About Bruce R. Magee, Editor.
The Louisiana Anthology
Although I was technically born in Brookhaven, Mississippi, my parents were at the time students at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and that’s where we lived during the week. I think we stayed there a little too long, and I never quite got Louisiana out of my system. Fortunately, we moved to Louisiana permanently in 1964 when I was 6 years old. I've split my time since then among North Louisiana (Ruston, Sharon, Monroe) and South Louisiana (New Orleans, Tangipahoa, Baton Rouge) and Central Louisiana (Alexandria). Wherever you go, there I am.
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Steve
and I with Grandpa Eliot in New Orleans, August
30, 2013
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I’ve taught English (and sometimes Latin) at Louisiana Tech University since 1992 (See my full resumé here.). I am currently the Robert C. Snyder Professor of English at Louisiana Tech.* I would occasionally talk to Stephen about my concern that nobody seemed to be drawing the kind of attention to Louisiana's literature they way we do for Louisiana’s music, food, architecture, and geography. Our literature is as intresting and varied as the state itself, but there was no central location for us to go to read it. Stephen came up with the idea that he and I should edit an anthology of Louisiana Literature. After much though, we settled on an anthology available online. Publishing the anthology through a web site rather than a than through a traditional bound book offers several advantages;
- We could make it available starting with the first entry rather and waiting for the last entry to be completed.
- We can achieve a much broader circulation.
- We can make the anthology available for free rather than having to charge people for an expensive book.
- We can include a vastly larger amount of material than can fit into a traditional book. In some ways, it’s more of a library than an anthology.
I hope you enjoy the anthology. Please email me with your comments and your suggestions for improvement. If we get something wrong in our footnotes, please let us know so we can correct it. (Another advantage of a web site is that you can make corrections quickly.) Also, let us know if you know of a work about Louisiana that you would like to see included. We are always scouting for more works to post.
*The Robert C. Snyder Professorship is made available through the State of Louisiana Board of Regents Support Funds.