Treme turns to local poet to capture post-Katrina New Orleans March 23, 2011: The Times-Picayune talks with Gian Smith who is featured reciting his poem "O Beautiful Storm" in a new promo for the HBO show Treme. Smith now hosts an open mic at The McKenna Museum of African American Art, but it was Katrina that first made him turn to poetry. In both the poem and his interview, he describes scraping the residue off the [...] by Harriet Staff

Poets set the tone for “Natural Events to Social Disasters” conference in Austin February 22, 2011: Natasha Trethewey and Evelyne Trouillot will keynote this week's conference From Natural Events to Social Disasters in the Circum-Caribbean hosted by the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at University of Texas, Austin. The conference will discuss the long-running injustices across the region that natural disasters of the [...] by Harriet Staff