Anne Gisleson is a native Lo
uisianan writer, editor, poet, and teacher. Receiving her BA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and her MFA from Louisiana State University, Gisleson has been published in such places as The Believer, The New Orleans Review, and Oxford American in addition to having her work included in such anthologies as Best American Non-Required Reading. She has also participated in residencies at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the New York Institute for Writers, and been the recipient of Louisiana Division of the Arts grants and a Surdna Arts Teacher’s Fellowship. She currently serves as chair of the creative writing program at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA), where she teaches.
In the summer of 2005, along with her husband, Brad Benischek, sister, Susan Gisleson, and other creative talents, Gisleson first envisioned the book project that would come to be known as Intersection/New Orleans. The book featured a pairing of 25 writers and artists in blind collaboration about 25 different street intersections throughout the city. However, it evolved into a project of greater importance in the wake of Hurricane Katrina because of its unintentional before-and-after comparison. Intersection saw completion in 2006 as the first publication of the newly-formed non-profit organization Press Street, of which Gisleson is the board president and co-founder.
Since its inception, the mission of Press Street has been to promote visual and literary arts within the community. In 2008, Press Street acquired the Antenna gallery space through which it hosts community events such as the annual 24 hour Draw-A-Thon and regular art house film screenings. Since Intersection, Press Street has gone on to publish five additional works, including Gisleson’s collaboration in 2010 with Tristian Thompson and Catherine Burke entitled How to Rebuild a City: a Field Guide from a Work in Progress.
Gisleson worked with Loyola University’s Walker Percy Center to teach a course on the personal essay in the fall season of 2010. More recently, she collaborated with Michel Varisco and Bradley Sumrall to create a collection of photographs and essays about the endangered Louisiana wetlands entitled Shifting, which is set to be published in 2012. Currently, she is working on a novel about two couples facing the disaster of Hurricane Betsy.
Links:
http://press-street.com/about/
http://www.nocca.com/index.php/directory/profile/anne_gisleson/
http://pelicanbomb.com/home/post/116
http://noladefender.com/content/intersection-five-years-later
http://www.maxliterary.org/clients.htm#Gisleson1
http://believermag.com/issues/201009/?read=article_gisleson