In 1985, New Orleans-born novelist Nancy Lemann was given an assignment by renowned editor Tina Brown to cover Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards’s two spectacular corruption trials for Vanity Fair.

The result was the classic 1987 non-fiction book, The Ritz on the Bayou.

Over the years, the book became “unjustly neglected” and out-of-print until now, its 40^th anniversary reissue by South Carolina-based Hub City Press.

Lemann enthralls a new generation of readers with a seat at the banquet, a smorgasbord of racketeering, fraud and bribery. Hazy, atmospheric scenes of cigar smoke-laden bars, heaping plates of oysters, and unchecked eccentricity and chaos.

New Orleans’ “tropic zone” of slick ‘n shady politicians comes to life as well as the voters who pick whacko charisma over staid stewardship.

“Admirably peculiar… a bellwether for contemporary politics” – Lauren LeBlanc, The Drift

“Picks up where Hunter S. Thompson left off.” – Barry Hannah

Nancy Lemann is the author of the novels, Lives of the Saints, Sportsman’s Paradise, The Fiery Pantheon, Malaise, and forthcoming from NYRB: The Oyster Diaries.

She has written for the Paris Review, Harper’s, the Oxford American, Lapham’s Quarterly, among others.

The Parchman Band is a historic group led by inmates at the Mississippi State Penitentiary whose existence dates back to the 1930s. The initial group dissipated in the 1990s, but it was revived in 2023 under Superintendent Marc McClure.

The band members have performed in several local prisons since 2023, working their way up to the group’s first public audience in April 2025 at the B.B. King Museum in Indianola.

The group is working on an album with producer Jimbo Mathus, the Music Maker Foundation and the Parchman Community and Culture Foundation.

The UM World Percussion Ensemble is under the direction of Professor Ricky Burkhead, who has been on the Ole Miss faculty since 1994. He formed the popular University of Mississippi Steel Drum Band in 1995.

Buckhead has performed as drummer for the Thacker house band, the Yalobushwhackers, since 2016.