native of New Orleans, Blanton has
traveled extensively in North Africa,
East Africa, West Africa, Europe, and
Asia Minor.
Thomas
Bonner, Jr.
is Professor
Emeritus
at Xavier
University of
Louisiana,
where he was formerly W.K. Kellogg
Professor and Chair of English.
He served twice as Distinguished
Visiting Professor at The United
States Air Force Academy. His books
include Parterre: New and Collected
Prose and Poetry, Sherwood Anderson
and Other Famous Creoles (edited
with Judith H. Bonner), William
Faulkner: The William B. Wisdom
Collection, and The Kate Chopin
Companion with Chopin’s Translations
from French Fiction.
Darrell
Bourque,
former
Louisiana
Poet Laureate,
recipient of
the 2014
Louisiana Book Festival Writer
Award, and the 2019 LEH Humanist
of the Year is professor emeritus
in English from ULL. A founding
member of the Ernest J. Gaines
Center, he has served as a board
member since its opening. Among
his works are Megan’s Guitar and
Other Poems from Acadie, From the
Other Side: Henriette Delille and
migraré.
Will Brantley
is a Professor
of English
at Middle
Tennessee
State
University,
where he teaches southern literature,
film studies, and professional writing.
He is the author of Feminine Sense
in Southern Memoir: Smith, Glasgow,
Welty, Hellman, Porter, and Hurston,
which received the Eudora Welty
Award for an interpretive work of
scholarship in modern letters (1993).
He is the editor of Conversations with
Pauline Kael (1996) and co-editor
of Conversations with Edmund White
(2017). His essay, “Carson and
Tennessee: The Politics of a Literary
Friendship,” is forthcoming in a
volume of essays to mark the Carson
McCullers centennial.
Robert Bray
has been
involved with
the Tennessee
Williams
Festival for
over 25 years.
Bray is professor emeritus of English
and editor emeritus of The Tennessee
Williams Annual Review. He is the
founding director of the Tennessee
Williams Scholars Conference and
the author/coauthor/coeditor of
four books, including Hollywood’s
Tennessee (with R. Barton Palmer)
and Modern American Drama on
Screen, as well as dozens of articles
on Williams. He has also been
instrumental in locating, editing,
and helping usher into performance
several previously unpublished
Williams works.
Ethan Brown
is author of
four books
about crime
and criminal
justice policy:
Murder in the
Bayou, Queens Reigns Supreme, Snitch,
and Shake the Devil Off. Showtime
premiered a TV adaption of Murder
in the Bayou in 2019. Ethan also
worked for nearly a decade as a
mitigation specialist for attorneys
representing indigent defendants
facing the death penalty in the Deep
South and elsewhere. Currently, he
is Enterprise Editor of The Appeal,
which produces original journalism
about the most significant drivers of
mass incarceration, state and local
criminal justice systems.
Taylor
Brown grew
up on the
Georgia coast.
He is the
author of a
short story
collection, In the Season of Blood and
Gold, and the novels Fallen Land
(2016), The River of Kings (2017),
Gods of Howl Mountain (2018), and
Pride of Eden (2020). You can find
his work in The New York Times, The
Rumpus, Garden & Gun, and more.
He is a recipient of the Montana
Prize in Fiction and the founder
of BikeBound.com. He lives in
Savannah.
Bryan Camp
is a graduate
of the Clarion
West Writers
Workshop
and the
University of
New Orleans Low-Residency MFA
program. Both novels in his Crescent
City series have earned starred
reviews in Kirkus, Booklist, Library
Journal, and Publisher’s Weekly. He
lives in New Orleans with his wife
and their three cats, one of whom is
named after a superhero.
Michael
Carroll’s
first book,
Little Reef
and Other
Stories, won
the 2015 Sue
Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from
the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. He is published in the Yale
Review, Southwest Review, Open City,
The Harvard Review, and The New
Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories.
His second collection is Stella Maris
and Other Key West Stories. As a Peace
Corps Volunteer, he taught in Yemen
and the Czech Republic. He has
also taught in the summer writing
program at John Cabot University in
Rome. Carroll is married and lives in
New York.
Andrei
Codrescu
was born in
Transylvania,
Romania and
emigrated
to the U.S.
in 1966. He
founded Exquisite Corpse: a Journal
of Books & Ideas, taught literature
and poetry at Johns Hopkins
University, University of Baltimore,
and Louisiana State University (as
MacCurdy Distinguished Professor
of English), and has been a regular
commentator on NPR’s All Things
Considered. He received a Peabody
Award for writing and starring in the
film Road Scholar. He also received
the Ovidius Prize for Literature, the
Heritage Award from the American
Immigration Council, an ACLU
Freedom of Speech Award, and was a
Poetry Finalist for the National Book
Award. A prolific writer of poetry,
essays, fiction, and journalism,
Codrescu’s most recent book is No
Time Like Now.
Iris Martin
Cohen
grew up in
the French
Quarter of
New Orleans.
She holds
an MFA from Columbia University
and studied Creative Nonfiction
at the Graduate Center of the City
University of New York. Her work
has appeared in The New York Sun,
The Austin Chronicle, Bookforum, 64
Parishes, Lit Hub, Crime Reads and
others. She is the author of The Little
Clan (2018). Her new novel, Last
Call on Decatur Street is forthcoming
from Park Row, August 2020. She
lives in Brooklyn.
Eric Colleary
is the Cline
Curator of
Theatre and
Performing
Arts at
the Harry
Ransom Center, an internationally
renowned humanities research library
and museum at The University of
Texas at Austin. He holds a doctorate
in theatre historiography from the
University of Minnesota and has
curated exhibits on topics including
Playwrights and Process, Shakespeare
in Print & Performance, and
Vaudeville.
Nancy
Sharon
Collins, in
partnership
with Antenna
Gallery,
produces
Letters Read, the ongoing series of
live readings bringing historically
important letters, which are vital
pieces of various Louisiana times
and cultures, to general audiences.
The series was recently awarded
a Louisiana Endowment for the
Humanities and an LGBTQ+
Archives Project of Louisiana grant.
CODEX, part of the Letters Read
series, was recently featured on Susan
Larson’s “Thinking Outside the
Book.”
Augustin J
Correro is
Co-Artistic
Director of
the Tennessee
Williams
Theatre
Company of New Orleans. Directing
credits for TWTC include The Glass
MARCH 25-29,
25-29, 2020
2020
MARCH
33
33