Mark your calendar as the 17th Annual Louisiana Book Festival will launch online programs on Saturday and Sunday, October 30-31, 2021. Additional new content will be available over the following two weeks on Friday, November 5, through Sunday, November 7, and Friday, November 12, through Sunday, November 14. This free, family-friendly, annual festival celebrating readers, writers, and books is being presented virtually this year. More than 80 authors and presenters will discuss their books during more than 40 virtual programs, including 15 presentations for children, tweens, and teens. Virtual programs can be viewed on the Louisiana Book Festival YouTube channel.

Several programs highlight musicians or music-themed content, including the following:

Streaming Friday, November 5

Rickie Lee Jones, author of Last Chance Texaco: Chronicles of an American Troubadour, in conversation with Rebecca Hamilton, Louisiana State Librarian

One weekend night on primetime television, a then-unknown singer and vital part of the burgeoning Los Angeles jazz pop scene skyrocketed to fame overnight after a now iconic performance on Saturday Night Live. The year was 1979, the song Chuck E’s in Love, and the singer, Rickie Lee Jones, donning her trademark red beret, was the soon to be pronounced “Duchess of Coolsville” by Time magazine. Last Chance Texaco is the first ever no-holds-barred account of the life of one of rock’s hardest working women in her own words. With candor and lyricism Jones takes us on the journey of her exceptional life: from her nomadic childhood as the granddaughter of vaudevillian performers, to her father’s abandonment of the family and her years as a teenage runaway, her beginnings at L.A.’s Troubadour club, to her tumultuous relationship with Tom Waits, her battle with drugs, and longevity as a woman in rock and roll.

Streaming Friday, November 12

Steve Bergsman, author of Chapel of Love: The Story of New Orleans Girl Group the Dixie Cups, in conversation with Courtney McCreary, Senior Publicity and Promotions Manager at the University Press of Mississippi.

In 1963, sisters Barbara Ann and Rosa Hawkins and their cousin Joan Marie Johnson traveled from the segregated South to New York City under the auspices of their manager, former pop singer Joe Jones. With their wonderful harmonies, they were an immediate success. To this day, the Dixie Cups’ greatest hit, “Chapel of Love,” is considered one of the best songs of the past sixty years.

The Dixie Cups seemed to have the world on a string. Their songs were lively and popular, singing on such topics as love, romance, and Mardi Gras, including the classic “Iko Iko.” Behind the stage curtain, however, their real-life story was one of cruel exploitation by their manager, who continued to harass the women long after they finally broke away from his thievery and assault. Of the three young women, no one suffered more than the youngest, Rosa Hawkins, who was barely out of high school when the New Orleans teens were discovered and relocated to New York City. At the peak of their success, Rosa was a naïve songstress entrapped in a world of abuse and manipulation.

Chapel of Love: The Story of New Orleans Girl Group the Dixie Cups explores the ups and downs of one of the most successful girl groups of the early 1960s. Telling their story for the first time, in their own words, Chapel of Love reintroduces the Louisiana Music Hall of Famers to a new audience.

Streaming Saturday, November 13

Taxicab Tales: Fact and Fiction, a conversation with Lee Durkee, author of The Last Taxi Driver: A Novel, and Dege Legg, author of Cablog: Diary of a Cabdriver

Hailed by George Saunders as “a true original―a wise and wildly talented writer,” Lee Durkee takes readers on a high-stakes cab ride through an unforgettable shift. Meet Lou―a lapsed novelist, struggling Buddhist, and UFO fan―who drives for a ramshackle taxi company that operates on the outskirts of a north Mississippi college town. With Uber moving into town and his way of life vanishing, his girlfriend moving out, and his archenemy dispatcher suddenly returning to town on the lam, Lou must finish his bedlam shift by aiding and abetting the host of criminal misfits haunting the back seat of his disintegrating Town Car. Lou is forced to decide how much he can take as a driver, and whether keeping his job is worth madness and heartbreak.

Shedding nuts and bolts, The Last Taxi Driver careens through highways and back roads, from Mississippi to Memphis, as Lou becomes increasingly somnambulant and his fares increasingly eccentric. Equal parts Bukowski and Portis, Durkee’s darkly comic novel is a feverish, hilarious, and gritty look at a forgotten America and a man at life’s crossroads.

In Cablog: Diary of a Cabdriver, a broke and unemployed musician lands a gig driving a cab through the swamplands of south Louisiana while bobbing and weaving through a nighttime world ruled by drugs, guns, saints and strippers. In this fuel-injected work of creative nonfiction, Grammy-nominated musician and award-winning writer Dege Legg (aka Brother Dege) recounts five years behind the wheel while documenting the underworld of Lafayette and its Cajun and Creole hinterlands. From the penthouse suites on high to the crack houses on the low, Legg churns out thick-skinned tales about downtrodden derelicts, minor victories for the forgotten, and redemption in the face of it all. Cablog reverberates with tones of Bukowski, Miller, Chandler, and Kerouac while charting its own new territory of the human spirit.

Streaming Sunday, November 14

Joey Kent, author of Cradle of the Stars: KWKH and the Louisiana Hayride, in conversation with Antoinette DeAlteriis, Promotion Director at Pelican Publishing 

This image-laden, entertaining chronology of the Shreveport-based Louisiana Hayride radio and stage show is written by the historian and archivist for the venue. The Hayride is credited with introducing the world to Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, George Jones, and so many others. The author’s father ran the show in the 1970s and 1980s.

Battle of the Bands, with stories by Brittany Cavallaro, Preeti Chhibber, Jay Coles, Katie Cotugno, Lauren Gibaldi, Shaun David Hutchinson, Ashley Poston, Jenny Torres Sanchez, Sarah Nicole Smetana, Eric Smith, Jenn Marie Thorne, Sarvenaz Taghavian, Jasmine Warga, Ashley Woodfolk, and Jeff Zentner, and featuring Motion City Soundtrack’s Justin Courtney Pierre

Fifteen young adult authors and one real-life rock star band together for one epic—and interconnected—take on a memorable high school rite of passage. In Battle of the Bands, a daughter of rock ‘n’ roll royalty has a secret crush. A lonely ticket taker worries about his sister. An almost-famous songwriter nurses old wounds. A stage manager tires of being behind the scenes. A singer-songwriter struggles to untangle her feelings for her best friend and his girlfriend. In this live-out-loud anthology, the disparate protagonists of sixteen stories are thrown together for one unforgettable event: their high school’s battle of the bands. Told in a harmonic blend of first- and third-person narrative voices, roughly chronological short stories offer a kaleidoscopic view of the same transformative night. Featuring an entry from Justin Courtney Pierre, lead vocalist of Motion City Soundtrack, Battle of the Bands is a celebration of youth, music, and meeting the challenges of life head on.

Additional authors participating in this year’s Louisiana Book Festival include 2021 Louisiana Writer Award recipient Fatima Shaik, Louisiana Poet Laureate Mona Lisa Saloy, and Louisiana Young Readers’ Choice Award winning author Tommy Greenwald (Game Changer). Other featured authors include David Armand (The Lord’s Acre), Alecia Long (Cruising for Conspirators), Robert Mann (Backrooms and Bayous), Joshua Prager (The Family Roe), and Steven V. Roberts (Cokie: A Life Well Lived).

To learn about additional authors and participants, see a complete list on the Louisiana Book Festival’s featured author page. A digital version of the program guide with more details is also available. More information and updates are available on the Louisiana Book Festival website and on Facebook.