“Culture is the New Cotton”: The failed promises of the Musicians’ Village

April 2026

“Culture is the New Cotton”: The failed promises of the Musicians’ Village

Strumming a guitar on his porch after work every evening in McComb, Mississippi in the 1950s, Fread Martin’s father taught him two things that would shape the course of his...

Drew Hawkins

December 2025

One Battle After Another: The ANTIGRAVITY 2025 Year-End Top 5

As Smash Mouth famously prophesized, “the years start comin’ and they don’t stop comin,’” and this latest chapter wrought an exceptionally high volume of...

Dalton Spangler, Danny Cherry Jr., Drew Hawkins, Holly Devon, Jesse Lu Baum, Mary Beth Campbell

July 2025

Fruit of a Poisonous Tree

On a recent Friday morning in New Orleans, while shoppers perused high-end luxury items at stores inside the Canal Place mall like Saks Fifth Avenue and Banana Republic, while...

Drew Hawkins

December 2024

2024 (Taylor’s Version): The ANTIGRAVITY Year-End Top 5

In 2024 it seems we all got a little older but not wiser, stared at the sun but never in the mirror, and at year’s close ended up in crisis (tale as old as time), our...

Drew Hawkins, Holly Devon, Mary Beth Campbell, Steven Melendez, Van Le

February 2024

Murky Waters

For Brian Ivey, life was all rainbows and beer. He managed to get his foot in the door of the craft beer industry, landing a part-time bartending gig for Catawba Brewing Company...

Drew Hawkins

December 2023

RAISING LOUISIANA

Drew Hawkins is a writer and journalist covering health equity in the Gulf South. He’s a father of two and the producer and host of Micro, a LitHub podcast for short but...

Drew Hawkins

December 2023

2023 Times the Charm: The ANTIGRAVITY Year-End Top 5

In case you have trouble wrapping your mind around the concept of time, we’re here to confirm that, yes, another year has passed. But what even happened in 2023? Our annual Top...

Danny Cherry Jr., Drew Hawkins, Holly Devon, James Cullen, Mary Beth Campbell, Van Le

June 2023

Missing in Action

If there’s one thing certain in this world, it’s that New Orleans knows how to put on a show. And that includes announcing new municipal employees. On August 8, 2022, flanked...

Drew Hawkins

December 2022

2022 Hours to Go

After the disaster-laden one-two punch that was 2020 and 2021, this year seemed inclined to ease its foot off the gas pedal a bit—if only because letting us rebuild our lives...

Drew Hawkins, Holly Devon, Mary Beth Campbell, Sara Pic, Steven Melendez

September 2022

Cubs the Poet: Poetry Still Matters

I’ve always been fascinated by what goes through the mind of an artist while they’re in the process of creation: when instinct and impulse are put on hold to allow for an...

Drew Hawkins

June 2022

No Safe Harbor

Cruising in his black Chevy Suburban down the flat, mostly empty stretch of Louisiana Highway 23 just past Belle Chasse in Plaquemines Parish, Maynard “Sandy” Sanders slid his...

Drew Hawkins

May 2022

Tiny Terrors

Nearly a year and a half after a shipping container carrying 55-pound bags of pre-production plastic pellets fell off the container ship CMA CGM Bianca into the Mississippi River,...

Drew Hawkins