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  • I'm a writer, journalist, and the editor of The Gambit, the alt-weekly newspaper in New Orleans.

    Journalism: My work has appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Globe & Mail (Canada), The Times- Picayune (New Orleans), The Oregonian, and Willamette Week, as well as in magazines including Details, Vogue, Publishers Weekly, and Portland Monthly.

    Publishing: Tight Shot, my first novel, was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Its sequel, Hot Shot, was roundly ignored by everyone, but was a far better book. I'm also a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

    Stage: I was a member of the Groundlings and Circle Repertory West in Los Angeles, and am a playwright (see "Stage" in the right-hand rail).

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Current Affairs

January 29, 2009

I'm still here, and this blog is alive. ALIVE, I tell you.

Dear Reader,

Hi there. It's been three months. So...how you been?

Me, I've been busy. As I said in my last post, I was hired in October as editor of New Orleans' weekly paper, Gambit. Since then, I've been

•  learning on the job (helped by a great staff)

•  going through a punishing election season (dozens of candidate interviews)

•  helping launch the paper's new Web site (functional, multimedia, all that stuff)

•  blogging daily on Gambit's Blog of New Orleans, and on Twitter (The_Gambit)

•  planning a 2009 budget (I do not excel at Excel)

•  helping with a complete redesign of the dead-tree edition (reaction has been mixed, but mostly positive, and everyone seems to like the new tabloid size)

•  being there while the paper rebranded from Gambit Weekly to The Gambit (for various reasons, some obvious)

•  and putting out a weekly paper in one week. Every week. Week after week after week.

All this against the backdrop of the publishing industry imploding -- magazines folding and newspapers collapsing, the Great Depression of Media. In some cases, it's market forces at work, business evolution in action; in others, it's gross mismanagement on a Wall Street scale of incompetence. (And I can't stop tracking it all, rather obsessively.)

I've been concentrating on the paper's blog, but I'll be writing more here in the year to come. Topics on my mind these days: the dissolution of the Washington Post Book World (one of my oldest freelance relationships), the grim future for alt-weekly cartoonists (the poor bastards), and why New Orleans, of all places, still has an attraction to, and an affection for, real news. Backwards as we are.

See you back here soon, and regularly.

10:54 PM in Book reviews, Buyouts, Current Affairs, Journalism, Magazines, New Orleans, Publishing, Writing | | Comments (15) | TrackBack (0)

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RECENT ARTICLES

BOOKS


  • Booklist:
    "A worthy successor to Tight Shot, Allman's insider view of the seamier side of Hollywood is not only hip and entertaining but also has something serious to say about our insatiable hunger for tabloid thrills."

    Washington Post:
    "Barbed, breezy and often pretty funny...sharp and entertaining. Allman can be very funny, and Hot Shot complements nicely the less forgiving takes on Los Angeles as the future of us all. "

    ----------


  • EDGAR AWARD NOMINEE
    BEST FIRST NOVEL
    MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA

    Booklist:
    "Allman turns a very sardonic pen loose on Hollywood's glitz-and-glamour crowd in this entertaining first novel... An impressive debut and an almost sure thing for a sequel."

    New Orleans Times-Picayune:
    "Allman clearly knows those of whom he writes. He's got L.A. nailed."

    Publishers Weekly:
    "Snappy debut... Readers will look for a sequel."

STAGE

  • BOO AND THE SHREVEPORT BABY
    A French Quarter convenience-store clerk has a hilariously traumatic encounter with a pair of Shreveport tourists. Part of Native Tongues 3 (Le Chat Noir, New Orleans; 2001; Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago; 2006).
  • BACKBONES
    An upper-class black caterer finds comeuppance and redemption. Part of Native Tongues 4 (Le Chat Noir, New Orleans; 2005).
  • MY-O-MY
    A recreation of an evening at the notorious New Orleans 1950s female-impersonator nightclub My-O-My (Le Chat Noir, New Orleans; 2005).
  • THE LOVE GIFT
    A lonely man discovers purpose when he intercepts a televangelist's letters from his neighbor's mailbox. Part of the Dramarama New Plays Festival (Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; 2004).
  • BABYDADDY
    A black father discovers that no good deed goes unpunished when he helps his white neighbor bail her son out of Orleans Parish Prison. (Le Chat Noir, New Orleans; 2004; Walker Percy Southern Playwrights Festival, Covington; 2007).
  • TWO IN THE BUSH
    An evening of comedies. In The Stud Mule, the world's richest woman arranges to be impregnated by a doltish escort; in Snatching Victory, an earnest college student runs afoul of her lecherous professor and the dour head of a women's-studies department (Le Chat Noir, New Orleans; 2003).

NEW ORLEANS READING

  • Patty Friedmann: <i>A Little Bit Ruined</i>

    Patty Friedmann: A Little Bit Ruined
    One of the first post-Katrina novels, and probably destined to be one of the best. Friedmann's sequel to Eleanor Rushing finds her crazy heroine still holding everything together after the storm (after a fashion), until she has to leave New Orleans and she falls apart physically as well as mentally. Mordantly, morbidly funny.

  • Tom Piazza: <i>Why New Orleans Matters</i>

    Tom Piazza: Why New Orleans Matters
    The best post-Katrina book I've read. In 150 small pages, Piazza explicates the New Orleans experience simply and beautifully. I'll be passing this one on to anyone who wonders "But why would anyone want to live there?".

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