The Historic New Orleans Collection Publishing award-winning books on the history, art, and culture of Louisiana and the Gulf South for more than 30 years

Tennessee Williams Annual Review edited by R. Barton Palmer THNOC is proud to publish the Tennessee Williams Annual Review—the only regularly published journal devoted solely to the works, influence, and cultural context of the great American playwright. Visit www.tennesseewilliamsstudies.org for more information.

Paperback; $15 each. Available online and at festival book tables.

Drawn to Life Al Hirschfeld and the Theater of Tennessee Williams by Mark Cave and David Leopold, with a foreword by Rex Reed Published in commemoration of Williams’s 2011 centennial, this catalog features works by renowned “characterist” Al Hirschfeld and correspondence, programs, and family photographs documenting Williams’s habit of drawing from his own life to create some of the most compelling characters in American theater.

Paperback; $17.95

A Life in Jazz by Danny Barker, an illustrated edition edited by Alyn Shipton, with a new introduction by Gwen Thompkins An elder statesman of jazz and an international representative of New Orleans and African American culture, Danny Barker (1909–1994) is credited on more than a thousand recordings and penned dozens of original songs. This new illustrated edition of his autobiography brings Barker’s story back into print and adds fresh insight into his legacy.

Hardcover; $39.95

Guidebooks to Sin The Blue Books of Storyville, New Orleans by Pamela D. Arceneaux, with a foreword by Emily Epstein Landau Between 1897 and 1917, a legal red-light district known as Storyville thrived at the edge of the French Quarter. Though many scholars have written about Storyville, Guidebooks to Sin offers the first thorough study of the blue books—directories of the neighborhood’s prostitutes, featuring advertisements for liquor, brothels, and other goods and services.

Hardcover; $50

Garden Legacy by Mary Louise Mossy Christovich and Roulhac Bunkley Toledano, with a foreword by S. Frederick Starr This sumptuously illustrated survey of the French-American tradition of landscape design in New Orleans showcases period maps and prints from a wide range of historical sources, including THNOC’s holdings, the remarkable plan-book collection of the New Orleans Notarial Archives, and memoirs of early Louisiana settlers and naturalists.

Hardcover; $49.95

533 Royal Street In the French Quarter (504) 598-7147 www.hnoc.org/books

THNOC.2017TW Program.final2.indd 1 12/23/16 11:04 AM AM TWF2017 Cover-crops.pdf 1 12/29/16 7:19 TABLE OF CONTENTS Important Reminders Educational Outreach ...... 4 The Tennessee Williams/New Board of Directors ...... 4 Orleans Literary Festival is a non- profi t, tax-exempt organization. Weekend Grid Schedule ...... 6-8 Contributions are deductible Map of Festival Sites...... 9 according to the provision of current tax laws. Because of variations in Schedule of Events ...... 10-27 attendance, the purchase of a Festival Creative Writing Workshop 25th Anniversary ...... 14 panel pass cannot guarantee seating Scholars Conference ...... 15 for every panel discussion. Seating is on a fi rst-come, fi rst-served basis, but Drummer & Smoke ...... 24 is generally available. Cover design by Michael Kooiman Theater Offerings...... 28 Please note that during the Funding Support for the Festival ...... 30 Festival, many activities may Published by: Participants ...... 32 be recorded for archival and/or New Orleans commercial purposes. By attending Publishing Group Festival events, you hereby grant Available at the Hotel Monteleone to The Tennessee Williams/New 3445 N. Causeway Blvd., Suite 901 Orleans Literary Festival and others Metairie, LA 70002 Books for purchase. 504-834-9292 • Fax 504-832-3534 Titles by Festival permission to photograph and record Garden District you visually and orally for various participants waiting Book Shop Publisher: Lisa Blossman to be signed by the author. TV and/or fi lm productions. You Britton Trice grant universal rights for any Custom Publishing Manager: Festival Souvenirs 2727 Prytania Street reproduction of your image, likeness, Valerie Huntley Posters, T-shirts, book bags, New Orleans, LA 70130 and other items created espe- 504-895-2266 or voice, throughout the Festival Advertising Executive: cially for the Festival available gardendistrictbookshop.com weekend. Cassie Foreman Special Projects Designer: Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Kady Weddle 938 Lafayette St., Suite 514 • New Orleans, LA 70113 • 1-800-990-3378 or 504-581-1144 [email protected] • www.tennesseewilliams.net

WHERE’S MY GUMBO, BABY?

AUTHENTIC CREOLE CUISINE IN THE CASUAL ELEGANCE OF A RESTORED 1795 CREOLE COTTAGE AND GARDEN PATIO. GUMBO SHOP LUNCH AND DINNER daily www.gumboshop.com 630 SAINT PETER (1/2 BLOCK FROM JACKSON SQUARE ) (504) 525-1486 3 March 22 - 26, 2017 3 BoardTWF2017 Cover-crops.pdf of 1 12/29/16 7:19 AM Staff Directors Authors: Make Your Pitch! Executive One of New Orleans’ beloved President Director indie bookstores, Crescent Mamie Sterkx Paul J. Willis City Books, has launched its Gasperecz publishing imprint for New Director of Orleans fi ction, CCB. If you Vice President— Communications have a New Orleans novel you would like to pitch to Michael & Special Events Development Allen Zell, this is your opportunity. Sara W. Woodard Tracy Ferrington Cunningham To register for a spot and for specifi c details, email Michael Secretary Allen Zell at [email protected]. Kim Marie Vaz- Festival Publicist Deville, Ph.D. Laura Veazey DEADLINE: MARCH 15, 2017 Treasurer Media Advisor Terry Verigan Ellen Johnson AVAILABLE SLOTS: FRIDAY, MARCH 24 3:00 PM • 3:20 PM • 3:40 PM • 4:00 PM • 4:20 PM • 4:40 PM Literary Program Assistants Programming Katrina Boniewski ABOUT MICHAEL: Seán Brennan Liaison Michael Allen Zell’s fi rst play, What Do You Say To a Shadow, was named David Johnson Caro Fautsch Drew Jordan one of the Top 10 Plays of the Year in 2013 by The Times- Picayune. His fi rst novel, Errata, was named one of The Times-Picayune’s Top 10 Books of 2012. He is Theater Marian Kaufman two books into the Bobby Delery series of New Orleans crime fi ction/social novels. Programming Ericka Sanchez Liaison Cody Siler Zell has worked as a bookseller in New Orleans since 2003. Janet Daley Duval Ruby Tremont

Members at Large Technical Director Jordan Friedman Bruce Campbell Amelia W. Koch Peggy Scott Web Master Laborde Cherry Cappel Ted Laborde Original Festival Board of Directors Logo Lisa Abel Arthur Nead Erin Alexander Educational Outreach Programs Bolles Cover Design WRITENOW Michael Kooiman Patricia Brady, Ph.D. Friday, March 24, 2017 Beau Bratcher Lisa D’Amour Volunteer The Festival offers a day of workshops for New Orleans’ young writers through Maureen Detweiler, Coordinator & our high school education outreach program, WriteNOW. Approximately Special Projects 150 students from Lusher, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, and the William M. Karissa Kary Neighborhood Story Project will participate this weekend. Justin Nobel (The Detweiler, J.D., Ex Story of Dan Bright), Kristen-Paige Madonia (Fingerprints of You and Invisible Advisory Board Brian Boyles Fault Lines), and Kiese Laymon (Long Division) will share their techniques, Joel Fredell, Ph.D. expertise, and advice with students. The Festival also provides students with free Lawrence Henry M. Graham passes to attend Festival events. Gobble Coleman David Hoover Amy Kirk Duvoisin Supported by the Joe and Dorothy Dorsett Brown Foundation, the Keller Susan K. Hoskins Thomas Keith Family Foundation, and Postlethwaite and Netterville, APAC. Errol Laborde, Ph. D. John Kemp John Lawrence Henry Lacey, Ph. D. Zachary Lazar Richard Thomas STAGING FOR SUCCESS Mary Niall Mitchell, Bonnie Warren Ph.D. The Festival’s newest educational outreach program, Staging for Success, launched Brad Richard this year with workshops for high school students by theater professionals, such D. Ashbrooke Tullis as actors, directors, and managers. The program culminates this weekend with a production of scenes from one-act plays by Tennessee Williams at Le Petit Scholars Théâtre by students from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Conference Chair Staging for Success made possible by the New Orleans Theatre Association. NOTA Robert Bray, Ph.D. 4 supports performing arts throughout the Greater New Orleans area. 4 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival CURL UP INSIDE A GREAT STORY The hotel that inspired the likes of Capote, Hemingway, and Tennessee Williams welcomes you to come find your own inspiration. Meet up at the Criollo Restaurant for an exquisite meal based on a true farm-to-table approach. After dinner, step over to the Carousel Bar & Lounge for live music and see where these authors spun their evening—and their stories. Then retreat for an historic night’s sleep surrounded by contemporary style and amenities, right in the heart of the French Quarter. For upcoming events, visit http://hotelmonteleone.com/entertainment/carousel-bar/.

NEW ORLEANS

214 Royal Street, New Orleans, LA 70130 | 866.338.4675 | fax 504.528.1019 | [email protected] www.HotelMonteleone.com | www.facebook.com/TheHotelMonteleone | www.twitter.com/HotelMonteleone Vip Pass $600 Day Panel Passes $40 Friday, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22 Includes all Events Thursday — Sunday Saturday or Sunday 7:30 P.M. Combo Pass $200 Single Panels $10 Includes all master classes and panels Opening night Panel Pass $100 Special Events, Walking Tours and Theater Where Sex and Sin Were the Specialties: Includes all Weekend Panels Friday — Sunday — Prices Vary An Evening of Storyville Memories COLOR KEYS (Special Event) Lavender - WALKING Pink - SPECIAL EVENTS Red - THEATER EVENTS See Page 10 for full description and pricing TOURS Blue - MASTER CLASSES Yellow - PANELS Le Petit Theatre THURSDAY, MARCH 23 Historic New Orleans Beauregard-Keyes Various Locations Various Locations Collection Hotel Monteleone House Special Events (Special Events) (Theater)

8:00 PM 9:00 A.M. 11:00 A.M. 3:30 P.M. 9:00 A.M. - 4:00 P.M. The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Tennessee Williams Soul Searching: Making History: Ticket Sales Here Anymore; $20/$25 Abridged with a Reading of A Victorian-Style Séance A Master Class with Hotel Monteleone, Tennessee Williams Theatre “At Liberty” (Special event) Patrick Maney on Orleans Room Co. of New Orleans Production Presidential Biography (Special Event/Theater) $20 $20 Hermann-Grima House Sanctuary Cultural Arts Center

6:30 PM Cocktail Hour, 8:00 PM 10:30 A.M. 9:00 A.M. 7:30 Performance Sweet Bird of Youth Use Your Words: A Writing Marathon Tribute Reading: Tennessee $25 Preview Southern Rep Master Class in Writing Queen Anne Ballroom Williams and the Eternal City Production Loyola University with Roy Blount, JR. FREE (Special Event) $35 Marquette Theatre The Jaxson on the River

1:00 P.M. 1:00 P.M. 1:30 P.M. Inspiration and Process: Charlene A. Donaghy: Long Live THIS Confederacy A Master Class with Devised Theater (Of Dunces)! Celebrating Playwright Lisa D’Amour Workshop $20; Queen John Kennedy Toole (Special Anne Ballroom Event/Theater) $20 Gallier House

2:00 P.M. 2:30 P.M. Frank Perez’s Saints and Ask Amy: A Master Sinners LGBT Literary Class with Columnist Walking Tour $25 Amy Dickinson Hotel Monteleone Lobby

FRIDAY, MARCH 24 The Historic New Hotel Monteleone Cabildo Various Locations Various Locations Hotel Monteleone Orleans Collection Hotel Monteleone Queen Room Panels: UNO’s (Theater) (Special Events) (Master Classes) Anne Ballroom (Panels) Creative Writing Workshop 11:00 A.M. 9:00 A.M. - 4:15 P.M. 9:00 A.M. 9:00 A.M. - 4:00 P.M. The Man in the Scholars Conference Dick Cavett: The Art of 10:00 A.M. 10:00 A.M. Overstuffed Williams Research Ticket Sales and the Interview -- A True Larger Than Life Stories The Power of Prose: Chair: Tennessee and Center $20 or Souvenirs Master in New Orleans Reading His Father (Theater) $20 Panel Pass Orleans Room and Discussion Jeremy Lawrence of the Reveal 9:15 A.M. —Welcome 1:00 P.M. “Brick”, $20, Second Star 9:30 A.M. - 10:45 A.M. 10:30 A.M. 11:30 A.M. 11:30 A.M. A Two-Way Street: 9:00 A.M. - 4:00 P.M. Wally Lamb: Making Performance Collective Fixin’ to Set a Spell: The Power of Poetry: Le Petit Theatre Cross Currents and Book Fair an Introduction—To Southern Storytellers on 25 Years of Creative Bonnet Carre Room Characters You’ll Never Southern Hospitality Writing at UNO 3:15 P.M. Forget 11:00 A.M. - 12:15 P.M. “St. Louis Stories” Williams and the 1:00 P.M. $20 Le Petit Theatre Female Persona 10:00 A.M. 1:00 P.M. 1:00 P.M. The Work in Writing, 7:30 P.M. Kenneth Holditch’s And Justice for All: Dividing the Estate 1:30 - 2:45 P.M. Robert Olen Butler: The Writing in Work: The Mutilated: Williams’ Literary Walking Tour Creating Fictional Art Setting the Record MFA Alums and their Theatre Production Disabled Characters Queen Anne Parlor Straight Surpising Jobs 8:00 PM 3:15 - 4:45 P.M. “St. Louis Stories” 10:30 A.M. 2:30 P.M. 2:30 P.M. The Milk Train Doesn’t (Theater) Frank Perez’s LGBT Rick Bragg: Telling the 2:30 P.M. Can You Imagine a Stop Here Anymore at Le Petit Theatre Literary Walking Tour Story Only You Can Tell Wish You Were Here: Better Place To Write? — A Master Class with Emerging Writers Taking Williams Theatre Co. of 11:00 A.M. Hotel Monteleone The Artistic Allure of New Tennessee Williams Lobby the Master of Memoir Us to Other Worlds Orleans New Orleans Sanctuary Cultural Arts Center Abridged with a Reading of “At Liberty” 4:00 P.M. 2:00 P.M. 4:00 P.M. 8:00 PM $20 Beauregard-Keyes Mr. Miyagi and Daniel- Sweet Bird of Youth $40 House Kenneth Holditch’s Taking No Prisoners: Sahn: The Mutual Southern Rep Production Literary Walking Tour, The Challenges of Writing Loyola University 2:00 and 7:00 P.M. Queen Anne Parlor About War in Ficiton Student Relationship Marquette Theatre Last Stop: Desire 9:00 P.M. (Ballet Production) Literary Late Night By The Old U.S. Mint Any Scenes Necessary: The Real Housewives of Tennessee Williams Project The Theatre at 6 St. Claude 6 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Former Residence of Tennessee Williams...

727 Toulouse Street New Orleans, LA 70130 (504) 324-4888 maisondeville.com

PUBLISHING STUDIES Southeastern Louisiana University

A comprehensive and interdisciplinary program in Publishing Studies, available as an undergraduate minor and master’s concentration. Course offerings include:

Writing U Editing U Visual Culture Print Publishing U Online Publishing

Students gain practical experience with professional creative and scholarly publications in print and digital formats. English Department publications include:

BOOKS DIGITAL HUMANITIES PROJECTS Louisiana Literature Press Book of Margery Kempe Early Ruskin Manuscripts JOURNALS Journal of College Writing STUDENT PUBLICATIONS Louisiana Literature Manchac Review Nineteenth Century Manchac Review Online Studies The Pick

southeastern.edu/english 985-549-2100 SATURDAY, MARCH 25

Hotel Monteleone Hotel Monteleone Queen Anne Williams Research Muriel’s Jackson Le Petit Theatre Various Locations Ballroom Panels Center Panels Square Restaurant 9:00 A.M. 11:00 A.M. 8:00 A.M. Restaurant Royalty 9:00 A.M. - 4:00 Writing Marathon, 11:00 A.M. 10:00 A.M. Books and Beignets $25 Revealed: P.M. Free “Brick” $20 The Wizard of the A Discussion of Robert Ti Martin in Conversation Ticket Sales and (Theater) Second Star 10:00 A.M. One-Act Play: Olen Butler’s Good Scent with John Pope $20 Souvenirs Tennessee Williams Performance Collective Orleans Room Women on Women, from a Stange Mountain (Special Food Event) In Literature, In Life Café Adelaide

10:00 A.M. 11:30 A.M. 11:30 A.M. 9:00 A.M. - 4:00 P.M. Getting at 1:00 P.M. 6:00 P.M. Wild and Precious Lives: The Women of Milk Train Book Fair the Real Story: Creating Loneliness In Celebration of Writers A Panel on Memoir and Sweet Bird Bonnet Carre Room and Desire: Free Three Scenes by Beauregard-Keyes 10:00 A.M. Tennessee (Theater) House 1:00 P.M. 11:30 A.M. Kenneth Holditch’s 1:00 P.M. NOCCA Student Who Are These People? Not Just for Young Literary Walking Tour Tennessee Williams: Production $15 Writing About Family in Adults: A Fast-Growing $25, Queen Anne The Autobiographical Self donation 8:00 P.M. Parlor Fiction Field in Fiction The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore 2:00 P.M. 2:30 P.M. 1:00 P.M. 4:30 P.M. (Theater); $20/$25 Kenneth Holditch’s 2:30 P.M. A Conversation About Mayhem Is My Business: Oh, What a Time It Was! Robert Wagner and Jill Tennessee Williams Theatre Literary Walking Tour Race: Finding Strength Crime Novelists Talk St. John Interview with Co. of New Orleans $25, Queen Anne New York City for the Struggle in Great About the Burning in the 1970s Foster Hirsch $20 Sanctuary Cultural Parlor Writing Questions Arts Center 7:30 P.M. 8:00 P.M. 4:00 P.M. 4:00 P.M. Sweet Bird of Youth Taking the Truth Off the The Baby Dolls: Preserving Dividing the Estate (Theater); $35/$40/$50 (Theater); $40 Southern Rep Page: Literary Activists Culture (Discussion and Theatre Loyola University, Speak Out Film Screening) Le Petit Theatre Production Marquette Theatre

SUNDAY, MARCH 26

Hotel Monteleone Queen Hotel Monteleone Palm Court Jazz Café Hotel Monteleone Hotel Monteleone Anne Ballroom Panels Royal Ballroom Drummer and Smoke La Nouvelle Various Locations Panels

9:00 A.M. Writing Marathon, Free 11:00 A.M. 11:00 A.M. 9:00 A.M. - 3:00 P.M. 10:00 A.M. LA Coeur Creole: The 11:00 A.M. Field Peas to Foie Gras: New Orleans Creole Musical Heart of French Flavors in the Ticket Sales and 10:00 A.M. Staged Reading of the Gay History: An Louisiana with Sunpie Heart of the South Souvenirs Places in the Heart: The 2017 Festival One-Act Orleans Room LGBTQ Mecca Barnes Play Contest Winner (Special food event) $15 History of New Orleans’ $10 or Panel Pass Bourbon House Beloved Landmarks

1:00 P.M. 1:00 P.M. 2:30 P.M. 11:30 A.M. The Musical Journey The Man in the Writing Marathon 11:30 A.M. 9:00 A.M. - 3:00 P.M. Professors Who of New Orleans Overstuffed Chair: Wrap-Up Prohibition and Murder Book Fair Publish — From Composer Roger Tennessee and His and Reading FREE with Sally Asher Bonnet Carre Room Poetry to the Dickerson Father (Theater) $20 Hotel Monteleone Paranormal $15 or panel pass Jeremy Lawrence Gallier Room

