Jewell Parker Rhodes -- Hurricane Katrina altered her book plans. Click photo for larger image. Related Story: 412 Literary Festival Schedule

Aug. 29 was a big day for Jewell Parker Rhodes, the Pittsburgh-born novelist. After publishing her third novel, "Voodoo Season," she was finally getting her first book party.

"Voodoo Season's" heroine is a doctor at New Orleans' Charity Hospital and a fictional descendant of Marie Leveau, a famed 19th-century sorceress.

But, on her book-party day, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, overwhelming the levees and flooding much of the city. Hundreds were trapped in Charity Hospital for days without food or electricity.

Katrina's devastation forced Rhodes to change the course of her writing plans.

"When the bigger world suddenly steps up in front of you, you have to take notice," said Rhodes. "What I had in mind was a sequel to 'Voodoo Season,' a smaller book called 'Voodoo Jazz.' I'm redoing everything now. I'm not sure what will happen to my heroine."

Rhodes, 51, is artistic director of the Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University, where she also holds the Piper Endowed Chair in writing.

(The late Virginia Piper was a Phoenix-area philanthropist.)

"We are ranked 20th among writing programs, and my goal is to get us to No. 5" was how Rhodes described her mission. A professor of writing at ASU since 1994, she now devotes much of her energy to the center, organizing readings and conferences and encouraging community involvement.

Her novels, "Voodoo Dreams" (1993), "Douglass' Women" (2002) and her latest, have focused on the lives of African-American women, inspired by her grandmother, Ernestine Thornton.

It was Thornton's moral guidance, delivered in stories told on her porch at her West North Avenue house in Manchester, that shaped her career, Rhodes said.

It also led to her first nonfiction book, "Porch Stories: A Grandmother's Guide to Happiness," that Atria Books will publish in May in time for Mother's Day.

"My novels take a lot of research, but 'Porch Stories' just rushed out," Rhodes said. "There are stories about playing the numbers, the chitlin parties people would throw after hitting the number and mostly, about the spiritual life in our community that I heard growing up."

The book is the outgrowth of an essay Rhodes wrote for the "Diversity Dialogues" issue of Creative Nonfiction Journal, the quarterly of the Pittsburgh-based writing organization.

Rhodes will be leading a panel discussion next week as part of 412, the second Creative Nonfiction Literary Festival based in Oakland that opens Monday.

"I wanted to address the 'mixed-blood stew' of race in Pittsburgh," she said, "much in the way that the plays of August Wilson did so well."

Rhodes was raised largely by her grandparents (her grandfather worked at Jones & Laughlin Steel). They supported her as a college student, first at Community College of Allegheny County, then as a theater major at Carnegie Mellon University, where she became interested in writing and switched to English.

She went on to earn her doctorate in English at Carnegie Mellon in 1979. "CMU trained me as a writer," Rhodes added.

"Pittsburgh has what I call a 'magical commitment to the arts,' a place where you're exposed to the influences of all the arts: painting, music, dance, theater, poetry," she said.

"Living here gave me a real sense of the whole world and the chances that it can give you."

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Starting Nov. 11, 412 events require a ticket. Tickets are $85 for the festival and closing party after Mary Karr's Nov. 12 appearance, $40 for festival only and $25 for students. Information: 412-688-0304. Order tickets through ProArts: 412-394-3353 or www. proartstickets.org.