7
Years since the American Library Association’s (ALA) Annual Conference was last held in New Orleans.
16,964
Number of Annual attendees in 2006, the year ALA was the first national group to hold a conference in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and the convention center’s reopening.
1014
Dumaine Street address of the town house once owned by playwright Tennessee Williams.
5
Number of days—usually the fourth week in March—that the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival is held annually.
14
Number of active New Orleans Public Library (NOPL) locations.
1
Number of Katrina-damaged branches in the NOPL system that have yet to reopen. The Seventh Ward’s Nora Navra location is currently undergoing reconstruction.
$5.6 million
Amount that Tulane University’s Howard-Tilton Memorial Library spends annually on digital resources.
1899
Year that Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening was published. Criticized at the time for its questioning of traditional female roles, the book is set in New Orleans and on nearby Grand Isle.
800
Block of Canal Street where a life-size bronze statue of Ignatius J. Reilly, protagonist of John Kennedy Toole’s posthumously Pulitzer Prize–winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces, stands in front of the former D. H. Holmes department store.
181
Years that The Times-Picayune, the oldest present-day newspaper in the Crescent City, has been in operation.
