As I had suspect, there are no New Orleans authors doing any kind of sponsorship or grants.
Meanwhile, I looked into that Neighborhood Story Project (http://www.neighborhoodstoryproject.org/) which publishes the books I mentioned. Begun before Katrina, thought turning inexorably towards that as a topic, its goal is to teach high school kids how to write books about their neighborhood, thus teaching them how to write, and documenting the rich and varied cultural and historic layers to the city, which is so much more than the Quarter and Uptown. There are currently five available (Wendy, I brought some of these to that meeting we had before the semester began; do you have them?) covering living in a project, above a neighborhood store, a couple of particularly diverse blocks, the local Mardi Gras Indian tribe, and more. The goal is not just literacy, but helping kids see their work both as a method for examining their world, but as a method of change. The group works wiwth both kids and their families, and begins orally, and in groups, so that kids can learn about the development and rewrite process as they go. In this way, they are working with methods Tyler was discussing in group last week. Given the shockingly low literarcy rates coming out of New Orleans public schools (pre-Katrina, as low as 20%), and the increasing need for a written historical record of a possibly vanished era of New Orleans, plus the theraputic value such a project has for kids, I think this is an excellent project already in place that we should strongly consider suggesting additional funding for. It seems to fit neatly in with all the elements we were discussing in group. It's already fairly well-established, if small, and associated with both Literacy Alliance and the University of New Orleans.
Meanwhile, literary quotes about New Orleans:
The minute you land in New Orleans, something wet and dark leaps on you
and starts humping you like a swamp dog in heat, and the only way to get
that aspect of New Orleans off you is to eat it off. That means beignets
and crawfish bisque and jambalaya, it means shrimp remoulade, pecan pie,
and red beans 'n rice, it means elegant pompano en papillote, funky file
z'herbes, and raw oysters by the dozen, it means grillades for breakfast,
a po-boy with chow-chow at bedtime, and tubs of gumbo in between. It is
not unusual for a visitor to the city to gain fifteen pounds in a week -
yet the alternative is a whole lot worse. If you don't eat day and night,
if you don't constantly funnel the indigenous flavors into your
bloodstream, then the mystery beast will keep on humping you, and you will
feel its sordid presence rubbing against you long after you have left
town. In fact, like any sex offender, it can leave permanent psychological
scars.
-- Tom Robbins, from Jitterbug Perfume
In those days in New Orleans, there was always something nice, and always with music.--Louis Armstrong, from Growing Up in New Orleans
Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is the flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?” Ignatious bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. “This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft. If you have a moment, I shall endeavor to discuss the crime problem with you, but don’t make the mistake of bothering me.” --John Kennedy Toole, from A Confederacy of Dunces
New Orleans, in the spring-time—just when the orchards were flushing over with peach blossoms, and the sweet herbs came to flavor the juleps—seemed to me the city of the world where you can eat and drink the most and suffer the least.--William Makepeace Thackary, from A Mississippi Bubble
Mardi Gras ain’t so much if you are broke.--John Dos Passos, from Funiculi, Funicula
I’ve always wanted to eat fried dough in the most corrupt city in the world.--Dale, from “King of the Hill”
Yet to all men whose desire only is to live a short life but a merry one, I have no hesitation in recommending New Orleans.--Henry Bradshaw Fearon, from Sketches of America (1818)
We had dinner on a ground-veranda over the water—the chief dish the renowned fish called the pompano, delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.--Mark Twain, from Life on the Mississippi
We picked up one excellent word—a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word—“Lagniappe”…It has a restricted meaning, but I think the people spread it out a little when they choose. It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a baker’s dozen. When a child or a servant buys something in a shop—or even the mayor or the governor, for aught I know—he finishes the operation by saying “Give me something for lagniappe”. The shopman always responds; gives the child a bit of liquorice-root, gives the servant a cheap cigar or a spool of thread, gives the governor—I don’t know what he gives the governor; support, likely. When you are invited to drink—and this does occur now and then in New Orleans—and you say “What, again?—no, I’ve had enough:” the other party says, “But just this one time more, --this is for lagniappe.”--Mark Twain, from Life on the Mississippi
On Mardi Gras day, as you know, it is a town gone mad with folly. A huge masked ball emptied into the streets at daylight; a meeting of all nations on common ground, a pot-pourri of every conceivable human ingredient, but faintly describes it all. There are music, and flowers, cries and laughter and song and joyousness, and never an aching heart to show its sorrow or dim the happiness of the streets. A wondrous thing, this Carnival!--Alice Dunbar-Nelson, from Odalie (1899)
For in this season is the glamour of New Orleans strongest upon those whom she attracts to her from less hospitable climates, and fascinates by her nights of magical moonlight, and her days of dreamy languors and perfumes. There are few who can visit her for the first time without delight; and few who can ever leave her without regret; and none who can forget her strange charm when they have once felt its influence.--Lafcadio Hearn, from The Glamour of New Orleans (1924)
Living in New Orleans is like drinking blubber through a straw. Even the air is caloric. --Andrei Codrescu, from “Fantastic Fast”.
She glanced back at the little peaked roofs of the tombs visible over the top of the wall.“The dead are so close they can hear us,” she thought.“Ah, but you see,” said Ryan, as if he had read her thoughts. “In New Orleans, we never really leave them out.”--Anne Rice, from The Witching Hour
THere is something left in these people here that makes them like one another; that leads to constant outbursts in the spirit of play, that keeps them from being too confoundedly serious about death and the ballot and reform and other less important things in life." --Sherwood Anderson, from "New Orleans and the Double Dealer."