The Neighborhood Story Project is a nonprofit organization in partnership with the University of New Orleans.
  In 2004, the Neighborhood Story Project was founded by Rachel Breunlin and Abram Himelstein as a book-making project based in the neighborhoods where we live and work.  Following our mission, “Our stories told by us,” we work with writers in neighborhoods around New Orleans to create books about their communities.  The NSP is a 501 C3 tax-exempt organization in partnership with the University of New Orleans.

  
  Office and Writing Workshop: 2202 Lapeyrouse Street, New Orleans, LA, 70116
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 19742, New Orleans, LA, 70179

  
 

Abram Shalom Himelstein
Co-Director
504-908-9383

Abram comes to the Neighborhood Story Project by way of writing and publishing several books, including 1998's Tales of a Punk Rock Nothing. He has been teaching in New Orleans Public Schools since 2001,while moonlighting on projects like the New Orleans Bookfair. He received his MFA from University of New Orleans in 2005. Abram is employed by the University of New Orleans, teaching in the College of Education. At the NSP you'll find Abram at work teaching writing, fundraising, and dealing with the printing and distribution of books.

 

  

Advisory Board
Emelda Wylie
Teacher and mother of Sam and Arlet Wylie, authors of "Between Piety and Desire"
Corlita Mahr
Seventh Ward resident and juvenile justice consultant
Troy Materre
Treasurer of Nine Times Social and Pleasure Club and co-author of Coming Out the Door for the Ninth Ward
Petrice Sams-Abiodun
Director of the Literacy Alliance of Greater New Orleans and the Bogg Center for Community Literacy
Helen A. Regis
Cultural Anthropologist at Louisiana State University
G.K. Darby
Publisher of Garrett County Press
Bob Cashner
Dean of Graduate School at University of New Orleans

 

  
   


Rachel Breunlin
Co-Director
713-504-6267

Rachel moved to New Orleans to study anthropology and African Diaspora Studies at Tulane University. She has an MSUS from the University of New Orleans in Urban Anthropology and has taught writing at John Mac since 2000. She is an instructor in the Anthropology Department at the University of New Orleans. As co-director of the NSP, Rachel teaches, directs and supervises fieldwork, involves interviewees in the process of turning their interviews into stories, and edits until everyone is exhausted.
The NSP has received funding from the Lupin Foundation, Creative Time and Paul Chan’s shadow fund for Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, the Charles Engelhard Foundation, Deutsche Bank, Time/Warner, Common Cents New York, Mercy Corps, the Schweser Family Foundation, many good people in Missoula, Montana and, of course, New Orleans. The lion's share of our monies have come from the sale of our books. Special thank you to Tom Roy, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the student volunteers from Brown University, and all of the others who worked on the writing workshop (particularly the Heritage Conservation Network).