Rien Fertel is a writer and professor of history at Tulane University and Bard Early College New Orleans. He has written for a variety of local and national publications. His first book, Inventing the Creole City, a history of early New Orleans literature and literary myth-making, is out now from Louisiana State University Press.
Currently, he is writing a personal narrative about his journey into the heart of barbecue, due out in the Spring of 2016 from Simon & Schuster/Touchstone.