Room 220 has a brief review and interview with Cynthia Joyce, the editor of Please Forward: How Blogging Reconnected New Orleans after Katrina, out this summer from UNO Press. Joyce and a number of contributors from the book will be reading from the anthology tomorrow evening at the Press Street headquarters at 3718 St. Claude Avenue in New Orleans. From the organizers:

The event on Tuesday will feature readings from Please Forward contributors such as Allen Boudreaux, Richard Read, Dedra Johnson, Andrea Boll, Mark Moseley, and Mike “T Mayheart” Dardar. The event is free and open to the public, Maple Street Books will be on hand with copies of the anthology, and complimentary libations will be served, though donations are strongly suggested.

Continuing its summertime theme, Pelican Bomb has a curated selection of poems on the theme of pilgrimage, with a brief introduction.

For those in the Hattiesburg area, I’m thrilled to be joining Oh, Jeremiah! and Cassie Pruyn for a reading and performance tomorrow night, July 10, at the Back Door Coffeehouse at University Baptist Church. Now going for over two decades, the coffeehouse is one of Hattiesburg’s premier arts nights, and a guaranteed great time. Doors at 7, with a small suggested donation — but there’s free coffee and homemade cake (yes, really).

I’m thrilled to be joining a cohort of superb writers here in New Orleans — among them Brian Boyles, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, and Katy Simpson Smith — for Bloomsday next Tuesday, June 16. If you’ve never been to a Bloomsday celebration, drop everything that evening and join us — by turns strange, funny, moving, and nonsensical, I promise it’ll be the weirdest (and best) encounter with language you have all week. 6-8pm at the Irish House on St. Charles, with spots available for guest readers to show up with their own favorite passages (come early to sign up).

Pelican Bomb has a brief essay on baldness, as part of their ongoing (De)tangled series on hair. Who among us couldn’t watch that clip of Zidane over and over again?