Displaced: 2026 Eric Hoffer Award winner
I’m excited to announce Displaced was named the 2026 Eric Hoffer Award winner for Memoir. It also received a First Horizon Award and was short listed for the Grand Prize. When I started the book in 2008, I knew I had things I wanted to say, but I wasn’t sure if anyone would ever read my recollections of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina.
Back then, I had a blog (as most people did). I wrote essays for fun. It wasn’t something I planned to pursue professionally because I saw myself as a film person. At that time, I was still working in documentary film as a researcher and film editor. I hadn’t yet decided to pursue an MFA in Nonfiction Creative Writing.
How times change.
Someone asked why I finally published the book nearly 20 years later. My answer was, “because I’m turning 49.”
I didn’t want this book sitting on a dusty hard drive somewhere for the rest of my life. Not when the people and places in my life at that time meant so much to me.
It’s still strange to think back on that time. As people have started reading the book and sharing their own stories of the city during that era, it has been so rewarding but also strange to see events through their eyes.
It was a period of my young adulthood that I had packed away many years ago—now coming back to life.
The funniest feedback has been from people who know me now, but didn’t know me then. More than one person has said, “I know how the story ends, but I’m so invested in this relationship!”
I get it. I felt the same way as I was finishing and editing the manuscript in 2025.
There were so many things I had forgotten I wrote. It made me nostalgic, and I had to reevaluate the relationship I had to “Eliot” and what that phase of our lives really meant to me. What his friendship continues to mean to me today. That relationship was rooted in something that went deeper than I think either of us realized at the time.
I wasn’t sure how to wrap up the ending. It felt incomplete to me, because I know what happened in all the years that followed. Such is the nature of memoir, and life in general. Constantly evolving.
The awards were announced, and I saw my name. I felt happily surprised and validated. Not that I expected to win awards (and I only submitted the book to a couple), but this one in particular meant a lot to me.
I admired Eric Hoffer for many years—decades at this point. This award means something personal to me.
When I was living in Boston, writing this book, one of my friends was writing a book about Hoffer. I grew to respect him even more as I learned about his life. He was a self-taught philosopher and astute observer of human nature and mass movements who never stopped living his life as a working man. He was the embodiment of the thinking, working-class person. I aspired to be that kind of writer. Someone who works in the real world, with real people, doing real things. It was how I got started in documentary film. It’s why my entire career has been spent in news and nonfiction writing.
And has there ever been a more appropriate moment to consider the themes of The True Believer?
I’ve never worked as a longshoreman or out in a field, but I have always felt deeply connected to the everyday working person. I am that person, as most of us are.
I didn’t set out with any kind of thesis when I started this post, so before I go off on random tangents, I’ll just say this:
This is the one award I hoped to win. I’m so grateful Displaced received this particular award.
If you’ve read the book, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you think Katrina was portrayed in the news and popular media. Did the book change any of your perceptions? I ask because that has been a common thread in the feedback—people have said it gave them a view of everyday people they hadn’t considered or seen represented before.
I’m curious if people have that experience after reading.
If you’d like to download a Displaced reading guide, you’ll find one on the book’s website at Live Write Publish.
And if you’ve already read the book, thank you for reading! I appreciate your time. xo