When you buy a concession item or donate to our $10 for 10^th Anniversary campaign during the 10th Anniversary Festival, you’ll be automatically entered for our raffle prize. Act now to win:

• $500 VIP All-Access Pass to the 2014 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival (March 19-23, 2014)
• All-Access Pass to 2014 Saints and Sinners
• A grab bag of books, tote bag, and Saints and Sinners t-shirt

Winner to be announced at our closing reception on Sunday, May 26.

Copy to come

The Festival is almost here! Here’s some need-to-know information about checking in, picking up passes, and purchasing tickets. Looking forward to seeing everyone soon.

If you have pre-purchased a ticket:

• If you have purchased a Weekend Panel Pass, Master Class ticket, Saturday Day Pass, Sunday Day Pass, Reading Series Pass, or walking tour ticket, report to the Registration/Information table at the Hotel Monteleone, Royal Salon A. You will be given your passes/tickets and should show them to the door attendant at the appropriate sessions.
• If you purchased a ticket to the walking tour on Friday, please meet in the lobby of the Hotel Monteleone 10 minutes before the tour begins.
• If you purchased tickets for the Book Launch Party/Fundraiser or Glitter with the Literati Party, your name will be on a guest list at the door.
• Seating is general admission to all events.

Please note that online sales will CLOSE on Tuesday, May 21 at noon (CST). 

To purchase tickets onsite during the Festival:

• The box office will be open from 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. beginning Friday, May 24. It is located at the  Royal Salon A at the Hotel Monteleone. When registering onsite, you will receive a paper ticket to give to the door attendant at the session. 

Michael Montlack is the author of the poetry book Cool Limbo and the editor of the essay anthology My Diva, which was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. He is the recipient of residencies/scholarships from VCCA, Ucross, Lambda Literary Foundation, Tin House and Squaw Valley. His newest release is Divining Divas, the poetry follow-up to My Diva.

Come see Michael at the Poetry Panel: Intro to Bodybuilding (Saturday, May 25 at 1:00 p.m.) and the Diva Reading Panel (Saturday May 25 at 4:00 p.m.) at the 10th Anniversary Festival!

Can you remember the first time you wrote a poem? How did it begin?
My first “serious” poem was called “Cover Charge,” which is in my collection Cool Limbo. I wrote that while backpacking through Europe, at age 24 or 25, on a train in Italy. The poem was about my first experiences going to gay bars after I came out, how they often were so dark, almost as if lit to conceal identities, like back rooms. Being young and wanting so badly to make my first gay friends, it bothered me that many places seemed built to cruise more than to socialize and I wondered if that was residue from our history of being in the closet. The poem began with imagery of shoes — all kinds: boots, sneakers, loafers — as they were often more visible in the angled lights than faces were.

I can’t remember writing my first poem specifically. Though before my mother passed a few years ago, she found a report card from my second grade teacher praising my writing, as well as an award from the local library for a story telling contest. I don’t remember that contest but can remember loving writing in class, as far back as second grade. All through junior high and high school I wrote what I called lyrics, many of them narrative, mostly because I didn’t know a lot about poetry and hadn’t realized that was what I was writing.

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Your poetry seems to keep humor close to its heart. We are often given a humorous image, or some kind of wordplay that entertains as much as it informs.
I grew up in a home where sarcasm (or humor) was a form of affection. I am a huge fan of comedy, especially female comics, and attend shows regularly. I think, as one of my favorite poets Edward Field put it at a reading once, wisdom is most easily imparted through humor. He was referring to his own work and to how Judaism teaches. I don’t think myself wise or religious at all. So it’s more of an automatic mode for me and a form of inspiration. It’s the way I see. I try to balance the poignant with the funny to avoid sentimentality, and just to entertain, too.

If you couldn’t be a writer, what would you do to support yourself?
I’d be a photographer, I think. I see my poems as portraits in words. I minored in photography as an undergrad and can see the influence it has had on my poetry.

That influence certainly shows in your latest book, Divining Divas. You’ve essentially edited an anthology of portraits, drawn by poets, of some of history’s most iconic divas.
Yes. Odes, if you will, to the divas. Originally, I collected poems AND essays at the same time for My Diva but immediately saw that they were separate books. The essays needed to be on their own as the poems broke their rhythm, and vice versa. The first anthology was so well recieved in reviews and at events (as well as being a Lambda Finalist), that it made sense to follow up with more of a good thing. Whereas My Diva had 65 essays, Divining Divas had room for 100 poems, and somehow even more diversity with additions to the roster like Oprah, Greta Garbo, Miss Piggy, Gertrude Stein, Frida Kahlo, Alice in Wonderland, Lady Gaga, even Jerri Blank (played by Amy Sedaris) of Strangers with Candy. There were more divas who needed their props and the poets needed to have their turn to do it.

Does writing get easier the longer you do it?
It depends. Some poems come easier and faster than others. I find it helpful to sit on a draft for a while, not looking at it for a couple days or weeks, then coming back to it to revise. Sharing poems with writer friends and workshopping are always helpful. I used to have to cut out a lot in drafts. So my poems would be there on the page and just needed editing. My MFA program helped me to realize that so I write more concisely now, even in drafts.

I finished a draft of my first novel recently, a YA novel. I enjoyed drafting it. Now that it is done and revised and I am about to send it off to agents and publishers, my concerns are more about commercialism and marketing … things I never had to bother worrying about in poetry.

Limited volunteer slots available!

We’ve lined up our who’s who of LGBT publishers, writers and readers, but we’re still looking for the real stars of the show: our volunteers! As a non-profit organization, we depend on our volunteers to help us ensure that the weekend’s festivities run smoothly. Without their generosity, we would not be able to pull it all off.

Please consider signing up for a volunteer slot; your helping hand will be invaluable to us. We’ll need:

• Ticket takers, site managers, and assistants for the panels, master classes, and special events

• Assistants at our box office staff/information desk/concessions

As a token of gratitude for your time and effort, we will offer you a free weekend panel pass ($150 value), which allows access to events featuring Dorothy Allison, Bernard Cooper, Greg Herren, Andrew Holleran, Justin Torres, Summer Wood, and many more.

All we ask is that you commit to working a shift of 4-5 hours during the Festival. And please spread the word on our behalf!

Sign yourself up for a slot on our online sign-up form where you will “order” the time slot during which you will volunteer. If there is an event you’d especially like to see, please DO NOT sign up to volunteer during that shift, as we cannot guarantee the venue where you will be assigned.

Once you sign up, your shift is your responsibility. Check in 10 minutes before your shift begins in the Royal Salon A at the Hotel Monteleone.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions. We look forward to working alongside you during the weekend of the Festival!

We’re counting down the days until our 10th Anniversary Festival! We’re excited to announce several new, can’t-miss events to our already jam-packed schedule. Read on for full descriptions, and then check out the rest of our schedule to start planning your weekend.

There’s still time to buy tickets online. Online tickets will be available until Tuesday, May 21 at noon (CST). If you don’t purchase tickets before the Festival, you can still get them at our box office at the Hotel Monteleone, Royal Salon A during the Festival, Friday through Sunday, 9 AM to 5 PM. All tickets are available for sale at this location, provided that the event has not already sold out.

See you soon!

Help us document our 10th Anniversary Festival! Send us your best photos capturing the spirit of the #SASFest13 weekend. The saint or sinner with the best Festival-themed photo will win a free ticket to the next Saints and Sinners event, a Festival gift bag, and a shout-out via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

Guidelines:

• Entries will be accepted from 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 23^rd until noon on Sunday, May 26^th.
• You may enter as many photos as you wish.
• All photos must be emailed to SASFestival@gmail.com. Photos may be attached or set in the body of the email.
• Photos must be in .JPG format. No other format will be accepted.
• The email subject line must be “#SASFest13 Photo Contest.”
• The body of the email must include your name, contact information, and a brief caption of the photo.
• No sexually explicit or otherwise inappropriate photos will be accepted.
• Photos must be taken at the 2013 Saints and Sinners Literary Festival.

We can’t wait to see what you come up with! Good luck!

With only 3 weeks until the 10^th Anniversary Saints and Sinners LGBT Literary Festival starts, we are bursting with anticipation and wanted to share it with you. There is still time to register for a weekend pass, purchase tickets to the Thursday Night Book Launch Party, schedule a Literary Walking Tour of the French Quarter or register for a Master Class. If you haven’t become a member or participated in the $10 for the 10^th please consider doing so.

