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Poetry will be prominent at the 2026 Louisiana Book Festival on Saturday, October 31 with programs running throughout the day under the West Tent outside the Capitol Park Museum.
Featured sessions begin at 9 a.m. with “Diving Into Nature: An Eco-Poetry Anthology of Louisiana,” an ensemble reading that gathers more than a dozen poets, among them Jack B. Bedell, Julie Kane, Biljana D. Obradović, and Andy Young, to read work rooted in the state’s landscape and waters. John P. Travis hosts.
Louisiana Poet Laureate Gina Ferrara anchors a two-part showcase of poets working across the state. “The Louisiana Poet Laureate Presents Louisiana Poets, Vol. I” (10:45 a.m.) brings together Taylor Clement, Rodney Jones, Justin Lacour, Jonathan Penton, and Jennifer Polson Peterson, each reading from a recent collection. The series continues after midday with Vol. II (12:45 p.m.), featuring Emily Cosper, Bill Lavender, Obradović, Ann Plicque, and Ed Ruzicka.
At noon, Catharine Savage Brosman discusses her new and selected work in Fire in the Mind: Poems New and Selected, with Julie Kane moderating. At 2 p.m., “Second Sight: Poets Laureate Write Through Vision Loss” pairs former Louisiana poets laureate Darrell Bourque and Peter Cooley for a discussion of how writing changes in the face of macular degeneration, ranging across the senses, reading and writing habits, and sources of inspiration. Benjamin Morris, whose 64 Parishes magazine article inspired the session, moderates.
Don't forget to visit our Poetry-to-Order desk for a truly unique memento from the day. Poets Cassandra de Alba and GennaRose Nethercott of The Traveling Poetry Emporium will be creating free personalized poems, which can be taken home as keepsakes, composed on the spot in the lobby of the State Library using antique typewriters.
Times and locations for all programming are available at louisianabookfestival.org, and every author appearance can be found on the site’s individual author pages.
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