by Shell, and uses the proceeds to fund year-round community development activities in the areas of education, economic development and cultural programming. Programs and assets of the foundation include: radio station WWOZ 90.7-FM; the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation Archive; the Don Jamison Heritage School of Music; the Tom Dent Congo Square Lecture Series; the Jazz Journey concert series; the Community Partnership Grants program; the Raisin’ the Roof housing initiative; and the S.E.E.D. micro-loan program for entrepreneurs. The foundation also produces community events such as the Crescent City Blues Festival, Fiesta Latina, the Congo Square Rhythms Festival, the Louisiana Cajun-Zydeco Festival, the Down By the Riverside Thanksgiving concert and others.
For more information, please call the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation at (504) 558-6100, or visit jazzandheritage.org 
For the most recent info on this event and others,
check our New Orleans Special Event Calendar.
