NOLA BOOK AND LITERARY NEWS

from Nathan C. Martin and Friends.

BIG CLASS: Adorable Kids Making Adorable Books

posted Aug 7, 2012
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Over at Room 220, we sometimes neglect the kids. It’s true. It’s not a point of policy, it’s just that we’re so tall, and they’re so short, and we often overlook them.

One exception is a project we love called BIG CLASS, a children’s workshop and publishing venture headed by Doug Keller that has put out three stellar books, conceived of and created by local grade school kids. We wrote about the first book, Big Class No 1: The Animals, last year. It’s fantastic.

Each Big Class book features writing by childrenz, along with art by adults (and some childrenz, I think?). This Saturday, Aug. 11, Big Class will be exhibiting work from the books and generally celebrating their formidable accomplishments at the Home Space Gallery (1128 St. Roch Ave.) during the St. Claude Arts District’s monthly Second Saturday art walk (6 – 9 p.m.).

In order to pay for the printing and hanging of the exhibition’s artworks, Big Class has launched a Kickstarter campaign. Although they’ve already reached their meager goal of $500, this is an organization that translates any small amount given to it into magic, so don’t feel bashful about chipping in a few more bucks.

 

  • Photo by Sophie Lvoff in WE'RE PREGNANT
  • final_cover (2)
  • curtain_optional (2)
  • howtorebuild
  • bitterink
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Photo by Sophie Lvoff in WE'RE PREGNANT

We’re Pregnant
Words by Nathan Martin. Photography by Akasha Rabut, Sophie T. Lvoff, and Grissel Giuliano.

We’re Pregnant is a chapbook of short fiction by Room 220 editor Nathan C. Martin along with photography by Akasha Rabut, Sophie T. Lvoff, and Grissel Giuliano. The book contains three of Martin’s short stories—which explore in morbid fashion anxieties related to sex, disease, marriage, and childbirth—with images inspired by the stories from each of the photographers.

final_cover (2)

The People Is Singular
Poems by Andy Young and Photographs by Salwa Rashad

The People Is Singular, by local poet Andy Young and Egyptian photographer Salwa Rashad, is a personal response to the Egyptian Revolution. Rashad’s vision includes everyday people—Muslims and Christians, young and old, the foregrounded and the peripheral. Her perspective is from inside the events as they unfolded. Andy Young, a New Orleans poet married to [...]

curtain_optional (2)

Curtain Optional
by Brad and Jim Richard

In both poetry and prose, Brad Richard explores the influence of his father’s work on his own, as well as the experience of growing up as the son of an artist while becoming an artist himself. Jim Richard is a professor of painting at the University of New Orleans and has exhibited at the Solomon [...]

howtorebuild

How to Rebuild a City
Edited by Anne Gisleson & Tristan Thompson w/ design and artistic direction by Catherine Burke

Beautifully designed, sometimes fun, always informative, How to Rebuild a City: Field Guide from a work in Progress, is a reflection of the many ways that New Orleanians have realized our way towards recovery, actively and creatively engaging with our communities.

bitterink

Bitter Ink
by Brian Zeigler & Raymond “Moose” Jackson

BBoth originally from Detroit, cousins Brian Zeigler and Raymond “Moose” Jackson began collaborating while Brian was harboring Moose in Vermont during Katrina evacuation. While their doodling proclivities may have made them rustbelt exiles from the rest of their autoworker family, together they produce seductive aphorisms of wit and weirdness that provoke, confound and celebrate a [...]

greenzoneforweb

Green Zone New Orleans
by Mark Yakich

A nine-part poem meant to be performed aloud, GZNO approaches questions of disaster and its aftermath from tragicomic perspectives. The poem is accompanied by the poet’s surreal line drawings. Mark Yakich is the author of Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross (National Poetry Series, Penguin 2004), and The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in [...]