Life in the Wake: Fiction from Post-Katrina New Orleans (2007)

Life in the Wake:

Fiction from Post-Katrina New

Orleans (2007, 275 p., $18.00)

23 short stories set amidst the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

What the critics say:

“This ain’t no Chicken Soup for the Flood Victim’s Soul. The heroes of these raw tales don’t find their mettle in the face of adversity. They hit the bottle, or each other, or simply fall apart. In the astonishing opener, by an 18-year-old, a flood victim waiting on a roof can’t decide whether to flag down the rescue helicopter or end it with his dead mother’s OxyContin. Outsiders are gawkers and exploiters. In one grimly hilarious number, workers brought in to rescue stray dogs meet their quota by stealing pets.  Another piece reports on a reporter who tries to take the city’s pulse without venturing “past the lights” or entering anyone’s home.

As the crisis recedes, residents try — and often fail — to get on with their lives amidst the ruins.”

–The Providence Phoenix

“These stories in “Life in the Wake” might not make for pleasant reading — and Lord knows, they’re not escapist! — but here they are, a look at the city’s desperate, battered spirit. As editors Joe Longo and Jarret Lofstead write in their introduction, “After two years living in the wake of the hurricane, this great social experiment, with its soft-shoe race politics, its oblique corruption, its half-destroyed landscape and post-diluvian economic stress, has produced a single phrase that’s on the lips of anyone who’s lost a thing to this new life: It is what it is. It is ching-ming, proper naming, and best sums up the shared experience that came ashore on August 29th, 2005.”

–Susan Larson, New Orleans Times-Picayune

Featuring the work of New Orleans writers:

Joel Farrelly
Sarah K. Inman
Bill Loehfelm
Ken Foster
Kris Lackey
Patty Friedmann
Berman Black
Amanda Anderson
Jennifer A. Kuchta
Tara Jill Ciccarone
Dana Harrison-Tidwell
Andrea Boll
Lucas Diaz-Medina
Anne Gisleson
Leonard Earl Johnson
Jason Berry
Justin Burnell
Bill Lavender
Karissa Kary
Kelly Gartman
Katie Walenter
Ed Skoog
with a forward by Joshua Clark