Students looking to expand their horizons of literary knowledge can get their fix at Chelsea’s Cafe and Ephemeral Gallery through a two-night special event featuring award-winning local, national and international writers and artists.
The Delta Mouth Festival kicks off tonight at Chelsea’s at 7 p.m. and will continue through Friday at Ephemeral Gallery with performances from an array of novelists, poets, short story writers, performance artists and raconteurs.
John David Harding, University creative writing graduate student and coordinator of the Delta Mouth Festival, said the event enables the literary community to thrive.
“This is the third annual Delta Mouth,” he said. “It is definitely growing and reaching a wider audience each year. As we become more visible — we’re able to bring in new artists and more attention to the Baton Rouge literary community as a whole.”
The event is sponsored by the New Delta Review, the University’s graduate literary magazine, Harding said.
“How it works is we make up a list of writers we want from all over the country, and I contact them to see if they’re interested in participating, and if they are, then we figure out a way to get them down here,” he said.
Harding said students shouldn’t pass up the event.
“It’s a good opportunity for LSU students to hear some of the best writers working today, to be exposed to some writers that they’ve never heard of or maybe aren’t familiar with, but who are doing some really great work,” he said.
Delta Mouth will feature a wide variety of entertainment, Harding said.
“We’re going to have fiction, poetry, nonfiction,” he said. “One of our artists is going to do a performance piece. So, we’ve got performance art. We also have two visual artists who are going to be exhibiting their work at the gallery.”
Harding said the event is an enriching experience for audiences as well as an excellent opportunity for the exposure of performers.
“The two visual artists [Mark Brosseau and Bryce Dishongh] are local Baton Rouge residents, and I had heard of their work and seen some of their work around, so I contacted them to participate in the festival,” he said. “It’s good, especially for the local artists, to get their names out there.”
Harding said he’s looking forward to the event.
“I’m really excited to hear everyone read,” he said. “I think we have a really great lineup of artists who come from all sorts of backgrounds and have very different voices, so the overall result is going to be something special.”
Cara Blue Adams, writer, participant in the festival and managing editor of The Southern Review, an on-campus literary journal, said students should attend to experience the writers in a unique setting.
“I think it’s a really great chance to hear stories and poems in a casual, Louisiana environment,” she said. “Two of the readers are resident scholars at The Southern Review. They’re both really great poets — Frank Giampietro and Jen McClanaghan. And that’s a great reason to come because they’re both fabulous, emerging authors, and I think it’s really exciting.”
Adams said she’s going to read a new story she recently completed called “At the Gates.”
“It’s about a town that gets a Homeland Security grant, and they decide to hire watchers with the money that are going to stand at the gates of the town,” she said. “It’s a magical realist story because nobody really understands what these people are watching for or why they’ve been hired, and so the town has to decide how they feel about these people watching them.”
Adams said this is her first time participating in the Delta Mouth Festival.
“I’ve never read for this event, but I have attended the last two Delta Mouths, and they were both really great,” she said.
Simone Laroussini, communication disorders freshman, said she looks forward to events like Delta Mouth for social and educational purposes.
“There’s something comforting about attending a reading,” she said. “It gives me an opportunity to meet new people who love writing and books and a chance to hear what’s relevant now.”
Laroussini said she would attend both events, but midterms have to come first.
“I’m disappointed I can’t make the Chelsea’s night, but I’m sure Friday will be just as good,” she said.
 
 
 
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contact Cathryn Core at [email protected]