2:30 P.M. 3:00 P.M. 10:00 A.M. 1:00 P.M. “Now the Cats with Sweet Bird of Youth Kenneth Holditch’s That’s What I Like About 1:00 P.M. Jewelled Claws” by $40 (Theater) Literary Walking Tour the South: A Panel of The Chinese in Tennessee Williams Southern Rep Theatre Loyola Queen Anne Parlor Great Storytellers the Gulf South (Theater) $20 University, The NOLA Project Marquette Theatre

3:00 P.M. 2:30 P.M Dividing the Estate 2:00 P.M. $35/$40/$50 An Interview with Dick 2:30 P.M. Kenneth Holditch’s Le Petit Theatre Cavett and screening The Way of Literary Walking Tour of His Interview with the Poet Queen Anne Parlor Tennessee Williams 4:15 P.M. $15 or Panel Pass Shouting Contest Free, Jackson Square

6:00 P.M. The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore $20/$25 (Theatre) Tennessee Williams Theatre Co. of New Orleans Sanctuary Cultural 8 Arts Center 8 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival 1 Hotel Monteleone 2017 Festival Sites 214 Royal Street 2 The Historic New Orleans Collection 533 Royal Street

3 Williams Research Center 410 Chartres Street

4 The Jaxson on the River 620 Decatur Street 11 12 5 Dickie Brennan’s Tableau 1 2 14 616 Saint Peter Street 6 Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carré 7 6 3 5 8 616 Saint Peter Street 13 7 Muriel’s Jackson Square Restaurant 4 801 Chartres Street 9 10 8 Beauregard-Keyes house 1113 Chartres Street 9 Palm Court Jazz Café 1204 Decatur Street

10 The Old U.S. Mint 400 Esplanade Avenue VENTS ENUES UTSIDE THE RENCH UARTER E /V O F Q 11 Hermann-Grima Historic House The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here The Real Housewives of Tennessee 820 St. Louis Anymore The Theatre at St. Claude 12 Dickie Brennan’s Bourbon House Sanctuary Cultural Arts Center 2240 St. Claude Avenue 144 Bourbon Street 2525 Burgundy Street, in the Fauburg Marigny Restaurant Royalty with Ti Adelaide 13 Jackson Square Sweet Bird of Youth Martin St. Peter Street, Shouting Contest Loyola University’s Marquette Theatre Café Adelaide 14 Gallier House 6363 St. Charles Avenue 300 Poydras Street in the Loew’s Hotel 1132 Royal Street

Read Local with

RESTAURANT&BAR 312 EXCHANGE ALLEY 504-523-1504

"Their food is marked by a con- sistent search for excellence in preparing the finest fresh ingre- dients with superior skill and fi- nesse...a tasteful ambiance where diners are comfortable in everything from blue jeans to ball gowns." Gregory Roberts – The Times-Picayune

Available at Garden District Book Shop Subscribe at www.thesouthernreview.org www.pelicanclub.com 9 March 22 - 26, 2017 9 WEDNESDAY MARCH 22, 2017

7:30 PM WHERE SEX AND SIN WERE THE SPECIALITIES: AN EVENING OF STORYVILLE MEMORIES Join us for a photographer Sally Asher of Tulane University, accompanied look inside the by actors Kerry Cahill and Andrew Ward, brings to life the scandalous history important year of 1917, the year Storyville closed, after reform and culture of the movements prevailed against last-ditch efforts to save it. “The Red Light District purity wave” as is it was called—with tougher enforcement of the that fl ourished laws and an attempt to segregate the district—grew out of protests in New Orleans by women’s organizations and Mayor Behrman’s desire to control from 1897- the district so it could continue to exist. Nina Bozak of The 1917, that famed Historic New Orleans Collection dazzles with period dances— neighborhood that from the Two-Step that was the rage in the 1890s The Foxtrot, fi xed the city fi rmly for which the Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded the Livery in the national Stable Blues in 1917 (the fi rst jazz recording ever issued), as well consciousness as a as dances to Spanish-tinged rhythms of the period. Ham Kick place of licentious and Naked Dance, anyone? Ward emcees, with live period music pleasure. One with band leader Seva Venet. And who knows? We might even The Historic New Orleans Collection, 1969.19.4 hundred years see a Baby Doll or two. New Orleans has always had a reputation after its closure, as a wicked city; Storyville is at the heart of that sense of excess it still illuminates New Orleans’s complex personality. Pamela and openness. See why it continues to captivate and intrigue us Arceneaux, senior librarian and rare books curator of The a century later, even as we learn more about its many aspects as Historic New Orleans Collection introduces us to the rare guides these scholars of Storyville celebrate its lively legacy in history, to the district chronicled in her new book, Guidebooks to Sin: The Blue Books of Storyville, New Orleans. She’ll explain how theater, dance and music. Directed by Brook Hanemann. the books served up the fl avor of the place – guides to brothels, Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carré, 616 St. Peter. Sponsored by the liquor stores, cures for venereal disease—and what rare and History/A+E Networks. Music and dance sponsored by Paige Royer fascinating information she found between the lines. Writer and and Kerry Clayton.

Photograph of Rita Walker from Blue Book, [1913-15], The Historic New Orleans Collection, 85-517-RL $30 ADMISSION: EVENT ONLY Balcony or general seating. Doors open at 7 PM. Complimentary cocktail provided by Dickie Brennan’s Tableau. Cash Bar also available at Le Petit Theatre.

$45 ADMISSION: EVENT AND POST-SHOW PARTY Balcony or general seating. Doors open at 7 PM. Complimentary cocktail provided by Dickie Brennan’s Tableau. Cash Bar also available at Le Petit Theatre. Champagne and Dessert After-Party with a live jazz band at Dickie Brennan’s Tableau $65 ADMISSION: PRE-SHOW PARTY AND EVENT VIP Cocktail Party at Tennessee Williams’ former apartment on St. Peter Street. 6 PM Priority seating in reserved VIP section. D oors open at 7 PM. Complimentary pre-show cocktail provided by Dickie Brennan’s Tableau. 10 Cash Bar also available at Le Petit Theatre. 10 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival THURSDAY MARCH 23, 2017

anything that they want and in any The Tennessee Williams/New HE EW RLEANS RITING ARATHON T N O W M form they wish—memoir, fi ction, Orleans Literary Festival opens with Jumpstart your writing endeavors with refl ection, essay, poetry, or just quick a series of Master Classes by leading the New Orleans Writing Marathon! descriptive impressions—and share authors and publishing industry Marathon founder and author their writing with each other without professionals. All master classes take of The Writing Marathon: In Good criticism. For more information, please place at The Historic New Orleans Company Revealed Richard Louth will see: www.writingmarathon.com. Collection located at 533 Royal Street. facilitate the event, with participants Each session is 1 hour and 15 minutes writing their way across the French Writing Marathon Schedule: Writers with a lively give-and-take between Quarter. Writers will visit cafes, pubs, may participate any day—Thursday, audience and facilitators. Authors bookstores, and anywhere else a Saturday, and/or Sunday—by meeting will sign books. Classes may be taken small group of writers can sit, write, in the Hotel Monteleone’s Queen individually for $25 or as a complete and share their work. It’s all about Anne Ballroom at 9 a.m. for a brief series for $200. The full series fee also writing in the moment, writing for introduction. Participants then write includes a Festival Panel Pass. the joy of it, and fi nding inspiration in at various locations until noon (or past Presented in partnership with The one’s place. noon if they wish). Historic New Orleans Collection.

On Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday Writing Marathon Readings: Includes a Festival Panel Pass. mornings, writers are invited to gather Participants in any of the three Thank you to the Patrick F. Taylor Foundation, Master Class Series at 9 AM for a 30-minute overview of Writing Marathons are invited to the Writing Marathon process, a map Sponsor. read their writing at a celebration on of great French Quarter writing Sunday, March 26, at 2:30 p.m. in the spots, and guidelines. They will Hotel Monteleone’s Gallier Room. write together as a community before setting out in smaller groups to write For questions or to sign up ahead and enjoy the city’s food, spirits, and of time, contact Richard Louth at: atmosphere. Participants write on [email protected].

We proudly support Tennessee Williams / New Orleans Literary Festival.

With all best wishes from

Anchorage | Bellevue | Los Angeles | New York | Portland San Francisco | Seattle | Shanghai | Washington, D.C. Gray Coleman, Chair, Entertainment Transactions Practice 11 March 22 - 26, 2017 11 THURSDAY MARCH 23, 2017

9 AM – 4 PM process behind these scenes—how they “At Liberty” (directed by Paul J. Willis), FESTIVAL TICKET SALES, ORLEANS changed and grew during workshops and in which you’ll find yourself on the front ROOM AT THE HOTEL MONTELEONE the rehearsal process. porch in Blue Mountain, Mississippi late The Historic New Orleans Collection, one night to witness a showdown between MASTER CLASSES $25 or included in Master Class series a concerned matriarch and her firebrand registration. daughter. Gloria, the actress, must reckon 9 AM with her mother as “the past keeps getting bigger at the future’s expense”! MAKING HISTORY: A MASTER 2:30 PM CLASS WITH PATRICK MANEY ON ASK AMY: A MASTER CLASS WITH Beauregard-Keyes House, 1113 PRESIDENTIAL BIOGRAPHY COLUMNIST AMY DICKINSON Chartres Street, $20. Sponsored by Coming out of a turbulent election year, Amy Dickinson counsels millions of Albert Carey, Jr. historians are giving us perspective. readers in her syndicated column, Boston College historian (formerly “Ask Amy,” and won even more with 1 PM of Tulane) describes the process of her memoirs The Mighty Queens of CHARLENE A. DONAGHY: DEVISED writing Bill Clinton: New Gilded Age Freeville and Strangers Tend to Tell Me THEATRE—aka SUDDEN SURPRISES, President. What are the responsibilities Things. How did she develop that voice BLIND ALLEYS, IMPROVISATION—OH and challenges of writing about America’s of hers, that relentless common sense, MY! (THEATER WORKSHOP) most powerful leaders especially when compassion and good humor? Get up As writers, we embrace our personal they are still scrutinized in the media? close and personal with one of America’s experiences, visions, voices, explorations, beloved journalists, and bring a dilemma and experimentation to create works The Historic New Orleans Collection, of your own for her to address. She just that live on the stage and/or the $25 or included in Master Class series might have the answer. page. In Devised Theatre, also known as registration. The Historic New Orleans Collection, “collaborative creation” by some artists, we add the element of improvisation to 10:30 AM $25 or included in Master Class series registration. begin that collaboration. Alison Oddey USE YOUR WORDS: A MASTER CLASS in Devising Theatre: A Practical and IN WRITING WITH ROY BLOUNT, JR. Theoretical Handbook describes it as a Roy Blount, Jr. is a true master at making THEATER & SPECIAL EVENTS method of creating original performances us laugh and making us think about the by gathering a group of artists who bring vagaries and possibilities of language— their unique experiences to collaborate both serious and comic. In books such on the creation of a new product. This as Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and highly interactive seminar will take writers Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations on a journey of discovery, as we look at Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, the collaborative creation for modern Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Devised Theatre bringing in elements Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of of commedia dell’arte, street theatre, Their Usage Foul and Savory, and its and improvisation. You should wear sequel Alpha-Better Juice, he’s explored comfortable clothing and be prepared to the twists and turns of our language. Come 11 AM participate with ideas, art, movement, prepared to be edified and amused; no one laughter, voices, and more. uses words like Roy! TENNESSEE WILLIAMS ABRIDGED WITH A READING OF “AT LIBERTY” Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne The Historic New Orleans Collection, (SPECIAL EVENT/THEATER) Ballroom, $20. $25 or included in Master Class series Part lecture, part performance, and all registration. promised to entertain! Join Tennessee 1:30 PM Williams scholar Augustin J Correro LONG LIVE THIS CONFEDERACY 1 PM for a fast, snappy, and at times comical (OF DUNCES)! CELEBRATING JOHN INSPIRATION AND PROCESS: A talk about the life and work of Tennessee KENNEDY TOOLE MASTER CLASS WITH PLAYWRIGHT Williams. Learn about his Mississippi The long and complicated history of John LISA D’AMOUR upbringing, his St. Louis years, his Kennedy Toole and his celebrated, Pulit- Experience a brief, up close tour of the Broadway successes and flops, and of zer Prize-winning novel, A Confederacy of playwright’s brain and heart. In this course the time he spent in his spiritual Dunces, is one of the city’s great literary Master Class, local playwright Lisa home, New Orleans. This talk takes sagas in itself. Festival board member D’Amour invites a team of actors to read Williams off the shelves and puts his David Johnson interviews Professor scenes from Tennessee Williams’ Glass personal and professional life in context Kenneth Holditch, who had a front Menagerie and two of her own plays. for you. It’s everything you wanted to row seat to it all. An expert in the New After each reading, she will examine know about our titular playwright! There Orleans and Southern literary traditions, and unpack the real-life details that were will be a question and answer session and Dr. Holditch was one of Thelma Toole’s adapted and transformed to “become” the talk is topped off by TW Fest favorites close friends and heirs and was involved these scenes. With the scenes from Beth Bartley and Brenda Currin in the controversy over whether to publish 12 her own plays, she will also discuss the performing a reading of the one-act play Toole’s first novel, The Neon Bible. This 12 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival THURSDAY MARCH 23, 2017 discussion leads into the performance of Hermann-Grima House, 820 St. Louis 8 PM scenes from New Orleans native Vivian Street, Limited Seating, $20. THE MILK TRAIN DOESN’T STOP HERE Neuwirth’s play, Mr. Toole, which had ANYMORE BY TENNESSEE WILLIAMS its New York City premiere as one of the 7:30 PM (THEATER) winning submissions for the Midtown TRIBUTE READING: TENNESSEE Whatever the game, Flora Goforth always International Theatre Festival. Neuwirth WILLIAMS AND THE ETERNAL CITY claims victory. But how can she hope to tells the story from the viewpoint of Lisette, (6:30 PM Hors d’oeuvres and cash triumph over the Angel of Death? As she one of Toole’s students at St. Mary’s Do- bar on the veranda overlooking the finds herself in a house on fire, will she minican College who learns of his suicide Mississippi River) and becomes obsessed with his life story. break out, or burn the world down with Todd d’Amour plays Ken; Brenda Currin, Our Tribute Reading features the her? And who is the mysterious youth Thelma, and Beth Bartley, Lisette. Vivian creative connection between Williams who’s appeared at her door in her darkest Neuwirth, also a student of Toole’s, will be and his time spent in Italy and includes hour? In Milk Train, Williams explores present for this event where there will be a selections from his memoirs, the many glory, death, letting go, Eastern serenity, talk back with the playwright and actors. letters he wrote while in Rome, and the Western decadence, and as always, the imaginative writings inspired by and complexities of the human spirit. Milk Gallier House, 1132 Royal Street, $20. created during his stays. Williams visited Sponsored by Albert Carey, Jr. Train is produced by the Tennessee Italy for the first time in 1948. In his Williams Theatre Company of New Memoirs, Tennessee wrote, “As soon as Orleans in conjunction with the Tennessee 2 PM I crossed the Italian border my health Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, SAINTS AND SINNERS FRENCH and life seemed to be magically restored. QUARTER WALKING TOUR There was the sun and there were the starring New Orleans’ favorite Janet Shea This leisurely stroll through the French smiling Italians.” Tennessee spent a great and directed by Augustin J Correro. Quarter focuses on New Orleans’ deal of the next decade in Rome, where enchanting past with an emphasis on the Sanctuary Cultural Arts Center, 2525 neighborhood’s queer history and its rich he worked on many of his greatest works Burgundy Street, literary heritage. See where writers lived including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The in the Marigny. Rose Tattoo, and Baby Doll. and wrote, and learn about the incredible General Admission: $25, Students/ contributions lesbians and gay men have Seniors/Theater Professionals: $20. made to the city over its nearly 300-year- Our readers include interviewer and raconteur extraordinaire, Dick Cavett; old history. Other highlights include 8 PM Jackson Square, Free People of Color, the Tony Award winner Michael Cerveris SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH BY French Market, the birth of jazz, Voodoo, (Assassins and Fun Home); acclaimed and a wide diversity of architecture. The biographer and memoirist Patricia TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (THEATER) tour is guided by long-time French Quarter Bosworth (Montgomery Clift: A Biog- Melting in the heat of the Deep South, resident Frank Perez, a local historian and raphy, Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda: a dwindling star is swept up in a race professional tour guide who has written The Private Life of a Public Woman); against time. Fueled by booze, pills, two books about French Quarter history. actor Bryan Batt, who has appeared on and entitlement, Alexandra del Lago stage, screen, and television (Mad Men, Tour meets in the Hotel Monteleone (Leslie Castay) places herself in the care Starlight Express, 12 Years a Slave); Amy lobby, approximately 2 hours, $25. of Chance Wayne, an ambitious gigolo with Dickinson, best-selling author, advice less than a heart of gold and a drama of his 3:30 PM columnist “Ask Amy” and NPR contrib- own unfolding. Directed by Mel. Cook. SOUL SEARCHING: A VICTORIAN- utor; author and journalist Julia Reed Produced by Southern Rep Theatre in STYLE SÉANCE (SPECIAL EVENT) (Julia Reed’s South: Spirited Entertain- partnership with the Tennessee Williams/ Historian Melissa Daggett will team with ing and High-Style Fun All Year Long), New Orleans Literary Festival. spiritual medium Juliet Pazera to interpret and Pulitzer Prize-winners Rick Bragg Loyola University Marquette Theatre, the supernatural rituals popular among (Ava’s Man, My Southern Journey: True 6363 St. Charles Avenue. 19th-century Creoles of color who adhered Stories from the Heart of the South) and to the beliefs of Spiritualism. Daggett’s Robert Olen Butler (A Good Scent from Get tickets at: www.SouthernRep.com or recent book, Spiritualism in New Orleans: a Strange Mountain, Perfume River). 504-522-6545. The Life and Times of Henry Louis Rey, Special guests include Robert Wagner examines Le Circle Harmonique, a and Jill St. John. Curated by TW/NOLF gathering of francophone free people of executive director Paul J. Willis and Wil- color who sought guidance from the dead liams editor and scholar, Thomas Keith, at public seances in the tumultuous years who serves as our Master of Ceremony spanning the antebellum era through providing context and introductions for Reconstruction. The period-furnished the selected readings. Sponsored by a Hermann-Grima Historic House Museum generous grant from the New Orleans will be the setting for a reenacted Victorian- Theatre Association. style séance that is sure to offer untold The Jaxson on the River, 620 Decatur surprises. Street, $35 13 March 22 - 26, 2017 13 CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW ORLEANS CELEBRATES ITS

