Lafcadio Lives: A New Festival Honors Often Overlooked Writer
Founders of the new Lafcadio Festival: Amy Kirk Duvoisin and Matt Smith, photo by Ellis Anderson fr FQJ
June 2026A new festival celebrating legendary New Orleans writer Lafcadio Hearn is the brainchild of Amy Kirk Duvoisin, founder of the beloved Joan of Arc Parade.
– by Kim Ranjbar
This column is underwritten in part by Matthew Peck Gallery
If you Google the name Lafcadio, a top result offers pronunciation help: laf-KAH-dee-oh. But if Amy Kirk Duvoisin has her way, Lafcadio Hearn’s name will soon be rolling off the tongues of thousands of new devotees. Lafcadio Fest, an inaugural celebration dedicated to the historic writer, will take place at the New Orleans Jazz Museum on Saturday, June 20.
“Every writer who has ever lived in New Orleans has contributed to the New Orleans ‘brand,’” says Duvoisin, “but Lafcadio doesn’t always get the credit he deserves.
“So much of the mystique that draws people here was created by him, yet, he’s still not the first person people think of when you say ‘writers who lived in New Orleans’. It’s high time we paid him his due!”
This isn’t the first rodeo for Duvoisin: She’s founder of the popular Joan of Arc Project that parades through the French Quarter each year on the saint’s birthday (January 6). And she once hosted a birthday bash for the Baroness Pontalba in the Upper Pontalba building.
This cultural dynamo jokes that she loves throwing birthday parties for historical figures – Lafcadio is simply the latest. The writer’s birthday is on June 27 (1850), but since the Jazz Museum was only available as a venue on June 20th, Duvoisin and co-founder Matt Smith bumped up the date.
This undated photograph of Lafcadio Hearn was taken by Frederick Gutekunst. public domain
The drawing from the photograph was created in the 1930s by William Edwin Rudge, Library of Congress
Duvoisin, who grew up in Ohio, came to New Orleans fresh from a lengthy collegiate career studying anthropology, English lit and creative writing – which culminated in a master’s in playwriting from San Francisco State University.
With such voluminous accreditation, she quickly found employment at Pelican Publishing in Gretna. It served as an ideal place to learn about the city’s history.
“I was reading a lot about early New Orleans and Lafcadio Hearn was always in the mix. He was famous for his Creole cookbook [La Cuisine Creole: A Collection of Culinary Recipes from Leading Chefs and Noted Creole Housewives]. And I always found his quotes about Ohio very amusing.”
Duvoisin is referencing one of the most remorseless quotes about our city, discovered in a letter Hearn wrote to a friend, shortly after moving to New Orleans from Cincinnati.
Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become a study for archaeologists...but it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.
Library of Congress
Noted photographer Arnold Genthe took this photograph in 1920 - 1926, notating that it was Lafcadio Hearn’s residence. Is it the building on St. Louis Street that Hearn references in the letter above? If you can identify this building, please write us! Library of Congress
It was not until shortly after her mother passed away that Duvoisin rediscovered Hearn and casually pitched her idea for a talk or festival about the journalist to a few friends at the Japan Society of New Orleans.
“I was reading a lot of ghost stories, about reincarnation and Japanese culture, and he kept popping up,” Duvoisin explained. “I kept pitching this idea because I knew the Japan Society goes to Matsue, our sister city in Japan, and that we are that sister city because of Lafcadio Hearn.”
Born on the Greek island of Lefkada in 1850, Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was a journalist, author, translator and artist known mostly for introducing the culture of Japan to the Western world.
Due to a tumultuous upbringing where he was abandoned by his parents and later his caretakers – not to mention an injury to his left eye that rendered him partially blind – Hearn was ever the outsider. Before moving to Japan, the writer spent nearly a decade living and writing in and about New Orleans, contributing to the lasting myths about our city.
Becasue of the damage to his eye, Hearn always made sure it was hidden in photographs. This one is from 1883 (during his time spent in New Orleans) and included in the book The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, published in 1906 by Elizabeth Bisland. Unknown photographer, public domain. Access the book here.
Lafcadio Hearn in 1888, shortly after he left New Orleans after living in the city for a decade. Unknown photographer, public domain
included in the book The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, published in 1906 by Elizabeth Bisland. Unknown photographer, public domain.
While Duvoisin isn’t “New Orleans born-and-bred,” she has arguably become one of our city’s greatest proponents. Over the past two decades, she has made a career out of supporting the arts and culture of New Orleans, from handling marketing for The French Market Corporation and Jefferson Performing Arts Society to creating special programming at the Louisiana Children's Museum.
