Pre- Mardi Gras Poetry Reading

Brad Richard, a New Orleans poet and author of a new book titled Turned Earth, will host an evening of poets reading their work at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 5, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie.

This event is free of charge and open to the public.

Richard is the author of Habitations (Portals Press, 2000), Motion Studies (The Word Works, 2011), Butcher’s Sugar (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012), Parasite Kingdom (The Word Works, 2019), and  Turned Earth (Louisiana State University Press, 2025). His 2022 chapbook, In Place, was chosen for the Robin Becker Series from Seven Kitchens Press. A second edition of Motion Studies, with additional poems and a foreword by Skye Jackson, was published last spring. He has taught creative writing at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, The Willow School (whose creative writing program he founded and directed), Louisiana State University, and Tulane University, and for The Kenyon Review and New Orleans Writers Workshop. Richard received his B.A. in English from the University of Iowa and his M.F.A. in Poetry from Washington University in St. Louis.

Justin Lacour

Justin Lacour is a poet who lives in New Orleans and edits Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry. He is the author of five chapbooks, including Hulk Church, Counting the Seconds ’Til Dinner, and Little motors: some love letters. His debut full-length, A Season in Heck & Other Poems, is forthcoming.He was the featured author in issue fourteen of Fine Print.

Andy Young

Andy Young grew up in southern West Virginia and has lived most of her adult life in New Orleans where she teaches at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Warren Wilson’s Program for Writers, her second full-length collection is Museum of the Soon to Depart. She has also written four chapbooks. She is the recipient of the Patricia Spears Jones Award, the Nazim Hikmet Award, and has been granted residencies in Virginia, Louisiana, Vermont and Barcelona. 

Program inquiries should be directed to Chris Smith, Adult Programming, at 504-889-8143 or wcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.