Master’s Tea
About Lolis Eric Elie
Lolis Eric Elie is a metro columnist New Orleans’ daily newspaper, The Times-Picayune, where his writing focuses on the music, politics, history and culture of the city. A music graduate of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, he went on to be the road manager for the Wynton Marsalis band from 1991 to 1993.
A nationally recognized expert on New Orleans food and culture, he is the author of Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbeque Country, a book about the culture of barbeque. He produced a television documentary based on that book. He is also editor of Cornbread Nation 2: The Best of Southern Food Writing for the Southern Foodways Alliance and the University of North Carolina Press. As a producer for the Smithsonian Institute’s Jazz Oral History Project, Lolis conducted interviews with many of New Orleans’ elder jazz musicians.
He has a B.A from the university of Pennsylvania and a Master’s degree from the Columbia School of Journalism in New York and a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia.