The New Orleans Book Festival gives students the opportunity to meet authors from all over the country and immerse themselves in the book world.

Cheryl Landrieu, the executive director and co-chair of the New Orleans Book Festival, said the goal of the festival is to bring national authors to Tulane’s campus and give students in the area a chance to engage with these authors and learn new things. 

Bryan Stevenson, author of “Just Mercy” and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative is featured in The New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane this year as a keynote speaker.

“He is just a preeminent voice in the country for justice and we thought it would be a very appropriate space for him to speak to the students and as well as the community,” Landrieu said.

“I hope that they see something that they hadn’t thought of before, that they develop an interest in something new to them, that they develop skills, creativity, and ideas of things that are outside of the university that they’re able to bring into their curriculum and into their lives,” Landrieu said. 

In conjunction with the book festival, there is an event on Loyola and Tulane campuses called “My Black Country Songs and Stories”. This event features Loyola’s college of music and media students as well as New York Times best-selling author and award winning song writer Alice Randall. 

The event will honor Randall’s new book “My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future,” and conjuction album “My Black Country The Songs of Alice Randall.” 

“I’m thrilled to be invited for this conversation and concert,” Randall said. “‘My Black Country’ is a book about erased Black music history and a history of intrepid entrepreneurs.”

Randall is the first Black woman in history to write a number one country song and write the treatment for an Academy of Country Music video of the year. 

“I just want the students to know that this is designed to be an intellectual event but it’s also designed to be a fun event and we have a lot of fun things for students built into this festival,’’ Landrieu said. 

There are sessions with authors on culture, culinary skills, and music. There are opportunities to pick up new books and talk to the author about the writing process. Landrieu stressed that this is a very high profile event being held right on Tulane’s campus and it is a great opportunity for students to take advantage of. 

“Any of the Loyola or Tulane University students don’t have to go very far to come in contact 

with either a national author or a local author who’s written something that would have an interest to them,” Landrieu said.

The event will run from March 27-29.