Fifth Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

AJC Decatur Book Festival Presented by DeKalb Medical Commemorates Fifth Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

Five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, authors at the AJC Decatur Book Festival Presented by DeKalb Medical will reflect on the disaster as they discuss and read from their work.

From the children’s stage, where author Renée Watson will read from her children’s picture book, A Place Where Hurricanes Happen, to the Decatur Presbyterian Sanctuary Stage where Patricia Smith will perform poems about the tragedy from her book Blood Dazzler, numerous events will focus on how writers have responded to Katrina.

Watson’s presentation about her free-verse picture book with its straightforward account of Hurricane Katrina will be Sunday, 1:30 at the Children's Stage.

Smith, a record-setting poetry slam champion, will present scenes from Blood Dazzler Sunday at noon at the Decatur Presbyterian Sanctuary Stage. The poems track Hurricane Katrina in minute-by-minute detail as it transforms into a full-blown mistress of destruction. From August 23, 2005, the day Tropical Depression Twelve developed, through August 28 when it became a Category 5 storm with its “scarlet glare fixed on the trembling crescent,” to the heartbreaking aftermath, Smith’s poems evoke the horror that unfolded in New Orleans as America watched on television.

Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast is poet Natasha Trethewey’s very personal profile of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and of the people there whose lives were forever changed by Hurricane Katrina. The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet will launch her book Sunday at 1:15 p.m. at First Baptist Decatur Carreker Hall Stage. Trethewey, who lives in Decatur, is professor of English at Emory University and holds the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry.

Former CNN correspondent Kathleen Koch and Decatur’s Dorothy Moye team up for a program, “5 Years From Katrina: Revisiting the Gulf Coast,” Saturday at 5:30 p.m. at the Decatur Library Stage. Koch, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist and author, will discuss her book, Rising from Katrina: How My Mississippi Hometown Lost It All and Found What Mattered, about her coverage of the disaster and its impact on her hometown of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Moye, a Decatur art consultant and a former resident of New Orleans, will present The X-Codes: A Post-Katrina Postscript, her curated collection of photos of thousands of post-Katrina search-and-rescue building markings and the haunting visual impact they’ve had after the storm, some remaining even five years later.