Denise McConduit

I've been an author since I was in my 20s, so I've spent about 40 to 45 years writing. I consider myself a cultural writer - I write about the culture of New Orleans for children, because children really didn't have a lot of stories about our culture, especially African American kids. My first published book came from a story I wrote about my son's ride in the Zulu Parade in New Orleans, which became a series of three books all dealing with the culture of New Orleans. I've written six books total so far. My latest book is called Claudia and the Storm, a middle grade story about Hurricane Katrina. I also wrote a story for kids in the Cane River community in Natchitoches, Louisiana about growing up there and celebrating the Christmas festival. When my kids were little, I tried to buy books for them, but they didn't have enough variety where they could see themselves in literature. New Orleans has such a unique culture, and I felt like they have to have stuff that they could be proud of, because sometimes my city gets a bad rap - we get a lot of negative as well as positive press. I wanted something positive that children could be proud of. As a community leader, I've been involved almost my whole life. We put on this big festival in New Orleans called the Gentilly Fest, and we'll have our 20th anniversary coming up - this year will be 19. I've been doing that since after Hurricane Katrina. It started off raising money for first responders in our community right after Hurricane Katrina, but now we support various organizations in the community through this huge festival.