The tentative schedule is online, and ready for your perusal!  Here’s a sampling of the wonderful panels being offered this year:

YOUNG ADULT vs. NEW ADULT: THE COMPLICATIONS OF WRITING FOR TEENS AND TWEENS
Moderated by Ruth Sternglantz with Trebor Healey, Greg Herren, Sassafras Lowrey, and Jeffrey Ricker (pictured)
The genre of young adult fiction has been one of the few areas of publishing that has continually seen growth in the last decade, and queer fiction for teenagers has also grown significantly. The modern publishing world is a lot more welcoming to queer characters in young adult fiction, but it still makes some libraries and parents a little queasy. How much sex is too much sex? How much reality can go into fiction for teens? And what is this new category called “new adult”?

This panel sponsored by Louis Flint Ceci.

CLEANUP ON PAGE 23: THE ROLE OF EDITORS AND EDITING IN YOUR BOOK’S SUCCESS
Moderated by Michele Karlsberg with Jameson Currier, Michael Thomas Ford, Kelly Smith (pictured), and Ruth Sternglantz
Getting our work into the world is in many ways easier than ever before. But whether you self-publish or go the more traditional route, with so much of the focus being on publicizing and marketing our work, the crucial step of editing is often minimized or overlooked. This panel examines the importance of editing to the publication process and success of a book, and looks at the increasingly important role of freelance editors. We’ll talk about how to form a successful author/editor partnership, how to find an editor for your self-published project, and why all of this matters anyway.

STATE OF THE ART: LGBT WRITING PAST AND PRESENT
Moderated by Thomas Keith with Dorothy Allison, Andrew Holleran (pictured), Val McDermid, and Felice Picano
Where do LGBT writers fit in today’s publishing marketplace?  Prior to about 1960, very few authors identified as LGBT, then came decades of acknowledgement, openness, pride, and relief for authors and readers alike. Why do some lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender authors identify as LGBT while others do not? With their distinct talents, backgrounds, outlooks, and voices, these four acclaimed authors will discuss what the LGBT designation means to them — from breakthrough beginnings to present day success — in a conversation that also includes a look at today’s publishing environment, their sources of inspiration, their mentors, and some of their favorite younger authors today.

And as always you will have the opportunity to hear a large and diverse group of festival authors debut their latest works in our SAINTS AND SINNERS READING SERIES: WRITERS READ sponsored by The John Burton Harter Charitable Trust. Expect to be entertained, engaged and thrilled by the written word read out loud by authors.

Looking forward to seeing all of you in NOLA!

“No other city is like New Orleans, and no other writers conference is like Saints & Sinners. Where else can you bring beignets and chicory coffee from Café Du Monde to your morning panel on creating realistic murder scenes? Where else are you going to have crawfish etouffee while exchanging ideas with half a dozen other writers from all around the country over lunch between sessions? Where else can you take a vampire tour after the day’s events are over?

The magic of New Orleans enlivens everything about the conference, resulting in an atmosphere that recharges the creative batteries and reminds us why we love to write.

I’ve been going to conferences for more than 20 years, and never have I enjoyed them as much as I do when I’m at Saints & Sinners. The conversations with other writers outside of the sessions are just as informative and inspiring as the panel discussions and workshops, and the opportunity to spend time with writers from so many different genres makes this a completely unique experience you won’t get from any other conference.

When I come home from Saints and Sinners I’m always more excited about my work—and about the work of my fellow writers — than when I left, and I immediately start counting down the days to next year’s conference.”
—Michael Thomas Ford

Michael Thomas Ford has been nominated for eleven Lambda Literary Awards, twice winning for Best Humor Book and twice for Best Romance Novel. Ford began his writing career in 1992 with the publication of 100 Questions & Answers about AIDS: What You Need to Know Now, one of the first books about the AIDS crisis for young adults. Named an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, the book became the most widely-used resource in HIV education programs for young people and was translated into more than a dozen languages.

Elana Dykewomon has published seven award-winning books foregrounding lesbian heroism, including the classics Riverfinger Women, Beyond the Pale, and 2009?s Risk. A former editor of the international lesbian feminist journal Sinister Wisdom, she’s also a long-time cultural worker and social justice activist. In 2009 she received the Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists’ Prize at Saints & Sinners and is delighted to be back. Friendship is the current she swims in, while living happily in Oakland with her partner, Susan, and stirring up trouble whenever she can. She offers classes in writing from life experience and private editing on her website. For more info, visit www.dykewomon.org

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Who is your favorite author and why?
Monique Wittig, for her re-imaginings of form; Toni Morrison for her skill and grace with complexity; Louise Erdrich for teaching me how to use imagery; Muriel Rukeyser for the enormity and humor of her language; Gloria Anzaldúa for her ability to create light in the caverns of life by rubbing insights together and creating sparks.

Any poet I can turn to when I am restless and casting about whose lines soothe or encourage or teach or give me direction, from Rilke to Nikky Finney.

And, oh wait! Irena Klepfisz, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Wislawa Szymborska, Adrienne Rich, Jewelle Gomez, Dorothy Allison, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Pat Parker, Toni Mirosevich, Sherman Alexie, June Jordan, Grace Paley, Cheryl Clarke, Audre Lorde, Barbara Ruth…

How can we have a favorite, beyond a favorite for this minute when I sit in my chair and long to read x? (The revelation of what “x” is: something new! New to me, when it appears.)

What role do you believe Saints and Sinners plays in the LGBT writing community?
It’s one of the few places we can come together as writers to talk about our work, the nuts and bolts of it, the internal and external struggles of being a LGBT cultural worker. At Saints and Sinners we revel in the opportunity to hear folks from places we otherwise might not travel (in every sense), while having a hell of a good time.

What’s one thing you know now that you wish you’d know at the start of your career?
Not to take myself so seriously. And to take my career more seriously.

And by that I mean, in the first instance, that when we believed the “revolution was around the corner,” I, and many other young dykes, acted with the zeal of the newly illuminated, and took any divergence from our ideals as a personal affront. I still cleave to those ideals, but I have a lot more flexibility and patience now. And as for my career, I would have published more, with less conditions on the publishers and more focus on getting read, on participating even more in the lesbian conversations of my time.

Your Master Classes at the 10th Anniversary event will be “Reclaiming the Scene from Yourself”. Will you share with us what you think is the root cause of authors trapping themselves and derailing their stories with their own expectations?
Everyone’s root causes are different. But many of us have idealized our pasts and futures, the places we want to write about. We may have idealized certain forms of suffering; or a particular story that portrays a relationship dynamic exactly; or an act of heroism our character achieves at great peril. That is, we see our stories as serving a purpose. We are eager to get to that purpose (revenge, revealing truth, unearthing grief, burnishing our love until it gleams, proving the cosmic joke, exposing injustice). In our eagerness, we write right past a lot of the “good stuff:” the story below the story, the other senses we could access if we stopped to consider them. Even (or especially) the most practiced of us needs to stop in the middle of certainty and let everything we don’t know rush in – at least once in a while.

Candice Detillier Huber founded Fleur de Lit on March 30, 2012. Fleur de Lit is dedicated to promoting and endorsing the local New Orleans literary scene, from authors and small publishers to literary non-profits, libraries, and local book sellers. Its goal is to be your one-stop-shop for all things literary in the New Orleans metro area, and its mission is to provide free advertising and promotion for literary people and organizations that do not have the means to promote themselves. It’s not just your run-of-the-mill literary event listing site. Sure, you get that, but you also get to discover local authors, new books, cool bookish things, literary haunts, and the most interesting literary landmarks in New Orleans. The only thing Fleur de Lit likes as much as books, writing, and New Orleans is talking to other people about books, writing, and New Orleans. Check it out at www.fleurdelit.com.

Like on Facebook: www.facebook.com/fleurdelit

Follow on Twitter: @nolafleurdelit

The winner of the Fourth Annual Short Fiction Contest is “In a Chamber of My Heart” by Sandra Gail Lambert (pictured).

The two runner-ups (in alphabetical order) are “Sky Blue” by ‘Nathan Burgoine and “What Took You So Long?” by Vince Sgambati.

Our Finalists for the 2013 Saints & Sinners Short Fiction Contest (in alphabetic order) are:

• N.S. Beranek, “Thou Shalt Not Lie”
• ‘Nathan Burgoine, “Sky Blue” (Runner-up)
• George E. Jordan, “Looking for Philip”
• Sandra Gail Lambert, “In a Chamber of My Heart” (Winning story)
• Joe Landrum, “The Favour of a Reply”
• Anne Laughlin, “It Only Occurred to Me Later”
• Jeff Lindemann, “Bruno’s Last Supper”
• JR Greenwell, “Silver Pumps and a Loose Nut”
• James Russell, “Mountainview”
• Vince Sgambati, “What Took You So Long?” (Runner-up)
• Jim Stewart, “Bucky and the Woods-Cop”
• Karis Walsh, “Stained Glass”

All of the finalist stories will be included in the anthology Saints & Sinners: New Fiction from the Festival 2013 to be published by Bold Strokes Books and released at the Book Launch Party on May 23 to launch the 10^th anniversary festival. Tickets are available for the Book Launch Party with an evening of (complimentary) cocktails and readings from the anthology Saints and Sinners 2013: New Fiction from the Festival. All guests receive a copy of the book

We’d like to thank everyone who entered the Fourth Annual Saints and Sinners Short Fiction Contest. We’d also like to thank Felice Picano who served as our final judge and Bold Strokes Books for publishing this year’s collection. Finally, we are especially grateful to The John B. Harter Charitable Trust’s continued support of Saints and Sinners and LGBT Literature by sponsoring this contest.

