LETTERS READ is a series of readings in which local performers interpret letters and documents written by culturally vital individuals from various times and Louisiana communities presented by stationer, Nancy Sharon Collins, and Antenna. 2025 is the ninth consecutive season.
Productions are free, open to the public, and presented live and as podcasts.
This segment in our tenth anniversary season, is about Armen Merjian, a stellar example of the 2026 Letters Read theme, “What Activates Activists?”
Merjian is amongst this country’s leading civil rights attorneys and perhaps the most important legal activist in the history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Armen Merjian has been fighting the good fight against civil rights discrimination largely his entire career. He’s the real deal, a civil rights hero.
The backstory of his activism is in the section about his family in this podcast and is the clip at the beginning of the April 13, 2026 podcast.
5 Apr 2026
An Interview with the Director
Dave Walker, veteran journalist and creator/producer of The Museum Goer (https://themuseumgoer.com), interviews Letters Read director Nancy Sharon Collins about ten years of this project's programming. Yet another example of 2026's "outtake-sub-theme, what activates activists?”
This podcast begins with an outtake from the 2024 Armen Merjian interview., a multi-decade civil rights and public interest attorney. According to the New York Law Journal, he’s “one of the nation’s leading civil rights lawyers". Merjian’s full interview is podcast later this year.
The first activating activists outtake aired earlier this year with local reproductive rights activist Allyn Goff. (https://open.spotify.com/episode/0RLT3AwYyiWfcLJwnPpYUz?si=53a82b5cd1c7476f)
The musical soundtrack, Happy Blues, is courtesy of Hans Witchi. As is the cover art painting.
This podcast audio engineering was by Steve Chyzyk, Sonic Canvas Studio. Letters Read fiscal sponsor is Antenna.
9 Feb 2026
LETTERS READ INCUBATOR XIX: How Activism Activates
Listen to this research outtake about how one Louisiana woman decided to take action about the first direct hit to destroy abortion rights. Letters Read director first interviewed Allyn Goff in 2025 for the Terri Bartlett reading. Goff became close to Bartlett as they both worked tirelessly for reproductive rights in Louisiana.
Allyn Goff joined NOW, National Organization for Women in 1989 and became president of the Louisiana chapter.
In 1989, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, a United States Supreme Court decision upheld a Missouri law imposing "restrictions on the use of state funds, facilities, and employees in performing, assisting with, or counseling an abortion. The Supreme Court in Webster allowed for states to legislate in an aspect that had previously been thought to be forbidden under Roe v. Wade (1973)." —wikipedia.org
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