S4 Ep. 1: Fifteen Years After Katrina: Kristina Kay Robinson and Tom Piazza Discuss How the Hurricane Shaped Our Past and Predicted Our Future

fiction/non/fiction

In this week’s episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan talk to writer, curator and visual artist Kristina Kay Robinson and novelist and television writer Tom Piazza in the wake of the 15-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Robinson describes the shifting narrative of her hometown, and explains how the U.S. is only now experiencing the full implications of Katrina. Then, Piazza reflects on how the disaster foretold a series of 21st century catastrophes that would affect the most vulnerable among us.

To hear the full episode, subscribe to the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. And check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel and Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel.

This episode was produced by Andrea Tudhope and Emily Standlee.

Selected readings:

Kristina Kay Robinson

• Republica: Temple of Color and Sound, art exhibition
• “Contemplating Extinction as Theme in Basquiat’s ‘Pez Dispenser, 1984,’” poets.org
• “The Darkroom in the Attic: Blackness and Visibility,” Burnaway
• “Ten Years Since: A Meditation on New Orleans,” The Nation
• “Rhythm, Water, and Global Blackness,” The Nation
• “10 Questions for Kristina Kay Robinson,” The Massachusetts Review
• Letter from New Orleans: Down River Road, Burnaway
• The New Orleans African American Museum
• “Spiritually Uncensored,” Sugarcane Magazine

Tom Piazza

• “Incontinental Drift,” The Huffington Post
• City of Refuge
• Why New Orleans Matters
• Devil Sent the Rain
• A Free State
• “Living in the Present with John Prine,” The Oxford American

Writers:

• The Control of Nature by John McPhee
• José Saramago
• Leo Tolstoy
• Maurice Carlos Ruffin
• A.L. Steiner

Television:

• Treme (HBO)
• Lovecraft Country (HBO)

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