Save the Date: May 13-16, 2010

The 2010 Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, May 13th -16th

Michael Nava

We’ve already begun to book an exciting program for the Festival, including literary luminaries Ann Bannon, Michael Nava, and Tim Miller.

Michael Nava is the author of a seven-volume series of novels featuring a gay Latino criminal defense lawyer, Henry Rios. Published between 1988 and 2000, the Rios novels (The Little Death, Goldenboy, Howtown, The Hidden Law, The Death of Friends, The Burning Plain and Rag and Bone) earned six Lambda Literary awards and won widespread critical acclaim. In 2000, Nava was awarded the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement in gay and lesbian literature. Currently, Nava is at work on a historical novel set in an Arizona border town during the Mexican Revolution called The Children of Eve. A graduate of Stanford Law School, he has also had a distinguished career as an appellate lawyer and is currently a staff attorney for the Honorable Carlos Moreno, Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court in San Francisco.

Ann Bannon

Ann Bannon has been called “The Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction” for her landmark “Beebo Brinker Chronicles,” a series of five original paperback novels published by Gold Medal Books in the 1950s and 60s. The books tell the stories of young lesbians in the gay Mecca of pre-Stonewall Greenwich Village. In the intervening years, having gone through many editions and reprints, Ann’s books have become something more than ardent and engaging tales; to a new generation of readers, they provide historical insights into gay life in those faraway days.

Tim Miller

We’re excited to announce that Tim Miller will be performing his new show, Lay of the Land, at the 2010 event.

Lay of the Land is Tim Miller’s saucy, sharp-knifed look at the State of the Queer Union during a time of trial! Careening from his sexy misadventures performing in 45 States, to Marriage Equality street protests, to the electoral assaults on gay folks all over the country, to his life as a grade-school flag monitor, to choking on cheap meat caught in his 10 year old gay boy’s throat, Lay of the Land friskily gets at that feeling of gay folks being perpetually on trial, on the ballot, and on the menu! Lay of the Land is a “lay” in all kinds of ways: a sex-assignation, a queer citizenship map, and of course a narrative ballad with a recurrent refrain! (Miller’s favorite way-down-the-list definition for “lay”!)

We hope to see you at the 8th annual Festival next year. And we’ll keep you posted as we finalize our plans for what’s certain to be another great event.