Sheila E. Murphy in New Orleans

As a prelude to my gratitude post for poet Sheila E. Murphy, I wanted to share a memory of the time she honoured New Orleans with her reading for the Lit City series in the mid-90s. One of Sheila’s favourite novels (and mine) was John Kennedy Toole’s carnivalesque A Confederacy of Dunces, which recounts the raucously comical misadventures of Ignatius Reilly, an unlikely medievalist and one-time hotdog vendor living with his mother in New Orleans. We set about touring some Ignatius landmarks, including the ubiquitous hotdog carts in the French Quarter. I treasure my photo of Sheila standing next to one.