New Orleans Reconsidered

For immediate release:

Artists Reflect on
New Orleans Culture, Catastrophe
at CSULA Forum

What & Who:
Cal State L.A. presents a forum, “New Orleans Reconsidered: Artists Reflect on Culture and Catastrophe.” In response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, several Los Angeles-based writers and artists from the New Orleans Diaspora will come together to reconsider and celebrate the city and culture of New Orleans. Panelists include author and poet Jervey Tervalon; writer Erin Aubry Kaplan; and vocalist, composer, visual artist and performance artist Mark Broyard.

When:
Thursday, January 12, 2006, 6:30 p.m.

Where:
Cal State L.A. King Hall D140. The University is located at the Eastern Ave. exit, San Bernardino (I-10) Fwy., at the interchange of the 10 and 710 Fwys. Public (dispenser) parking available in Lots F and G, or the top of Parking Structure 2.

More:
Mark Broyard is lead singer and principal songwriter for his band, The Spiritual Jazz Quartet, and is a staff musician at two churches as well as choir director at St. Jerome Church in Los Angeles. He created and performed “Inside The Creole Mafia” with Roger Guenveur Smith. “Creole Mafia,” which has toured nationally, was recognized as one of the Top Ten Theater Productions of 1993 by the Los Angeles Times and was awarded Best Two Character Performance Work by the L.A. Weekly that same year. His assemblages and painting have also been exhibited in national and local museums and galleries. For several years, he worked as art tour director for the International House of Blues Foundation and as studio assistant for Betye and Alison Star.

Erin Aubry Kaplan – staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and L.A. Weekly – began working as a journalist for The Times since 1992, and for a short time, for a section called City Times, where she continued covering the Crenshaw district, South Central and events affecting L.A.’s disparate black communities. A widely anthologized author, Kaplan’s articles have appeared in London Independent, The Guardian, Salon.com, The Crisis, Newsday, Contemporary Art Magazine, the Utne Reader and Black Enterprise. She has completed a first book, an essay collection, entitled Views and Blues from the Edge: Dispatches from a Black Journalista.

Jervey Tervalon’s acclaimed debut novel, Understand This, won the 1994 New Voices Award from the Quality Paperback Book Club. His second critically-acclaimed novel, Dead Above Ground, is available from Washington Square Press. Also an award-winning poet, screenwriter, and dramatist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Details magazine, and other publications. Tervalon has served as a Pasadena Arts Commission fellow, and his numerous recognitions include the Pasadena Arts Council’s Gold Crown Award and the Oakland PEN Award. He is currently the Remsen Bird Writer-in-Residence at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Info:
For more details, call the Cross Cultural Centers at Cal State L.A., (323) 343-5001.

Working for California since 1947: The 175-acre hilltop campus of California State University, Los Angeles is at the heart of a major metropolitan city, just five miles from Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. More than 20,000 students and 185,000 alumni—with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds--reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Six colleges offer nationally recognized science, arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and humanities programs, among others, led by an award-winning faculty. Cal State L.A. is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Jazz Orchestra and to a unique university center for gifted students as young as 12. Among programs that provide exciting enrichment opportunities to students and community include an NEH- and Rockefeller-supported humanities center; a NASA-funded center for space research; and a growing forensic science program, to be housed in the Los Angeles Regional Crime Lab now under construction. www.calstatela.edu