‘Postmark Bayou Chene’ author Gwen Roland will speak at Franklin library

Gwen Roland, author of the memoir Atchafalaya Houseboat, will visit the Alex P. Allain Memorial Branch of the St. Mary Parish Library on Wednesday, Dec. 2 as part of the promotional tour for her new novel Postmark Bayou Chene, recently released by LSU Press.
“I suppose you could call it an evening at Bayou Chene,” said Roland of the event, which will include readings from her books and a slide show of her adventures in the 1970s when she and Calvin Voisin lived on a houseboat in the Atchafalaya Basin. “Many people in the area are descendants of Bayou Chene or other Basin communities. We grew up listening to some of the same stories, but chances are we processed them differently so it will make for some good conversation.”
Roland began writing Postmark Bayou Chene after readers of her memoir asked for more details about daily life back when the community was still vibrant. She felt the same curiosity herself.
“The old stories that I had heard all of my life begged to come alive with the smell of freshly tarred nets, the thump of a log against a houseboat’s hull, the heft of wet petticoats pulling into the current. I wanted to read a novel that would sweep me away to that place and time,” she says. “So I anchored those yarns with scholarly research, then set my own imagination free to fill in the blanks. The result is Postmark Bayou Chene, a novel set in 1907, and as far as I know the first novel with a Bayou Chene setting. “
Roland will also talk about the difference in writing a memoir like Atchafalaya Houseboat and a novel like Postmark Bayou Chene. “There is so much interest in researching family history these days,” she says, “but family members get little benefit from research that sits in a desk drawer or computer. Why not turn that research into some biographical fiction that will entertain family members as well as educate them about their history? You don’t have to be a professional writer, and your ancestors don’t have to be famous to merit a tall tale or two that can be read by future generations.”
The event will start at 6 p.m. Copies of Postmark Bayou Chene will be for sale and signed by the author. St. Mary Parish Library is located at 206 Iberia St. in Franklin.