Saturday
The biographers on this panel discuss their research, their obsessions,
and the resources they use to create the end result: an intriguing,
fully fleshed-out version of someone else’s life story. Panelists include
Andrew Feldman, Nigel Hamilton, Robert Mann, Miki Pfeffer, and
moderated Anne Boyd Rioux.
Sponsored by Kathleen and Edmund Schrenk.
Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Ballroom, $10 or Literary
Discussion, Combo, or VIP Pass
11:30 AM – 12:45 PM—Literary Discussion
WILLIAMS ON THE WORLD STAGE
Have you ever wondered how Tennessee Williams’ plays are produced,
reviewed, understood, and appreciated in Europe, South America,
Asia, and Africa? Distinguished Williams scholars and directors share
their experiences of seeing and directing international productions of
Williams’ plays and discuss how local cultural and political contexts
change or enhance audiences’ understanding of the plays, presenting
interpretations we will likely never see in America. What is gained
and what is lost in translation? This panel will explore how these very
American, and sometimes very Southern, stories translate linguistically
and artistically around the world. Panelists include Anthoullis
Demosthenos, Dirk Gindt, Annette Saddik, with David Kaplan
moderator.
Sponsored by Dramatists Play Service.
Williams Research Center, $10 or Literary Discussion, Combo, or
VIP Pass
10 – 11:15 AM—Literary Discussion
SPECULATIVE FICTION: WELCOME TO AN ALTERNATE
REALITY
How does a writer create an alternate yet recognizable world? All
of these writers have created brilliant alternate versions of their
imaginative adaptations of New Orleans. Alys Arden began a
bestselling supernatural saga with The Casquette Girls. Bryan Camp
imagines underworld denizens who move between worlds in such
novels as Gather the Fortunes, part of his Crescent City Novel series.
Daniel José Older brings dinosaurs to the Crescent City in his Dactyl
Hill Squad series for young readers and employs magical realism in his
depiction of life after the Cuban revolution and in the New York City
of the future. Maurice Carlos Ruffin delineates a racialized city of the
future in We Cast a Shadow. Moderated by Candice Huber.
Sponsored by Backspace Bar & Kitchen.
Muriel’s Jackson Square Restaurant, $10 or Literary Discussion,
Combo, or VIP Pass
11:30 AM – 12:45 PM—Literary Discussion
LIVES AND LETTERS
What is it about certain people that fills others with a passion to follow
their lives, to research them, and, eventually, carefully document them?
16 TENNESSEE WILLIAMS & NEW ORLEANS LITERARY FESTIVAL
11:30 AM – 12:45 PM—Literary Discussion
POETICS OF SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
In the recently released American Poets in the 21st Century: Poetics of
Social Engagement, edited by Claudia Rankine and Michael Dowdy,
Michael Dowdy writes that the editors assembled the volume at “a
critical juncture in the history of United States.” Dowdy goes on to
say that “the range of aesthetic practices and cultural commitments
in this volume demonstrates some of the ways that contemporary
poets have anticipated the ‘new’ era that was consolidated in the
2016 U.S. presidential election.” This panel of four contemporary
poets examines, through readings and commentary, what constitutes
a “poetics of social engagement” and, more broadly, the role of the
poet in our “new” era of polarization and extremely divisive politics.
Poets include Darrell Bourque, Beth Ann Fennelly, Jerika Marchan,
and John Warner Smith with moderator, poet and publisher Bill
Lavender.
Sponsored by Scovern Law Firm.
Muriel’s Jackson Square Restaurant, $10 or Literary Discussion,
Combo, or VIP Pass
11:30 AM – 12:45 PM—Literary Discussion
WRITING FROM THE SOUTH SIDE OF LAKE
PONTCHARTRAIN: NEW WORK FROM THE UNIVERSITY
OF NEW ORLEANS PRESS
Abram Himelstein, editor-in-chief of the University of New Orleans
Press, moderates a panel of writers whose works demonstrate the range
and diversity of the publisher’s new offerings. The panel features the
soul-searching poetry of Marian Moore in Louisiana Midrash, the
timely meditative consideration of Mackie Blanton’s poetry collected