ANNIVERSARY

FRIDAY, MARCH 24, 2017 consider the odd persistence of contempo- world. Join writers from Australia (Kia rary poetry both inside and outside academia Groom), Trinidad (Trisha Rezende), New 10 AM in today’s political environment. Nationally York (Bill Loehfelm) and Alabama (Tad THE POWER OF PROSE: READING and internationally celebrated poets to Bartlett) as they discuss what originally drew AND DISCUSSION appear include Jericho Brown (Please, them to the Big Easy and the lasting effect For 25 years, American Book Award; The New Testament), that New Orleans has had on their lives. Hear fi ction and Gina Ferrara (Amber Porch Light, Fitting also from New Orleans native Maurice Ruf- non-fi ction writ- the Sixth Finger), Clare Harmon (If Wishes fi n about how the city continues to inspire ers have come to Were Horses the Poor Would Ride), Bill and challenge his fi ction in multiple ways. the University Lavender (While Sleeping, I of the Storm, This panel is sure to be a most complicated of New Orleans’ Memory Wing), and John Warner Smith love song to a most complicated muse. MFA program to (Soul Be a Witness). Moderator: Carolyn Hembree hone their skills. Moderator: John Gery Hotel Monteleone, Cabildo Room, Hotel Monteleone, Cabildo Room, Panel Pass Panel Pass 4 PM This panel 1 PM MR. MIYAGI AND DANIEL-SAHN: THE features fi ve of THE WORK IN WRITING, THE WRITING MUTUAL BENEFITS OF THE MENTOR/ the many prose IN WORK: MFA ALUMNI AND THEIR STUDENT RELATIONSHIP writers who SURPRISING JOBS There is perhaps no more subjective have gone on to As everyone (we hope) knows, not all MFA discipline than the study of Art. So, when great success students go on to become best-selling novel- a teacher takes on a mentorship role with a after leaving ists, poet laureates, or Academy Award-win- massively talented student, things can get the classroom. ning screenwriters. However, most do fi nd interesting. This panel connects former Award-win- surprising ways to use their study of language students and mentors spanning the 25 year ning novelists Skip Horack (The Other and narrative in their daily lives. Join us to history of the Creative Writing Workshop at Joseph), Nick Mainieri (The Infi nite), and hear professional songwriter Jim McCor- UNO. Teachers like Rick Barton and John Amanda Boyden (Babylon Rolling) will read mick, professor and app developer Jason Gery have had the pleasure of watching from recent work, as will creative non-fi ction Buch, yoga instructor AC Lambeth, editor their students, Joseph Boyden and Jericho writers Juyanne James (The Persimmon Marcus Gilmer, and book publisher Abram Brown, respectively, rise to meteoric liter- Trail and Other Stories) and Brenda Quant. Himelstein discuss the ways that their study ary success. Joanna Leake has seen former The writers will then be open to discussion/ of the creative process continues to help them student Barb Johnson not only publish questions on any topics relating to the craft or out there in “the real world.” to wide acclaim, but also become a fellow impact of prose. Moderator: Richard Goodman faculty member in the program she helped Moderator: M.O. Walsh Hotel Monteleone, Cabildo Room, to begin. Professor Randy Bates is now applauding from the sidelines as recent Hotel Monteleone, Cabildo Room, Panel Pass graduate Coleen Muir begins to publish Panel Pass 2:30 PM and teach on her own. Join these eight 11:30 AM CAN YOU IMAGINE A BETTER PLACE wonderful writers as they discuss the ups THE POWER OF POETRY: 25 YEARS OF TO WRITE? THE ARTISTIC ALLURE OF and downs of the mentor/student process CREATIVE WRITING AT UNO NEW ORLEANS and how it continues to inform their own Poets who have studied at UNO’s rich and New Orleans has long been a magnet for writing and teaching lives. diverse MFA program in Creative Writing artists, and for the last 25 years, the Creative Moderator: Henry Griffi n from across the last quarter century gather Writing Workshop at UNO has provided Hotel Monteleone, Cabildo Room, 14 to read from and discuss their work, as they a landing spot for writers from all over the Panel Pass 14 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival 2017 Tennessee Williams Scholars Conference Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street Artwork by Jimmy Blanchard. Courtesy of The Historic Robert Bray, Director New Orleans Collection, acc. no. 1994.41.1

9:15-9:30 OPENING REMARKS, ROBERT BRAY

9:30-10:45 A TWO-WAY STREET: CROSS CURRENTS AND INFLUENCES A discussion of playwrights and other artists who infl uenced Tennessee Williams, as well as those whose work has been infl uenced by Williams. • Henry Schvey, Washington University • Will Brantley, Middle Tennessee State University • Raymond Jean Frontain, University of Central Arkansas (moderator)

11:00-12:15 WILLIAMS AND THE FEMALE PERSONA “There is no actress on earth who will not testify that Williams created the best women characters in the modern theatre,” wrote Gore Vidal shortly after Williams’s death. How did Williams create such psychologically complex and demanding roles? Join our discussion to fi nd out. • Annette Saddik, City University of New York • Bess Rowen, City University of New York • Lisa D’Amour, playwright • Katherine Weiss, East Tennessee State University (moderator)

1:30-2:45 THE MUTILATED: WILLIAMS’S DISABLED CHARACTERS Williams’s plays are replete with characters who exhibit mental and physical disorders ranging from pathological shyness to alcoholism to dissociative breaks with reality. Think Laura, Brick, and Blanche, among others. Williams scholars discuss these issues and speculate why Williams featured these problems in many of his works.

• John Bak, Université de Lorraine, France • Michael Hooper, St. Margaret’s School, England • Clay Morton, Middle Georgia State University • Robert Bray, Middle Tennessee State University (moderator)

3:15-4:45 ST. LOUIS STORIES Le Petit Théâtre, 616 St. Peter Street A performance of seven Tennessee Williams unpublished short stories and narrative poems, adapted for the stage and directed by Tom Mitchell, University of Illinois. These pieces, written early in Williams’s career, reveal his nascent ability to create complex and compelling characters from his own experience. 15 March 22 - 26, 2017 15 FRIDAY MARCH 24, 2017

9 AM – 4 PM Lennon, Judy Garland, Gore Vidal, The Historic New Orleans Collection, FESTIVAL TICKET SALES AND Norman Mailer, Festival namesake $25 or included in Master Class series SOUVENIRS, ORLEANS ROOM AT THE Tennessee Williams—and brought registration. HOTEL MONTELEONE out their best (and even, sometimes, their worst). With his easy style and his 2:30 PM BOOK FAIR, BONNET CARRE ROOM AT wide-ranging intellect, he always coaxes RICK BRAGG: TELLING THE STORY THE HOTEL MONTELEONE something new and interesting from his ONLY YOU CAN TELL—A MASTER Local independent bookseller Garden guests. How does he prepare? What CLASS WITH THE MASTER OF THE District Book Shop will offer books for are his secrets? And what are some of MEMOIR. sale by Festival authors, along with books his favorite moments? America’s great Bestselling author Rick Bragg has about Louisiana and all things Tennessee. conversationalist shares the stories of his made us love his family through many interviews and his long show-biz career. memoirs, beginning with All Over But TENNESSEE WILLIAMS SCHOLARS The Historic New Orleans Collection, the Shoutin’ and continuing all the way to CONFERENCE $25 or included in Master Class series the travels he chronicles in My Southern registration. Journey. Hear about his adventures 9 AM – 4:45 PM (and memorable meals) and get his good Literary experts share their insights on advice on planning your own journey as the creative works of America’s greatest 10:30 AM you set out on your own writing project. playwright. Complete schedule WALLY LAMB: MAKING AN is on page 15. INTRODUCTION—TO CHARACTERS The Historic New Orleans Collection, YOU’LL NEVER FORGET $25 or included in Master Class series Conference Director: Dr. Robert Bray. From the very first time readers met registration. Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Dolores Price in Wally Lamb’s debut Street, $20 for Scholars Conference Pass, novel, She’s Come Undone, she’s lived or included with Festival Panel Pass. LITERARY PANELS, THEATRICAL on in our hearts. In his two most recent Sponsored by The Historic New Orleans PERFORMANCES, AND SPECIAL EVENTS novels, Wishin’ and Hopin’ and I’ll Collection. Entrance to all literary panels, Ta k e Yo u t h e re, Lamb treated us to the readings, and featured conversations life of Felix Funicello, relative of the UNO CREATIVE WRITING with literary luminaries is included in more famous Annette. In all of his work, WORKSHOP PANEL SERIES the Festival Panel Pass, $100. Lamb has created strong and spirited The Creative Writing Workshop of the characters, challenged by circumstance 10 AM but unbowed. See how he makes these University of New Orleans celebrates its LARGER THAN LIFE STORIES IN NEW th 25 anniversary with a special series of enduring characters come to life in this ORLEANS panel discussions featuring alumni from master class. New Orleans is a city renowned for the MFA program. Complete schedule is The Historic New Orleans Collection, producing real-life characters who on page 14. $25 or included in Master Class series outmatch any fictional creation. Three Hotel Monteleone, Cabildo Room, registration. biographers have recently traced the life Panel Pass. stories of native sons who defy simple 1 PM categorization. Michael Tisserand’s ROBERT OLEN BUTLER: CREATING interest in comic strips led him to profile MASTER CLASSES FICTIONAL ART George Herriman, a Creole of color who 9 AM This workshop will focus on the created the nationally syndicated Krazy DICK CAVETT: fundamentals of the creative process Kat cartoon and addressed racial issues THE ART OF THE for any fiction writer, beginning or in the funny pages throughout the early INTERVIEW—A advanced, who aspires to create enduring 20th century. Kathy Finn brings the saga TRUE MASTER OF literature. We will address such issues as of flamboyant Saints owner Tom Benson THE REVEAL what is art; what is distinctive about the to the printed page, and Melissa Daggett Dick Cavett has way the artist addresses the world, the investigates the mysteries surrounding interviewed almost inner self, and the objects to be created; Henry Louis Rey, a 19th-century everyone you can and what are the essential characteristics spiritualist who led a séance circle among free people of color who sought guidance of fiction as an art form. 16 imagine—John PHOTO BY RIDE HAMILTON 16 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival FRIDAY MARCH 24, 2017 from the dead. Moderator: David 10:30 AM Street, $20. Sponsored by Helen and Johnson. SAINTS AND SINNERS FRENCH George Ingram. Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne QUARTER WALKING TOUR Presented by special arrangement with Approximately 2 hours, $25. See Page Ballroom, Panel Pass. Sponsored by the University of the South. 11 for full description. Pelican Publishing. 11:30 AM 11 AM FIXIN’ TO SET A SPELL: SOUTHERN 10 AM AND 2 PM TENNESSEE WILLIAMS ABRIDGED FRIDAY THROUGH SUNDAY STORYTELLERS ON SOUTHERN WITH A READING OF “AT LIBERTY” HOSPITALITY TENNESSEE WILLIAMS LITERARY (SPECIAL EVENT/THEATER) WALKING TOUR CREATED BY “You grow up in the Mississippi Delta, DR. KENNETH HOLDITCH you learn early on how to entertain yourself,” wrote Julia Reed. She is the queen of entertaining herself—and her readers—in her new book Julia Reed’s South: Spirited Entertaining and High-Style Fun All Year Long. Rick Bragg has taken us down highways and yummy byways all over the region in My Southern Journey. Roy Blount, Jr. adds his delicious sensibility with Save See page 12 for full description. Room for Pie: Food Songs and Chewy Beauregard-Keyes House, 1113 Ruminations, and Georgia chef Jennifer Chartres Street, $20. Sponsored by Hill Booker adds a French flair to Albert Carey, Jr. southern classics in From Field Peas to Foie Gras. Bon vivant John Pope New Orleans—and especially the 11 AM (Getting Off at Elysian Fields) moderates. French Quarter—played a vital role THE MAN IN THE OVERSTUFFED Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne in shaping Tennessee Williams. CHAIR: TENNESSEE AND HIS FATHER Ballroom, Panel Pass. When he came here for the first (THEATER) time, he was Tom Williams. When The words of Tennessee Williams arranged and performed by Jeremy 1 PM he left here a couple of months Lawrence AND JUSTICE FOR ALL: SETTING THE later, he was known as Tennessee, Cornelius Coffin Williams (C.C. as his RECORD STRAIGHT having undergone a tremendous cronies called him) famously referred Three veteran journalists talk about change in his personal life and his to his son as “Miss Nancy.” Theirs their search for truthful accounts of creativity. A man perpetually on the was an uneasy relationship at best and controversial, shameful past events: move, Tennessee considered this yet in The Glass Menagerie, Williams Ethan Brown, author of Murder in the city his “spiritual home” and had at idealized the absent father as “the man Bayou: Who Killed the Jefferson Davis least eight residences in its famous who fell in love with long distance.” Eight?, searches for the real killer of neighborhoods. Visit the homes And late in his life, Williams wrote, eight women; Justin Nobel chronicles and hangouts where he lived and “The play that I want to write as a the wrongful conviction and eventual worked and returned to throughout final play, some day is the story of my release of Dan Bright in The Story of his adult life, beloved spots father . . . the angry hedge-hog under Dan Bright: Crime, Corruption and that helped to make Tennessee a floor lamp whose fading silk-fringe Injustice in the Crescent City, and John America’s greatest playwright. Each appeared to be weeping for him with DeSantis establishes the historical tour will start with an introduction more forgiveness and compassion than record of a racial battle in The Thibodaux by Dr. Kenneth Holditch, creator of we were old enough or wise enough Massacre. Using interviews, archives, this tour and the first literary tour to give him.” This new piece captures and good old-fashioned detective work of the Quarter. Tour meets in the a son’s struggle to love the un-loveable in historical records, they’ve come up Hotel Monteleone Queen Anne man who was his father. with three important stories, sometimes Parlor, Heritage Tours, $25. at considerable personal risk. Michael Le Petit Theatre, 616 Saint Peter 17 March 22 - 26, 2017 17 FRIDAY MARCH 24, 2017

Allen Zell, who often rights wrongs in his Nicole Colbert’s Last Stop: Desire 3:15 PM noir novels, moderates. highlights the love and tension “ST. LOUIS STORIES” BY TENNESSEE Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne in the relationship between three WILLIAMS (THEATER) Ballroom, Panel Pass. central characters: Blanche, Stella This theatrical production is a and Stanley, through dance, music, compilation of unpublished stories 1 PM and theatre. Distilled to the essential, by Thomas Lanier Williams (before “BRICK”—A ONE-ACT PLAY BY JON Tennessee Williams’ text acts as a he became “Tennessee,”) set in BRODER INSPIRED BY THE LIFE & foundation to unearth the complex the hometown of his youth. The LEGACY OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS relationship between the three characters reflect the people he (THEATER) characters as well as explore, more knew and the places he frequented. Join us as New Orleans playwright deeply, Blanche’s wounded, yet regal Often funny and sometimes Jon Broder imagines what would have psyche. Original choreography by harrowing, these stories testify happened in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Nicole Colbert draws on an array to the talent of Williams at the if Brick had “the talk” with his best of dance forms including jazz, ballet beginning of his career. These short friend Skipper. It’s lunch time on a and modern set to a score created by stories and narrative poems are presented in a dramatic performance Friday afternoon. Drinks are being New Orleans-based musician Richard with an ensemble of actors from served and everyone in the restaurant Bates. Mary Carol Chenet (Blanche), the Theatre Program of the is watching. Presented by Second Star Josef Pons (Stanley) and Reese University of Illinois at Urbana- Performance Collective featuring Big Johanson (Stella) join the production Champaign. Adapted for the stage by Easy Award winner Bob Edes. of this dramatic and touching rendition of an American classic. To m M i t c h e l l from materials in the Le Petit Theatre, 616 St. Peter Street, $20 Tennessee Williams Collection of the The Old U.S. Mint, 400 Esplanade Ransom Research Center, University 2 PM Avenue. Tickets are $20 for adults, of Texas at Austin. LAST STOP: DESIRE—A DANCE/ $15 for students & teachers. Group Le Petit Theatre, 616 Saint Peter THEATRE ADAPTATION OF A rates are available for 10 or more. Street, $20. STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE BY TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (THEATER/ 2:30 PM 4 PM DANCE/SPECIAL EVENT) WISH YOU WERE HERE: EMERGING TAKING NO PRISONERS: THE WRITERS TAKING US TO OTHER CHALLENGES OF WRITING ABOUT WORLDS WAR IN FICTION One of the great challenges facing new In a time when war can break writers is taking readers someplace out anywhere at any moment, new, with authority and conviction. two distinguished novelists These writers discuss how they did it: give us insight into their work. Nicholas Mainieri takes us to post- Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Katrina New Orleans and the world Olen Butler has constructed a of the Mexican drug cartels in The distinguished body of work from Infinite; Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes his Vietnam experience, most creates a chaotic 70s-era Spain in The recently in Perfume River. Winston Sleeping World; and Matthew Griffin Groom, known for the character chronicles the long relationship of a immortalized in Forrest Gump, closeted gay couple in the post-war enters a different place in history American heartland in Hide. Katy in El Paso, his new novel of the Simpson Smith, known for The Story Mexican Revolution. Longstanding of Land and Sea and Free Men, novels scholar of Vietnam War fiction set in colonial America, moderates this Randy Fertel moderates. panel. Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Ballroom, Panel Pass. Sponsored Ballroom, Panel Pass. 18 by the Ruth U. Fertel Foundation. 18 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival FRIDAY MARCH 24, 2017

