This April, a jewel of the American South is experiencing an overdue literary renaissance. Nancy Lemann, bard of New Orleans and stylist nonpareil, has gotten a glow-up—and in some corners, there’s already been much rejoicing. In this week’s New Yorker , for instance, Brandy Jensen praised Lemann’s singular voice. In novels like Lives of the Saints and The Oyster Diaries —both recently reissued from NYRB—the author has proven “capable of crystalline insights into the miscreants and oddballs of the American South and great bursts of unrestrained sentiment. Sort of like if Charles Portis listened to a lot of Joni Mitchell.” In Oxford American , Snowden Wright called Saints nothing short of “miraculous, “ and compared Lemann’s fictional sensibility to a poet’s. Other critics have praised the author’s smooth sentencing, her Balzacian grip on social problems, and her wet wit. Frankly, I’m one of the converted. But I’m here today to ring a particular bell: for Lemann’s non -fiction.…