Summary: AuthorViews is proud to present two minutes with New Orleans-born author Alice Wilson-Fried, cut from her interview at the 2008 Alternative Media Expo in New Orleans. We met up with Wilson-Fried to discuss her fiction debut, Outside Child, a wonderfully written and believable mystery set in New Orleans. The main characters, Ladonis Washington and her brother HeartTrouble, grow up in the notorious Magnolia Housing Projects of Uptown New Orleans -- where Wilson-Fried lived for most of her childhood. Built in 1941, at its height, the Magnolia Projects housed more than 2000 people in over 1400 apartments. But by the time Hurricane Katrina flooded the area in August 2005, the Magnolia Projects were almost completely vacant. Now, almost 3 years after the storm, the city has begun to demolish the abandoned ruins. For the past couple of decades, the Magnolia Projects were known throughout the entire country for their insanely high violent-crime and drug-use rates. According to Wilson-Fried, however, the projects weren't always like that. In this video, Wilson-Fried talks about what the Magnolia Housing Projects were like when she was a child, before gangs, drugs and violence plagued the community. In Outside Child, Wilson-Fried takes the reader through a seemingly neglected period of New Orleans history. If you like the video, feel free to check out an excerpt from the book at Wilson-Fried's website.
