"New Orleans cuisine is Creole rather than Cajun." -- Poppy Z. Brite
Poppy Z. Brite (born Melissa Ann Brite on May 25, 1967 in New Orleans, Louisiana) is an American author. Brite initially achieved notoriety in the gothic horror genre of literature in the early 1990s after publishing a string of successful novels. Brite's recent work has moved into the related genre of dark comedy, of which many are set in the New Orleans restaurant world. Brite's novels are typically standalone books but may feature recurring characters from previous novels and short stories. Much of her work features openly bisexual and gay characters.
"And I can't think of a reason I'd ever use a pseudonym, as I wouldn't want to publish something that I didn't like enough to put my name on it.""Celebrities, even insignificant ones like me, are created to be abused by the Great Unwashed.""I certainly don't think I would have been asked to pose for Rage if I wasn't a known writer.""I certainly wanted to write a book that was honest about New Orleans without explaining it to death, so much so that the first draft contained references absolutely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't lived here for several years.""I don't like to talk about work in progress, but the novel I'm working on now is definitely not horror.""I like visiting people's homes on Saint Joseph's Day, when people set up altars, serve food as a tribute to the saint, and invite the public - I enjoy that much more than Mardi Gras.""I think film had a terrible effect on horror fiction particularly in the 80s, with certain writers turning out stuff as slick and cliched as Hollywood movies.""I'd much rather do an obviously commercial writing project than get a day job.""I've certainly learned a great deal from my husband, though, and could never have written a book like Liquor without him and the people he introduces me to and the stories he brings home.""I've tried to avoid labels, but they always find you.""In France, for instance, one magazine writer was convinced that On The Road had been a huge influence on Lost Souls and was crushed to learn that I hadn't read the one until after I'd written the other.""In high school I was the dog, always, and I never have felt comfortable or right in my body, and part of my whole exhibitionist thing has probably been a way of testing to see whether or not I really was this repulsive creature that I felt like for so long.""In the Netherlands I read the first chapter of Exquisite Corpse to an audience that laughed in all the places I thought were funny - an experience I've never had in America!""Mostly I enjoy the restaurants (my husband is a chef), though I wish we had a wider diversity of ethnic food.""My childhood may have been more demented than most, because I learned to read very early and was allowed to read whatever I wanted.""My dad told me that no one could ever make it as a writer, that my chances were equivalent to winning the lottery - which was good for me, because I like to have something to prove.""My mother is an office manager, my father a professor of economics and financial planner.""Some of the food in Liquor is food I've really eaten filtered through a veil of fiction.""There are people who must spend huge amounts of time composing these online diatribes against me, all about how disgusting and terrible I am and how no one should ever read my books, and it's not enough for them to hate me, they can't stand the fact that ANYONE likes me!""This is the point being missed by readers who lament Liquor's lack of hot sex scenes, probably because they aren't old enough to understand that a passionate relationship could be about anything other than sex.""Yeah, I think A Confederacy of Dunces is probably the perfect New Orleans book."
Early in Brite's career, she was best known for writing gothic and horror novels and short stories. Her trademarks have included using gay men as main characters, graphic sexual descriptions in the works, and an often wry treatment of gruesome events. Some of her better known novels include Lost Souls (1992), Drawing Blood (originally titled Birdland) (1993), and Exquisite Corpse (1996); she has also released short fiction collections: Swamp Foetus (also published as Wormwood, 1993), Are You Loathsome Tonight? (also published as Self-Made Man, 1998), Wrong Things (with Caitlin R. Kiernan, 2001), and The Devil You Know (2003). Brite's "Calcutta: Lord of Nerves" was selected to represent the year 1992 in the story collection The Century's Best Horror Fiction.
She has also written a biography about singer Courtney Love (1996) that was officially "unauthorized", but Brite tends to acknowledge that the work was done at Love's suggestion and with her cooperation.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s Brite has moved away from horror fiction and gothic themes while still writing about gay characters. Her critically acclaimed Liquor novels...Liquor (2004), Prime (2005), and Soul Kitchen (2006)...are dark comedies set in the New Orleans restaurant world.The Value of X (2002) depicts the beginning of the careers of the protagonists of the Liquor series ... Gary "G-Man" Stubbs and John "Rickey" Rickey; other stories, including several in her most recent collection The Devil You Know and the novella D*U*C*K, chronicle events in the lives of the extended Stubbs family, a Catholic clan whose roots are sunk deep in the traditional culture of New Orleans. Brite hopes to eventually write three more novels in the Liquor series, tentatively titled Dead Shrimp Blues,Hurricane Stew, and Double Shot. However, in late 2006 she severed her relationship with Three Rivers Press, the trade paperback division of Random House that published the first three Liquor novels, and is currently taking a hiatus from fiction writing. She has described Antediluvian Tales, a short story collection published by Subterranean Press in November 2007, as "if not my last book ever, then my last one for some time." She is still writing short nonfiction pieces, including guest editorials for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and a food article for Chile Pepper Magazine.
Brite has often stated that, while she will allow some of her work to be optioned for film under the right circumstances, she has little interest in movies and is not overly eager to see her work filmed. In 1999, her short story "The Sixth Sentinel" (filmed as The Dream Sentinel) comprised one segment of episode 209 of The Hunger, a short-lived horror anthology series on Showtime. Of all her books, only Exquisite Corpse is currently under option, by producer Simon Rumley.
A critical essay on Brite's fiction appears in The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004) by S. T. Joshi.
Assigned female at birth, Brite has written and talked much about her gender dysphoria/gender identity issues. She self-identifies with gay males, and as of August 2010, has begun the long and often controversial process of gender reassignment. Brite has written that, while gender theorists like Kate Bornstein would call her a "nonoperative transsexual", Brite herself would not insist on a pedantic label, writing "I'm just me".
She lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Athens, Georgia prior to returning to New Orleans in 1993. She is a fan of UNC basketball, but says her greatest support is for her hometown football team, the New Orleans Saints.
Brite is married to Chris DeBarr, who is a chef at The Green Goddess. They have a de facto cat rescue that houses between 15 and 20 cats, and sometimes also dogs.
During Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federal levee system in 2005, Brite at first opted to stay at home, but she eventually relocated away to her mother's home in Mississippi. She used her blog to update her fans regarding the situation, including the unknown status of her house and many of her pets, and in October 2005 became one of the first 70,000 New Orleanians to begin repopulating the city.
In the following months, Brite has been an outspoken and sometimes harsh critic of those who are leaving New Orleans for good. She was quoted in The New York Times and elsewhere as saying, in reference to those considering leaving, "If you’re ever lucky enough to belong somewhere, if a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don't desert it just because it can kill you. There are things more valuable than life."
On August 30, 2008, as Hurricane Gustav approached the city, Brite and DeBarr both elected to remain in New Orleans and not evacuate. They survived the ordeal unharmed and with minimal damage to their home and property.
On January 6, 2009, Brite was arrested at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in New Orleans as part of a peaceable demonstration in which churches in the Uptown area of the city were occupied to protest their closings. In August of 2009 New Orleans' Gambit Weekly publication published reader-poll results naming Brite in second place as an ever-popular "Best Local Author."
On June 9, 2010, Brite officially stated that she was retired in a post entitled 'I'm Basically Retired (For Now)' on her Livejournal. She stated that she had 'completely lost the ability to interact with her body of work,' then went on to state that business issues were in part a cause of this issue. Along with this, she specifically mentioned being unable to disconnect with aspects of her life relating to Hurricane Katrina. She ended her statement by saying that she missed having relationships with her characters and that she did not feel the need to write for publication.