We just wrapped up a successful Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival and will be turning our full attention to producing our 10th anniversary Saints and Sinners event. Our next newsletter will announce our panel and reading series schedule. We are working hard to include everyone that has expressed interest in participating. Looking forward to seeing you all in New Orleans in May. 

Tickets are available for our first LGBT literary walking tour in New Orleans that reveals, in an entertaining way, the culturally rich, vital and often hidden gay history of the Crescent City. Read more.

Date: Friday, May 24 at 3:00 p.m.
Duration: 2 hours
Price: $20

Congratulations to Fay Jacobs, our Hotel Monteleone winner. And thanks to everyone who became an Archangel member. We had our most successful membership campaign to date!

Ellen Hart is the author of 28 crime novels in two different series. She is a five-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery, a three-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Best Popular Fiction, a three-time winner of the Golden Crown Literary Award in several categories, a recipient of the Alice B Medal, and was made an official GLBT Literary Saint at the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans in 2005.

Why mystery? What drew you to writing crime novels?
I’ve always read mysteries. I believe that the element of mystery is central to all good stories. Because crime novels give that element center stage, they remain one of the most popular fictional forms. Mystery occurs in a novel any time a writer poses a question or establishes a threat that isn’t immediately answered.

Reading has always been central to my life. Because of that, and because of my interest in stories as vehicles for exploring ideas, human behavior, moral and ethical issues, humor, character — all the good stuff — writing a novel was something I knew I had to try. During my late thirties, four elements came together — a synchronicity of sorts. I had a job that gave me my summers off. A neighbor, a good friend and a professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Minnesota, had begun writing a mystery. When he finished, he offered it to me to read. I loved it. Another friend sent me a copy of Murder in the Collective, by Barbara Wilson, one of the first lesbian mysteries to be published, which, in a sense, gave me the permission I needed to write about my own life. And finally, I started reading P.D. James and ended up using her books as a tutorial — they taught me much about how to write a crime novel.

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What is one thing you have learned writing 28 novels that you wish someone had told you when you were working on the first draft of the first novel?
I guess it would be something like, “Don’t wait for the Muse to come sit on your shoulder.” A writer can’t wait for inspiration to strike. Not that inspiration doesn’t strike, but it doesn’t mean much if you aren’t sitting down, working. Discipline is everything, even if you aren’t trying to meet a deadline. I’ve been teaching creative writing for sixteen years. In that time, I’ve come across many fine writers. What I don’t know about them is whether these individuals have the discipline to complete the book, and that means multiple revisions, being willing to not only take, but hear criticism, to make the necessary changes to make the book the best it can be and then work with an editor to make it even better.

I was impressed to see that on your website www.ellenhart.com you have starting points for discussion for book groups who are reading your works and you offer up the options for you to attend book groups in person or over Skype. Could you share your philosophy behind these two items with our readers?
I think a writer has to try everything to reach readers. That being said, writers also have to be smart with their promotional efforts. I wish I had the money to travel to bookstores and libraries all over the country when I have a new book out. Alas, I don’t. One way to travel to book groups on a budget is through Skype. I hope this promotional tool grows in popularity because it’s really fun for everyone involved. Providing book group questions is a great starting point, especially for the person facilitating the discussion.

In the past, you have said your best advice to writers was to read, read, read. What are you currently reading and what is your all-time favorite book?
Let me take a little more time with this one. “Favorite” anything, whether we’re talking food, a movie, a novel, a piece of music — there are just too many.

I’m always reading multiple books. Right now, that would be:

• Outlaw Marriages: Rodger Streitmatter’s discussion of long-term gay and lesbian relationships in history.
• Death In The City Of Light: David King’s exploration of a serial killer in Paris during the German occupation in WWII. (I love true crime.)
• Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story: T.D. Max’s fine bio of David Foster Wallace. (I love biography.)
• Drift: Rachel Maddow’s fascinating take on the history of how the U.S. goes to war. (Also love history.)
• The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (I’m doing research on human consciousness for a book. I’m usually reading something about science or technology. )
• Michael Tolliver Lives: adore Armistead Maupin and the Tales of the City stories.

Favorite Book (if I must): The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien. (I think O’Brien is an alchemist with words.)

Favorite Mystery: The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Favorite Novel: The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

We’re thrilled to announce that novelist Ayana Mathis will be joining our Saints and Sinners lineup! Ayana’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie has won rave reviews from everyone from Marilynne Robinson to Oprah. The novel, which traces the lives of an African-American family through Great Migration and beyond, had us wowed. But just don’t take it from us. Upon choosing the book for her Book Club 2.0 selection, Oprah said, “I can’t remember when I read anything that moved me in quite this way, besides the work of Toni Morrison.” Ayana will speak to “finding your characters voice” and will participate in our reading series.  

We’d like to thank everyone who entered the 4^th Annual Saints and Sinners Short Fiction Contest. The entries were top-notch and the judges had a very difficult time narrowing down the field. We’d like to especially thank Felice Picano, our final judge, who is currently in the process of selecting the winner and two runner-ups. Look for the announcement of the winners in our next newsletter. We are especially grateful to The John B. Harter Charitable Trust’s continued support of our contest and the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival.

Our Finalists for the 2013 Saints & Sinners Short Fiction Contest are:

Nancy Beranek, “Thou Shalt Not Lie”
‘Nathan Burgoine, “Sky Blue”
George E. Jordan,“Looking for Philip”
Sandra Gail Lambert,“In a Chamber of My Heart”
Joe Landrum,“The Favour of a Reply”
Anne Laughlin,“It Only Occurred to Me Later”
Jeff Lindemann, “Bruno’s Last Supper”
J.R. Greenwell, “Silver Pumps and a Loose Nut”
James Russell, “Mountainview”
Vince Sgambati, “What Took You So Long?”
Jim Stewart, “Bucky and the Woods-Cop”
Karis Walsh,“Stained Glass”

Dorothy Allison will be facilitating a Master Class on Friday, May 24, at 1:30 PM as part of the 10^th Anniversary Saints and Sinners Festival programming.

DOROTHY ALLISON MASTER CLASS: A VOICE LIKE THUNDER, A TEXT IN WHISPERS
Let’s talk frankly about the performance aspect of reading off the page. What if you are a better reader than you are a writer? Can performance become a part of the craft? Is there a set of rules and exercises that help make this process more useful? Can performative aspects detract from the written work? How do you train yourself to use performance to improve the work on the page? Is performance necessarily a lesser work? Finally, are there ways to write out verbal expressions that enliven performance but seem awkward or obscure on the page? These are just a few of the things we will cover in my workshop on the performative aspects of writing.

Dorothy Allison received mainstream recognition with her novel Bastard Out of Carolina, a finalist for the National Book Award. The novel won the Ferro Grumley prize, became a best seller, and an award-winning movie. Her second novel, Cavedweller became a national bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, finalist for the Lillian Smith prize, and an ALA prize winner. In 2003, Lisa Cholendenko directed a movie version featuring Kyra Sedgwick. Awarded the 2007 Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction, Allison is a member of the board of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her new novel, She Who, is forthcoming. For more information, visit dorothyallison.net

We had the opportunity to catch up with Dorothy who has been a long-time supporter of the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival.

Q: As someone who has attended numerous Saints and Sinners, why do you think the festival is important to the LGBT writing community?
Allison: Sometimes, after reading the work of young authors in a workshop, I find myself asking them ‘who do you write for?  Who do you write to?’ Some answer me immediately—my daddy, my mama, my first lover, the preacher who scared me so badly when I was thirteen. But some just stare at me, not knowing how important the question actually is. Of course, we write for ourselves. Of course. But even making notes in a journal or commenting anonymously on some blog, we have an observer in the back of our heads—a reader, a witness. It is that witness that shapes the work—focuses it or, now and then, pushes us past what we are first willing to share. Tell me the truth, that reader/witness demands. Say what you fear. Say what you love. Tell me something no one else has ever told me. Out of that demand comes the best work—the richest most revealing narratives, what we never imagined we could share but discover in the writing.

