Katheryn Krotzer Laborde is a writer of prose. Her work has appeared in Poets&Writers, Callaloo, CrossRoads: A Southern Annual, and other journals and anthologies. She is a recipient of the Louisiana Division of the Arts Artist's Fellowship (in literature) and The Pirates' Alley Faulkner Society Medal (novella division). Her book, Do Not Open: The Discarded Refrigerators of Post-Katrina New Orleans, was published by McFarland in 2010.
She writes:
Following Katrina, I spent a month away from home. Part of that time was spent in a rented apartment in my ex-husband's hometown of Marksville, Louisiana. Tired of washing my clothes in the sink, I finally made it one hot Sunday to a laundromat on Highway 1. It was obvious that so many people were evacuees, and others were regulars. As I waited for my clothes, I made notes about the environment, from the choir coming through on a radio to the heat of the window-brightened room. Months later, when I looked at my notes to make an essay of the experience, I realized the notes were really enough, and that the repetition of lines reflected the repetition of motions one finds in a laundromat. Claim a washer, drop in coins, slop in soap, and wait.
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