Treme - Interview with Tom Piazza

At least two of your books focus on Hurricane Katrina. Where were you when it happened?
PIAZZA: I’ve lived in New Orleans since 1994. When the storm was approaching the gulf, I was at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts working on another novel. I’ve always had a dismissive attitude toward weather or hurricanes. I grew up in New York City and paid no attention to weather. My partner Mary called on a Saturday and Katrina came ashore late Monday, August 20, 2005. I said I’d see her in a couple days. She said she wouldn’t see me in New Orleans because there was a mandatory evacuation. She and her niece and a friend were going to the family farm in Missouri. I couldn’t drive into New Orleans, so I went to Missouri and stared at the TV for a couple weeks. After two weeks, I got the idea for my book “Why New Orleans Matters.’’
It was intolerable, like watching someone you love suffer terribly and not being able to do anything about it. Those who lived through it will never get over it. Two weeks after the storm, we were back in New Orleans. Small parts were still underwater, but most were not. My house, a rental, was not flooded. The water stopped eight blocks from the house. A chunk of roof was blown off, the ceiling caved in and everything got soaked, but that was nothing compared to others. Mary’s house had 7 to 10 feet of water on her street. Her house had to be gutted. She lost everything on the first floor and it took a year to get it redone.
The real killer was the violence done to the continuity of community perspective. That sense of being in the world that depends largely on sense of community, especially in New Orleans. That sense of community is so strong in that city that Katrina was a huge mental health crisis that continues to this day. Suicides there have been an epidemic.

How did you end up writing for the “Treme” series on HBO?
PIAZZA: David Simon, the show’s co-producer with Eric Overmeyer, read “Why New Orleans Matters.” To my surprise, he invited me to dinner with him and Eric and a wonderful writer named Paul Mills, who later died on the set of the show when they were filming the second to last episode of season one. They invited me to be a writer for the show. I was surprised. I felt maybe they’d ask me to be a consultant. I was very surprised to be one of six writers for the first season, which has continued on for the second and third seasons.

Source: Full interview @ Finger Lakes Times