My Bio

Constance Adler lives and writes in New Orleans.  She shares a cottage near Bayou Saint John with her dog Winnie. 

She holds a BA in English Literature from Smith College and an MA in Creative Writing from Hollins University. 

Her articles have appeared in Oxford American, Spy, Utne Reader, Self, In Style, Baltimore Magazine, Philadelphia Magazine among others.  Locally her stories have run in Gambit Weekly.  The Louisiana Press Association honored her work with a first place award for Individual Feature Writing.

She has written a memoir, describing her exile during Hurricane Katrina and a lot more besides, titled My Bayou: New Orleans Through the Eyes Of a Lover (Michigan State University Press, March 2012).  Excerpts have been published in Bayou Magazine (University of New Orleans, winter 2007) and Oxford American (Aug/Sept 2008).  The online journal, Blackbird (Virginia Commonwealth University, fall 2008) published a chapter titled "Season of Miracles". You can learn more about My Bayou here.

She writes a blog called Emily Every Day, a daily meditation on a poem by Emily Dickinson.

Read some of her articles archived online:

• Word Perfect
  Ten thousand players. Two hundred clubs. One tournament. As the National Scrabble Championship gears up in New Orleans, Constance Adler ventures into the mostly friendly, always competitive world of local players.

• Drawing From the Past
  Henri Schindler has devoted his life to a single mission: bringing the mystery and splendor of 19th century Carnival onto 21st century streets.

• Nancy Drew in New Orleans
  The girl detective's biggest fans come to town to solve some mysteries of their own.

• The Passion of Kathy Randels
  The performance artist follows her curiosity wherever it takes her, from Belgrade to the Lower Ninth Ward, from a Contemporary Arts Center residency to performing 'necessary acts of futility' on downtown sidewalks.

 

Constance Adler teaches creative writing and memoir at Tulane University.  She also taught a creative writing class of her own design called Writing From the Chakras that combined movement, meditation and spontaneous writing.  She devised the Bayou Writing Workshop as a variation on that process.

In 2005, she participated in the workshop Writing the Unthinkable taught by Lynda Barry, author of What It Is.  In 2007, she finished a year-long manuscript series, facilitated by Patricia Lee Lewis, author of A Kind of Yellow.  In spring 2008 she completed the workshop leadership training offered by Amherst Writers and Artists, and she is an affiliate member of AWA.  She is also a member of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.