Locations like Tiger Stadium, Middleton Library, Allen Hall and Chimes Street played a part in the written works of University authors, including Robert Penn Warren, Jean Stafford and John Ed Bradley, by housing their offices or inspiring them to write, according to English instructor Nolde Alexius.
Last Spring semseter Alexius’ English 2025 class pieced together and presented as their final exam a new type of campus tour looking into the people who occupied spaces on campus and the works they produced.
The course is based on the book “The Best of LSU Fiction,” edited by Alexius and former English instructor Judy Kahn. The book highlights 20 University writers from the ‘30s to today.
Alexius said the tour can’t become a reality for campus visitors yet, but it might soon.
“Right now it’s in the works still, [the College of Humanities and Social Sciences} was going to look into having a regular tour, and the college’s student advocate group would give it.” Alexius said.
She said there was also a creative writing club called “The Allen Project” considering giving the literary tours as a way to recruit for the organization.
Alexius said the class created the tour by going through writers stories and looking when they were at the University and where they did their writing. Some of them were inspired by campus landmarks.
The University moved to its Baton Rouge location in 1925. From 1939 to 1942, Robert Penn Warren shared an office in Allen Hall with Cleanth Brooks. He and Brooks then founded The Southern Review, a literary magazine produced by LSU Press.
Warren was named the first Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry in 1986, but it was during his time at the University, working under the low ceilings of Allen Hall he began work on his most famous work, “All the King’s Men.” The novel went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
“I never knew the history behind it all, and so many famous writers had written here,” said Kristi Kay, an elementary education junior. “We could picture these writers in the places we see every day.”
Kay said she enjoyed the class, and it helped her look at the University campus differently.
Tiger Stadium inspired John Ed Bradley to write “It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium: Football and the Game of Life.” The book, published in 2007, discussed his time on the LSU football team in the late 70s.
Jean Stafford, a short story writer who also won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, lived in a small apartment on Chimes Street, where students now flock to Highland Coffees and Inga’s Subs and Salads.
Kay said it is cool to see the talented people who came from the University, and get to know the buildings around campus and their history.