Monday, September 25, 2023
BATON ROUGE, La. – Other Voices, Other Rooms, the debut novel of New Orleans-born writer Truman Capote, is the selection for the 2023 One Book, One Festival, the Louisiana Book Festival's popular discussion group.
The novel is celebrating its 75th anniversary. Dr. Gary Richards, who has led many previous sessions since One Book, One Festival began in 2008, returns to moderate the discussion. Participants are invited to read the same book in advance and then join the scholar-led discussion with others at the festival.
The 19th Annual Louisiana Book Festival will be held Saturday, October 28, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in downtown Baton Rouge at the Louisiana State Capitol, the State Library of Louisiana, Capitol Park Museum, and the surrounding Capitol Park area. The One Book, One Festival discussion will happen from 2:30 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. in Senate Committee Room E in the State Capitol.
"This is one of the most popular programs at the Louisiana Book Festival every year," said Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser. "It's great that we're able to celebrate the anniversary of a debut novel by another of the great names in literature who is from our great state. We're also pleased that Gary Richards will be back to lead the discussion. He's a festival favorite."
Richards is a professor of English and former chair of the Department of English and Linguistics at the University of Mary Washington. This will be the 11th time he's led the One Book, One Festival discussion. An expert on southern literature and culture who previously taught at the University of New Orleans, Richards has also led One Book, One Festival discussions on Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, Capote's A Christmas Memory, and Ernest Gaines's A Gathering of Old Men, among others.
"Few novels grabbed the nation's attention in the post-war years like Other Voices, Other Rooms, and I'm delighted to return to the festival, revisit this groundbreaking novel with contemporary readers, and explore Capote making his leap from the short story to the novel," said Dr. Gary Richards.
Other Voices, Other Rooms was published in 1948. The semi-autobiographical novel of Capote's childhood focuses on a 13-year-old New Orleans boy who is sent to live with his father in rural Alabama after his mother dies. "Truman Capote's first novel is a story of almost supernatural intensity and inventiveness, an audacious foray into the mind of a sensitive boy as he seeks out the grown-up enigmas of love and death in the ghostly landscape of the deep South," notes publisher Penguin Random House.
One Book, One Festival is free and open to the public.
For complete details on the 2023 Louisiana Book Festival, visit LouisianaBookFestival.org and follow us on Facebook.
The Louisiana Center for the Book was established in the State Library of Louisiana in 1994. Its mission is to stimulate public interest in reading, books, literacy, and libraries and to celebrate Louisiana's rich literary heritage. It is the official state affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book.