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AUTHOR SAM IRWIN enjoys a 2009 Mardi Gras crawfish boil hosted by Jeff Davis Parish crawfish farmer Burt Tietje. Crawfish may be harvested as early as November and as late as July.  (Sam Irwin)

Joe Amy’s grandson, Sam Irwin, on the history of eating crawfish

Local author tackles a familiar topic

Author Sam Irwin, a Breaux Bridge native, was uniquely positioned to write “Louisiana Crawfish: A Succulent History of the Cajun Crustacean.” It is the book on Louisiana’s crawfish history.

The book is now available in “the better bait shops” and bookstores.

Irwin’s grandfather, Joe Amy (pronounce it ah-mee), was one of the pioneers of the crawfish business. According to some accounts, Amy was dealing in crawfish from his Henderson location of Amy’s Fisheries in 1932.

The author worked at Amy’s as a crawfish laborer in between semesters as he earned his master’s degree in history from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In the fish dock he witnessed the shift of the Atchafalaya Basin’s fish-based economy to one dominated by the crawfish market.

Louisiana Crawfish is a penetrating dissection of the important role crawfish played in the development of Cajun cuisine but also in the haute and street cuisine of New Orleans. Perhaps not many Crescent City residents know that, in decades past, the road grid off Canal Street and Hagan Avenue became a swampy area in the spring where crawfish could easily be trapped by city dwellers.

Irwin is a freelance journalist and writer who lives in Baton Rouge. He is the former editor of the Louisiana Market Bulletin, an agricultural journal, and served as the press secretary for the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry. Currently, he is the public relations director for the American Sugar Cane League.

A product of a “mixed marriage” – his father’s family is from north Louisiana, his mother’s from the heart of French-speaking Louisiana – Irwin’s prose is often set in Louisiana.

He’s a firm believer in “write what you know.” Irwin says he knows about love, life, death, honky-tonks, music and making bad decisions. And, of course,crawfish.

Irwin’s work appears regularly in Country Roads, The Advocate and House and Home. His writing has also been featured in Louisiana Kitchen, Louisiana TravelHost, Offbeat, 225, Louisiana Film and Video, Teche News and Louisiana Kitchen.

His fiction has been published by Dead Mule, Cape Fear Crime Festival Chapbook, Murder in the Wind Anthology, Love is in the Wind Anthology, Tom’s Voice, Gulf Coast Writers Anthology, Spillway Review, Long Story Short, Gris Gris Rouge, and the Nicholls State Jubilee Anthology.

Irwin’s blog, LaNote, may be found at LaNote.org.

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