That witness/reader is not always trustworthy. Sometimes the demand scares us too deeply and we cannot rise to the challenge—not immediately anyway.  But it is those nagging demands that we circle back to over and over that take us into stories that might change everything, that might use all of us, and by taking us so far into our fear or desire—show us who we really are, or can be.

One must create that witness, cultivate that imaginary reader, seek out that audience.  The community to which we address ourselves is shaped over our whole lifetime—and it is that community that takes us to our best selves as writers, as readers of other writers and as members of an often misunderstood or misrepresented minority.  For me that murmur of voices, that eye and ear and heart has always been shaped in part by exposure to audiences like those that come to Saints and Sinners. I write for them, toward them—those widely read, demanding individuals who will not let me shrug off my responsibilities, my fears or my great aching hopes.  Not all of them write, but all of them read. All of them push me to my best work.

Q: What are you currently reading for fun?  
Allison: Poetry.

Just read The Gift of Tongues, the anthology of work done at Copper Canyon over the last twenty-five years—like reading history, but better. Wonderful, wonderful work.

Q: If you could only share one thing with an emerging author, what would it be?
Allison: Be afraid but don’t let it stop you. And take revenge.  At its best revenge becomes justice. At its worst it is at least small compensation—and those you hurt on the page can always come back on another page.

Q: Your Master Classes at the 10th Anniversary event will be “A Voice Like Thunder, A Text in Whispers”.  In your opinion, what role does performance play in the toolbox of the author?
Allison: Performance at its best in the realization of the connection between the artist and the audience. One hears and feels the response immediately—the indrawn breaths of genuine engagement, the rustling that signals a loss of attention—or in some cases the shouts or whispers of the congregation testifying to the resonance of the work in their own lives. It sidesteps the delay inherent in publishing. 

More importantly, performance is a complicated tool—a razor sharp way to focus your energy and insights but also a constant hazard.  You can caricature yourself and your people just as easily as you can make them breathtakingly real and vulnerable.  Each individual writer must find their own way into the actualization made possible by performance—while avoiding the pitfalls.

We truly have a special line-up of icons, rising stars, and new and diverse voices from the LGBT literary world. Here’s a sampling of the authors that will be sharing their knowledge and experience for what promises to be an informative and entertaining weekend: Dorothy Allison, Ellen Hart, Andrew Holleran, Ayana Mathis, Val McDermid, Felice Picano, Justin Torres. 

Check our complete list of scheduled events (to date), then purchase a weekend panel pass today! The weekend panel pass ($150) gets you a ticket our welcome reception on Friday night at the historic Hermann Grima House, entry to all literary panel discussions and readings, and a closing reception with free spirits at the top of the Monteleone, a literary landmark hotel and the tallest building in the French Quarter.

In the spirit of love, now through February 18, receive a 20% discount by entering the coupon code CUPID during checkout. This discount is not combinable with other deals.

Whether this message reaches you in sunny Sarasota, snowy Boston, or right here in New Orleans – we at the Saints & Sinners LGBT Literary Festival wish you all the best for the new year. We can’t wait to see you in 2013 at the 10^th Anniversary Saints & Sinners celebration!

Our team has been hard at work assembling a stellar lineup for our 2013 celebration of LGBT writing. In this newsletter, you’ll find deals on lodging for Fest guests and an interview with one of our 2013 speakers. The interview is a new and exciting regular installment for newsletters leading up to our 10^th Anniversary Festival. In this newsletter, we’ve chosen to highlight Sassafras Lowrey, whose new novel Roving Pack grapples with themes of LGBT homelessness.

Stay tuned for more information from the Saints & Sinners team as we move closer to the date of our 2013 celebration. In our next newsletter, we will feature Festival updates and panel discussion topics, as well as an interview with Justin Torres, author of We the Animals which the New York Times lauded as “the kind of sensitive, carefully wrought autobiographical first novel that may soon be extinct from the mainstream publishing world.”

Sassafras Lowrey is a queer international award winning author, artist, storyteller and educator. Ze believes that everyone has a story to tell, and that the telling of stories is essential in the creation of social change. In 2004 In Other Words Feminist Bookstore honored hir as one of the top emerging writers in the Portland Oregon area. In 2009 and 2012 GO Magazine honored hir as one of the ‘top 100 women we love, and in 2010 Sassafras received an Honorable Mention from the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund for Fiction. Sassafras is the editor of the two time American Library Association honored, and Lambda Literary Finalist Kicked Out anthology released in 2010. Kicked Out brought together the voices of current and former homeless LGBTQ youth from around the country. Sassafras’ debute novel Roving Pack will be released in autumn 2012 and ze is currently editing Leather Ever After, a BDSM retelling of fairy tales.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to a writer who is just starting out?
The best piece of advice I’ve ever been given about writing, is to write the most dangerous story you can. Writing is a time for edge play. I fundamentally believe, that there is a story only you can tell and we as a community, as a world need for you to tell it.  The other main piece of advice I can give is to answer calls for submissions, send your work to editors and work to get your work into as many people’s hands as possible. You will get rejections — we all do, all the time. But, if you’re not sending put work you’ll also never get published.

Read more

Both your novel, Roving Pack, and the recent anthology you edited, Kicked Out, deal with issues around LGBT homeless youth. How did you first become aware and passionate about this topic?
I’m not someone who grew up writing — I started writing as a teenager in the weeks and months following having been kicked out of my family’s home. Three days after I was kicked out I went to the public library in my county and looked at every book shelved under “homosexuality.” I was looking for answers, looking for solutions for how I was going to live through this, but I found noting. I promised myself that day in the library that if I survived, I would make a book so no other queer kid would ever feel as alone as I felt in that moment. It was about ten years later and with a tremendous amount of community support that Kicked Out was born, and now Roving Pack. More than homelessness specifically, what as an author I’m most interested in, and what factors heavily into my writing is the idea of queer family. I’m interested creating space for the depiction of the queer kinship networks we create to raise ourselves up, and care for one another in the forced or chosen absence of biological family.

On your website, www.pomofreakshow.com, you talk about the “transformative power of storytelling for marginalized queer communities”.  Would you share your thoughts and ideology on how telling our stories can impact us as a community?
The guiding philosophy in my work is the idea that everyone has a story to tell, and that telling our stories essential in the creation of social change. I believe there is a particular power in storytelling for marginalized queer folks. In part what I mean by this is about exploring the ways in which our lives, bodies, families are not just misrepresented but actually absent in most areas of the media.  We fail to exist unless we write our stories, unless we insist that our truths be heard. The most powerful experience I’ve had as an author are the letters, emails, and Facebook messages from readers who read one of my books and saw their queer community come to life and for a few pages didn’t feel so alone. It is my hope that my books will inspire others to write their own stories.

What is your favorite book?
Oh! That’s a really hard question. I’m not sure that I can pick just one — a few of my favorite books that really influenced me have been: Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues,  Taste This’s Boys Like Her, and Diane Dimassa’s Hothead Paisan: Homocidal Lesbian Terrorist.

Our new friends at Country Inn & Suites by Carlson and Bon Maison Guest House have partnered with the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival to offer discounts on lodging for attendees. You can also stay at our original (2003) host hotel, The Olivier House. (pictured, left to right: The Olivier House, Country Inn & Suites, Bon Maison)

• The Olivier House is offering a standard room for $109 or a junior suite for $149. Call them at (504) 525-8456 or visit them at olivierhousehotel.com. (828 Toulouse Street)
• Country Inn & Suites is offering rooms for $155 per night. Call them at 1-800-830-5222, or visit them online at countryinns.com. (315 Magazine Street, historic downtown hotel within walking distance to the French Quarter)
• Bon Maison is offering their “Slave Quarter” room at $115 per night, and their “Victorian Suite” at $160 per night. Call them at (504) 561-8498, or visit them online at bonmaison.com. (835 Bourbon Street)

Those who donate to the Festival before February 7, 2013 will be automatically entered in a drawing for a four-night stay at our host hotel, the Hotel Monteleone. It’s been said that the French Quarter begins at the steps of this historic literary hub.

Participate in our 10 for the 10^th promotion, or become a member at any level to be entered. This 4-night, $800 value is complete with the Monteleone’s two award-winning restaurants, the famed rotating Carousel Bar (a Tennessee Williams favorite), and myriad of Saints & Sinners events taking place in the hotel’s spaces, just floors below your room.

Thank you to our many Archangels who have already contributed to the Festival — without your generosity, our celebration of LGBT writers’ contributions to the American literary landscape would not be possible. And if you’re thinking of contributing to this year’s festival, don’t wait! Your generosity — yes, yours — is the driving force behind our events and success. Join the list of names below as a donor now — contribute to the oldest LGBT event of its kind in the United States.