7 PM 8 PM a race against time. Fueled by booze, LAST STOP: DESIRE—A DANCE/ THE MILK TRAIN DOESN’T STOP pills, and entitlement, Alexandra del THEATRE ADAPTATION OF A HERE ANYMORE BY TENNESSEE Lago (Leslie Castay) places herself STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE BY WILLIAMS (THEATER) in the care of Chance Wayne, an TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (THEATER/ ambitious gigolo with less than a DANCE/SPECIAL EVENT) heart of gold and a drama of his own Nicole Colbert’s Last Stop: Desire unfolding. Directed by Mel. Cook. highlights the love and tension in Produced by Southern Rep Theatre the relastionship between three in partnership with the Tennessee central characters: Blanche, Stella Williams/New Orleans Literary and Stanley, through dance, music, Festival. and theatre. Distilled to the essential, Loyola University Marquette Tennessee Williams’ text acts as a Theatre, 6363 St. Charles Avenue. foundation to unearth the complex relationship between the three Get tickets at: www.SouthernRep. characters as well as explore, more com or 504-522-6545. deeply, Blanche’s wounded, yet regal psyche. Original choreography by 9 PM Nicole Colbert draws on an array LITERARY LATE NIGHT—BY ANY of dance forms including jazz, ballet SCENES NECESSARY: THE REAL and modern set to a score created Whatever the game, Flora Goforth HOUSEWIVES OF TENNESSEE by New Orleans based musician always claims victory. But how can WILLIAMS Richard Bates. Mary Carol Chenet she hope to triumph over the Angel of The NOLA Project returns to the (Blanche), Josef Pons (Stanley) Death? As she fi nds herself in a house Festival this year with their unique and Reese Johanson (Stella) join on fi re, will she break out, or burn the theater/improv hybrid, “Any Scenes world down with her? And who is the the production of this dramatic and Necessary.” In this special Festival mysterious youth who’s appeared at touching rendition of an American edition, Tennessee Williams takes her door in her darkest hour? In Milk classic. the place of Andy Cohen to bring Train, Williams explores glory, The Old U.S. Mint, 400 Esplanade you Watch What Happens Live— death, letting go, Eastern serenity, Avenue. Tickets are $20 for adults, The Real Housewives of Tennessee Western decadence, and as always, the $15 for students & teachers. Group Williams. With the help of some complexities of the human spirit. Milk rates are available for 10 or more. audience suggestions, Tennessee Train is produced by the Tennessee will orchestrate a reunion where the Williams Theatre Company of New women of his plays relive, reimagine 7:30 PM Orleans in conjunction with the and restage all the dramatic moments DIVIDING THE ESTATE Tennessee Williams/New Orleans of their lives. You’ll fi nally get to see Le Petit Theatre presents the region- Literary Festival, starring New what these lovely ladies have been al premiere of Horton Foote’s Divid- Orleans’ favorite Janet Shea and up to since their tragic stories graced ing the Estate, 2009 Tony nominee directed by Augustin J Correro. for Best Play. Stella Gordon is against America’s stages. It’s the Wingfi eld parceling out her family’s land, Sanctuary Cultural Arts Center, Home meets Big Daddy’s Plantation despite fi nancial woes brought on by 2525 Burgundy Street, in the meets Belle Reve. Hold on to your the 1980s’ oil bust. Old resentments Marigny. memories! This unique event and sibling rivalries surface as this General Admission: $25, Students/ was created by and features the hilariously dysfunctional family Seniors/Theater Professionals: $20. Festival’s very own “Stella,” Cecile fi ghts to claim the biggest piece of Monteyne along with New Orleans’ the pie. 8 PM actors and long-form improvisors. Doors open at 8:30 PM. Le Petit Theatre, 616 St. Peter SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH BY Street. Call 504-522-2081 or visit TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (THEATER) The Theatre at St. Claude, 2240 www.lepetittheatre.com Melting in the heat of the Deep St. Claude Avenue, $15 in advance to purchase tickets. South, a dwindling star is swept up in or $20 at the door. 19 March 22 - 26, 2017 19 SATURDAY MARCH 25, 2017 8 AM do they create their complicated female across America, Sixteen Teenagers on the BOOKS AND BEIGNETS characters, and how much do they draw Adventure of a Lifetime; Jack Davis found (SPECIAL EVENT) on their own lives to do so? Do these his great story of politics and geography Energized anew by Robert Olen characters’ lives matter more in this in Gulf: The Making of an American Butler’s most recent novel, Perfume political climate? These writers all craft Sea; Miriam Davis was drawn into an River (2016), the group returns to his very strong female characters; however, age-old murder case in The Axeman of Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short that is not the way women are often New Orleans; and Jeremy Alford and stories, A Good Scent from a Strange portrayed in the media these days. Let Tyler Bridges went behind the political Mountain (1992). Attendees are invited these writers seize your hearts and minds. scenes in Long Shot: A Soldier, A Senator, to read all of these now-classic stories that Panelists: Dorothy Allison, Moira A Serious Sin and an Epic Louisiana deftly explore the legacy of the Vietnam Crone, Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes, and Election. Susan Larson moderates. War and the people affected by the Bernice McFadden. Moderator: Nancy Muriel’s Jackson Square Restaurant, conflict, including those who relocated Dixon. Panel Pass. to South Louisiana. The discussion will Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne focus on “Open Arms,” “Mr. Green,” Ballroom, Panel Pass. 11 AM “The Trip Back,” “Love,” “Snow,” “BRICK”—A ONE-ACT PLAY BY JON and “A Good Scent from a Strange 10 AM BRODER INSPIRED BY THE LIFE & Mountain.” The suggested edition is WIZARD OF THE ONE-ACT PLAY: LEGACY OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS the most recent paperback (ISBN 978- TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (THEATER) 0802137982). Traditional New Orleans “I think the peak of my virtuosity was Join us as New Orleans playwright Jon fare of coffee and beignets at Muriel’s in the one-act plays. Some of which are Broder imagines what would have hap- Restaurant with lively discussion to follow like fire crackers in a rope,” Williams told pened in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof if Brick led by Southern literary scholar Gary director Elia Kazan in 1950 and, true to had “the talk” with his best friend Skipper. Richards and a guest appearance by the his word, he proved to be master of the It’s lunch time on a Friday afternoon. author.Seating is limited to 50 persons; form. The first and last plays written by Drinks are being served and everyone in pre-registration is required. Williams were one-acts: Beauty is the Word the restaurant is watching. Presented by Muriel’s Jackson Square Restaurant, (1930) and The One Exception (1983). Second Star Performance Collective fea- $25. During that 53-year span, Tennessee turing Big Easy Award winner Bob Edes. Williams penned over 75 that are now Le Petit Theatre, 616 Saint Peter Street, 9 AM – 4 PM published, more one-act plays than any $20. FESTIVAL TICKET SALES AND major American playwright, with the SOUVENIRS, ORLEANS ROOM AT THE most recent collection, Now the Cats with 11 AM HOTEL MONTELEONE Jeweled Claws and Other One-Act Plays, RESTAURANT ROYALTY REVEALED: released in 2016. The variety of form TI MARTIN IN CONVERSATION WITH BOOK FAIR, BONNET CARRE ROOM and content Williams could explore and JOHN POPE (SPECIAL FOOD EVENT) AT THE HOTEL MONTELEONE experiment with in these short works Co-proprietor of one of the most beloved Local independent bookseller Garden — from eye-popping dramas, black restaurants in New Orleans, the legendary District Book Shop will offer books for comedies, satire, myth, and sci-fi, to issues Commander’s Palace, Ti Adelaide sale by Festival authors, along with books of race, sexuality, and gender, in locations Martin dishes on her family dynasty and about Louisiana and all things Tennessee. from New Orleans to London and the shares stories from growing up as part bottom of the ocean to a dystopian future of restaurant royalty. Ti faithfully carries LITERARY PANELS, THEATRICAL — are staggering and go well beyond on the family legacy, embodying the PERFORMANCES, AND SPECIAL what he could accomplish in his primarily spirit of the New Orleans’ cuisine and EVENTS commercial full-length plays. Panelists: cocktail culture. The daughter of Ella Entrance to all literary panels, readings, Beau Bratcher, Augustin J Correro, Brennan, “mother, mentor, blunt-talking and featured conversations with literary Henry Schvey, and Bess Rowen. fireball, and matriarch of a New Orleans luminaries is included in the Festival restaurant empire,” Ti has expanded the Panel Pass, $100. Moderator: Thomas Keith. family business to include Café Adelaide, Williams Research Center, Panel Pass. the Swizzle Stick Bar, and SoBou, and 10 AM co-authored several books that offer a WOMEN ON WOMEN, IN 10 AM glimpse into her family’s kitchens where LITERATURE, IN LIFE GETTING AT THE REAL STORY: iconic chefs like Paul Prudhomme, Women are truly at the fore and being CREATING COMPELLING Emeril Lagasse, and James Beard Award “grabbed” in so many places these days, NONFICTION winner, Tory McPhail got their start. Her it’s time we look at how these four writers Lorraine Boissoneault found her most recent is a candid autobiography captivate their readers with their stunning inspiration in a group of teens for The Last co-written with her mother, Miss Ella 20 storylines and characterization. Just how Voyageurs: Retracing La Salle’s Journey Brennan of Commander’s Palace: I Don’t 20 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival SATURDAY MARCH 25, 2017

Want a Restaurant Where a Jazz Band screen versions of these two plays. and created worlds of Tennessee Williams. Can’t Come Marching Through! The Panelists: Will Brantley, Leslie Castay, Panelists: Robert Bray, Melanie McCabe, book is far more than the story of a woman Mel. Cook, Augustin J Correro and Tom Mitchell. and her life in the restaurant business; it is Moderator: John Bak Moderator: Katherine Weiss. the history of how American restaurants Williams Research Center, Panel Pass. and cuisine came to be where they are Williams Research Center, Panel Pass. today. Moderated by John Pope with 1 PM brunch samples and cocktails provided 11:30 AM LONELINESS AND DESIRE: THREE by Café Adelaide. NOT JUST FOR YOUNG ADULTS: A SCENES BY TENNESSEE (THEATER) Café Adelaide, 300 Poydras Street in the FAST-GROWING FIELD IN FICTION Two young strangers meet on a deserted Loew’s Hotel, $20. Bookseller Candice Huber, who runs train track. Lovers say goodbye, maybe for the Not So YA Book Club, moderates the last time. Down on their luck strangers 11:30 AM a panel of authors who write for young dream of a better life. In three scenes WILD AND PRECIOUS LIVES: A adults (and by extension, everyone). Greg from plays by Tennessee Williams—This PANEL ON MEMOIR Herren writes for young gay readers, Property is Condemned, The Rose Tattoo, Long before poet Mary Oliver posed the author Kristen-Paige Madonia is a former and The Lady of Larkspur Lotion—high essential question, “What is it you plan to winner of the Festival’s fiction contest, school students from the New Orleans do with your one wild and precious life?” and Alys Arden who serialized her novel Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) memoirists were rising to the challenge, The Casquette Girls before publishing. explore the loneliness, frailty, desire describing battles fought, changes made, Muriel’s Jackson Square Restaurant, and illusions embodied by Tennessee new visions of their own lives, clearing Panel Pass. Williams’ rich characters. the past to make way for the future. Join Patricia Bosworth, Amy Dickinson, Le Petit Theatre, 616 Saint Peter Street, 1 PM $15 suggested donation to support Kiese Laymon and Lara Naughton WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? WRITING as Anne Gisleson asks them about the youth theater outreach programming ABOUT FAMILY IN FICTION throughout the year. struggles of examining their personal You can’t choose your family, as the saying experiences for public consumption. goes, but writers do choose the families 1 PM Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne they write about. In Perfume River, MAYHEM IS MY BUSINESS—CRIME Ballroom, Panel Pass. Sponsored by Robert Olen Butler writes about the NOVELISTS TALK ABOUT THE Janet Daley Duval and Mimi Koch. way war has shaped one American family. BURNING QUESTIONS In Wally Lamb’s I’ll Take You There, he Kay Kendall turned to historical fiction 11:30 AM reprises protagonist Felix Funicello, who for her most recent novel, while Laura THE WOMEN OF MILK TRAIN AND realizes valuable lessons about the women Elvebak and Bill Loehfelm worked with SWEET BIRD in his family; and in All Grown Up, Jami police procedurals, and Michael Allen The Milk Train Attenberg shows how the life of a single Zell has chosen the noir tradition. J.M. Doesn’t Stop woman is anchored by her few remaining Redmann, the author of two ongoing Here Anymore family members. Susan Larson moderates series, moderates this discussion about and Sweet Bird a discussion of the way families provide important writing choices. of Youth, a great—if not the greatest—subject for fiction. Muriel’s Jackson Square Restaurant, Williams’s two Panel Pass. Sponsored by Mystery meditations on Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Writers of America, Southwest Chapter. braving Ballroom, Panel Pass. Sponsored by mortality, Backspace Bar and Kitchen. 2:30 PM loneliness, and OH, WHAT A TIME IT WAS! NEW YORK fear, feature 1 PM CITY IN THE 1970s heroines that have been played by larger- TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: THE In retrospect, it is the dynamic and gritty than-life stars such as Tallulah Bankhead AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SELF worlds of culture and the arts that still (in Milk Train) and Elizabeth Taylor (in For Tennessee Williams, the relationship captivate and excite us from our 21st film adaptations of both plays). between his life and his art was century view of New York City in the Bankhead’s and Taylor’s outlandish inseparable. With details from his own 1970s: Susan Sontag, Twyla Tharp, Fran performances have propelled these works experiences so clearly evident in his plays, Liebowitz, Joseph Papp, Blondie, Robert to an almost cult status, and a closer stories, poems, and novels, Williams Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, Sam Shepard, appraisal suggests that Williams created could arguably be called America’s most Bob Fosse, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Flora Goforth and Alexandra Del Lago autobiographical author. Join Williams Lennon, Allen Ginsburg, Candy Darling, with himself in mind. Join our scholars who discuss the obvious—and Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli, Philippe conversation to explore both stage and not so obvious—parallels between the real Petit, and Sid Vicious are just a few of 21 March 22 - 26, 2017 21 SATURDAY MARCH 25, 2017

4 PM tradition alive on the city’s streets. TAKING THE TRUTH Williams Research Center, Panel Pass. OFF THE PAGE: LITERARY ACTIVISTS 4:30 PM SPEAK OUT A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT In a time of political WAGNER AND JILL ST. JOHN change and threats to Robert Wagner and his wife Jill St. John arts support, writers/ both have strong connections to Ten- activists are seeking nessee Williams: Mr. Wagner co-starred and finding new ways as Brick in an acclaimed 1976 television to come together. production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Moderator Megan with Natalie Wood, Laurence Olivier, Holt of One Book/ and Maureen Stapleton. Mrs. Wagner One New Orleans the notable figures who come to mind, co-starred with Vivien Leigh, Warren moderates a panel with novelists Jami along with iconic sites such as Studio Beatty, and Lotte Lenya in the memorable Attenberg and Adrian Van Young of 1961 film of Williams’ novel The Roman 54, CBGB’s, Max’s Kansas City, The Writers Resist, A Scribe Called Quess?, Ridiculous Theatrical Co., La MaMa, Spring of Mrs. Stone. Interviewer and and a representative of Louisiana Books film historian Foster Hirsch will focus The Chelsea Hotel, Christopher Street, 2 Prisoners talk about their ongoing the NYC Subway System, The World on the Wagners’ Williams credits before efforts and the new paradigm for literary opening up the discussion to the long Trade Center, Filmore East, and The activism. Bottom Line. As it happens, Tennessee and distinguished careers of both guests. Williams’s experimental novel of New Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Robert Wagner, with one of the longest York City in the 1970s, Moise and the Ballroom, Panel Pass. sustained careers in Hollywood history, World of Reason (1975), has just been was a major star at Twentieth Century Fox reissued—no less than John Waters has 4 PM in the 1950s, starring in early CinemaS- called it a “radical little novel”—and THE BABY DOLLS: PRESERVING cope spectacles such as Prince Valiant depicts many of the sights and sounds CULTURE (DISCUSSION AND FILM and Beneath the 12-Mile Reef. Other early that will be discussed on this panel. SCREENING) credits include Titanic, The Mountain, Panelists will include Patricia Bosworth, Broken Lance, The True Story of Jesse Dick Cavett, and Winston Groom. James, and (unforgettably) as the cold- Moderator is Thomas Keith, editor of eyed killer in A Kiss Before Dying. Also Williams titles for New Directions. to be discussed are Harper, The Longest Day, The Condemned of Altona, The Pink Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Panther, Austin Powers, and the beloved Ballroom, Panel Pass. Sponsored by the and internationally popular TV series Friedman Family. Hart to Hart. Jill St. John may be most noted for her appearance as a Bond girl 2:30 PM opposite Sean Connery in Diamonds Are A CONVERSATION ABOUT RACE: One of the most exciting and inspiring Forever, but she has many other major FINDING STRENGTH FOR THE revitalizations in New Orleans culture credits including The Remarkable Mr. STRUGGLE IN GREAT WRITING has been the revival of the Baby Doll Pennypacker, Holiday for Lovers, The Lost A panel of impressive writers who work Carnival tradition and its exploration World, Tender Is the Night, Come Blow in various forms discuss their inspirations in a new book and film. The Festival is Your Horn, The Oscar, Banning, and and struggles and readership. Jericho pleased to present this early screening. To ny R o m e . Both actors have written Brown is a rising star in poetry; Kiese Meet Dr. Kim Vaz-Deville, whose books. Laymon has given us memorable fiction study, ‘The Baby Dolls”: Breaking the Le Petit Theatre, $20 and memoir; Bernice McFadden writes Race and Gender Barriers of the New novels of strong black characters; poet Orleans Mardi Gras Tradition, has 6 PM and nonfiction writer Kalamu ya Salaam sparked this renewed interest; she is the IN CELEBRATION OF WRITERS turns to the Black Arts Movement in his producer with Vashni Balleste, of the The Festival is excited to celebrate and most recent book, The Magic of Juju. documentary The Baby Dolls: Preserving recognize emerging talent alongside Short story writer and essayist Maurice Culture in New Orleans, directed by established voices of the literary scene. Carlos Ruffin moderates a conversation Dr. Tia Smith in collaboration with First, acclaimed author Dorothy Allison, about where we are now and how black the Xavier University Department of 2017 Fiction Contest judge, will present literature matters more than ever in these Mass Communication. And you’ll get to our fiction winner. Allison and the winner divided states of America. hear from some of the Baby Dolls who will both read from their fiction. Then 22 Williams Research Center, Panel Pass. are keeping this empowering, beautiful Louisiana Poet Laureate Peter Cooley, 22 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival SATURDAY MARCH 25, 2017 who judged our Poetry Contest, will www.lepetittheatre.com to purchase Sanctuary Cultural Arts Center, 2525 present our 2017 Poetry winner. Cooley tickets. Burgundy Street, in the Marigny. and the winning poet will read from their General Admission: $25, Students/ work. The evening will conclude with 8 PM Seniors/Theater Professionals: $20. authors of the University of New Orleans’ THE MILK TRAIN DOESN’T STOP Creative Writing Workshop (celebrating its HERE ANYMORE BY TENNESSEE 8 PM 25th anniversary) sharing their writing. WILLIAMS (THEATER) SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH BY Beauregard-Keyes House. Free and Whatever the game, Flora Goforth always TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (THEATER) open to the public. claims victory. But how can she hope to Melting in the heat of the Deep South, triumph over the Angel of Death? As a dwindling star is swept up in a race 7:30 PM she fi nds herself in a house on fi re, will against time. Fueled by booze, pills, DIVIDING THE ESTATE she break out, or burn the world down and entitlement, Alexandra del Lago Le Petit Theatre presents the regional with her? And who is the mysterious (Leslie Castay) places herself in the premiere of Horton Foote’s Divid- youth who’s appeared at her door in her care of Chance Wayne, an ambitious ing the Estate, 2009 Tony nominee darkest hour? In Milk Train, Williams gigolo with less than a heart of gold and for Best Play. Stella Gordon is against explores glory, death, letting go, Eastern a drama of his own unfolding. Directed serenity, Western decadence, and as parceling out her family’s land, despite by Mel. Cook. Produced by Southern always, the complexities of the human fi nancial woes brought on by the 1980s› Rep Theatre in partnership with the spirit. Milk Train is produced by the oil bust. Old resentments and sibling Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Tennessee Williams Theatre Company rivalries surface as this hilariously Festival. of New Orleans in conjunction with the dysfunctional family fi ghts to claim the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Loyola University Marquette Theatre, biggest piece of the pie. Festival, starring New Orleans’ favorite 6363 St. Charles Avenue. Le Petit Theatre, 616 St. Peter Street. Janet Shea and directed by Augustin J Get tickets at: www.SouthernRep.com or Call 504-522-2081 or visit Correro. 504-522-6545.

SAVOR THE SEASON WITH CHEF ERIK’S FRIED GREEN TOMATO STACK

23 March 22 - 26, 2017 23 DRUMMER SMOKE A DAY OF MUSIC AT THE PALM COURT JAZZ CAFÉ Sunday, March 26 • 1204 Decatur Street

11 AM LA COEUR CREOLE: THE CREOLE MUSICAL HEART OF LOUISIANA Bruce Sunpie Barnes will showcase a collection of original compositions all written in Creole, along with some historic Creole tunes, offering a unique and rare glimpse into Louisiana Creole life, past and present. Panel Pass or $10. Sponsored by the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park and a special thanks to Matt Hampsey.

