It’s now a decade since category-three Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, claiming the lives of over 1800 people and displacing more than one million of the region’s residents. To commemorate the anniversary, join us for a conversation between NPR correspondent John Burnett (pictured below), who was on the ground in New Orleans during the hurricane, and Tom Zigal, whose novel Many Rivers to Cross is set during Katrina. John and Tom will discuss Katrina and the aftermath, as well as answer any audience questions. And John will also put on his harmonica player’s hat and end the evening with a rousing blues session featuring Tom’s brother Frank Zigal on guitar.

As a roving NPR correspondent based in Austin, Texas, John Burnett’s beat stretches across the U.S., and, sometimes, around the world. Currently, he is serving as Southwest Correspondent for the National Desk, focusing on the issues and people of the Southwest United States, providing investigative reports and traveling the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. His special reporting projects have included New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, and many reports on the Drug War in the Americas. His reports are heard regularly on NPR’s award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. Prior to coming to NPR, Burnett was based in Guatemala City for United Press International covering the Central America civil wars. From 1979-1983, he was a general assignment reporter for various Texas newspapers.

Tom Zigal has been publishing short stories, reviews, and essays for forty years. He is the author of three popular crime novels featuring Kurt Muller as the sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, and he has published two award-winning novels of a trilogy-in-progress set in New Orleans—The White League and Many Rivers to Cross, which won the 2014 Jesse Jones Award for Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters and the 2014 Fiction Award from the Philosophical Society of Texas. He attended high school in Louisiana, lived in New Orleans from 1989-93, and has a special fondness for the city.