As Dorothy Allison, National Book Award finalist for Bastard Out of Carolina and author of the critically acclaimed novel Cavedweller, put it best:

“Saints & Sinners is hands down one of the best places to go to revive a writer’s spirit. Imagine a gathering in which you can lean into conversations with some of the best writers and editors and agents in the country, all of them speaking frankly and passionately about the books, stories and people they love and hate and want most to record in some indelible way. Imagine a community that tells you truthfully what is happening with writing and publishing in the world you most want to reach. Imagine the flirting, the arguing, the teasing and praising and exchanging of not just vital information, but the whole spirit of queer arts and creating. Then imagine it all taking place on the sultry streets of New Orleans’ French Quarter. That’s Saints & Sinners — the best wellspring of inspiration and enthusiasm you are going to find.”

Thank you to our donors who have already contributed to Saints & Sinners for our 10^th Anniversary Celebration:

Today is the last day to enter the Saints and Sinners LGBT Literary Festival’s Fourth Annual Short Fiction Contest. SAS Fest is seeking original, unpublished short stories between 5,000 and 7,000 words with LGBT content on the broad theme of “Saints and Sinners.”

This contest would not be possible without a generous grant from The John Burton Harter Charitable Trust.

Judge: Felice Picano (pictured), author of Tales: From a Distant Planet and Art & Sex in Greenwich Village, will select the winning stories.

Prize: One grand prize of $250 and two second place prizes of $50 will be awarded. In addition, the top stories will be published in an anthology from Bold Strokes Books. There will also be a book release party and reading held during the 10th annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans May 23-26, 2013. A list of the top ten finalists will be posted on our website and in our e-newsletter.

Entry fee: $15 per story. There is no limit on the number of stories each author may enter.

Deadline: December 3, 2012 (postmark)

To enter by mail: download the entry form and send 2 copies of each story with a completed entry form and your $15 entry fee to

Saints and Sinners Short Fiction Contest
938 Lafayette Street, Suite 514
New Orleans, LA 70113

To enter online: Visit our Contest page to pay online and upload your story. One story per transaction please. To enter more than one story, please complete the online entry process for each story.

To whet your literary appetite, here’s a sampling of our 2013 speakers:

Dorothy Allison, Rob Byrnes, Bernard Cooper, Jameson Currier, Wayne Courtois, Jolie du Pre, Elana Dykewomon, Michael Thomas Ford, Trebor Healey, Ellen Hart, Greg Herren, Andrew Holleran, Marty Hyatt, Fay Jacobs, Daniel M. Jaffe, Michele Karlsberg, Thomas Keith, Susan Larson, Anne Laughlin, Sassafras Lowrey, Lee Lynch, Damon Marbut, Jeff Mann, Marianne K. Martin, David McConnell, Frank Perez, Felice Picano, J.M. Redmann, Brad Richard, Ron Suresha, Justin Torres, and Jess Wells, among others.

You can read about the rest of our speakers on our website. We’ll be updating as more are confirmed, so check back often!

(pictured: Trebor Healey, Susan Larson, Greg Herren, Jolie du Pre, Brad Richard, and Sassafras Lowrey)

Planning on attending? Let us know what panel topics you’d like to see as part of the 10^th anniversary program. A limited number of spots are available for the Saints and Sinners Reading Series. If planning to register and would like to read from your latest work, let us know soon!

We very much appreciate it when people get in touch wanting to help out with the Saints and Sinners Literary event.

Care to join? Here’s the top 10 ways that you can make our 10^th anniversary a truly special event:

10. Post the announcements about the 10^th anniversary Saints and Sinners Literary Festival and the 4^th annual Short Fiction Contest on Facebook, your web page, and other appropriate venues. Forward them to other writers you know that might be interested. And follow us on Facebook and Twitter for Festival updates.

9. Enter an original story in the 4^th annual Short Fiction Contest.

8.  Participate in our special $10 or the 10^th promotion. Each $10 donation (unlimited per person) is entered into a drawing for a four-night stay at the Hotel Monteleone during the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. Winner of the hotel stay to be announced on Friday, February 8^th.

7.  If you have an upcoming reading or are a member of a book club or writers group, we can send you some save the date postcards that you can distribute.

6. Are you a member of a book club? Suggest a title by one of our participating authors to get people excited and aware of Saints and Sinners. You could recommend We the Animals by Justin Torres, or Ellen Hart’s newest Jane Lawless mystery Rest for the Wicked. Or you might want to try a classic such as Like People in History by Felice Picano, Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran, or Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison.

5. If you’ve attended Saints and Sinners in the past, send us a quote about your experience. Maybe you met an editor who was interested in your newest project and subsequently published your work. Describe a master class session that helped you with your writing or how attending might have energized you. Testimonials make for compelling event marketing, grant proposals, and sponsorship proposals.

4. Help us identify a new sponsor or advertisers for the Festival program. Full and half page ads are very affordable and can include opportunities to distribute information at our registration table, as well as include tickets to the various events. If interested in advertising for yourself or if you have an organization in mind that you would like to contact on our behalf, please get in touch with Paul at saintandsinnola@aol.com and we can come up with a sponsorship/advertising proposal to help seal the deal.

3. Help us publicize the 10^th anniversary. Get in touch with Paul at saintandsinnola@aol.com if you have access to write an article for any publications, have contacts where we could get free advertising and/or editorial coverage, or if you’d like a copy of a press release that you could send out to interested writers and book clubs.

2. Become a Saints and Sinners’ Archangel Member at any level that is appropriate for you. All members are entered to win hotel stay during Saints and Sinners at the Hotel Monteleone, our host hotel and sponsor in the French Quarter.

1. Take advantage of our early registration discount good through December 1, and join us for a special Memorial Day weekend filled with literary revelry in the French Quarter.

Register early and save 20% off your weekend panel pass registration and any ticketed events you purchase, including the 4^th Annual Short Fiction Contest book launch party and reading, our new LGBT literary walking tour of the French Quarter, Master Classes, and partner/guest welcome party tickets.

TO RECEIVE THE DISCOUNT: Simply enter this coupon code during checkout to receive 20% off your tickets: SAS2013

Early registration discounts end December 3, 2012.

Tickets available for early registration include:

• Thursday, May 23: Book Launch Party/Fundraiser ($35)
• Friday, May 24: Weekend Panel Pass Registration ($150)
• Friday, May 24: Master Classes ($25 for each selection/two per time period to choose from)
• Friday, May 24 at 3:00 p.m.: Saints and Sinners Walking Tour ($20, 2 hours)
• Friday, May 24 at 6:30 p.m.: Glitter with the Literati (included in the weekend panel pass) Guest tickets $25

Weekend panel pass registration includes admittance to the following events at the 10^th Anniversary Festival Celebration: access to all of the panels and readings on Saturday and Sunday, the welcome party on Friday night and the closing reception on Sunday. Enhance your Festival experience by adding tickets to the additional events like our first ever literary walking tour and the book launch party.

If you have any questions, please call our office at 504.581.1144 or email Paul at pjwillisnola@aol.com

Can’t wait to see you in May!

The 10^th anniversary Saints and Sinners Literary Festival opens with an evening of (complimentary) cocktails and readings from the anthology Saints and Sinners 2013: New Fiction from the Festival. At this book launch party to benefit the Festival and the NO/AIDS Task Force, finalists from the 4th Annual Short Fiction Contest will read from their creative works. All guests receive a copy of the book — published by Bold Strokes Books — and can be the first to sample the anthology’s Saints and Sinners-themed stories.

Ticket Code: BookLaunchTh7pm
Date: Thursday, May 23 at 7:00 p.m.
Price: $35
Location: Bienbille/Iberville Room, Mezzanine Level, Hotel Monteleone

The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival’s literary program opens with a series of Master Classes by leading authors. Each session is 1 hour and 15 minutes with a lively give-and-take between audience and facilitators. Authors will sign books.

This year’s slate includes:

10:00 a.m.
ELANA DYKEWOMON: RECLAIMING THE SCENE FROM YOURSELF
Ticket Code: MCDykewFr10am
Price: $25
Location: Royal B, Hotel Monteleone
In both memoir and fiction we often have a clear vision of what will happen when we start to write a scene.  We are sometimes trapped by our own expectation of what should, would or did happen in the scenes we create. Instead of allowing them to unfold naturally, we try to force them into our “fixed” idea of what they should be. This is because we think we “know” what happened and what we want to show. Elana Dykewomon, author of seven award-winning books, will lead this workshop in exploring the various ways to reclaim your scene from your own expectations. Bring your preferred writing implements.

