The New Orleans Writing Marathon: An Oasis for Wordsmiths
March 2025For more than three decades, this unique writers’ workshop has been offering camaraderie, inspiration and fascinating French Quarter locations.
- by Christopher Louis Romaguera
This column is underwritten in part by Karen Hinton & Howard Glaser
I remember my first New Orleans Writing Marathon, during the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival. I ended up getting confused and showed up at Café Du Monde. I saw the people waiting in line for beignets, hustlers hustling and artists showing off their work before I realized my mistake.
As I tried to cross the street, a car barely missed me, but it did drive straight into a puddle that got me soaking wet. Then I ran to the Hotel Monteleone, where the marathon was actually meeting. Whatever puddle water had dried in the March sun, my sweat replaced it. I showed up at the Hotel Monteleone, disheveled and damp.
The group had already started, in the quiet and beautiful Queen Anne Ballroom, sitting in a circle, writing. Founder, facilitator and participant Richard Louth sweetly waved me to sit down, and I wrote about my adventure. And a few other people wrote about the disheveled and damp Cuban-American writer who appeared in the middle of their session.
Founder Richard Louth in the Monteleone’s Queen Anne Ballroom, talking to a group of writers at the beginning of the session, photo by Ellis Anderson
And in that way, we all wrote about New Orleans and the magic of writers. The story became a bit of a legend amongst those of us there, and it was my introduction into the New Orleans Writing Marathon.
The New Orleans Writing Marathon has been going on since 1994. Every year, there are at least two New Orleans Writing Marathon events, one during the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival, and one during the summer.
The Marathon Writing is led by Richard Louth, Professor Emeritus of writing at Southeastern Louisiana University, and Tracy Cunningham, the Managing Director of the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival.
Co-directors Tracy Cunningham and Richard Louth, 2019, NOWM FB.
Louth often starts the marathon reading from Natalie Goldberg’s classic book, Writing Down the Bones:
“What usually happens is you stop thinking: you write; you become less and less self-conscious. Everyone is in the same boat, and because no comments are made, you feel freer and freer to write anything you want.”
Afterward, Louth may quote Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, where Hemingway wrote “I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and pencil.”
The idea of the New Orleans Writing Marathon is to bask in the fact that New Orleans belongs to us, and that we belong to our “notebook and pencil.” It is why Louth often ends the opening gathering for us to all repeat the phrase, “I’m a writer.”
After reading and getting together in the morning, writers break into small groups (3-5 people give or take) and strike out into the city.
Some marathoners like short five-minute rounds of writing, others like longer ones, and some prefer untimed sessions. Some participants would rather work with writers in their genre - poetry or fiction - while others connect with those who feel most productive writing in cafes. One group might visit art galleries on Royal Street, another might take the ferry to Algiers to write at the point.
After each session, people can read and share. No one in the group pays compliments or gives critiques to avoid people feeling something or someone is better than the other; the point is to write freely. So, after you share, you go right back to writing.
As co-director Tracy Cunningham puts it, “I have been on dozens of Writing Marathons and the experience always invigorates my writing practice, reminds me to listen to the muses around me, deepens my commitment to writing, and expands my writing community.”
Louth holds up the entry form for the first Writers’ Marathon, 31 years ago. Photo Ellis Anderson
The New Orleans Writing Marathon has grown over the past 31 years: There are regular writers both from New Orleans and elsewhere in North America. Every marathon, I write with marathon regulars as well as friends I haven’t made the time to write with in a while, as well as strangers who will become friends by the end of the day. To write and share with fellow writers in this magical city is a beautiful thing.
As Louth says, “The Writing Marathon gives everyone a chance to write on anything they want and to share their writing in small groups, with no criticism, while experiencing the city as writers.”
On the New Orleans Writing Marathon website, there is a virtual map that details the popular locations to write, as well as some snippets of what people have written there. And I love that map, and I love that each of us who have participated in the New Orleans Writing Marathon have our own personal marathon maps.
Click on the map image to access!
When I think of my map, I think of mornings at Croissant D’Or, having tasty pastries and good coffee and writing by the fountain that is so soothing. I think about writing in the old Café Rose Nicaud, and how they had the devoted writers’ table, a café run by a family of native New Orleanian writers and artists, I think of going to Coop’s Place and having their jambalaya or Chicken Tchoupitoulas, as Richard would have a small personal writing marathon with me mid-day, and we’d talk about our lives and our writing, back when I was new, to the city and to writing in it.
I think about writing in a one-on-one group with a dear friend and writer, and how we broke the rules and shared what we felt after hearing the other read, cause we wrote about stuff that we had never shared with each other or out loud before.
I think about writing during the unnamed storm that came so early it happened during the summer workshop, and how the city was putting up floodwalls we could see, while we were still creating during the beautiful calm before the storm.
I think of going to Algiers to with former Poet Laureate of Louisiana Jack Bedell, and walking and writing with him and Drew Hawkins (who I finally got to meet in person due to the writing marathon, after years of us following each other online), I think about writing in Molly’s at the Market while it was pouring, and how Irma Thomas’s “It’s Raining,” came on, and how some of us stopped to dance, then continued writing, letting the words flow, and I think about all the writing marathons that have ended with us at Molly’s writing under the plaque that calls Louth the “Writer-in-Residence”, before we all head back to the final meet up place and share what we’ve got.
Chris Romaguera
And I also have a map of what I’ve written during these marathons, of how it’s allowed me to go back to Cuba in my mind, and really spend all day with coffee and rum and just let myself sit there and let the words flow, I think of how sitting in those cafes and with those writers, let me think of my first home, of Miami, and let me process the things I can’t during everyday life, I think of how sitting in those cafes let me write about my surroundings, and my New Orleans, about what happened here before me, about what will happen here after we are all gone, as I work on my novel.
And I think about all the toasts we’ve shared for the writers who can no longer marathon with us, and I think about how we’ve let ourselves be in our writerly worlds, and be in each other’s orbits enough, to share our ghosts with each other, on the page and also between the writing sessions, and how there is nothing more important and beautiful as a writer than being able to bring those stories back alive for each other, for ourselves.
So I share all this to say, I love this city that has adopted me, and I love the New Orleans Writing Marathon, for all the writing it has allowed me to do, and all the lovely friends I’ve been able to meet, and that, I love that “I’m a writer,” with everyone else that decides to be one with us, too.
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