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April 04, 2007

An Evening with Martin Pousson

Martin Pousson will read from Sugar, his poetry collection, and his debut novel, No Place, Louisiana on Thursday, April 5, at 7 p.m. in the Hatfield Room in the Hatfield Library. The event is free and open to the public.

Pousson was born and raised in Louisiana’s Acadiana, often referred to as Cajun Country. No Place, Louisiana was published in 2002. His publisher wrote that the book is an “unflinching vision of family reationships pushed to the breaking point, conveyed with a rare empathy and understanding” and praised Pousson’s “ability to peer into the secret hearts of its misfit characters.”

“Louisiana-born Pousson debuts with a tightly wound novel about a claustrophobic Cajun marriage,” wrote Publishers Weekly, and Pulitzer-prize winning novelist Michael Cunningham wrote that Pousson “has given us a book of startling complexity, originality and power.”

No Place, Louisiana was a finalist for the John Gardner Award in Fiction, and it will soon be translated for publication in France.

Sugar, Pousson’s first collection of poems, was published in 2005 and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, an award that celebrates books with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender themes. His prose and poetry have also appeared in The Louisiana Review; Cimarron Review; Epoch; Icon; Transfer; Intersection and Love, Bourbon Street.

Pousson is the writer-in-residence at Loyola University in New Orleans.