10:00 a.m.
FELICE PICANO: TRUE STORIES OR TRUE LIES?
Ticket Code: MCPicanoFr10am
Price: $25
Location: Royal CD, Hotel Monteleone
Crafting autobiography seems like a cinch, after all, it’s your life, isn’t it? Until you find yourself asking ”Wait! Did that really happen?” and “Did it really happen that way?” and “Can I really tell that story?” and “Will I be sued–beaten up–lose my license, passport,(fill in the blank) if I tell this story truthfully?” Felice Picano, author of five memoirs including 2011 prize winner, True Stories: Portraits From My Past, has faced all of these issues and more and will open up to you about how to face and deal with them.

11:30 a.m.
JESS WELLS: THEME IS WHERE THE ART LIVES
Ticket Code: MCWellsFr1130am
Price: $25
Location: Royal B, Hotel Monteleone
Go from a wordsmith to an artist by understanding the key role that theme plays in your fiction. Deft handling of theme and it’s multiple facets is what drives plot, characterization, setting, in short…it’s the key to making art. Work with Jess Wells on identifying the theme in your work, crafting the “only to discover that” moment in your plot/story-arc/characterization, and the way to make your characters the embodiment of theme.

11:30 a.m.
JUSTIN TORRES: CLOSE TO THE BONE—WRITING FICTION FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
Ticket Code: MCTorreFr1130am
Price: $25
Location: Royal CD, Hotel Monteleone
We will have a conversation about the transformation of personal experience into fiction. How do we achieve distance? What are the ethical challenges? How do we balance our desire to protect loved ones with our writerly instincts: exposure, invention, drama? Why choose fiction over memoir? What does fiction offer? I’ll talk a bit about my own experience writing and publishing, but this class will take the form of a discussion, not a lecture.

1:30 p.m.
DOROTHY ALLISON: A VOICE LIKE THUNDER, A TEXT IN WHISPERS
Ticket Code: MCAllisoFr130pm
Price: $25
Location: Royal CD, Hotel Monteleone
Let’s talk frankly about the performance aspect of reading off the page. What if you are a better reader than you are a writer? Can performance become a part of the craft? Is there a set of rules and exercises that help make this process more useful? Can performative aspects detract from the written work? How do you train yourself to use performance to improve the work on the page? Is performance necessarily a lesser work? Finally, are there ways to write out verbal expressions that enliven performance but seem awkward or obscure on the page? These are just a few of the things we will cover in my workshop on the performative aspects of writing.

1:30 p.m.
BERNARD COOPER: SUDDEN FICTION
Ticket Code: MCCooperFr130pm
Price: $25
Location: Royal B, Hotel Monteleone
Variously labeled Sudden Fiction, Flash Fiction, Micro-Fiction, and Short-Shorts, a very brief form of the traditional short story has been practiced by American writers since the 1960s. This form of the traditional short story has been practiced by some of our most important and exciting contemporary writers, including John Cheever, Donald Barthelme, Tobias Wolff, Mary Robison, Raymond Carver, and Lydia Davis. How does a writer compress narrative into a precise, distilled form that has the impact of a much larger story? Join Bernard Cooper’s master class to find out.

3:00 p.m.
ANDREW HOLLERAN: NOT JUST THE FACTS
Ticket Code: MCHolleranFr3pm
Price: $25
Location: Royal CD, Hotel Monteleone
Getting it right in a non-fiction piece isn’t just about telling the story exactly as it happened. The best creative non-fiction takes its readers on an odyssey before coming back home to its central argument, and writers of non-fiction need to walk a delicate line between staying true to the facts and creating a compelling narrative. In this Master Class, you’ll learn from respected writer and original Violet Quill member, Andrew Holleran about the importance of pace and selection of detail. Using Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood as a model, Holleran explains how the best non-fiction blends the novel’s arc with journalism’s factual rigor to keep readers turning page after page.

3:00 p.m.
ELLEN HART: IT’S ALL JUST FORMULA — OR IS IT?
Ticket Code: MCHartFr3pm
Price: $25
Location: Royal B, Hotel Monteleone
You might think mysteries have a formula, but we all know that the best mystery writing offers the pleasures of keeping the reader guessing. Ellen Hart leads us through the intricacies of plotting, hooking the reader from the get-go, and immersing yourself in your story. She’ll demonstrate how the best writers play by the rules, yet bend them to make the form their own.

One of the world’s largest independent publishers of LGBTQ literature will be hearing pitches at Saints and Sinners. Bold Strokes Books editor Ruth Sternglantz is taking appointments for 10-minute meetings on Friday, May 24, from noon-1pm. The full spectrum of LGBTQ general and genre fiction (including YA) welcome. Email resternglantz@gmail.com to request an appointment and to learn more. For more information about Bold Strokes Books, check their website: www.boldstrokesbooks.com

NEW WORKSHOP ADDED!

Date: Friday, May 24 at 1:30 p.m.
Location: Cabildo Room, Hotel Monteleone
Price: Free to any interested Saints and Sinners participants

Timothy J. Lambert and Becky Cochrane will offer guidance and discussion about polishing, submitting, and revising your short fiction from the point of view of two editors.

Lambert and Cochrane have been on both sides of the writer/editor relationship. Between them, they’ve had nine novels and numerous short stories published, and they’ve edited three anthologies of short fiction. They’ll offer insights on what editors look for and ideas on how to get your short fiction to readers.

Please contact: timothyjlambert@gmail.com if you plan to attend.

As part of the writing team Timothy James Beck, Timothy J. Lambert wrote five novels. He also co-wrote The Deal and Three Fortunes in One Cookie with Becky Cochrane. His short stories were anthologized in Alyson’s Best Gay Love Stories 2005 and Best Gay Love Stories NYC Edition, as well as Lawrence Schimel’s The Mammoth Book of New Gay Erotica, and Foolish Hearts: New Gay Fiction. He selected stories and introduced Cleis Press’s Best Gay Erotica 2007, edited by Richard Labonté. With Becky Cochrane, he edited Cleis Press’s anthologies Fool For Love: New Gay Fiction (2009), Foolish Hearts: New Gay Fiction (2013), and Best Gay Romance 2014. Timothy has lived in Maine, New York City, and Texas.

Becky Cochrane grew up in the South, graduated from the University of Alabama, and now lives in Texas. She co-wrote five novels under the name Timothy James Beck, wrote two additional novels with Timothy J. Lambert, and has authored numerous short stories and two contemporary romances, A Coventry Christmas and A Coventry Wedding. With Timothy J. Lambert, sheco-edited Fool For Love: New Gay Fiction, Foolish Hearts: New Gay Fiction, and Best Gay Romance 2014.

SOLD OUT! The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival is excited to unveil the first and only LGBT literary tour in New Orleans that reveals, in an entertaining way, the culturally rich, vital and often hidden gay history of the Crescent City.

With your expert guide, stroll through the city’s fabled French Quarter and learn about its history from the 18^th century to today. Hear about key contributors to the cultural development of the city, including Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, Lyle Saxon, Walt Whitman, John Kennedy Toole, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Tony Jackson, George Dureau, and many others. Visit historically rich sites and explore fascinating topics, such as the tragic Upstairs Lounge fire, the origins of Gay Carnival, and the development of the modern gay rights movement in New Orleans. The two-hour tour also includes general New Orleans history and plenty of fun facts. Finish your walking tour with a visit to Café Lafitte in Exile, considered the oldest gay bar in the United States.

James Geraghty is a consultant specializing in cultural services and heritage tourism. A licensed tour guide, he provides walking tours through Historic New Orleans Tours, a Frommer’s Guide favorite since 1999. Before moving to New Orleans, James spent over a decade in the publishing industry, serving at Viking/Penguin and HarperCollins Publishers. Photo (c) Vanessa Murphree

Date: Friday, May 24 at 3:00 p.m.
Price: $20. SOLD OUT
Location: Tour will meet in the lobby of the Hotel Monteleone

Stories & Queer, a traveling reading series for queer and queer-friendly poets & writers, presents: Guy Mark Foster, Jacqueline Kolosov, and Emanuel Xavier.

Date: Friday, May 24 at 4:00 p.m.
Price: Free for all Saints and Sinners participants
Location: Crescent City Books, 230 Chartes Street, New Orleans, LA 70130

Guy Mark Foster has a BA from Wheaton College in Writing and Literature and a PhD in English from Brown University. He has published fiction in such places as Shadows of Love: American Gay Fiction, Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men, Ancestral House: The Black Short Story in the Americas and Europe, and Icarus 14: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction. His first collection, The Rest of Us: Stories, is recently published by Lethe Press. He lives with his partner in Southern Maine, where he teaches courses in African American Literature and Gay and Lesbian Studies at Bowdoin College.

