Megan Braden-Perry is an author, award-winning journalist, multigenerational Black Creole New Orleans native and mom. Her books include Crescent City Snow: The Ultimate Guide to New Orleans Snowball Stands (UL Press, 2017) and Allen the Alligator Counts Through New Orleans: A New Orleans Kids’ Counting Book (2014).
She started at Gambit Weekly as an intern and was promoted to contributing writer within months, and was recruited by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune a few months later to be a news reporter and feature writer.
In addition to NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune and Gambit Weekly, Megan’s byline has appeared in Bon Appetit, Epicurious, Oxford American, The Infatuation, Thrillist, Apartment Therapy, Parents Magazine, Today, Essence, New York Daily News, Jezebel, Romper, Where Traveler, Very Local New Orleans and OffBeat. She’s covered everything, including New Orleans culture, Black culture, food, drink, travel, crime, education, parenting, religion, Creole culture and politics.
Megan is the recipient of a 2025 Black Women in Food Amplifier award, a 2024 Dillard University 40 Under 40 award, the 2024 New Orleans Tourism and Cultural Fund Literary Arts & Humanities award, the 2017 Delta Sigma Theta New Orleans alumnae ARTIE in literature, and a 2013 Press Club of New Orleans Excellence in Journalism award for her weekly greater New Orleans public transit travelogue in Gambit, “Public Transit Tuesdays,” and another for her work in Gambit’s fashion and beauty pullout, CUE.
In 2019, she was awarded the Jack Jones Literary Arts retreat Roxane Gay fellowship in prose, for her upcoming novel Greener Grass, Different Drummer. She’s on the board of Lede New Orleans, was formerly on the board of 826 New Orleans and is a very proud product of Orleans Parish Public Schools (McDonogh 39, Lusher [now Willow], Ben Franklin and McDonogh 35) and of HBCUs (Dillard University and Southern University [Katrina semester]). She’s a graduate of Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s Civic Leadership Academy and Urban League of Louisiana’s ULEAD, Urban Leaders for Equity and Diversity, and she’s taught elementary through high school at New Orleans charter schools.
When she’s not writing, she’s hanging out with her son Franklin. Her best friend Jenny says she’ll “talk to the Devil for a sandwich,” and that is the most accurate biographical detail to date.
