Author Event! Teresa Tumminello, Constance Adler and Allison Alsup

Three local authors - Constance Adler, Allison Alsup and Teresa Tumminello Brader – will discuss their new books at 7 p.m., Thursday, June 5, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie.

This event is free of charge and open to the public. Registration is not required.

Sight Unseen by Constance Adler

Constance Adler's novel Sight Unseen follows three innocents in New Orleans: Claire, a photographer; her husband Simon, who runs a plant nursery; and their dog Hank, the middleman. In their new home, Claire seeks solace from her own bleak childhood and feeds her hungry eyes on the gorgeous green life, rising from this strange city, while Simon digs into the rich alluvial soil, coaxing young shoots from the mud. The story opens in May 1995, on the night of a terrific flood, a "rain event" that sets their home afloat. So many plans, so much water. Amidst this ruin, the couple also grapples with conflicting desires around parenthood. In their foundering attempts to have a child, their marriage is tested by the deeper desolation exposed in the fallout from this immense loss. 

Constance Adler is the author of the memoir My Bayou, New Orleans Through the Eyes of a Lover (Michigan State University Press) and her stories have appeared in Oxford American, Utne Reader, Garden & Gun Magazine, River Teeth Journal, Blackbird, Peauxdunque Review, and LMNL Anthology, among others. A graduate of Smith College, she holds an MA in Creative Writing from Hollins University. A

Foreign Seed by Allison Alsup

China, June 1918. When the explorer Frank Meyer suddenly disappears from a ferry on the Yangtze River, American Vice-Consul Samuel Sokobin is tasked with finding the missing man. By the time Sokobin receives the case, four days have passed since Meyer was last seen on the vast river. With no clues to guide his search and fearing failure in his new post as a man of rank, Sokobin heads upriver with Mr. Lin, a Chinese interpreter he’s never met. The investigation soon turns deeply personal for Sokobin, who can’t help but conflate Meyer’s fate with that of his own daring younger brother—a fighter pilot gone MIA in the world war. 

Allison Alsup has won multiple contests and recognitions, including the 2014 O. Henry Prize Stories, Best Food Writing 2015, and the UK’S 2018 Manchester Fiction Prize shortlist. She is the co-founder of the non-profit New Orleans Writers Workshop, where, in addition to teaching, Allison mentors fellow writers one-on-one to develop their stories. Foreign Seed is her first novel.

Secret Keepers by Teresa Tumminello Brader

In Teresa Tumminello Brader’ s follow-up to her New Orleans memoir, Letting In Air and Light, Secret Keepers expands the question of whether we can ever truly know our loved ones. This collection of character-driven short stories delves intimately into romantic and family relationships— some fractured, some fragile, all troubled by mysteries for which there may be no clear answers. One woman convinces herself of a husband’s affair that may or may not be imagined; other families struggle to rebuild amidst the wreckage of hurricanes and severed family ties.

Teresa Tumminello Brader is a New Orleanian, spurred on to writing by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She has a bachelor of arts in English from Marquette University, her four years in Milwaukee the only time she lived away from the city of her birth. Her short stories, essays, poetry, and reviews can be found at various online literary sites, as well as in print anthologies. 

For more information regarding this presentation, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at 504-889-8143 or wcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.