In a literary event marking the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Fredrick Barton reads from his new book In The Wake of the Flagship, a blistering satire chronicling one man’s battle against bureaucracy and corruption in the aftermath of a devastating hurricane.

The Visiting Writers Series hosts the event on Tuesday, Sept. 22 at 6:00 pm in the Rosati Room 300 of the John T. Richardson Library 2350 N. Kenmore Avenue.

Barton is known for his novels The El Cholo Feeling Passes, Courting Pandemonium, and With Extreme Prejudice. His short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and in the anthologies Something in Common and Above Ground. He is a winner of Louisiana Division of the Arts Literature Prize and his novel A House Divided is the 2000 winner of the William Faulkner Prize.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford says, “Barton has a lot of important human business on his mind in this exceptional novel: race, history, the South, hurricanes, laughter, love, and much more. In the Wake of the Flagship is wonderfully inventive, and addictive to read.”

Barton did graduate work under a Danforth Fellowship, taking degrees from UCLA and the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. Currently Barton is a Professor of English at the University of New Orleans.