1 PM THE MUSICAL JOURNEY OF NE W ORLEANS COMPOSER ROGER DICKERSON This special two-hour program will feature a scintillating interview with composer Roger Dickerson by renowned radio announcer Fred Kasten. Dickerson will also perform piano music refl ective of his varied cultural journey, traveling through early blues to “pop” and modern jazz. Spinto-Soprano Dr. Valerie Anne Jones-Francis accompanied by pianist Dr. Wilfred Delphin will perform several original works by the composer—art-songs which refl ect stages of Dickerson’s creative journey. The session includes segments from Dickerson’s New Orleans Concerto documentary fi lm (1977) and excerpts from a 2014 concert honoring Roger Dickerson and his music at the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music. Performances of music from the composer’s recently completed musical comedy, Preacher Man! Preacher Man! and a short question and answer session between Dickerson and the audience will close out the afternoon. 24 Panel Pass or $15. Sponsored by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation Community Partnership Grants. 24 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival SUNDAY MARCH 26, 2017

9 AM – 3 PM in that history. Alecia Long, author introducing her new book Dinner Déjà FESTIVAL TICKET SALES AND of the forthcoming book, The Trouble Vu along with discussing her previous SOUVENIRS, ORLEANS ROOM AT THE with Tight Pants, chronicles the city’s book Field Peas to Foie Gras. This HOTEL MONTELEONE homophobia, particularly during Jim hearty discussion will be moderated by Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw. New Orleans’ culinary activist Poppy BOOK FAIR, BONNET CARRE ROOM And Frank Perez, author of In Exile: Tooker with samples from Booker’s AT THE HOTEL MONTELEONE The History and Lore Surrounding New creations provided by our host Dickie Local independent bookseller Garden Orleans Gay Culture and Its Oldest Gay Brennan’s Bourbon House. Books will District Book Shop will offer books Bar and founder of the LGBT+ Archives be available for sale and signing by Chef for sale by Festival authors, along with Project of Louisiana, describes the Jennifer. books about Louisiana and all things Archives’ efforts to collect gay history. Bourbon House, 144 Bourbon Tennessee. Moderator: Brad Richard. Street, $15. Hotel Monteleone, Royal Ballroom, LITERARY PANELS, THEATRICAL Panel Pass. Sponsored by the Ethel 11:30 AM PERFORMANCES, AND SPECIAL & Herman L. Midlo Center for New PROHIBITION AND MURDER WITH EVENTS Orleans Studies at UNO. SALLY ASHER Entrance to all literary panels, The play Chicago was written by readings, and featured conversations 11 AM female reporter Maurine Watkins and with literary luminaries is included in STAGED READING OF THE 2017 premiered in 1926 billed as a “satirical the Festival Panel Pass, $100. FESTIVAL ONE-ACT PLAY CONTEST comedy.” Based on Chicago’s Beulah WINNER (THEATER) Annan, the “prettiest murderess,” and 10 AM The Festival is proud to showcase the Belva Gaertner, the “most stylish” PLACES IN THE HEART: THE HISTORY winning play of this year’s One-Act murderess, it portrayed the tabloid OF NEW ORLEANS’ BELOVED Play Contest through a dynamic staged culture of the era. In 1933, months LANDMARKS reading of the script. The winner before Prohibition ended, New Orleans From “under the clock at D.H. Holmes” receives a $1500 cash prize. This event had a similar high-profile murder and to the rusty bridge in Bywater, New is presented by the University of New trial involving backwoods Kentucky Orleanians cherish their landmarks Orleans Department of Film, Theatre, girl Mrs. Albert Busha, aka Lou and special meeting places. This panel and Communication Arts. The Creative O’Neil, and her gangster boyfriend of experts gives you a tour of the New Writing MFA Program at the University Gus Tomes, aka Dutch Gardner of the Orleans landscape, past and present. of New Orleans administers and Terminal Gang. Whiskey, bootlegging, Peggy Scott Laborde traces the history coordinates the competition and judging. murder, a lost dog, even a Pulitzer Prize of the Fairgrounds in her new book; Hotel Monteleone, La Nouvelle honorable mention for reporting — this historian Pamela Tyler explores the Ballroom, Panel Pass or $10 at the door. story has it all. Sally Asher lectures past and vibrant present of the Poydras from a chapter of her upcoming Home; and Sally Asher tours St. Louis 11 AM book on Prohibition from LSU Press Cemeteries Nos. 1 and 2. Your tour FIELD PEAS TO FOIE GRAS: FRENCH featuring local actors doing dramatic guide to these wonders? Errol Laborde, FLAVORS IN THE HEART OF THE reenactments. who has his own favorites. SOUTH (SPECIAL FOOD EVENT) Queen Anne Ballroom, Panel Pass. Queen Anne Ballroom, Panel Pass. Chef Jennifer Sponsored by Baker Donelson. Hill Booker talks about 10 AM 11:30 AM NEW ORLEANS GAY HISTORY: AN growing up with PROFESSORS WHO PUBLISH LGBTQ MECCA Southern flavors, —FROM POETRY TO THE The city has long been known as a connecting with PARANORMAL welcoming haven for the LGBTQ French traditions, Nicole Greene, Executive Director of community, but it has its dark side as and becoming well. Clayton Delery-Edwards talks in a Food Ambassador. Conversation will Xavier Review Press, leads a discus- his award -winning book, The Upstairs focus on the farm-to-table movement, sion of Xavier University authors Lounge Arson: Thirty-Two Deaths farmer’s markets, the melding of food with works ranging from fiction with in a New Orleans Gay Bar, June 24, cultures in the South, and her new a paranormal edge, landmark poetry anthologies and collections, to writing 1973, about one of the great tragedies book, Dinner Déjà Vu. She will be 25 March 22 - 26, 2017 25 SUNDAY MARCH 26, 2017

about art and performance. Sim Shat- the mid-20th century. Rhodes College his life, Williams wrote, “The play that I tuck, author of Dark Angel, Pass Me, professor Shaolu Yu of Memphis, want to write as a final play, some day is Biljana D. Obradovic, co-editor Tennessee, is engaged in a humanities the story of my father. . . the angry hedge- of Cat Painters: Contemporary Serbian mapping project aimed at documenting hog under a floor lamp whose fading Anthology, and Ralph Adamo, author Chinese immigration in the Mississippi silk-fringe appeared to be weeping of Ever, talk about preparing their work Delta, and scholar of Chinese history for him with more forgiveness and for publication. They are joined by Lisa Winston Ho continues to document compassion than we were old enough or Flanagan, a specialist in performance Chinese history in the metro area, wise enough to give him.” writing, and Mapo Kinnord, an expert including cemetery tombs, laundries, This new piece captures a son’s struggle in ekphrastic writing, will address being churches, and the political ascension of to love the un-loveable man who was his part of a larger literary community, and the late Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry father. balancing their teaching and writing lives. Lee. Moderator: David Johnson. Hotel Monteleone, La Nouvelle Hotel Monteleone, Royal Ballroom, Hotel Monteleone, Royal Ballroom, Ballroom, $20. Sponsored by Helen and George Ingram. Panel Pass. Sponsored by Xavier Uni- Panel Pass. Sponsored by the Confucius versity of Louisiana. Institute at Xavier University of Presented by special arrangement with Louisiana. the University of the South. 1 PM THAT’S WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE 1 PM 2:30 PM SOUTH: A PANEL OF GREAT THE MAN IN THE OVERSTUFFED AN INTERVIEW WITH DICK CAVETT STORYTELLERS CHAIR: TENNESSEE AND HIS FATHER In 1974, Dick Cavett sat down with our Meet writers who both honor and (THEATER) namesake playwright for a full-length push against traditional Southern The words of Tennessee Williams interview on his late night ABC show. norms of stories of place, race, faith and arranged and performed by Jeremy We’ll talk to Cavett about his interviews family. Novelist Michael Farris Smith Lawrence with Tennessee Williams, along with his writes about age-old family rivalries Cornelius Coffin Williams (C.C. as his long career as one of our country’s most in a small town; M.O. Walsh crafts an cronies called him) famously referred well-known, entertaining, and insightful unforgettable coming-of-age story with to his son as “Miss Nancy.” Theirs was interviewers. The interview includes a twist; Martin Pousson chronicles the an uneasy relationship at best and yet in clips from the show featuring Cavett hard life of a young gay man; and Mary The Glass Menagerie, Williams idealized and Williams. Miller offers stories of young women the absent father as “the man who fell Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne you probably recognize. Novelist Bev in love with long distance.” And late in Ballroom. Panel Pass or $15. Marshall, a fine Southern storyteller herself, moderates this discussion of what makes Southern fiction so wonderfully Southern, and why it breaks your heart. Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Ballroom, Panel Pass.

1 PM THE CHINESE IN THE GULF SOUTH Many ethnicities combined to form the unique amalgam of cultures that define the Gulf South. Among the least studied are the Chinese, the first wave of whom arrived in New Orleans as agricultural laborers following the Civil War. Geographer Richard Campanella has studied the two Chinatowns that 26 existed in the Crescent City through 26 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival SUNDAY MARCH 26, 2017

2:30 PM 3 PM Women are welcome to join in and yell DIVIDING THE ESTATE THE WAY OF THE POET for Stanley (or Stella) as the NOLA Bill Lavender, co-founder of the New Le Petit Theatre presents the regional Project’s Cecile Monteyne provides Orleans Poetry Festival, previews premiere of Horton Foote’s Divid- inspiration on the Jackson Square 2009 Tony nominee that festival and moderates a panel ing the Estate, balcony as our Stella. Celebrity judges for Best Play. Stella Gordon is against of fi ne New Orleans poets who are will choose fi ve fi nalists and declare a new parceling out her family’s land, despite also teachers, reading their new winner. Prizes awarded. Free and open fi nancial woes brought on by the 1980s› work and discussing their poetic to the public. Sponsored by Gulf Coast oil bust. Old resentments and sibling concerns: Stacey Balkun, who has just Bank and Trust Co. and The New rivalries surface as this hilariously published Lost City Museum; Peter Orleans Advocate. dysfunctional family fi ghts to claim the Cooley, whose ninth book is Night biggest piece of the pie. Jackson Square Bus to the Afterlife; Jerry Ward, author of Fractal Song; and Rodney Jones, Le Petit Theatre, 616 St. Peter Street. 8 PM whose 11th book is Village Prodigies. Call 504-522-2081 or visit www.lep- etittheatre.com to purchase tickets. THE MILK TRAIN DOESN’T STOP Hotel Monteleone, Royal Ballroom, HERE ANYMORE BY TENNESSEE Panel Pass. 3 PM WILLIAMS (THEATER) SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH BY Whatever the game, Flora Goforth always 2:30 PM TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (THEATER) claims victory. But how can she hope to “NOW THE CATS WITH JEWELLED Melting in the heat of the Deep South, triumph over the Angel of Death? As CLAWS” BY TENNESSEE WILLIAMS a dwindling star is swept up in a race she fi nds herself in a house on fi re, will (THEATER) against time. Fueled by booze, pills, she break out, or burn the world down Tennessee Williams wrote his absurdly and entitlement, Alexandra del Lago with her? And who is the mysterious acidic one-act “Now the Cats with (Leslie Castay) places herself in the youth who’s appeared at her door in her Jewelled Claws” in the late 1960s, then care of Chance Wayne, an ambitious darkest hour? In Milk Train, Williams revised it in 1981, not long before his gigolo with less than a heart of gold and explores glory, death, letting go, Eastern death. Through the play, Williams a drama of his own unfolding. Directed serenity, Western decadence, and as refl ects on loneliness, mortality, and by Mel. Cook. Produced by Southern always, the complexities of the human how trivial the human existence can Rep Theatre in partnership with the spirit. Milk Train is produced by the be. This one-act is set during the New Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Tennessee Williams Theatre Company York City after-Christmas sales in a Literary Festival. of New Orleans ladies-who-lunch Manhattan restau- Loyola University in conjunction rant with two society women and two Marquette Theatre, with the Tennessee gay bikers. Fragmented, funny, and 6363 St. Charles Williams/New sinister, it combines bitter comedy and Avenue. Orleans Literary decadent sexuality with an eccentric Festival, starring Get tickets at: www. song-and-dance sequence, as well New Orleans’ SouthernRep.com or as stage directions for dialogue to be favorite Janet 504-522-6545. sung, though no music was written for Shea and directed it during Williams’ lifetime. Though it by Augustin J may seem jaded, the play contains the 4:15 PM Correro. compassion Williams always had for SHOUTING the outcasts. Award-winning director CONTEST Sanctuary Cultural Beau Bratcher (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Contestants vie Arts Center, 2525 The Night of the Iguana, A Truckload to rival Stanley Burgundy Street, of Ink) directs this staged reading Kowalski’s shout for in the Marigny. starring members of the NOLA Project “STELLAAAAA!!!” General Admission: ensemble. in the unforgettable $25, Students/ Hotel Monteleone, La Nouvelle Ball- scene from A Streetcar Seniors/Theater Named Desire. Professionals: $20. room, $20. PHOTO BY GREG MILES 27 March 22 - 26, 2017 27 TheaterOfferings SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH by Tennessee Williams SOUTHERN REP THEATRE Melting in the heat of the Deep South, a dwindling star is swept up in a race against time. Fueled by booze, pills, and entitlement, Alexandra del Lago (Leslie Castay) places herself in the care of Chance Wayne (Martin Bradford), an ambitious gigolo with less than a heart of gold and a drama of his own unfolding. Directed by Mel. Cook. Loyola University Marquette Theatre, 6363 St. Charles Avenue. Preview Performances: $25. Wednesday, March 22-Thursday, March 23 at 8 PM. Regular Performances: $40. Friday, March 24-Sunday, April 16. Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 PM; Sundays at 3 PM. Tickets at: www.SouthernRep.com or 504-522-6545.

DIVIDING THE ESTATE by Horton Foote LE PETIT THÉÂTRE DU VIEUX CARRÉ In this regional premiere of Horton Foote’s 2009 Tony Nominee for Best Play, Stella Gordon is against parceling out her family’s land, despite fi nancial woes DATE brought on by the 1980s’ oil bust. Old resentments and sibling

rivalries surface as this hilariously dysfunctional family fi ghts to claim the biggest piece of the pie. Le Petit Theatre, 616 St. Peter Street. March 24-April 2 and April 13-15. Thursday - Saturday at 7:30 PM; Sundays at 3 PM. Note there are no performances April 6 - 9 or April 16. Call 504-522-2081 or visit www.lepetittheatre.com to purchase tickets.

THE MILK TRAIN DOESN’T STOP

HERE ANYMORE THE by Tennessee Williams

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS THEATRE COMPANY OF NEW ORLEANS Whatever the game, Flora Goforth always claims victory. But how can she hope to triumph over the Angel of Death? As she fi nds herself in a house on fi re, will she break out, or burn the world down with her? And who is the mysterious youth who’s appeared at her door in her darkest hour. Starring New Orleans’ favorite Janet Shea and directed by Augustin J Correro. Sanctuary Cultural Arts Center, 2525 Burgundy Street, in the Marigny. March 23-25 at 8 pm; March 26 at 6 pm; and March 30-April 2 at 8 pm. General Admission: $25, Students/Seniors/Theater Professionals: $20. MARCH 21-25, 2018 28 SAVE 28 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival FRIENDS OF TENNESSEE Tennessee Williams’ tragic heroine, Blanche Dubois, was fond of saying she always depended on the kindness of strangers. Here at the Festival, we depend on the kindness of FRIENDS. You can become a Friend of Tennessee and help us provide quality programming, support writers and theater, and provide educational outreach to local students. Plus, members receive discounts on Festival tickets and special perks! You can join year-round by visiting our website at www.tennesseewilliams.net or call 504-581-1144.

2016-17 MEMBERS Diana Jones Kathy and Edmund Schrenk AS OF MARCH 1, 2017 Patricia Krebs Errol and Peggy Scott Laborde FESTIVAL DONORS BABY DOLL Priscilla and John Lawrence Ellen and Mac Ball Tiki Axelrod Michael Ledet Elizabeth Barron Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Cyrus Lohfi nk Patricia Friedmann Shauna Rae Carpenter Arlene and Larry Manguno Arlene and Larry Manguno Mark Manguno Elizabeth Dubus The Historic New Orleans Bev and Butch Marshall Barbara Ewell BIG DADDY PANEL SPONSORS Collection Ti Martin Backspace Bar & Kitchen Deborah Fagan Susie Hoskins Pat Mason Baker Donelson Jane Ferguson Hotel Monteleone Albert McMeen Albert Carey, Jr. Joel Fredell Il Posto Italian Cafe Laura McNeal Confucius Institute of Xavier Jefferson Performing Arts Lawrence Henry Gobble Janet Melancon University of Louisiana Society Eric Johnson Constance and Brian Nelson Janet Daley Duval and Amelia David Johnson John Kelly Sandra Nickel Koch Keil’s Antiques Jackie and Bill Koenig Cynthia Nobles The Friedman Family Peggy Scott Laborde Frederick Lee Lawson Stuart Noel and Joseph Bishop Helen and George Ingram Peter Ladetto Sarah and Zachary Lazar Lurana O’Malley Ted and Mary Merle Laborde Susan Larson Doris and Richard Louth Nancy and Stanley Pond Ethel & Herman L. Midlo Center Michael Ledet Mary Mitchell Hal Reed for New Orleans Studies at The Linen Registry Linda Nix Hélène and Al Rufty UNO The Lotus Room Nell Nolan Richard Stewart Mystery Writers of America, Louisiana Children’s Museum Shirley Quement Ruby and Jerry Tremont Southwest Chapter Massey’s Professional Brad Richard Ashbrooke Tullis Pelican Publishing Outfi tters Dr. and Mrs. Charles R. Smith Theresa Westerfi eld Paige Royer and Kerry Clayton Miss Claudia’s Vintage Clothing Kim Vaz-Deville Sara Woodard Tulane University & Costumes Peggy Wilson Xavier University of Louisiana Mr. Ed’s Restaurant Group GENTLEMAN CALLER Muriel’s Jackson Square SERAFINA DELLE ROSE Elgart Aster and Paul SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR New Orleans Pharmacy Lynn Adams Swerdlove AUCTION DONORS Museum Hon. Maria Arroyo (Ret.) Mamie Gasperecz A Studio in the Woods Nola Healer Caroline and Wayne Blank Wendy Griswold Acme Oyster House Ogden Museum of Southern Julie Breitmeyer Page Harris American Aquatic Gardens Art Janis and Richard Britson Lura Harrison Allain Andry Plum Janara Bornstein Mary and Charles Harvell Arcadian Books Pontchartrain Hotel Barbara Jo Brothers Karissa Kary Atlanta Ballet Razzle Dazzle Daniel Clayton Mary Myrick Langlois Sandy Bartel Sage Body Work Lisa D’Amour James Rowland, Ed.D. Beth Bartley Salon by Sucre Maureen and William Detweiler Terry Verigan Beauregard-Keyes House ShiNOLA Art Gallery Martha Edmonds John Wade Besh Restaurant Group Saints and Sinners Literary Ione Elioff Barbara Wingo Bijou Nola Festival Mary Ramsey Evans Body Mind LLC Southern Candymakers Rubye Noble Evans MAGGIE THE CAT Bold Strokes Books Southern Costume Company Eleanor Farnsworth Mary Anderson Patricia Brady Southern Rep Theatre Wanda Garner Judy and Allain Andry Brigtsen’s Restaurant Tableau Restaurant Carol Gelderman Rick Barton Bywater Framing Tennessee Williams Theatre Janice and Lane Grijns Marshall Bennett Albert Carey, Jr. Company of New Orleans Rebecca Hale Erin Alexander Bolles Catahoula Hotel Tesek Massage George Hero Patricia Brady Commander’s Palace Tubby & Coo’s Mid-City Book Steve Hirst Albert Carey, Jr. Brenda Currin Shop Louise Hoffman Margaret Dziedzic Lisa D’Amour Tujague’s Marilyn Huddell Susie Hoskins Garden District Book Shop UNO Press Helene Inayetian Ruth Koffman Mamie Gasperecz Upperline David Johnson Brobson Lutz Hazelnut New Orleans Wellington & Co jewelry Ellen Johnson and Ronald The Motch Family Foundation Hermann-Grima + Gallier Tom and Brandy Whisnant Swartz Patricia Murphy Historic Houses Windsor Court Hotel 29 March 22 - 26, 2017 29 The 31st Annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival FUNDING SUPPORT FOR THE FESTIVAL

The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival is a non-profit arts organization made possible by many kindred spirits who take an active role in keeping the literary arts vibrant and accessible. We gratefully acknowledge their funding in the form of grants, donations, and in-kind support.