Jacqueline Kolosov is an American poet, children’s book author, and professor. Her most recent collection of poetry is Modigliani’s Muse (WordTech Communications, 2009), and her most recent young adult novel is A Sweet Disorder (Hyperion Books, 2009). Her poetry has appeared in literary journals and magazines including The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Poetry, Passages North Orion, PRISM International, The Malahat Review, Ecotone, and Western Humanities Review, and her honors include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She was raised in and around Chicago and graduated from University of Chicago with a B.A. and an M.A., and from New York University with a Ph.D. She teaches currently at Texas Tech University.

Emanuel Xavier, an Equality Forum GLBT History Month Icon, Emanuel Xavier is an award-winning NYC based spoken word artist of Ecuadorian/Puerto Rican heritage best known for his appearances on Russell Simmons presents Def Poetry on HBO. As a former homeless gay teen, he has staged many benefits for queer youth and is a longtime activist. His poetic manifesto from 1997, Pier Queen, was officially published last year along with a revised edition of his poetry collection, Americano: Growing up Gay and Latino in the USA. He is also author of If Jesus Were Gay & other poems, the novel Christ Like and editor of Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry and Me No Habla With Acento: Contemporary Latino Poetry. His work also appears in the books For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Still Not Enough and Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing Up Gay based on the popular blog. His new poetry collection, Nefarious, will be published Fall 2013 by Rebel Satori Press.

For more info: www.storiesandqueer.org

Come to our welcome party and experience true Southern Hospitality in the beautiful courtyard of the Hermann-Grima House—a chance to meet the authors that will be speaking during the weekend as well as some of New Orleans’ colorful characters. There will be plenty of “spirits” along with tasty treats. Prior to the Civil War, prosperous Creole families enjoyed an elegant lifestyle in the Vieux Carre. Walk through this meticulously restored residence and experience the Golden Age of New Orleans. Built in 1831, Hermann-Grima House is one of the most significant residences in New Orleans. This handsome Federal mansion with its courtyard garden boasts the only horse stable and functional 1830s outdoor kitchen in the French Quarter.

Ticket code: GlitterFr630pm
Date: Friday, May 24 at 6:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m.
Price:  Admission included with Weekend Panel Pass. $25 for guest tickets.
Location: Hermann-Grima House, 820 Saint Louis Street.

Seven of the twenty-six contributors to the new anthology, Love, Christopher Street: Reflections of New York City, will read excerpts from their essays that involve revealing, intense, profound, funny, and personal reflections and span forty years of queer life in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Together these essays create an LGBT love letter to New York City from native New Yorkers, American transplants, and international writers. Hosted by editor Thomas Keith, readers include: Charles Rice Gonzalez, Martin Hyatt, Fay Jacobs, Michele Karlsberg, Val McDermid, Felice Picano, and Shawn Syms.

“One reads Love, Christopher Street to see how other people, like and unlike yourself, countered and endured and learned from New York, and that’s why this extremely varied anthology is always interesting and often moving. “
–Andrew Holleran, The Gay & Lesbian Review

Date: Saturday May 25^th / 7:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Location: Gallery Orange, 819 Royal Street
Price: $10 at the door, or included in the Weekend Panel Pass

Sidearm Gallery and St. Claude Arts District welcome author, artist, wizard, c. huilo c. and Teatro Jaguar Luna to New Orleans. In this theatrical adaptation of the book series, Tales of a Jaguar Magician, huilo invites us on the quest of a jaguar magician, Lolaboy, who meets several teachers to guide him through his trials. Each comes with a unique gift that Lolaboy may use to awaken others on the ailing Planet of Great Consciousness.

Travel beyond didactic prose or drab monologues, outside the normal paradigm and reconsider what is deemed to be a finite existence. As the keeper of masques Wizard Weezel proclaims, “every role we take guides us closer to the essence of the soul’s journey — to become realigned with the godself”.

Date: Saturday, May 25 at 9:00 p.m. & Sunday, May 26 at 7:00 p.m.
Location: Sidearm Gallery, 1122 St Roch Avenue, New Orleans, LA (504-701-5180).
Cost: $13 at the door. Limited seating; no one turned away for lack of funds.

Teatro Jaguar Luna has been presenting adaptations and dream theatre for almost two decades. c. huilo c. has inspired audiences for over two decades with installation and performance art around the globe.

“Vivid, fun, stunning” — NY Theatre
“Noble and Mercurial concept” — Philadelphia Gay News
“Mythmaker” — Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco

Books and original illustrations will be on sale at the gallery. For more information: www.jaguarmoonpress.com, www.jaguarlunart.com, www.deep-woods-art.com.

A lit-Bear-ary event during Saints & Sinners 2013

Date: Saturday, May 25th at 9:00-10:00 p.m.
Location: JohnPaul’s Bar, 940 Elysian Fields (to be confirmed)
Price: Free and open to the adult public.

Join us for a festive hour with a fun, furry group of authors reading their works from Bear Bones Books, the hairy arm of indy LGBTQ publisher Lethe Press, including readings from:

• David Bergman, contributor, Hibernation, and Other Poems
• ‘Nathan Burgoine, contributor, Hibernation, and Other Poems
• Lewis DeSimone, contributor, Hibernation, and Other Poems
• Daniel M. Jaffe, author, The Limits of Pleasure
• Jeff Mann, author of Desire & Devour and Fog
• Nick Mann, author and illustrator of Night Duty, and Other Stories
• Ron J. Suresha, editor of Hibernation, and Other Poems, reading from the newest BBB title, Bear City: The Novel
• Jerry L. Wheeler, editor of The Bears of Winter

Remember, giving $10 for the 10^th anniversary automatically enters you to win a free hotel stay at the Hotel Monteleone during the Festival.

Stay tuned: In late September we’ll make a special early registration announcement and post updates on our master classes and special events.</>

Thank you for your support, and we hope to see you next May!

“Any conference that tugs a frost-covered Minnesotan away from her Swedish meatballs and plunks her in the middle of the best jazz, and most decadent cuisine, and the finest writing the LBGT community has to offer, and at the same time allows her to rub shoulders with publishers, reviewers, writers, and passionate, articulate readers, is a conference to embrace. Saints and Sinners is, hands down, my favorite convention of the year.”

—Ellen Hart, Five-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery

Our home base in the French Quarter of New Orleans offers a singular environment to an equally singular Festival. New Orleans has served as the muse to some of America’s most prolific writers.

Even our new host hotel, the Hotel Monteleone, is an official Literary Landmark – eternalized by Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway in their writing and their personal trips to the Crescent City. While at the hotel for the Festival, why not stop by the famed Carousel Bar, a favorite haunt of Williams? It’s said that Williams found inspiration for his characters from Carousel guests. Who knows? You may find your very own Stanley or Stella sitting next to you sipping a Ramos Gin Fizz at the Carousel Bar.

Stay tuned for our next e-news with early registration discounts!

To ensure a fantastic 2013 Festival, we need the help of literary-minded Festival goers and cultural patrons like yourself. As arts funding disappears, and more organizations vie for such limited funding, we count on the generosity of those who wish to support LGBT writers’ stake in the American cultural landscape.

We have set a $10,000 fundraising goal between now and December 31 to ensure that this year’s Festival is a blowout celebration. Membership packages are available in a range of prices, starting at just $25. For our 10^th Anniversary bash, we are even offering a special “$10 for the 10^th” membership option!

Best of all, anyone who becomes a member at any level OR participates in the “$10 for the 10^th” promotion before the end of 2012 will be automatically entered to win a 4-night-stay for the 10^th Festival at our host hotel, the Hotel Monteleone. A membership and a $10 for the 10^th gets you two entries to drawing. A portion of each donation is tax-deductible.

Become a member online, or download mail-in form. 

Questions about automatic monthly giving options or sponsorship/donation options? Call our office at 504.581.1144 or email saintandsinnola@aol.com

MEMBERSHIP LEVELS

LITERARY PANEL SPONSOR: $1,500

• Underwriting of one of the Festival’s literary panels. You will receive credit directly beneath the panel description of your choice in the Festival program
• An “All Access Pass,” which provides you with admittance to every event during the Festival (a $285 value)

ANGEL: $250

• One weekend pass ($150 value)
• One Saints & Sinners Master Class ticket ($25 value)
• Exclusive Saints & Sinners gift item
• Recognition in the Festival program book

SINNER: $125

• One Saints & Sinners Master Class ticket ($25 value)
• Exclusive Saints & Sinners gift item
• Recognition in the Festival program book

SAINT: $75

• One Saints & Sinners Master Class ticket ($25 value)
• Recognition in the Festival program book

DEVIL: $25

• Recognition in the Festival program book

10 FOR THE 10TH: $10

• Recognition in the Festival program book

“Every time I have attended this Festival, I have come away enlightened and energized and changed.” —Susan Larson, Host of “The Reading Life” On WWNO, 89.9 FM and former book critic for The Times-Picayune (pictured)        

If you’ve attended Saints & Sinners in the past we’re sure you’ll agree with Susan Larson’s sentiment. Each year, the Festival assembles publishers, editors, media specialists, and authors in an intimate setting to discuss writing, share experiences, and network with other industry professionals.

