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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A Louisiana author who has written about the 1918 flu pandemic and the 1927 Mississippi River flood is receiving the state’s annual writing award.

John M. Barry has been chosen for the 21st annual Louisiana Writer Award, given by the state library’s Louisiana Center for the Book.

Barry is a professor at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

He has written several books, including “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History” and “Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America.”