Hub City Press Announces 40th Anniversary Reprint of Nancy Lemann's THE RITZ OF THE BAYOU for 2026

Hub City Press is pleased to announce that it will publish a new 40th-anniversary reprint edition of The Ritz of the Bayou by Nancy Lemann in early 2026. This atmospheric account of the New Orleans trial of the Governor of Louisiana for racketeering, fraud, and bribery, Lemann’s sole book of nonfiction, has attained lost classic status in the decades it has languished out of print. This new hardcover edition will feature an introduction by the critic James Wolcott and an afterword by the author.

 

New Orleans-born novelist Lemann was assigned by renowned editor Tina Brown to cover Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards's two racketeering trials (1985-86) for Vanity Fair. However, instead of focusing solely on the trials, Lemann crafted what Library Journal described as “a modest mosaic of brief, discrete glimpses" into the lives of the politicians, their families, the lawyers, and the reporters involved. Her playful account suggests that the South's tropical climate and leisurely pace of life foster a charming, reckless eccentricity and a heightened awareness of human frailty.”

 

Lavishly subtitled, "The New Orleans Adventures of a young novelist covering the trials of the Governor of Louisiana, with digressions on smoldering nightclubs, jazz-crazed bars, and other aspects of life in the tropic zone," Barry Hannah praised the book, saying, "Nancy Lemann picks up where Hunter Thompson left off with Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72."

 

James Wolcott, writing for The Paris Review, says of Nancy’s signature voice, “Although Nancy was a protégé of Gordon Lish, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Walker Percy—a heady triad of influences and personality-pluses that might have easily overloaded her circuits—her literary voice from the outset was assuredly, distinctively hers. In temperament and sensibility, she seems to me closer to F. Scott Fitzgerald than any of her mentors—or perhaps she’s Scott and Zelda rolled into one, her work suffused with a longing for a lost glamour. And she has no imitators.” 

 

Publisher of Hub City Press Meg Reid says, “We are thrilled to be working with Nancy to bring this ‘unjustly neglected’ book back in print. As importantly, this new edition will also reintroduce its remarkably prescient themes into our contemporary literary conversation, because, as Lauren LeBlanc wrote recently for The Drift, ‘With its yearning for charismatic kings over staid leaders, the book can be seen as a bellwether for contemporary politics.’” 

 

Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2025,  Hub City Press has reissued books in the past. But this release particularly marks the start of a new initiative focused on publishing overlooked and out-of-print books from the South, especially those by women and marginalized authors.

 

Nancy Lemann is the author of four novels — including Lives of the Saints and Sportsman’s Paradise—and one book of nonfiction, The Ritz of the Bayou. She has also contributed to Harper’s, Esquire, The New Republic, and Paris Review. A reissue of Lives of the Saints will be published in 2026, as well as a new novel. She was born and raised in New Orleans, lived in New York for fifteen years, and now resides in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

James Wolcott is a columnist for AIR MAIL. He first gained national prominence as a columnist for The Village Voice in the 1970s and later became Vanity Fair’s cultural critic, while also contributing to The New Yorker.

 

Hub City Press was founded in Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1995, and is the only independent publisher devoted entirely to highlighting Southern voices. Focused on finding and spotlighting extraordinary new and unsung writers, our curated list champions diverse authors and books that don’t fit into the commercial publishing landscape. Our books have been widely praised and featured in the New York Times, NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, the WSJ, People Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and many other outlets. 

 

For all questions and requests, please email Julie Jarema.