30 BUILDING AMERICA® 30 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival The 31st Annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival FUNDING SUPPORT FOR THE FESTIVAL

31 March 22 - 26, 2017 31 Stacey Balkun is the author Louisiana Arts Council, and work in Ploughshares, of Jackalope-Girl Learns to Speak and Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Grand Lost City Museum. A Finalist for the Street, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, and articipants 2016 Event Horizon Science Poetry many others. In 2015, he received the UNO Alumni Ralph Adamo, former editor of Competition as well as the Center for Association Award for Excellence in Teaching. both Barataria and New Orleans Women Writer’s 2016 Rita Dove Review, edits Xavier Review at Xavier Award, her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Bryan Batt is a native New University in New Orleans, where he is Gargoyle, Muzzle, Bayou, and others. A 2015 Hambidge Orleanian, award-winning actor, an Associate Professor of English. His Fellow, Stacey served as Artist-in-Residence at the Great designer, fundraiser, and civic most recent collections of poetry Smoky Mountains National Park in 2013. She holds an activist. His fi lm and television are Waterblind: New & Selected Poems (Portals Press MFA from Fresno State and teaches poetry online at The credits include 12 Years a 2002) and Ever: Poems 2000-2014 (Lavender Ink, 2014). Poetry Barn. Slave, Mad Men, Scream: The TV Vashni Balleste is from upstate New Series, and Jeffrey among others. He has written two Jeremy Alford is the publisher and York and studied broadcast journalism books, the “momoir” She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My editor of LaPolitics Weekly, Tuesday at Xavier University. She has been a Mother and the décor book Big Easy Style. With his Tracker and LaPolitics.com. His freelance photographer for Ebony partner Tom Cianfi chi, Batt co-owns Hazelnut, a fi ne syndicated news columns are carried by Magazine and written for tennis.com. gift and home accessories shop, in New Orleans. He more than 25 newspapers and Balleste is a UNCF grant recipient and received the 2013 New Orleans Arts Council magazines across Louisiana. His documented political issues at the borders of Haiti for Community Award. bylined work appears regularly in The New York Times, American Friends. She has directed music videos, and he has written for The Dallas Morning News, contributed to publications such as Sofar Sounds, Roy Blount, Jr. is the author of Associated Press and Campaigns & Elections magazine. BalconyTv and Data News Weekly. A black culture twenty-four books including Save He has also served as an analyst for CNN, FOX News, enthusiast and documentarian, Vashni’s goal is always to Room for Pie and Alphabetter Juice: MSNBC, C-SPAN and NPR. build platform for often silenced voices. The Joy of Text. Long Time Leaving: Dispatches From Up South won the Dorothy Allison is the author Bruce Sunpie Barnes is a veteran New 2007 nonfi ction award from the of Bastard Out of Carolina, a fi nalist for Orleans musician who has traveled to New England Independent Booksellers Association, the 1992 National Book Award, over 50 countries playing his own style and AudioFile chose it as the audio version as one of and Cavedweller, a national bestseller of what he calls Afro-Louisiana music, the year’s top fi ve books read by their authors. He is a and a New York Times Notable Book of incorporating blues, zydeco, gospel, panelist on NPR’s Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me, a the Year, as well as a collection of short Caribbean, and African infl uenced member of PEN and the Fellowship of Southern fi c t i o n , Trash. Her short stories have appeared in The Best rhythms and melodies. He is a multi-instrumentalist, Authors, and a usage consultant to the American American Short Stories and The Best of the South. A master accordion and harmonica player. Sunpie leads his Heritage Dictionary. novel, She Who, is forthcoming from Viking Penguin. own internationally popular group, the Louisiana Sunspots, and is also a member of the world renowned Lorraine Boissoneault is a graduate Alys Arden was raised by street Paul Simon Band. of Columbia University’s School of performers, tea leaf-readers, and Journalism and writes about science, glittering drag queens of the Vieux Tad Bartlett was born in Ankara, history, foreign policy and adventure Carré. One cliché-gray-day in London, Turkey; grew up in Selma, Alabama; for publications including The she started writing her debut novel, The and married into New Orleans. His Atlantic, Salon, LitHub, Forbes, Casquette Girls, in serialized form on fi ction has appeared in Baltimore Chicago Magazine, The Weather Channel and the Internet. It garnered over 1.2 million reads online, a Review, Carolina Quarterly, and Bird’s others. The Last Voyageurs is her fi rst book and tells starred review in Publisher’s Weekly, and became a Thumb, among others. His non-fi ction the true story of 23 Chicago-area teens and teachers number one best seller on Amazon. It was recently has appeared in Chautauqua Literary Journal, Writing who canoed 3,300 miles across North America while acquired by Skyscape in a two-book deal. Disorder, and the online Oxford American. He’s twice dressed like 17th-century French explorers. been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Tad received his Sally Asher is the author of Hope & MFA from the Creative Writing Workshop at UNO. He is Jennifer Hill Booker is an award-win- New Orleans: A History of Crescent City a founding member of the Peauxdunque Writers Alliance. ning chef who trained at Le Cordon Street Names and Stories from the St. Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Paris Louis Cemeteries of New Orleans. She Beth Bartley performed on Broadway and makes her home in her native holds two master’s degrees from Tulane in Fortune’s Fool (dir. Arthur Penn). Georgia. In her fi rst cookbook, From University and has been the public She played Catherine Holly Field Peas to Foie Gras, she blends her relations photographer since 2008. Asher frequently in Suddenly Last Summer (dir. Aimée love of Southern cuisine, French technique, and healthy lectures on New Orleans history through the Louisiana Hayes) and in Suddenly Last Summer ingredients to a new interpretation uniquely her own. State Museum and is currently working on a book about (dir. Augustin Correro) in Columbus, Prohibition in New Orleans to be published by LSU MS and in Provincetown. She played Carol Cutrere Patricia Bosworth is a contributing Press in 2017. in Orpheus Descending (dir. Jef Hall-Flavin) and editor at Vanity Fair and author of in Orpheus Descending (dir. Austin Pendleton) in NYC in bestselling biographies of Montgom- Jami Attenberg is the New York 2016. Bartley graduated from the Interlochen Arts ery Clift, Marlon Brando, Jane Times best-selling author of fi ve novels, Academy and The Juilliard School. Fonda, and the photographer Diane including The Middlesteins and Saint Arbus. Her Arbus biography Mazie. She has contributed essays Frederick Barton, UNO writer-in-resi- inspired the 2006 fi lm Fur, starring Nicole Kidman about sex, urban life, and food to dence, is the author or editor of ten and Robert Downey Jr. Bosworth is a winner of the the New York Times Magazine, the Wall books including the book of essays Front Page Award and also wrote two memoirs, Any- Street Journal, the Guardian, and Lenny Letter, among Rowing to Sweden, the jazz opera thing Your Little Heart Desires and The Men in My other publications. libretto, Ash Wednesday, the anthology Life; the latter was published by HarperCollins in of short fi ction, Monday Nights, and the January 2017. John S. Bak is Professeur at the novels The El Cholo Feeling Passes, Courting Pandemoni- Université de Lorraine in France. He um, With Extreme Prejudice, and A House Divided, Amanda Boyden is the author of holds degrees from the University of which won the William Faulkner Prize. His short stories two novels, Pretty Little Illinois, Ball State University, and the have been included in the anthologies Something in Dirty and Babylon Rolling, an Sorbonne in Paris. He was a Fulbright Common, Above Ground, and Louisiana in Words. His international bestseller and one of Scholar in 1995 and Visiting Fellow at latest novel, In the Wake of the Flagship, is a story of the French weekly Le Point‘s top Harvard (2011), Columbia (2013) and Texas (2014). He culture clash, political bias, and human heartbreak. Rick twenty books of 2010. Amanda has is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at Wolfson College, also thinks it’s pretty funny. contributed nonfi ction to Macleans magazine, Oxford. His edited books include Tennessee Williams and the Globe and Mail, the anthology New Orleans: Europe (2014) and New Selected Essays: Where I Live Randy Bates’s writing credits include What Can’t Be Lost and others. Her short fi ction has (2009). He is the author of the monographs Ernest Rings: On the Life and Family of Collis appeared in the collection 2033: Future of Misbehav- Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and Queer Masculini- Phillips (nonfi ction), Dolphin Island ior, The Mid-American Review, Sonora Review, the ties (2009) and Tennessee Williams: A Literary Life (poems), fellowships from the National men’s magazine Gallery and elsewhere. She is at 32 (2013). Endowment for the Arts and the work on her third novel. 32 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Joseph Boyden, writer-in-residence Orleans; Snitch: Informers, Cooperators and the 2014 and reprised the role at Theatre 40 in LA February and a graduate (MFA, fi ction) of the Corruption of Justice; and Queens Reigns Supreme: Fat 2015. Cavett has published four books beginning with University of New Orleans, is the Cat, 50 Cent and the Rise of the Hip-Hop Hustler. Cavett (1974) and Eye on Cavett (1983), co-authored author of Born with a Tooth, Through with Christopher Porterfi eld. His two recent books— Black Spruce, and Three Day Road. An Jericho Brown has received the Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and international bestseller, Three Day Whiting Writers Award and Off- Screen Secrets (2010) and Brief Encounters: Road was chosen by Isabelle Allende for The Today fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute Conversations, Magic Moments, and Assorted Hijinks Show’s book club, Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great for Advanced Study at Harvard (October 2014) are both collections of his online opinion New Writers Program, won The Rogers Writers Trust University and the National Endow- column, written for The New York Times since 2007. Prize, Canadian Authors Association Book of the Year, ment for the Arts. His poems have Additionally, he has written for The New Yorker, TV Libris Book of the Year, Amazon First Novel, and the appeared in The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The Guide, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere. Ontario Library Association Book of the Year. Best American Poetry. His fi rst book, Please, won the American Book Award, and his second book, The New Michael Cerveris is a two-time Tony Rick Bragg won a Pulitzer Prize in Te s t a m e n t , won the Anisfi eld-Wolf Book Award and was award-winning actor and has appeared 1996 for his reporting for the New York named one of the best books of the year by Library in theater, fi lm, and television, Times and now teaches writing at the Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. performing in productions on both University of Alabama. He is the He teaches at Emory University in Atlanta. Broadway and the West End. His author of All Over But the Shoutin’, television credits include roles Ava’s Man, and most recently My Jason D. Buch is an Assistant on Fringe, Treme, and The Good Wife, among others. His Southern Journey: True Stories from the Heart of the Professor in Screenwriting and New performances as Bruce Bechdel in Fun Home won him South. Watch for his new book, with the working Media at LSU. He received his B.S. in both a Tony and an Outer Critics Circle Award. Other title The Best Cook in the World, later this year. Computer Science from USF and his recent performances include Faust: The Concert, Evita, M.F.A. in Screenwriting from UNO. and In the Next Room (or the vibrator play). Will Brantley is a professor of English Jason has been a working writer/ at Middle Tennessee State University. producer/director for the last ten years. His work focuses Peter Cooley has published nine Brantley’s publications include on storytelling in interactive environments. In 2011, he books of poetry, eight through Feminine Sense in Southern Memoir wrote, directed, and developed the branching narrative Carnegie Mellon. His poetry has (1993), which was awarded the Eudora iPhone/iPad app So You’re Dating a Vampire. His latest appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic, The Welty Prize for an interpretive work of project is the web series Arceneaux. Nation, The New Republic, and The scholarship in modern letters. He is the editor of New Yorker. A graduate of the Iowa Conversations with Pauline Kael (1996) and co-editor of Robert Olen Butler has published Writers’ Workshop, he has lived over half his life in New the forthcoming Conversations with Edmund White sixteen novels including his most Orleans. He is Senior Mellon Professor of the Human- (2017). In 1997, Brantley co-founded the Carson recent, Perfume River; six volumes of ities and Director of Creative Writing at Tulane McCullers Society to promote critical appreciation of the short fi ction, including the 1993 Pulitzer University, and is the Poet Laureate of Louisiana. iconoclastic Georgia author. Prize-winner, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain; as well as a guide to Augustin J Correro serves as Founding the creative process, From Where You Dream. In 2013 he Beau Bratcher returns to the Festival Co-Artistic Director of the Tennessee received the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Williams Theatre Company of New after directing last year’s For Whom the Achievement in American Literature. He is a Francis Eppes Southern Belle Tolls. He previously Orleans, where he has directed Kingdom Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair of Earth, Small Craft Warnings, Weird directed Weïrd for the 2008 Festival, in Creative Writing at Florida State University. The Night of the Iguana in 2010 and Ta l e s (world premieres of The Strange Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Beau is a proud Play and Ivan’s Widow), The Rose Tattoo, and Dangerous Leslie Castay is starring as Alexandra Birds (If Agitated). He also directed Suddenly Last Summer member of the NOLA Project and a teacher at Lusher Del Lago in Sweet Bird of Youth with Charter. Other past directing credits include 4000 Miles, at the Columbus TW Tribute and Provincetown Festival. Southern Rep, where she also starred He earned an MFA in Theatre Pedagogy from Virginia Peter and the Starcatcher, Robin Hood: Thief/Brigand, in Next To Normal, Grey Gardens, and and A Truckload of Ink. Commonwealth University and a BA from the Mississippi The Clean House. She is a seasoned University for Women. veteran of Broadway, Off-Broadway, Robert Bray is the founding editor of and several National Tours. She has been featured locally Moira Crone has written six books of the Tennessee Williams Annual Review with the Nola Project, Tulane Summer Lyric, Le Petit and the founding director of the fi c t i o n . The Ice Garden won the 2015 Theatre, and most recently as Eleanor of Aquitaine in Independent Publishers Regional Tennessee Williams Scholars Lion in Winter. Film and TV credits include The Big Conference. Bray is the author/ Awards Gold Medal (Southeast). The Short, Beautiful Creatures, Common Law, American Not Yet was short-listed for the Philip co-author or editor of four books, Horror Story, and NCIS: New Orleans. including Hollywood’s Tennessee: The Williams Films K. Dick Award, and her collections and Postwar America and Tennessee Williams and His include Dream State and What Gets Into Us. Her work Richard Campanella, a geographer has appeared in the New Yorker, Fantasy and Science Contemporaries. Bray is a professor of English at Middle with the Tulane School of Architecture, Tennessee State University. Fiction, among others, and has been published in New is the author of Bienville’s Dilemma, Stories from the South. She received the Robert Penn Geographies of New Orleans, Bourbon Warren Award from the Southern Fellowship of Writers. Tyler Bridges is a freelance journalist Street: A History, and other books. The Crone has taught and lectured all over the world. who splits his time among New only two-time winner of the LEH Book Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lima, Peru. of the Year Award, Campanella has also received the Brenda Currin is an Obie award He reports for the Baton Rouge/New Louisiana Literary Award, Williams Prize, Hannah Arendt winner for My Sister in This House by Orleans Advocate and occasionally for Prize for Public Scholarship, and Tulane Professor of the Wendy Kesselman, and just played the Washington Post and Politico Year Award. In 2016, the Government of France named Thelma Toole in Mr. Toole by Vivian Magazine. While covering politics for the Times-Pica- Campanella a Knight of the Order of the Academic Palms. Neuwirth in New York. She was yune, he wrote two books: Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Beulah Binning in Orpheus Descend- Rise of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fall of Governor Dick Cavett has been nominated for ing, directed by Austin Pendleton (New York) and Jef Edwin Edwards and The Rise of David Duke. He was eleven Emmy awards (the most recent Hall-Flavin (Southern Rep). She also played Violet twice a member of Pulitzer Prize-winning teams at the in 2012 for the HBO special, Mel Venable in Southern Rep’s Suddenly Last Summer, Herald and received Columbia University’s Maria Moors Brooks and Dick Cavett Together directed by Aimée Hayes. Currin’s fi lm credits Cabot Award in 2010 for his South American coverage. Again), and won three. Spanning fi ve include: In Cold Blood, The World According to decades, Dick Cavett’s television career Garp, Reds, Ta p s, Life with Mikey, and the cult Ethan Brown is an investigative report- has defi ned excellence in the interview format. He classic C.H.U.D. er and licensed private investigator started at ABC in 1968, and also enjoyed success on based in New Orleans. He is the author PBS, USA, and CNBC. His most recent television Melissa Daggett teaches United States of four investigative reporting driven successes were the September 2014 PBS special, Dick history at San Jacinto College in books about crime and criminal justice Cavett’s Watergate, followed April 2015 by Dick Cavett’s Pasadena, Texas. Her debut book, policy: Murder in the Bayou: Who Vietnam. He has appeared in movies, TV specials, TV Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century Killed the Women Known as the Jeff Davis 8?; Shake the commercials, and several Broadway plays. He starred in New Orleans: The Life and Times of Devil Off: The True Story of the Murder That Rocked New an off-Broadway production of Hellman v. McCarthy in Henry Louis Rey (University Press of 33 March 22 - 26, 2017 33 Mississippi, 2017) chronicles the history of Modern Amy,” which is carried in over 150 newspapers and read is a freelance correspondent for Reuters America. She is American Spiritualism in the Crescent City with an by an estimated 22 million readers daily and is known for the author of the new biography Tom Benson: A emphasis on the francophone séance circle of Henry her wisdom and wit as a featured panelist on National Billionaire’s Journey. Louis Rey, a Creole of color who was a key civil rights Public Radio’s comedy quiz show, “Wait, Wait . . . Don’t activist, author, and Civil War and Reconstruction leader. Tell Me.” Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes’ work has appeared or is forthcoming in One Lisa D’Amour is a playwright and Nancy Dixon is an English professor Story, Slice, Pank, The Georgia co-artistic director of PearlDamour, an at Dillard University in New Orleans Review, Western Humanities Review, OBIE-award winning interdisciplinary and has been studying, teaching, and and elsewhere. She has received performance company. Lisa’s plays writing about Louisiana literature for fellowships from Yaddo, Bread Loaf, have been produced by Manhattan over 20 years. Her work appears in among others. She holds a BA from Brown University, an Theater Club (on Broadway), Steppen- Louisiana Literature, Florida English, MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and is wolf Theater, Playwrights Horizons and Southern Working in the Big Easy: The History and Politics of currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Georgia. Repertory Theater, among others. Her play Detroit was a Labor in New Orleans, Turning Points and Transforma- She has lived in Spain and France and currently lives in fi nalist for both the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and tions. Her fi rst book, Fortune and Misery: Sallie Rhett Athens. The Sleeping World is her fi rst novel. Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is a past recipient of Roman of New Orleans, won the LEH Humanities Book the Alpert Award for the Arts, the Steinberg Playwright of the Year, 2000. More recently, she is editor of the 2013 John Gery’s poetry collections Award, and is a 2013 Doris Duke Artist. Lavender Ink book, N.O. Lit: 200 Years of New Orleans include The Enemies of Leisure, Dav- Literature and was recently named Executive Editor of enport’s Version, A Gallery of Ghosts, Todd d’Amour grew up in New the New Orleans Tricentennial Book. and most recently, Have at You Orleans and graduated from DeLaSalle Now! He has also written on a wide High School. After earning a degree in Charlene A. Donaghy’s plays have been range of poets, including a monograph biopsychology from Syracuse produced in New York, Los Angeles, on nuclear annihilation and American poetry, a University, Todd received a degree Great Britain, and Canada. Madison co-authored guide to Ezra Pound’s Venice, and a collabo- from The American Academy of Square Productions holds the Broadway rative biography of Armenian poet Hmayeak Shems. A Dramatic Arts in New York City. Stage credits include option for The Quadroon and the Dove. recipient of NEA, Fulbright, and University of Minnesota Southern Rep’s Venus in Fur, Orpheus Her play collection is Bones of Home and fellowships, among other awards, he teaches at the Descending, and Airline Highway. Other recent credits Other Plays. Other publications include Best American University of New Orleans and directs the Ezra Pound include Detroit at TheatreWorks, the Broadway Short Plays, 25*10-Minute Plays for Teens,and Estroge- Center for Literature, Brunnenburg, Italy. production of Airline Highway, and Ken in Mr. Toole by nius. She is the Festival Director of the Warner Internation- Vivian Neuwirth. al Playwrights Festival, Producing Director of the Marcus Gilmer is currently an Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, teaches playwriting/ Associate Real-Time News editor at Jack E. Davis is the author of The Gulf: theatre at the University of Nebraska, and is a member of Mashable.com. A 2005 graduate of the The Making of an American Sea and Proscenium Playwrights, among others. CWW (nonfi ction), Marcus has also the award-winning An Everglades written or worked for NOLAFugees, Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas Laura Elvebak has been a waitress, a The Gothamist network (Chicagoist), and the American Environmental go-go dancer, legal assistant and The Onion’s AV Club, WBEZ, the Chicago Sun-Times, Century. A professor of environmental executive secretary, and has lusted after Uproxx, and The San Francisco Chronicle. An Alabama history at the University of Florida, he grew up on the and loved six husbands, then ran from native, Marcus now resides in Cleveland, Ohio with his Gulf coast, and now lives in Florida and New Hampshire. all of them. Now she devotes her time wife, a dog, and a pocketful of dreams. to writing about murder. She is the Miriam C. Davis, a native of Mobile, author of six books; the most recent is Less Dead. She Anne Gisleson’s work has appeared graduated magna cum laude from lives in Houston. in The Atlantic, The Oxford American, Emory University with a degree in The L.A. Times, The Believer, Eco- history and went on to earn an M.A. in Gina Ferrara lives in New Orleans. tone and many other places. She medieval archaeology from the Her poetry collections include: The teaches in the Creative Writing University of York (England) on a Size of Sparrows, Ethereal Avalanche, Program at the New Orleans Center for Fulbright Fellowship. She received her Ph.D. in history Amber Porch Light, Carville: Amid Creative Arts and is co-founder of the literary and visual from the University of California, Santa Barbara. After Moss and Resurrection Fern, and arts non-profi t, Antenna. Her book The Futilitarians is teaching at Delta State University for sixteen years, Fitting the Sixth Finger: Poems Inspired forthcoming from Little, Brown this August. Miriam is now a freelance writer and lives in Montgomery. by the Paintings of Marc Chagall (forthcoming from Aldrich Press). She teaches English and Creative Writing Richard Goodman is the author of Clayton Delery-Edwards is the author at Delgado Community College. Recent work appears in French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in of two books about LGBT history in Callaloo, anderbo, Valley Voices, and others. Twice the South of France, The Soul of New Orleans: The Up Stairs Lounge nominated for a Pushcart, Ferrara curates The Poetry Creative Writing, and A New York Arson and the forthcoming The Murder Buffet, a monthly reading series presented by the New Memoir. His latest book is The Bicycle of Fernando Rios. He has essays Orleans Public Library. Diaries: One New Yorker’s Journey included in My Gay New Orle- Through 9/11. His work has appeared in The New York ans and Fashionably Late: Gay, Bi, and Trans Men Who Randy Fertel, a professor of English Times, Creative Nonfi ction, Harvard Review, River Came Out Later in Life. His article, “New Orleans and who has taught the literature of war for Teeth, Chautauqua, Vanity Fair, Ascent, and the the Drive Against The Deviates,” will soon appear in an over 30 years, is the author of the Michigan Quarterly Review. He is an assistant professor anthology titled Queering the South. award-winning 2011 memoir, The of creative nonfi ction writing at the University of New Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak, Orleans. John DeSantis is a veteran journalist set in colorful, food-obsessed New with a criminal justice background Orleans. Novelist Tim O’Brien calls his new book, A Nicole Pepinster Greene is a Kellogg who grew up in New York and is now Taste for Chaos: The Art of Literary Improvisation, “a Professor of English at Xavier University Senior Staff Writer at The Times of stunner of a book—smart, jarring, innovative, witty, of Louisiana where she teaches British Houma, LA. His fi rst book, For the provocative, wise, and beautifully written.” He founded and Irish literature, as well as composi- Color of His Skin: The Murder of Yusuf the Ridenhour Prizes for Courageous Truth-telling in tion. She is currently the Executive Hawkins and the Trial of Bensonhurst, tells the story of a memory of his friend, whistleblower and investigative Editor of Xavier Review Press and was racially motivated murder in 1989 New York. His reporter Ron Ridenhour. He is Trustee Emeritus at The previously the editor of Xavier Review and the Journal of second, The New Untouchables: How America Sanctions Kenyon Review. College Writing. Her scholarship on collaborative Irish Police Violence examines deaths in police custody. women writers Edith Somerville and Martin Ross has been Kathy Finn has spent some thirty years published internationally. Born in London, Greene has Amy Dickinson is author of the New in New Orleans, working as a journalist lived in Louisiana for almost thirty years. York Times bestselling memoir, The covering local business and personali- Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Story of ties extensively. The former editor of Henry Griffi n is a screenwriter and Surprising Second Chances, a chronicle CityBusiness and Biz New Orleans fi lmmaker from New Orleans. His fi rst of her experiences and misadventures magazine, as well as author of a screenplay, Rock Scissors Paper, was as a single mother to her daughter, business column for New Orleans Magazine, Finn has optioned by Fox 2000 in 1996, which 34 Emily. She writes the syndicated advice column, “Ask also been a contributor to the New Orleans Advocate and began an illustrious career as a 34 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival professional screenwriter and script doctor. He has worked Abram Shalom Himelstein is the Sue. She has also recently launched a progressive for Fox, DreamWorks, and New Line Cinema. As an actor, co-founder of the Neighborhood Story website/blog to promote marginalized voices and he was a recurring cast member on HBO’s Treme. He has Project and the editor in chief at the intersectionality. Huber established a Tubby & Coo’s directed documentaries and music videos, and Griffi n University of New Orleans Press. He publishing company last year, which will publish its fi rst appears monthly on the WWNO radio show “All Things has written for the Daily Racing Form, books in 2017. New Orleans,” discussing the local movie scene. The Houston Chronicle, and Next City. He is the author of What the Hell Am I Doing Juyanne James is the author of The Matthew Griffi n is a graduate of Wake Here? and co-author of Tales of a Punk Rock Nothing. Persimmon Trail and Other Stories Forest University and the Iowa Writers’ (Chin Music Press, 2015), her debut Workshop. He has taught composition, Foster Hirsch, professor of fi lm at collection of 17 stories interpreting the literature, and creative writing at the Brooklyn College, is the author of 16 African American experience in University of Iowa and Walters State books on fi lm and theater. His subjects Louisiana. Her stories and essays have Community College, and worked as include Woody Allen, fi lm noir, the appeared in The Louisville Review, Mythium, Bayou Assistant to the Director of Highlander Research and Actors Studio, Kurt Weill, Otto Magazine, and Eleven Eleven, and in the anthologies New Education Center, a hub of grassroots organizing for social Preminger, and Tennessee Williams. Stories from the South: 2009 (Algonquin) and Something justice throughout the South and Appalachia. Born and He is now working on a history of Hollywood in the in the Water: 20 Louisiana Stories (Portals Press, 2011). raised in North Carolina, he now lives with his husband 1950s to be published by Alfred Knopf. Her essay, “Table Scraps,” was a notable essay in The and too many pets in New Orleans. Hide is his fi rst novel. Best American Essays 2014. Winston Ho is the son of Taiwanese Kia Groom is an Australian writer and parents and a native of New Orleans, Barb Johnson worked as a carpenter in poet residing in New Orleans. She is and a graduate of history and Chinese New Orleans for more than twenty the founding editor of Quaint language from Rutgers University years before receiving her MFA from Magazine and the recipient of an specializing in early 20th century the University of New Orleans. Her Academy of American Poets award, China and Chinese American history work has appeared in such magazines runner-up for the 2014 Judith Wright in New Orleans. He studied at the Mandarin Training as Guernica, The Southern Review, Poetry Prize, the 2015 W.B. Yeats Poetry Prize, and a Center at National Taiwan Normal University, Beijing The Greensboro Review, 52 Stories, Yemmassee, and Pushcart nominee. Recent work has been published or is Language and Culture University, the University of Oxford American, as well as in a number of anthologies. forthcoming in The Mary Sue, Delirious Hem, Cordite, Mississippi, and the University of New Orleans. He Her short story collection, More of This World or Maybe Westerly, Permafrost, the Hunter Anthology of Contempo- taught Chinese at the Academy of Chinese Studies and Another, won a number of prizes, including an American rary Australian Feminist Poetry, Poetry, and HYSTERIA: St. Mary’s Dominican High School in New Orleans. He Library Association Award. Writing the Female Body. is currently collaborating with the Historic New Orleans Collection on documenting the presence of Chi- David Johnson serves as Editor of Winston Groom has created a body of nese-owned businesses in the French Quarter from the Museum Publications at the New work in both fi ction and history. He 1920s to the 1970s. Orleans Museum of Art. Previously he has written several novels of the edited Louisiana Cultural Vistas Vietnam experience, as well as Kenneth Holditch’s work revolves magazine and KnowLA.org, The nonfi ction about the expansion of the around Tennessee Williams Digital Encyclopedia of Louisiana for American West and America at war. He scholarship, including being editor of 24 years. He also organizes a year-round lecture series for is perhaps best known for Forrest Gump, which was the Tennessee Williams Journal and the Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic House Museums. made into a 1994 Academy award-winning fi lm starring co-editor, along with Mel Gussow, of Tom Hanks and directed by Robert Zemeckis. His most the Library of America edition of Rodney Jones is the author of eleven recent book, El Paso, his fi rst novel in nearly twenty years, Williams’ writings. He is also a professor emeritus at the books of poems. His numerous honors is set during the Mexican Revolution. He lives in Point University of New Orleans. Holditch has collaborated include the National Book Critics Clear, Alabama. with Richard Freeman Leavitt on Tennessee Williams Circle Award, the Harper Lee Award, and the South and The World of Tennessee Williams. He and the Kingsley Tufts Award, and he Clare Louise Harmon is the author created the Tennessee Williams literary walking tours has been a fi nalist for the Los Angeles of The Thingbody (Instar Books, 2015) and knew the playwright. Times Book Award, the Griffi n International Poetry and If Wishes Were Horses the Poor Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches in the Would Ride (Finishing Line Press, Megan Holt holds a B.A. in English low-residency MFA creative writing program at Warren 2015). Her work has appeared in and Spanish from the University of Wilson College and lives in New Orleans and Southern numerous journals including PANK, Alabama and a Ph.D in English/ Illinois. Sixth Finch, Bone Bouquet, and The Feminist Wire. Prior Comparative Literature from Tulane to completing her MFA at the University of New Orleans University. She teaches in the English Thomas Keith has edited the in 2015, Clare taught violin and viola at Drake University Department at Tulane and is active in Tennessee Williams titles for New Di- in Des Moines, IA. She currently lives in Treme with her several community literacy projects. She is a project rections since 2002, including four dog, Tinkerbell the Rescue Chihuahua. leader for YLC’s One Book One New Orleans, a volumes of previously unpublished or member of the Board of Directors for the Literacy uncollected one-acts, and is co-editor Carolyn Hembree’s poetry collection, Alliance of Greater New Orleans, and a member of the of Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams Skinny, came out from Kore Press in Advisory Board for the Lower Ninth Ward Street and James Laughlin. Keith is editor of Love, Christopher 2012. Earlier this year, Trio House Library. Street, an anthology of LGBT essays about New York Books published her second collection, City. He served as dramaturg for Sundance Theater Lab, Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine Skip Horack is the author of the reader for Yale Drama Prize, teaches theater at Pace and Other Ways to Escape a Plague, novels The Other Joseph and The Eden University, has participated in this Festival every year winner of the 2015 Trio Award and the 2015 Rochelle Hunter, as well as the story collection since 2002, and in the Saints and Sinners Literary Ratner Memorial Award. Her work has appeared in The Southern Cross. He is a former Festival since 2005. Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, The Journal, Poetry Daily, Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, and other publications. She comes from Tennessee and where he was also a Wallace Stegner Kay Kendall, an international lives in New Orleans. Fellow, and his fi ction and nonfi ction has appeared in award-winning PR executive, is the Oxford American, The Southern Review, Narrative author of two mysteries set during the Greg Herren is the award-winning Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and elsewhere. A Vietnam War—Desolation Row and author of over thirty novels and fi fty native of Louisiana, Horack is currently an assistant Rainy Day Women. They feature the short stories. His most recent professor at Florida State University. Nancy Drew-inspired sleuth Austin novel, Garden District Gothic, was Starr. Kendall lives in Texas with her husband, three released in September. He has also Candice Huber owns New Orleans’ house rabbits, and a spaniel. edited twenty anthologies, including premier geeky bookstore, board the 2016 Bouchercon anthology Blood on the Bayou. He gaming store, and nerd mecca: Tubby Errol Laborde is the editor-in-chief of has won the Lambda Literary Award twice, was & Coo’s Mid-City Book Shop, named Renaissance Publishing Company. short-listed twelve more times, and was also a fi nalist for after her grandparents. She is an active Laborde’s most recent books the Shirley Jackson Award. He won two Independent online writer and regular contributor to are Mardi Gras: Chronicles of the New Press medals for outstanding young adult mystery/horror. the feminist websites Nerdy But Flirty and The Mary Orleans Carnival and Krewe: The 35 March 22 - 26, 2017 35 Early Carnival from Comus to Zulu. Laborde holds a directors Brian De Palma, Ron Howard, and Stephen and a model for the tragic main character in Allen Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of New Daldry. Drury’s classic Washington novel, Advise and Orleans. He is a founder of the The Tennessee Williams/ Consent. A longtime member of Tulane’s History New Orleans Literary Festival and served as its fi rst Kiese Laymon is a Professor of English Department, Maney now teaches at Boston College. president. Laborde was awarded the Lifetime Achievement and creative writing at the University of He has appeared on public television, C-SPAN and Award by the New Orleans Press Club in 2016. Mississippi. Laymon’s stories and essays NPR. have appeared in The Best American Peggy Scott Laborde has been the Essays Series, Esquire, NPR, and The Los Bev Marshall is the critically-ac- senior producer for the New Orleans Angeles Times among others. His essay claimed author of Walking Through PBS station, WYES-TV since 1987. collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself came out in 2013, and Shadows, Right as Rain, Hot Fudge Laborde has produced, narrated, or his debut novel, Long Division, won the 2014 Saroyan Sundae Blues, and Shared Words: A consulted for over thirty documentaries, International Writing Award. His memoir Heavy and the Guide to Writers’ Groups and Book and produces and hosts Steppin’ Out, novel And So On are forthcoming. Clubs. Her stories and essays have New Orleans’ only weekly arts and entertainment review been widely anthologized, and she serves on the program. She is the winner of a regional Emmy Award. Joanna Leake is one of the founders of Advisory Board for the Tennessee Williams/New Laborde is a founding member of the Tennessee Williams/ The Creative Writing Workshop and for Orleans Literary Festival. She lives with her husband New Orleans Literary Festival and served as president for sixteen years served as its Director. She is in Ponchatoula, LA. over a decade. She is the co-author of fi ve books concerning the author of A Few Days in Weasel Creek, New Orleans history, including The Fair which was a CBS Movie of the Week, and Ti Adelaide Martin is co-proprietor with James Knudsen co-authored two Grounds Through the Lens: Photographs and Memories of of Commander’s Palace and composition textbooks. Her stories have appeared Horse Racing in New Orleans. co-author of Miss Ella Brennan of in Louisville Review, Apalachee Review, The Panhandler, and elsewhere. With Rick Barton she edited the CWW fiction Commander’s Palace: I Don’t Want a Wally Lamb is the author of several New anthology, Monday Nights. Restaurant Where a Jazz Band Can’t Yo r k Ti m e s -bestselling novels: Wishin’ Come Marching Through! written and Hopin’, The Hour I First Believed, I Bill Loehfelm is the author of the with her mother, the “grande dame” of the family’s Know This Much is True, and She’s Come critically-acclaimed Devil series about restaurant business. She also co-wrote Commander’s Undone. He was twice selected for New Orleans Police Department rookie Kitchen with Chef Jamie Shannon; In the Land of Oprah’s Book Club. His most Maureen Coughlin, featuring the novels Cocktails: Recipes and Adventures from the Cocktail recent novel is I’ll Take You There. He also edited Couldn’t Let the Devil Out, Doing the Devil’s Chicks with Lally Brennan; and Commander’s Wild Keep It to Myself and I’ll Fly Away, two volumes of essays from Work, The Devil in Her Way, and The Side with Executive Chef Tory McPhail. students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institu- Devil She Knows. He lives in New Orleans with his wife, AC tion, a women’s prison in Connecticut, where he has been a Lambeth, a writer and yoga instructor, and plays drums in a Melanie McCabe is the author of His volunteer facilitator for many years. He lives in Connecticut. rock-’n-’roll band. The fifth Maureen Coughlin novel, The Other Life: Searching for My Father, Devil’s Muse, will be published in July 2017. His First Wife, and Tennessee AC Lambeth is a graduate of UNO’s Williams, to be published this spring Creative Writing Workshop. Since then Alecia P. Long is a professor history at by the University of New Orleans she has completed one novel and is LSU and author of The Great Southern Press. She is also the author of two currently working on another. She is a Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in poetry collections: History of the Body, (David Robert senior teacher and mentor at Wild Lotus New Orleans, 1865-1920 (2004). Her Books, 2012) and What the Neighbors Know, (Future- Yoga, where she leads weekly classes as current project, Crimes Against Nature: Cycle Press, 2014.) Her work has appeared in well as workshops on mindfulness, creativity, and New Orleans, Sexuality, and the Search for Shenandoah, The Georgia Review, The Massachusetts philosophy. Her fi ction has appeared in Short Story, Conspirators in the Assassination of JFK, connects Clay Review, Best New Poets, and numerous other journals. Sojourn, North American Review, Passage North, Cimarron Shaw’s 1969 trial for conspiracy to its overlooked role in the Review, and Elephant Journal. She lives with her husband, national movement for gay civil rights. Jim McCormick’s songs have been the author Bill Loehfelm, in New Orleans. recorded by Luke Bryan, Jason Richard Louth is a professor of English at Aldean, Tim McGraw, Harry Susan Larson has hosted “The Reading Southeastern Louisiana University, where Connick Jr., Keith Urban, Trisha Life” on WWNO-FM, New Orleans’s he teaches courses in Living Writers, Yearwood, Randy Travis, Ronnie NPR affi liate, for the past six years. Louisiana Literature, and Creative Writing Milsap, and others. He recently Before that, she was the longtime book and received the university’s award for celebrated two #1 songs on the Billboard Country editor for The New Orleans Teaching Excellence. Founding director charts. He’s a faculty member in the Music Industry Times-Picayune. She is the author of The of the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project, he created the program at Loyola University, VP of the Memphis Booklover’s Guide to New Orleans, which has appeared in New Orleans Writing Marathon and edited The Writing Chapter of the Recording Academy, and holds a BA Marathon: In Good Company Revealed. He has published two editions, and the founding president of the Women’s from Georgetown University and a MFA in Poetry in Louisiana in Words, Country Roads, and Louisiana National Book Association of New Orleans. from the University of New Orleans. Literature.

