Bio:
Anne Gisleson is the author of The Futilitarians: Our Year of Thinking, Drinking, Grieving and Reading (Little, Brown), a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, The Oxford American, The Believer and many other publications.
Her essays have been featured in several anthologies such as Best American Non-Required Reading, Life in the Wake, and others. She co-edited and co-wrote How to Rebuild a City: Field Guide from a Work in Progress, about ground-up rebuilding efforts in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and wrote the accompanying essays for photographer Michel Varisco’s Shifting, a book about the beauty and degradation of the coastal wetlands.
She teaches creative writing at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and is co-founder of the literary and visual arts non-profit Antenna.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
On Anne Gisleson’s The Futilitarians (Little, Brown) —
“Gisleson writes with wit, warmth, and a spiritual devotion to books... Her search for purpose and connection amid chaos and loss permeates even the most heart-wrenching moments of The Futilitarians-- and it’s what turns the book from a meditation on reading to a celebration of being.” -- Jason Heller, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO
“Essential... this is a shattering and very important important book...one of the best books of this year.”
— Dave Eggers
“Truly great writing...Gisleson conjures the strange beauty of her world... An affecting memoir.”
-- Keziah Weir, ELLE
“With beautiful writing, Gisleson effortlessly weaves existentialism around narrative, challenging and engaging readers with a seamless blend of theory and memoir. Writer and educator Gisleson’s first book-length work weighs heavy with life’s toughest questions and then instantaneously elevates the soul with hope, making a charming, captivating, and incredibly smart must-read.” -- Melissa Norstedt, Booklist
“Sets out a search for meaning in grand terms and resolves the search in the beauty of loving detail...Plus, spoiler, it ends in fireworks and a reading list you do not want to miss.”
— Louise Erdrich
“A beautiful book about things that matter-- love, death, grief, anger, regret, renewal, the life of the mind, the life of the heart, and the life of the world around you.”
— Sam Lipsyte
Praise for The Futilitarians —
“The Futilitarians sets out a search for meaning in grand terms and solves the search in the beauty of loving detail. From suicide to set painting, lunch pies to Death Row, from decayed eternity to the complex rebirth of New Orleans, this book never loses the treasure of abiding doubt. Plus, spoiler, it ends in fireworks and a reading list you do not want to miss.”
— LOUISE ERDICH, National Book Award–winning author ofLaRose
“This is a shattering and very important book—and will, if there is justice (and there must be justice), be considered one of the best books of this year. There is an ocean of hurt here, but Gisleson manages to sail through it and show us everything that’s beautiful about this sea of pain. If you love existential literature, or New Orleans, or your family, or are curious about the meaning of life, then you will find The Futilitarians to be an essential book.”
— DAVE EGGERS, New York Times bestselling author of The Circle and What Is the What
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).