The Art of Traumedy

It’s hard being human. Writing the tough stuff—illness, trauma, loss, disaster, life—may take readers to dark places, but also brings them up for air and lets them laugh about it. Join Brooke Champagne, Annell López, and Mary Miller as they marry tragedy with comedy to conceive the love-hate child named “Traumedy.” They’ll offer tips for a discussion about our collective use of irony, irreverence, and gallows humor to bring levity to heartbreak and explore life’s sorrows traumedically. Morphing pain with pleasure is ideal for any sadomasochist—or writer.

This discussion is sponsored by Ellen and Tom Prewitt.

Free and open to the public; donations gratefully accepted. Donations support One Book One New Orleans' year-round work.

The Andre Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice is accessible to community members who require mobility-related ADA accommodations. Parking near the venue is free, though somewhat limited. The nearest RTA stop is at N. Broad and Columbus.

MEET THE PANELISTS

Brooke Champagne is a native New Orleanian and the award-winning author of Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy, named a Best Book of 2024 from Kirkus Reviews. Her work has been selected as Notable in several editions of the Best American Essays anthology series, and she is the recipient of the 2023-2024 Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellowship in Prose. She is at work on her next book project, Drive-Thru Daiquiri, which will be published with LSU Press. Champagne lives with her husband and children in Tuscaloosa, where she is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA Program at the University of Alabama.

Annell López is the winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and the author of the short story collection I’ll Give You a Reason, a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for best debut short story collection. Named a best short story collection of 2024 by Electric Literature, I’ll Give You a Reason has been longlisted for the Maya Angelou Book Award, the Reforma Latinx Book Award, and shortlisted for the Clark Fiction Prize. Most recently, López was recognized as a Gambit’s 40 under 40. Her work has appeared in Guernica, American Short Fiction, The Common, Brooklyn Rail, Refinery29, and TIME. López received her MFA from the University of New Orleans, where she was awarded the Joanna Leake Fiction Prize. She is the Creative Writing Chair at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.

Mary Miller is the author of two novels and two short story collections. Her most recent book, Biloxi: A Novel (Liveright 2019), received starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The Best of McSweeney's Quarterly, Oxford American, Pushcart Prize XLIV, Norton's Seagull Book of Stories, and American Short Fiction. She is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas and a former Grisham writer in residence at the University of Mississippi. She lives in Oxford and is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Mississippi University for Women.