NEWS RELEASE

Contact: David West (west@nsula.edu )
News Bureau
Northwestern State University
Natchitoches, LA 71497
(318) 357-6466

11/05/2003

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NATCHITOCHES-Northwestern State University Assistant Professor of English Dr. Julie Kane will participate in the Second Annual Louisiana Book Festival Saturday, Nov. 8 in Baton Rouge. The Festival will be held at the Louisiana State Capitol and the Louisiana State Library.

Kane will make a presentation from her book, "Rhythm & Booze" and will also hold a book signing. She will also take part in a panel discussion, "On Language: The Writer as Prism."

Kane was selected by Maxine Kumin as a winner of the National Poetry Series. "Rhythm & Booze" was published by the University of Illinois Press.

NSU faculty have been part of both Louisiana Book Festivals. Last year, Associate Professors of English Dr. Lisa Abney and Dr. Suzanne Disheroon Green moderated a discussion on "The New Generation of Louisiana Writers" and talked about their book, "Songs of the New South: Writing Contemporary Louisiana," published by Greenwood Press.

"I was thrilled to have been selected," said Kane. "Last year, Lisa and Suzanne came back from the Festival and talked about how much fun it was to be part of the Book Festival. I know it will be wonderful to meet with other writers and do some networking. It will also be great to learn about other books that are out."

Arranged in four parts--each associated with a particular Louisiana city--the poems in "Rhythm & Booze" trace the hardships and uncertainties, as well as the moments of unexpected sublimity, of a life lived in a continuous struggle between fresh starts and destructive old patterns.

Mirroring the music of New Orleans, Kane's poems combine traditional form with improvisational flourishes. "Rhythm & Booze" charts her progress as she undertakes a number of journeys, from youth to experience, from blues bars to college classrooms, from city to country, from chaos to something approaching peace.

Kane was a Fulbright Lecturer in Lithuania in 2002. She has published one other book and two chapbooks of poetry in the U.S. and England. Kane's individual poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Feminist Studies, Epoch, Thema, London Magazine, The Taos Review and Thirteenth Muse. Her work has also appeared in anthologies published by Milkweed Editions, Henry Holt/Viking-Penguin and the LSU Press. Kane's poem, "Reasons for Loving the Harmonica," was set to music by Grammy winner Libby Larsen.

Presentations will also be made by best selling authors Haynes Johnson and Michael Lewis, National Book award finalist Richard Peck, historian Douglas Brinkley and author and commentator Juan Williams along with a variety of Louisiana authors.

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