Krewe of BOO! Announces 2026 Royalty: King James Michalopoulos and Co-Grand Marshals Eric Shaw Quinn and Christopher Rice
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana — Krewe of BOO!, New Orleans’ Official Halloween Parade, announces its 2026 Royalty, honoring three celebrated creative voices in dialogue with the city. Renowned painter and New Orleans cultural champion James Michalopoulos will reign as King, while bestselling authors and producing partners Eric Shaw Quinn and Christopher Rice will serve as Co-Grand Marshals to summon the spirit of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire on its 50th Anniversary.
King James Michalopoulos
James Michalopoulos became a leader in the cooperative movement before starting a life on the road, where his sketching turned into a devotion to painting. In 1979, he was drawn to New Orleans as the last bastion of hippie bohemia in America and a locale to continue his plein air painting during the winters.
The culture of celebration in New Orleans and the beauty and decay of the city’s architecture play prominently in Michalopoulos’s body of work, featuring thick, vibrant impasto portraits of shotgun houses, Creole cottages, and the musicians who fill the streets. This signature style established him as the most influential living artist in the region today.
Michalopoulos developed an abiding interest in musical imagery as Art Director for House of Blues Productions, NBC’s In Concert series, and the Nice Jazz Festival. His work has been featured on the coveted New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival poster a record eight times.
Beyond the canvas, Michalopoulos has left an indelible mark on New Orleans. As Founder of Celebration Distillation, he created the continental United States’ first rum distillery since Prohibition. After Hurricane Katrina, he converted the Old Union Brewery into Orleania Art Studios. In 2025, he opened the award-winning Hotel Pompadour on his Elysian Fields studio campus. As steward of the Michalopoulos Foundation, he continues to champion expressive architecture and affordable housing for emerging artists.
The PBS documentary Michalopoulos: The Art of Celebration! chronicles Michalopoulos’s four-decade love affair with New Orleans and opened the New Orleans Film Festival in October 2025. Michalopoulos: Mystical Expressionism, an exhibition at the historic Cabildo in Jackson Square, has been open since November 2025 and runs through September 27, 2026.
Co-Grand Marshals Eric Shaw Quinn and Christopher Rice
Bestselling authors and longtime best friends Eric Shaw Quinn and Christopher Rice will lead the parade as Co-Grand Marshals. They are thrilled to return to New Orleans to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Interview with the Vampire, the worldwide phenomenon novel penned by Rice’s mother, New Orleans’ own beloved Anne Rice.
In 2025, the duo produced the sold-out live event Anne Rice, An All Saints’ Day Celebration at the Orpheum Theater in New Orleans, along with its companion documentary, Anne Rice, A Life in Stories. Together, Quinn and Rice run the production company Dinner Partners, through which they produce a popular podcast and video network at www.DinnerPartners.com.
Eric Shaw Quinn is the New York Times bestselling author of Say Uncle, a groundbreaking book about gay adoption, and Write Murder, the first entry in a comic murder-mystery series drawn from his years in Hollywood, his work as a celebrity ghostwriter, and being a hopeless murder mystery addict. Writing as Quinn Brockton, he penned two novelizations for Showtime’s Queer as Folk, and in 2004 was named Amazon’s #1 Chick Lit Author. His epic novel The Prince’s Psalm was written at the urging of his close friend, the late novelist Anne Rice, and was published to both controversy and acclaim.
Christopher Rice, who grew up in New Orleans from the age of 10 and currently resides in West Hollywood, California, is a Lambda Literary Award winner and Amazon Charts and New York Times bestselling author of A Density of Souls, the Burning Girl series, and Bram Stoker Award finalists The Heavens Rise and The Vines. An executive producer for television, he collaborated with his mother, Anne Rice, on the novels Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra and Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris.
About Krewe of BOO!
Krewe of BOO! is a New Orleans-based grassroots initiative on a mission to build community through a shared love of culture, creativity, and all things spooky. It started as a modest parade to raise city spirits after Hurricane Katrina and has evolved into a two-day, multi-event production centered around New Orleans’ Official Halloween Parade, drawing more than 100,000 people to Downtown New Orleans every year the weekend before Halloween.
This year’s royalty reflects the krewe’s enduring celebration of the artists and storytellers who shape New Orleans and its culture.
Krewe of BOO! 2026 festivities kick off with the Royal Luncheon on Friday, October 23. The parade rolls at sundown on Saturday, October 24. For a comprehensive schedule of events, visit www.kreweofboo.com.
Media Contact
Brian Kern
Chief Spookster, Krewe of BOO!
504-669-7655
briankern@kreweofboo.com