Ellis Anderson of French Quarter Journal, 2025
Ellis Anderson is the founder of the French Quarter Journal, an insider’s guide to local events and cultural experiences around New Orleans.
Ellis Anderson’s relationship with the French Quarter has been a real romance. She first came to the Quarter in 1978 as a street musician. She played violin, sang, and wrote poetry. Her journey would include working as a silversmith among others, and then moving to Bay St. Louis, where she started Shoofly Magazine. Through her journalistic work as well as her historical activism, Anderson recognized the power of the digital word early on and decided that a digital magazine had the potential for a larger reach and bigger impact. She moved to the Quarter for the second time and started the French Quarter Journal (FQJ) in 2019 with the goal of creating a legacy project for all of the stories and histories not being told.
Her hopes for the journal? She says, “I’m trying to create a huge archive of material about the Quarter that hopefully will be invaluable 100 years or so now. That’s my dream.”
Here are a few reflections Anderson had on the French Quarter, life, and writing.
For somebody who’s never been to the French Quarter before, what would you tell them about it?
“I think the feeling of continuity makes it special and draws people in. There’s a feeling of the history of the people who’ve been here, and then they feel interconnected with them. That’s one of the beauties of the work I do, and I find so much joy in it. I’m seeing all of these connections between people that I never realized existed before. To me, knowing about all of the connections enriches this place. It’s like you can see the surface of the ocean and it’s really beautiful and then you put on your snorkeling mask, and you poke your head down and you see what’s happening underneath it. I think most tourists who come here just tend to see that surface, but the longer you stay here and the longer you dig in, you’re going to get a little peek under the water there. And I hope it resonates with them.”
Why did you decide to create a journal for such a small place as the French Quarter?
“This neighborhood is a spiritual touchstone for the whole country—for instance, in its tolerance. Gay people gravitated here. There were some of the first interracial coffee houses here. This is where musicians, Black and white, started coming together. This was an interracial neighborhood itself in the early part. Now it’s more gentrified, but all the people who live and work here are drawn by that sense of being able to be who you are without feeling self-conscious about it.”
What do you think about the literary community in New Orleans right now and how did you become interested in Tennessee Williams?
“I think it’s great. It’s incredibly vibrant. It’s amazing. We love sharing literary events on FQJ. Artists and writers sense the freedom here that allows them to be creative. They sense that nobody’s going to judge them.
Back in high school in Charlotte, I was involved in theatre and read everything of Tennessee Williams I could get my hands on. In large part due to Williams and Lillian Hellman, I was convinced New Orleans was a hotbed for writers and couldn’t wait to go. I was twenty when I first visited, and it lived up to every romantic notion I’d ever had. A year later, I was calling it home. That’s one reason I’m so pleased to be working with the TWFest now!”
What makes the French Quarter such a special place?
“The French Quarter is a community of people who live here because it’s the people who work here—it’s the people who have lived here in the past and at a pivotal time in their life. Maybe they lived here a couple years when they were in college and then they’ve gone, and they’ve never moved back. But they’ve carried that feeling with them. This is their happy place—not because it’s where they can get drunk but because they can absorb something here and feel like they’re part of the community.
I feel like New Orleans and the French Quarter in particular are really important to the country today. The French Quarter represents freedom to be who you are and to become who you want and to just have this pressure and expectation of society off of your shoulders. It’s like a dream for people to come here, so I feel like I’m one of the luckiest people in the world to have spent all this time in the Quarter. To see all the threads. I feel so fortunate.”
Thank you to Ellis for taking the time to share with us. Explore more from French Quarter Journal HERE.
