Author Night at Norman Mayer Library: Black Literary Voices

Celebrate Black History Month and New Orleans culture with readings of poetry and fiction from local authors, featuring Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Skye Jackson, Valentine Pierce, and Ladee Hubbard.

A New Orleans native, Maurice Carlos Ruffin is a professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University, and the 2020-2021 John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. Ruffin’s most recent book is The American Daughters (One World, 2024), which Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called "a vibrant picture of antebellum New Orleans." He is also the author of the story collection The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You (One World, 2021), which was a New York Times Editors' Choice, a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and longlisted for the Story Prize. His first book, We Cast a Shadow (One World, 2019), was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize. It was a New York Times Editors' Choice and was longlisted for the 2021 DUBLIN Literary Award, the Center for Fiction Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Ruffin is the winner of several literary prizes, including the Iowa Review Award in fiction and the William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Award for Novel-in-Progress. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Oxford American, Garden & Gun, Kenyon Review, and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America. 

Skye Jackson was born and raised in New Orleans. She writes about love, femininity and the challenges of navigating our modern world as a young Black woman. Her work has appeared in Palette Poetry, The Southern Review, RHINO, RATTLE and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook A Faster Grave (2019) and her debut collection of poetry, Libre (2025), is the 2026 One Book One New Orleans selection. Jackson has been a finalist for the RATTLE Prize, the RHINO Founders' Prize, the Michelle Boisseau Poetry Prize, and in 2021 she received the AWP Intro Journals Award and was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize & Best New Poets. Former Poet Laureate Billy Collins selected her poem "can we touch your hair?" for inclusion in the Library of Congress Poetry 180 Project Anthology. She has received support for her work from The Frost Place, The Key West Literary Seminar & Cave Canem. In 2024, she was appointed as the Chairwoman of the New Orleans Poetry Festival Board. She currently serves as the Visiting Writer & Lecturer of Xavier University of Louisiana.

Valentine Pierce is a spoken word artist, writer, editor, and graphic designer active in the New Orleans art scene. She is the author of the poetry collections Geometry of the Heart (Portal Press 2007) and Up Decatur (New Laurel Review Press 2017). Her work has also been published in several anthologies, including I am New Orleans, Nasty Women Poets, Cape Cod Review, Mending for Memory, New Laurel Review, Mapleleaf Rag, and Bayou Magazine.  

Ladee Hubbard is the author of the novels The Talented Ribkins which received the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction and The Rib King. Her writing has appeared in Oxford American, Guernica, Virginia Quarterly and Callaloo among other venues. She is a recipient of a Berlin Prize, a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Born in Massachusetts and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Florida, She currently lives in New Orleans.

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