Bill Lavender is a poet, novelist, musician, Kristen-Paige Madonia is the author of Bernice L. McFadden is the author carpenter and publisher in New Orleans. Fingerprints of You, and her work has of nine critically acclaimed novels He founded Lavender Ink, a small press appeared in the Greensboro Review, the including Sugar, Loving Dono- devoted mainly to poetry, in 1995, and New Orleans Review, and American van, Nowhere Is a Place, The Diálogos, an imprint devoted to Fiction. The winner of the Tennessee Warmest December, Gathering of cross-cultural literatures in 2011. His work Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival’s Waters (a New York Times Editors’ has appeared in print and web journals and anthologies. He Short Fiction Contest in 2010, Madonia returns to the Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), has written the verse memoir, Memory Wing, the novel, Q, Festival in 2017 with her new book Invisible Fault Lines. She and Glorious, which was featured in O, The Oprah and a chapbook, surrealism. With Megan Burns, he holds an MFA from California State University, and has Magazine and was a fi nalist for the NAACP Image co-founded the New Orleans Poetry Festival. received awards and fellowships from the Sewanee’s Writer’s Award. She is a three-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Conference and the Vermont Studio center, among others. Award fi nalist, as well as the recipient of three awards Jeremy Lawrence is appearing for the from the BCALA. McFadden lives in Brooklyn, New 11th time at the Festival. Recent TV Nicholas Mainieri is the author of The York. The Book of Harlan is her latest novel, which appearances include The Blacklist and Infinite, a novel. His short fiction has was a Washington Post Notable Book of 2016. Shades of Blue. He just appeared appeared in the Southern Review, the Off-Broadway in his one-man Queer Southern Humanities Review, and Mary Miller is the author of a novel, Weimar Berlin Cabaret: Lavender Songs Salamander, among other literary The Last Days of California, and two featuring songs of the era (1918-1933) in his English magazines. He lives in New Orleans with short story collections: Always Happy adaptations. Regional credits include fi ve years of playing his wife and son. Hour and Big World. She is a former Scrooge for the 2300 seat Hanover Theatre in Worcester, James A. Michener Fellow at the MA, Fiddler at Goodspeed in Connecticut and the MUNY Patrick Maney is author of Bill University of Texas and John and in St. Louis, Noises Off at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Into Clinton: New Gilded Age President. He Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at Ole Miss. She the Woods at Baltimore’s Center Stage and the Westport has written biographies of Franklin D. currently lives in Gulfport and is a Visiting Assistant Country Playhouse where he also performed in Ta r t u f fe. Roosevelt and of “Young Bob” La Professor at the low-residency MFA program at 36 Film credits include the original Critters and work with Follette, a prominent New Deal senator Mississippi University for Women. 36 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Tom Mitchell is Associate Head of Frank Perez serves as President of the “Fresh Air”. The next Micky Knight book is The Girl on Theatre at the University of Illinois LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana. the Edge of Summer. Writing as R. Jean Reid, her book where he has directed all of He is the author of two books: In Exile: Roots of Murder was published by Midnight Ink in the Tennessee Williams’s early plays. The History and Lore Surrounding New summer of 2016. Perdition is the follow-up. Redmann He has essayed articles on Williams Orleans Gay Culture and Its Oldest Gay lives in New Orleans. and presented at Festivals in New Bar (with Jeffrey Palmquist) and Orleans, Provincetown, and St. Louis. He is former Treasures of the Vieux Carre: Ten Self-Guided Walking Julia Reed writes “The High and the chair of the Mid-America Theatre Conference Tours of the French Quarter, and the co-editor of the Low” column for Garden & Gun Directing Symposium, former chair of the anthology My Gay New Orleans: 28 Personal Reminis- Magazine and is a contributing editor at Interlochen Summer Theatre Program, and an cences on LGBT+ Life in New Orleans. He also writes a Vogue and Newsweek. Known for such honorary faculty member at Inner Mongolia column on gay New Orleans history for Ambush Magazine. witty books as The Queen of the Turtle University Arts College. Derby and But Mama Always Put Vodka Juliet Seer Pazera began her spiritual in her Sangria, as well as the post-Katrina memoir, The , she is also the author of Cecile Monteyne is a New Orleans journey in the desert oasis of Tucson, House on First Street Julia native and member of The NOLA Arizona, where she studied Reiki, Reed’s South: Spirited Entertaining and High Style Fun Project. Her theatre credits astrology and other healing modalities. All Year Long. include A Few Good Men, Marie In 2002, she moved to New Orleans to Trisha Rezende is a poet who hails Antoinette, Cat on a Hot Tin begin a new chapter and focus on from the island nation of Trinidad and Roof, and La Concierge Solitaire. sharing her psychic abilities. She also became interested Tobago. She has loved New Orleans, She is the creator and producer of You Don’t Know in local history and lore, leading to an Archival Assistant “the northern-most city of the the Half of It, currently in its fi fth season. In 2015, Position at Notarial Archives Research Center where she Caribbean,” since she moved here in she was named New Orleans’ Big Easy Awards En- worked for 7 years. She recently became a licensed tour 2003 to earn her MFA at the University tertainer of the Year, and in 2016 she was listed as guide to keep her knowledge of history alive and teaches of New Orleans. She has taught composition, creative one of Gambit Magazine’s 40 Under 40. She and her classes on psychic development. writing, and poetry at Dillard University and at UNO. She brother, Jules, co-wrote and co-produced the now teaches at Xavier University, an HBCU. Her poetry fi lm, One Night Stand Off, in which she also stars. John Pope, author of Getting Off at Elysian Fields, an anthology of his has been published in Poet Lore and Burlesque Press. obituaries and funeral stories, is a mem- Coleen Muir’s writing has appeared ber of The Times-Picayune’s team that Brad Richard chairs the creative writing in publications such as Fourth won two Pulitzer Prizes, a George Polk program at Lusher Charter School. Genre, Silk Road Review, The Award and a National Headliner 2015 Louisiana Artist of the Year, he is Chattahoochee Review, The Rumpus, Award for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its the author of three collections of poems, and Cream City Review, among aftermath. A New Orleans-based reporter since 1972, he Habitations, Motion Studies, and others. Her writing has been earned degrees at the University of Texas, where he was Butcher’s Sugar, and two chapbooks, Pushcart nominated and has won various awards elected to Phi Beta Kappa. The Men in the Dark and Curtain Optional. With such as Svenson Award for Fiction, Samuel Mockbee Elizabeth Gross, he co-curates The Waves, a quarterly award in Creative Nonfi ction, and the Gulf Coast Martin Pousson was born and raised LGBTQ+ reading series at Antenna Gallery. Creative Writer’s Award in Fiction. She lives in in Acadiana, in the bayou land of Charlotte, North Carolina, where she teaches college Louisiana. His short stories won a Gary Richards is associate professor level writing and is completing a novel. fellowship from the National and chair of the Department of English, Endowment for the Arts. He also was a Linguistics, and Communication at the Lara Naughton’s works include The fi nalist for the John Gardner Fiction University of Mary Washington. He is Jaguar Man and Never Fight a Book Award, the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction the author of Lovers and Beloveds: Shark in Water: The Wrongful Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. His stories have Sexual Otherness in Southern Fiction, Conviction of Gregory Bright. She is appeared in The Antioch Review, Epoch, Five Points, 1936-1961 and a contributor to Faulkner’s Sexuali- a certifi ed Compassion Cultivation StoryQuarterly, and elsewhere. Black Sheep Boy is his ties, Comics and the U.S. South, and The Cambridge Trainer through The Center for latest novel from Rare Bird Books. He now lives in Los Companion to Literature of the U.S. South, among other Compassion and Altruism Research and Education Angeles. collections. His most recent essay is “Tennessee Williams (CCARE); Director of CompassionNOLA; and and the Burden of Southern Sexuality Studies” in The Chair of Creative Writing at New Orleans Center for Brenda Quant was born in New Oxford Handbook of the Literature of the U.S. South. Creative Arts. For over twenty years she has worked Orleans, Louisiana. She earned an with students K-12 as well as adults, and works with MFA from UNO’s Creative Writing Bess Rowen is a Ph.D. Candidate in individuals facing challenging circumstances, Workshop in 2015. In 2013, Quant Theatre and Dissertation Fellow at including homelessness, HIV/AIDS, wrongful was awarded the Malcolm Magaw The Graduate Center, CUNY, where conviction, incarceration, and torture. Prize for Best Graduate Student Essay, she is writing a dissertation on stage the Samuel Mockbee Nonfi ction Award, and the Gulf directions as fl uid, physical Justin Nobel’s stories about science, Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers Graduate collaborations between playwrights the environment and culture have Award for Nonfi ction. Her work has appeared in Fjords and actors. She also has an M.Phil in Theatre from The been published in Newsweek, Orion, Review, The New Orleans Tribune, The Other Side, Graduate Center, an MA in Performance Studies from Popular Mechanics, Tin House, African American Review, Thema Literary Quarter- NYU, and a BA from Lehigh University. Bess is currently Nautilus, Virginia Quarterly ly, and other publications. a lecturer at Purchase College and an Arts & Culture Review, Oxford American and also blogger for The Huffi ngton Post. in Best American Science and Nature Writing A Scribe Called Quess? is a poet, 2014 and Best American Travel Writing educator, actor, playwright, and activist Maurice Carlos Ruffi n’s work has 2011 and 2016. The Story of Dan Bright, a book he in that order. He is a founding member appeared in Unfathomable City: A New co-wrote with an Angola prison death row exoneree, of Slam New Orleans, having won Orleans Atlas edited by Rebecca Solnit was published in November 2016 by the University National Poetry Slam championships and Rebecca Snedecker, AGNI, of New Orleans Press. Justin lives in New Orleans. with them in 2010 and 2013. He’s also Kenyon Review, Callaloo, Massachu- a founder of Take ‘Em Down NOLA, a coalition setts Review, LitHub, and Virginia Biljana D. Obradovi, is a dedicated to removing White Supremacist symbols in Quarterly Review. He is the winner of the Iowa Review Serbian-American poet and New Orleans. His second book of poetry, Sleeper Cell, Fiction Award, the So to Speak Journal Short Story translator. She is Professor of English was published through Next Left Press in May of 2016. Award and the William Faulkner Competition for Novel and Head of the English Department in Progress. He is a member of the Peauxdunque Writers at Xavier University of Louisiana. Her J.M. Redmann’s mystery series Alliance and the Melanated Writers Collective. collections of poems include Le Riche features New Orleans PI Micky Knight. Monde (1999), Frozen Embraces (2001), Little Her books have won First Place in the Kalamu ya Salaam (born 24 March Disruptions (2012), and Incognito (WordTech Press, ForeWord mystery category, and three 1947, New Orleans) is a writer, editor, January 2017). She is the main translator and co-editor Lambda Literary awards. The educator and fi lmmaker. His current with Dubravka Djuri, of Cat Painter: An Anthology of Intersection of Law & Desire was an book is The Magic of Juju: An Contemporary Serbian Poetry, with a preface by Editor’s Choice of the San Francisco Chronicle and a Appreciation of the Black Arts Charles Bernstein, Dialogos Press, 2016. recommended book by Maureen Corrigan of NPR’s Movement (Third World Press, 2016). 37 March 22 - 26, 2017 37 Henry I. Schvey is professor of Jill St. John has charmed fans in a Robert Wagner has captivated drama and comparative literature at myriad of fi lm and television roles. She audiences of stage and screen and Washington University in St. Louis, made her screen debut at the age of television in his long and distin- and is a director and playwright as nine in the fi rst television production guished career. He has appeared in well as a scholar. He has lectured on of A Christmas Carol, and all James such television classics as Hart to Tennessee Williams both in the U.S. Bond fans remember her performance Hart, Switch, and It Takes a Thief, and abroad, has published numerous essays on the as Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), playing and recently he has had a recurring guest role on NCIS, playwright, and is currently writing a book on opposite Sean Connery. (She was the fi rst American all this in addition to a busy movie career. Wagner was Williams’s paintings and their relation to his plays, The actress to play a Bond girl.) She appeared in such fi lms chosen by Sir Laurence Olivier to star with him in the Might of Design, the Mystery of Color: the Plastic with literary antecedents as The Roman Spring of Mrs. television adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which Theatre of Tennessee Williams, to be published by Stone, and Te n d e r i s t h e Ni gh t . St. John has worked on he costarred with his wife, the late Natalie Wood. Wagner Edinburgh University Press. His coming-of-age fi ve movies with her husband Robert Wagner: Banning; has toured the world performing A.R. Gurney’s “Love memoir, The Poison Tree, was published in fall of 2016. How I Spent My Summer Vacation; Around the World in Letters” with Stefanie Powers; and currently, Wagner 80 Days; Something to Believe In; and The Calling. She is performs “Love Letters” at charity events with his wife, Sim Shattuck was born in Decatur, the author of The Jill St. John Cookbook. actress Jill St. John. He has charmed readers with his Georgia and now resides in memoirs, Pieces of My Heart: A Life, You Must Remember Louisiana. His novels include Michael Tisserand is a New This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age, and I Pleasant Hurricanes, Basilisk, Krewe Orleans-based author whose new Loved Her in the Movies: Memories of Legendary of Hecate, Yarilo’s Dance, The book, Krazy: George Herriman, a Life Hollywood Actresses. Abyssal Plain, and Dark Angel, Pass in Black and White (HarperCollins), Me. All of them are available on Kindle. His next novel was called by Kirkus Reviews “a M.O. Walsh is the author of the story is The Shadow of the Omuroi, a sci/fi and historical roaring success, providing an collection The Prospect of Magic and novel based in Stalin’s Russia and in Namibia. indispensable new perspective on turn-of-the-century the novel My Sunshine Away, which America.” His previous books include The Kingdom of was a New York Times bestseller, won John Warner Smith has published Zydeco, which was awarded the ASCAP Deems Taylor the Pat Conroy Book Award for two collections of poetry: Soul Be a Award for Music Writing, as well as the Hurricane Fiction, the Housatonic Book Prize, Witness (MadHat Press, 2016) and A Katrina memoir Sugarcane Academy. and is longlisted for the International Mandala of Hands (Aldrich Press, DUBLIN Literary Award. His work has appeared in 2015). Spirits of the Gods, is Poppy Tooker is the author of the New York Times, The Southern Review, Oxford forthcoming from UL Press. Smith’s the Crescent City Farmers Market American, and others. He directs the Creative Writing poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Callaloo, Cookbook, awarded the Eula Mae Dore Workshop at the University of New Orleans. Antioch Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Transition, Tabasco Cookbook Award for historic Quiddity, and numerous other literary journals. His content and named New Orleans Jerry W. Ward, Jr., who has lived in poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Magazine’s 2009 Cookbook of the New Orleans since 2002, is currently for the Sundress Best of the Net Anthology. A Cave Year. In 2012, she wrote the foreword and updated the a Distinguished Overseas Professor in Canem Fellow, Smith earned his MFA in Creative historic recipes of Madame Begue’s Recipes of Old New the School of Foreign Languages, Writing at the University of New Orleans. Orleans Creole Cookery, fi rst published in 1900. Poppy Central China Normal University hosts an award-winning weekly NPR-affi liated radio (Wuhan). He is the author of The Katy Simpson Smith was born and show, “Louisiana Eats!” and published a book by the Katrina Papers: A Journal of Trauma raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She is same name in 2013, which won the Literary Award of and Recovery (2008), The China Lectures: African the author of We Have Raised All of the Year by the LA Library Association. Her most recent American Literary and Critical Issues (2014), You: Motherhood in the South, book is Tujague’s Restaurant Cookbook, Recipes and Lore and Fractal Song: Poems (2016). His essays and poems 1750-1835, and the novels The Story in the Grand Creole Tradition. have been published in many magazines and anthologies. of Land and Sea and Free Men. Her His work-in-progress is Reading Race Reading America, writing has also appeared in The Oxford Ameri- Pamela Tyler, a native of Georgia, a collection of essays. can, Granta, Literary Hub, Garden & Gun, and Len- holds a Ph.D. in history from Tulane ny. She lives in New Orleans. University. She is a member of the Katherine Weiss is a Professor of history department faculty at the English and Chair of the Department Michael Farris Smith is the University of Southern Mississippi, of Literature and Language at East award-winning author of Desperation where she teaches courses in U.S. Tennessee State University. Her Road, (a Barnes & Noble Discover women’s history and the history of the South since the accomplishments include an edited pick and an Indie Next selec- Civil War. Her book, Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes: student edition of Tennessee tion), Rivers (2014 Mississippi New Orleans Women and Politics 1920-1963, won the L. Williams’s Sweet Bird of Youth (Methuen Press, 2010) Author Award for Fiction), and The Kemper Williams Prize, given annually for best book in and A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Hands of Strangers. He has been awarded the Louisiana history. Williams (Bloomsbury, 2014). Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship, the Transatlantic Review Award for Adrian Van Young is the author of The Shaolu Yu is a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fiction, and the Alabama Arts Council Fellowship Man Who Noticed Everything, a Fellow in Urban Studies at Rhodes Award for Literature. His short fi ction has twice been collection of stories, and Shadows in College. Dr. Yu is an ur ban geographer nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and his essays have Summerland, a novel. His fi ction and whose current research interests appeared in the New York Times, Catfi sh Alley, Deep nonfi ction have appeared in The include Space and Place, Race and South magazine, and more. Collagist, Black Warrior Review, Ethnicity, Immigration, Urban Conjunctions, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Segregation, and Asian Urbanism. She is also interested Tia L. Smith joined the Mass Slate, VICE, The Believer, and The New Yorker, among in applying Geographical Information Science in Communication Department at others. He received a Henfi eld Foundation Prize and has visualizing and analyzing spatial data. Her current Xavier University in 2015 as twice been nominated for the Pushchart Prize. He lives in projects “The Mississippi Chinese Heritage Trail” and Department Head. Smith has trained New Orleans with his wife Darcy and son Sebastian. “Chinese Churches in Memphis” attempt to complicate journalists and media professionals the dichotomous narrative between black and white in throughout the Caribbean and Latin Kim Vaz-Deville is associate dean of the American South. America on covering taboo topics such as child sexual the College of Arts and Sciences at abuse, domestic violence, and human traffi cking. Her Xavier University of Louisiana. Her Michael Allen Zell’s fi rst play, What research interests focus on intersections of gender, book, The ‘Baby Dolls’: Breaking the Do You Say To A Shadow?, was named media, and sexual culture. Dr. Smith has lived and Race and Gender Barriers of the New one of the Top 10 Plays of the Year in worked in diverse cultural and learning environments Orleans Mardi Gras Tradition (LSU 2013 by The Times- Picayune. His fi rst in the United States, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Brazil, Press, 2013) was the basis for The Louisiana State novel, Errata, was named one and Trinidad and Tobago, giving her fi rst-hand Museum Presbytere’s 2013 exhibition “They Call Me of The Times-Picayunes’s Top 10 knowledge of the sensitive nature and challenges Baby Doll: A Mardi Gras Tradition”. The ‘Baby Books of 2012. He is two books into the Bobby Delery associated with issues of media, diversity and Dolls’ was the 2016 selection of the Young Leadership series of New Orleans crime fi ction/social novels. Zell has 38 inclusiveness. Council’s program, One Book One New Orleans. worked as a bookseller in New Orleans since 2003. 38 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival LCV for TWF 2017 Half.qxp 1/26/17 8:20 AM Page 1

26 Years, 9,088 pages, 551 writers, 138 awards Get to know Louisiana.

Subscribe to Louisiana Cultural Vistas, the quarterly magazine of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, principal sponsor of the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival. A one-year subscription is $20/4 issues and a two-year subscription is $35/8 issues. Get to know your history today! To subscribe, visit www.knowlouisiana.org or call 504-620-2630.

Follow us: facebook/KnowLouisiana @KnowLouisiana