Amy Duvoisin Kirk in the 2025 Joan of Arc parade, photo by Ellis Anderson for FQJ
Duvoisin also spent ten years as a board member for the distinguished Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival, and developed some of her closest friendships marching with the Pussyfooters. Currently, Duvoisin spends her days as the events and sponsorship manager of the iconic local radio station WWOZ.
However, she’s best known for the parade and organization she founded in 2008, Krewe de Jeanne d'Arc and still spends her free time planning events for them.
As an indelible thread woven throughout our city’s cultural tapestry, carnival was also the onus behind renewed interest in the life and writings of Lafcadio Hearn. In 2024, Rex, one of the city's oldest (since 1872) and longest-running carnival krewes, announced “The Two Worlds of Lafcadio Hearn – New Orleans and Japan” as their theme and rolled with colorful floats depicting Japanese mythology and Creole cooking.
“A friend of mine actually hosted the great-grandson of Lafcadio Hearn [Bon Koizumi]. She toured the Rex den with him,” says Duvoisin. “There was more discussion and I brought it up again [to the Japan Society], about the deep connection with Japan and Lafcadio Hearn. That is how I finally connected with Matt Smith.”
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. "Lafcadio Hearn."
Meeting Matt Smith seemed like kismet. He is an active board member of the Japan Society and an instructor at Tulane’s Liberal Arts College who has heavily researched 19th-century Louisiana literature – including the work of Lafcadio Hearn.
“Once Matt and I got together and started talking, things came together very quickly – as things do when they’re meant to be,” says Duvoisin. She is quick to point out that while the festival was her idea, “Matt is the real manifester at this point.” She also points to Smith as the expert on all things Lafcadio.
Matt joined the Japan Society in 2019 and in 2024, the organization sent him to Matsue, Japan, where he stayed with a host family for ten days. Smith was struck by how excited they were about Lafcadio Hearn – even though the writer only lived there for a year or two. It made Smith consider why New Orleans didn’t really celebrate the writer.
“[In Matsue] you can’t go a city block without running into some plaque about ‘this is what Lafcadio Hearn got up to here,’” explains Smith. “So when Amy came to me about the festival, I was happy to join forces with her.”
Lafcadio Hearn lived in New Orleans for nearly a decade, writing prolifically for local newspapers such as The City Item and the Times Democrat. He also created satirical cartoons to accompany his columns (a first for southern newspapers) using hand-carved woodcuts. Yet, he remains relatively unknown to the local community.
From the book Lafcadio Hearn’s American Days by Edward Larocque Tinker, published in 1924. See end of story for digital access.
From the book Lafcadio Hearn’s American Days by Edward Larocque Tinker, published in 1924. See end of story for digital access.
First editions of the Hearn’s cookbook are extremely collectable, like this one, available from Sotheby’s for $2500.
“When you say his name around town, the culinary community knows him because of the cookbook, but beyond that I don’t know how wide of a reputation he has in this city,” says Smith.
“Amy and I are hoping that this festival is a way to get a little more name recognition for him out there, get larger pockets of the community more familiar with his life and work.”
The upcoming, day-long festival at the New Orleans Jazz Museum is jam-packed with a morning panel featuring several Hearn scholars from Michigan to the Bahamas, with a mid-day lunch served by Greta's Sushi, a Gulf-forward omakase.
The festival’s keynote speaker is Steve Kemme, a Hearn biographer who wrote The Outsider: The Life and Work of Lafcadio Hearn: The Man Who Introduced Voodoo, Creole Cooking, and Japanese Ghosts to the World and the roster even includes virtual visits from Mayor Akihito Uesada of Matsue, Shoko Koizumi, and Lafcadio Hearn's great-grandson, Bon Koizumi.
Bon Koizumi, Great Grandson of Lafcadio Hearn, Historic New Orleans Collection, acquisition made possible by Donna & John Fraiche and John Turner & Jerry Fischer, 2020.0142.1
But all of this is just the first wave in an ocean of information and study about Hearn. Both Duvoisin and Smith are already brainstorming future festivals.
“You can take him into a number of different conversations. In future years, I’d love to do a theme about Lafcadio Hearn and horror, Lafcadio and food, and then a year on tourism, but from a critical angle: How do we responsibly write about other cultures, how do we engage in intercultural interactions in ways that are respectful?” asks Smith excitedly.
“But this year the theme is ‘let’s see if we can get this thing done,’” he says, laughing.
Duvoisin agrees there are endless possibilities.
“The great thing about these larger-than-life characters is that they appeal to different people in different ways. You have someone like John Folse, who thinks of him as a culinary giant and a friend of mine, who just loves Hearn’s horror stuff.
“This year, we’re just starting the celebration of him and his birthday. Joan of Arc and Lafcadio Hearn may be two very different figures, but both have a place in the eternal New Orleans' story!”