Planning for the Saints & Sinners’ 10^th Anniversary Festival is already underway, with the Festival taking place in New Orleans’ French Quarter May 23-26, 2013. We could not be more excited to celebrate a decade of exploring LGBT literature with you!

Here at the Festival office, our list of guests grows each day as we continue assembling our 2013 events. As a sneak-peek for our 2013 line-up, we are excited to announce the following speakers:

• Dorothy Allison, National Book Award finalist for Bastard Out of Carolina and author of the critically-acclaimed Cavedweller;
• Five-time Lamda Literary Award-winner, Ellen Hart, a crime writer who has said she crafts “maximal suspense and minimal gore” to capture readers;
• Felice Picano, author of over two-dozen books of poetry, fiction, memoirs, non-fiction, and plays, Saints and Sinners Literary Hall of Fame member, and our judge for this year’s short fiction contest;
• The Beauty of Men and Dancer from the Dance author Andrew Holleran, who founded The Violet Quill group with Picano;  and
• Justin Torres, whose debut novel We the Animals has been lauded by The New York Times as a “sensitive, carefully wrought autobiographical first novel that may soon be extinct.”

In addition to inspiring master classes, panel discussions, and readings of new LGBT literature, we are in the process of planning new offerings that include a LGBT literary walking tour with highlights including connections with Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.

Submissions are now closed for our Fourth Annual Short Fiction Contest.

The winner will be selected from this year’s submissions of original, unpublished short stories between 5,000 and 7,000 words with LGBT content on the broad theme of “Saints and Sinners.”

This contest would not be possible without a generous grant from The John Burton Harter Charitable Trust.

Judge: Felice Picano (pictured), author of Tales: From a Distant Planet and Art & Sex in Greenwich Village, will select the winning stories.

Prize: One grand prize of $250 and two second place prizes of $50 will be awarded. In addition, the top stories will be published in an anthology from Bold Strokes Books. There will also be a book release party and reading held during the 10th annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans May 23-26, 2013. A list of the top ten finalists will be posted on our website and in our e-newsletter.

Eligibility:

• The annual fiction contest is open to authors at all stages of their careers and to stories in all genres.
• Only previously unpublished stories will be accepted.
• Stories that won this contest in previous years are ineligible; their authors remain eligible but must submit new work.
• Stories submitted to this contest in previous years that did not place in the top ten are eligible.
• Stories that have won any other writing contests are ineligible.

Guidelines:

• Submissions should be in standard manuscript format (double-spaced, one inch margins, 12 point font). Please include a word count on first page under the title.
• Your name and contact information should NOT appear on the manuscript.
• No bios or resumes. We only consider manuscript quality.
• Word Count: 5,000 to 7,000
• Submit only original, unpublished short stories.
• Theme (interpret as you wish): Saints and Sinners

Entry fee: $15 per story. There is no limit on the number of stories each author may enter.

Deadline: December 3, 2012 (postmark) Submissions for the 4th Annual Contest are now closed. Try again next year! We will open our next contest July 2013. 

The weekend was packed with cocktails, canapés, and (of course) creative thinking. And thanks to your support we’ve gotten a jump start on the 10^th Annual Saints and Sinners Festival.

Cheers to everyone who made SAS 9.5 happen:

• To the Hotel Monteleone, our official host hotel and title sponsor, for donating the book launch party venue, workshop rooms, and guest rooms for our wonderful facilitators. The old-school ambiance provided the perfect backdrop for recharging creative spirits.
• To the J.B. Harter Trust for underwriting the Short Fiction Contest and for being another title sponsor of our special Saints and Sinners 9.5 event.
• To these generous people, without whom we would not have the Saints and Sinners 2012: New Fiction from the Festival anthology: Sven Davisson of QueerMoJo, a Rebel Satori Imprint, who has published all three volumes; Sandy Bartel, who designed this year’s fabulous cover; and the judges who donated their time to read and reread the entries. We’re honored to have Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard out of Carolina and Trash, as the final selection judge for the 2012 contest.
• To all the writers who submitted their work to the Short Fiction Contest. And to all of our finalists and our winner, who read selections from their works at our book launch party.
• To all of our workshop facilitators and participants. We hope you had an enriching experience, and wish you the best in all your writing endeavors.
• And last, but not least, to all our volunteers who lent a hand, thus ensuring a well-organized and fun weekend.

Mark your calendars for the 10^th Annual Saints and Sinners Festival on May 23-26, 2013 at the Hotel Monteleone. We’ll launch our early bird registration this July. Hope to see you next year!

Missed the Festival? Check out our Facebook album and look at all the fun that was had.

SAS 9.5 is nearly here!

Here’s the schedule for the weekend, just in case you missed our last email. Please note that there is a room assignment change for our Manuscript Review Sessions and Workshops: Fay Jacobs’ session will now be in the Gallier Salon.

If you signed up for one of the workshops, your registration includes all other events. Workshop participants will receive a badge that acts as your entry to all events.

Opening Night

Time: Friday, May 18, 2012 at 6:30 p.m.
Location: The Royal CD Room/Hotel Monteleone/214 Royal Street

The Saints and Sinners 9.5 Literary Event opens with an evening of cocktails and readings from the anthology: Saints and Sinners 2012: New Fiction from the Festival. Live music by Raphael Bass. Hosted by co-editor, Amie M. Evans with contest finalists: J.R. Greenwell, George E. Jordan, Jeff Lindemann, Frank Perez, James Russell, and our winner, Jerry Rabushka.

Manuscript Review Sessions and Workshops

Time: Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Location: Hotel Monteleone/214 Royal Street

Each of the four groups will meet for a morning session from 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. (with an hour break for lunch), and will meet back up for an afternoon session from 1 p.m. – 4 p.m. The meeting rooms are located on the 2nd floor of the Hotel Monteleone. The room assignments are listed below:

Jameson Currier: Cabildo Salon
Fay Jacobs: Gallier Salon (Please note room assignment change)
Jeff Mann: Cathedral Salon
Radclyffe: Ursulines Salon

SAS Saturday Salon Readings

Time: Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 7:30 p.m.
Location: Gallery Orange/819 Royal Street
Price: $10 at the door, or included in the weekend workshop pass

Festival authors William Holden, Jeff Mann, Radclyffe, J.M. Redmann, and Jerry Wheeler will read selections from their latest works for your listening pleasure. Hosted by humorist and author, Fay Jacobs.

Panel Discussion: Is The Sky Falling? Publishing, Plagiarism, and Piracy

Time: Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 10:30 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.
Location: Orleans Room (Mezzanine Level), Hotel Monteleone, 214 Royal Street
Price: Free and open to public

Amazon seems poised to take over not just the book-selling business but apparently wants to take over book-publishing as well. Books are getting shorter and sales aren’t what they used to be. In this strange new world, how do presses and authors keep their heads above water?

Panelists: Jameson Currier, Greg Herren, and Radclyffe.
Moderator: J.M. Redmann

Thank you for supporting Saints and Sinners 9.5! If you have any questions about the event or the schedule, please contact Paul at: pjwillisnola@aol.com or feel free to call our office at: 504-581-1144.

Sunday, May 20, 2012
10:30 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.
Orleans Room (Mezzanine Level), Hotel Monteleone, 214 Royal Street
Free and open to public

Bookstores are closing. Amazon seems poised to take over not just the book-selling business but apparently wants to take over book-publishing as well. Books are getting shorter and sales aren’t what they used to be. In this strange new world, how do presses and authors keep their heads above water? How does a publisher create a publishing program geared to success? How has the new world of smart phones, Facebook, and Twitter changed marketing? And how do you help readers sort through all the noise to get to your books when anyone with a keyboard is self-publishing ebooks?

Panelists: Jameson Currier, Greg Herren, and Radclyffe.
Moderator: J.M. Redmann

Thank you for supporting Saints and Sinners 9.5! If you have any questions about the event or the schedule, please contact Paul at: pjwillisnola@aol.com or feel free to call our office at: 504-581-1144.

Saturday, May 19, 2012
7:30 p.m.
Gallery Orange/819 Royal Street
Price: $10 at the door, or included in the weekend workshop pass

Join us for evening literary offerings amid the gorgeous art of Gallery Orange in the French Quarter. Festival authors William Holden, Jeff Mann, Radclyffe, J.M. Redmann, and Jerry Wheeler will read selections from their latest works for your listening pleasure. Hosted by humorist and author, Fay Jacobs. As always, there’ll be time for Q&As and lively discussion with authors and attendees afterwards. Cocktails and canapes will be served throughout the evening.