A quick note to let you know that we’re moving tickets to the Walker Percy Weekend, so please do your best to get yours early. We need to know how much crawfish, beer, and oysters to buy for the dinners, so the sooner you buy yours, the better off we’ll be. Information about the event is on the Walker Percy Weekend website; you can reserve your tickets online at the bottom of the page.

I wanted to tell you about a neat thing we have planned for the event. We’re working with LSU to host an I Knew Walker When… oral history project. Festivalgoers who knew, met, or interacted with Walker Percy will be invited to sit down with LSU historians to record their memories for the university’s archive. It will be a great opportunity for festivalgoers to make history themselves, and to help build Walker Percy’s legacy for future generations of readers. Please come on down to St. Francisville, drink a little cold beer with us, eat some crawfish under the live oaks, and let’s talk Southern literature and Walker Percy.

I know a lot of you are planning to roadtrip, because you’ve told me so. Do us a favor and get those tickets early, willya? We want to be ready for you. While you’re down this way, why not make a run over to the Covington area to St. Joseph’s Abbey, where you can visit Walker’s grave? You’ll be on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, which means prime Moviegoer territory. And of course, you’ll want to go have a drink at Napoleon House, and go kiss the Ignatius statue.

Sounds like a vacation to me. I’m just saying. Louisiana is always happy to see you.