Tom Piazza's short story collection Blues and Trouble, for which he won a James Michener Award, is the debut of an exciting and original new presence in American fiction. Set in Memphis, Florida, New York, New Orleans, and elsewhere, these twelve stories echo voices from Ernest Hemingway to Robert Johnson to Jimmie Rodgers in their powerful imagery and keen eye for the truth. A tough and haunting vision of a land where the social, emotional, and spiritual ground shifts constantly underfoot, Blues and Trouble is a work of both masterful craft and raw, rare beauty.
Tom Piazza is the author of ten books, the most recent of which is "Devil Sent The Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America," a collection of essays and journalism on music, literature and politics.
His other books include the novel "City Of Refuge," which won the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, and the post-Katrina classic "Why New Orleans Matters." His novel "My Cold War" won the Faulkner Society Award for the Novel, and his short-story collection "Blues and Trouble," won the James Michener Award for Fiction. He is currently a writer for the HBO series "Treme" and is at work on a new novel.
No less a literary critic than Bob Dylan has said, "Tom Piazza's writing pulsates with nervous electrical tension - reveals the emotions that we can't define." A well known writer on American music as well, Tom won a Grammy Award for his album notes to "Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: A Musical Journey" and is a three-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Music Writing. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Bookforum, The Oxford American, Columbia Journalism Review, and many other periodicals. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and he lives in New Orleans.
