Book Signing w/ Katy Morlas Shannon

Join us Tuesday April 26th at 6 pm for a signing with Katy Morlas Shannon, author of Antoine of Oak Alley.

She will be in conversation with Jo Banner, co-founder of The Descendants Project.

The event is free to attend. You can RSVP or pre-order your signed copies by clicking the link.

The story of Antoine is emblematic of countless enslaved people whose lives and contributions have been overlooked. Antoine, the enslaved gardener of Oak Alley Plantation, was the first person to successfully propagate the pecan tree yet he exists only as a footnote in the bigger story of Oak Alley Plantation. His pioneering work enabled large groves of trees to be planted creating a lucrative commercial crop and though his horticultural achievement has long been legend, virtually nothing is known about his life. Historian Katy Morales Shannon utilizes extensive research and period documents to expose his story and explore the lives of the enslaved community in which he lived. The life of this truly revolutionary enslaved man is revealed through the lives of his family and friends, the community they built, and the bonds they forged during their enslavement and their life as free people.

Katy Morlas Shannon is a tenth-generation Louisianian and received her Master’s degree in History from Louisiana State University in 2005. She has dedicated her career as a professional historian to uncovering the stories of enslaved people. She was instrumental in the early stages of research for Whitney Plantation and created a searchable online database of more than 400 enslaved individuals at Evergreen Plantation along with biographies of enslaved people for the plantation’s website. Currently she is the historian at Laura Plantation, where she co-curated an exhibit dedicated to the plantation’s enslaved community. She lives on a hobby farm with her English-teacher husband, three young children, a dog, cats, chickens, and goats. Her non-fiction biography Antoine of Oak Alley: The Unlikely Origin of Pecans and the Enslaved Gardener Who Cultivated Them was published in November 2021.