Please join us for a presentation and signing with Claire Manes featuring OUT OF THE SHADOW OF LEPROSY: The Carville Letters and Stories of the Landry Family.

In 1924 when thirty-two-year-old Edmond Landry kissed his family good-bye and left for the leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana, leprosy, now referred to as Hansen's Disease, stigmatized and disfigured but did not kill. Those with leprosy were incarcerated in the federal hospital and isolated from family and community. Phones were unavailable, transportation was precarious, and fear was rampant. Edmond entered the hospital (as did his four other siblings), but he did not surrender to his fate. He fought with his pen and his limited energy to stay connected to his family and to improve living conditions for himself and other patients.

Claire Manes, Edmond's granddaughter, lived much of her life gripped by the silence surrounding her grandfather. When his letters were discovered, she became inspired to tell his story through her scholarship and his writing. Out of the Shadow of Leprosy: The Carville Letters and Stories of the Landry Family presents her grandfather's letters and her own studies of narrative and Carville during much of the twentieth century. The book becomes a testament to Edmond's determination to maintain autonomy and dignity. Letters and stories of the other four siblings further enhance the picture of life in Carville from 1919 to 1977.

Claire Manes, Lafayette, Louisiana, is retired from Remington College, where she taught English and speech for fourteen years. Her work has appeared in Louisiana History, Journal of American Folklore, and Louisiana Folklore Miscellany.

“Funny…odd, original, and nearly unclassifiable…Unlike any other novel I can think of.” —David Haglund, The New York Times Book Review

Please join us for an evening with author Sheila Heti celebrating the paperback edition of HOW SHOULD A PERSON BE? with a reading and book signing.

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE

Hailed as “a breakthrough” (Chris Kraus, Los Angeles Review of Books) for the critically acclaimed Sheila Heti, HOW SHOULD A PERSON BE? is an unabashedly honest and hilarious tour through the unknowable pieces of one woman’s heart and mind. It has ignited conversation and earned Heti comparisons to Joan Didion, Henry Miller, Kathy Acker, and Gustave Flaubert.

Part literary novel, part self-help manual, and part bawdy exploration of the artistic impulse, it shocked and excited critics and readers with its raw, urgent depiction of female friendships and of the shape of our lives right now. In a novel “unlike any other,” Heti breathes new life into the essential questions: What is the most noble way to love? What kind of person should you be?

“A vital and funny picture of the excitements and longueurs of trying to be a young creator in a free, late-capitalist Western City.”
—James Wood, The New Yorker

“One of the bravest, strangest, most original novels I’ve read this year.”
—Christopher Boucher, The Boston Globe

“[A] really amazing metafiction-meets-nonfiction novel that’s so funny and strange.”
—Lena Dunham, Entertainment Weekly

“I read this eccentric book in one sitting, amazed, disgusted, intrigued...but always in awe.”
—Alan Cheuse, NPR’s All Things Considered

Sheila Heti is the author of several books of fiction, including The Middle Stories and Ticknor; and an essay collection written with Misha Glouberman, The Chairs Are Where the People Go. Her writing has been translated into ten languages and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Bookforum, McSweeney's, n+1, The Guardian, and other places. She works as interviews editor at The Believer magazine and lives in Toronto.

Please join us when author/actress Victoria Rowell — Drucilla on "The Young and the Restless" — returns to Octavia Books to read from and sign her new novel, THE YOUNG AND THE RUTHLESS, another hilarious and shocking send-up of the soap opera world.

After a brief stint in drug rehab, unstoppable daytime drama diva Calysta Jeffries is back on the set and ready for action. But, not everyone in the cast and crew is happy to about her return. She’s already survived amnesia, alien abduction, and death three times over—but all that and a real-life alcohol abuse problem couldn’t keep Calysta down. Now, her enemies come up with the nastiest plan ever devised. Packed with behind-the-scenes secrets, THE YOUNG AND THE RUTHLESS crackles with salacious details and over-the-top, hot and heavy hijinks.

Victoria Rowell, best known as Drucilla Winters on The Young and the Restless, is the author of Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva. Her New York Times bestselling memoir, The Women Who Raised Me, received The African American Literary Award and two NAACP Image Award nominations. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.