Menagerie, Suddenly Last Summer,
The Mutilated, One Arm, Not About
Nightingales, Camino Real, The Milk
Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore,
Dangerous Birds (If Agitated), The
Rose Tattoo, Weird Tales, Small Craft
Warnings, and Kingdom of Earth. He
directed Suddenly Last Summer at the
Columbus, MS and Provincetown
TW Festivals. He earned an MFA
in Theatre Pedagogy at Virginia
Commonwealth University and a BA
in Theatre at Mississippi University
for Women.
Maureen
Corrigan,
book critic
for NPR’s
Fresh Air, is
the Nicky
and Jamie
Grant Distinguished Professor of
the Practice in Literary Criticism at
Georgetown University. She is an
associate editor of and contributor
to Mystery and Suspense Writers and
winner of the Edgar Award for
Criticism (1999), presented by the
Mystery Writers of America. In 2019,
Corrigan was awarded the Nona
Balakian Citation for Excellence in
Reviewing by the National Book
Critics Circle. In 2012, she served
as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize in
Fiction. She is the author of So We
Read On: How The Great Gatsby
Came To Be and Why It Endures
and the literary memoir, Leave Me
Alone, I’m Reading! Corrigan is also
a reviewer and columnist for The
Washington Post’s Book World,
serves on the advisory panel of
The American Heritage Dictionary,
and has chaired the Mystery and
Suspense judges’ panel of the Los
Angeles Times Book Prize.
Brenda
Currin
received
an Obie
Award for
My Sister in
This House by
Wendy Kesselman and has worked
extensively in the New York theater.
Film credits include In Cold Blood,
The World According to Garp, Reds,
Taps, cult classic C.H.U.D., Out
of Blue starring Patricia Clarkson,
Gossamer Folds, The Friend, and
the TV show Claws. Currin played
Thelma Toole in TWFest’s A
Confederacy of Dunces. Also in New
Orleans, she was in Dividing the
Estate, To Kill a Mockingbird, Orpheus
Descending and Suddenly Last
Summer. With David Kaplan, she has
adapted Eudora Welty’s stories Sister
and Miss Lexie and A Fire Was in My
Head. Brenda most recently adapted
Welty’s short story, “Moon Lake.”
Lisa
D’Amour
is an OBIE-
award
winning
playwright
and co-
artistic director of PearlDamour,
an interdisciplinary performance
company. Her plays and
performances have been performed
on Broadway (Samuel J. Friedman
Theater), Steppenwolf Theater,
Southern Rep, and in many
other adventurous spaces across
the country, such as the 50-acre
Meadow Garden at Longwood
Botanical Gardens. She is a Pulitzer
Prize finalist, a past winner of the
Steinberg Playwright Award, and a
proud resident of the Broadmoor
neighborhood in New Orleans.
Todd
d’Amour
made his
Broadway
debut in 2015
in Airline
Highway.
NYC credits include Mr. Toole,
Orpheus Descending, and Lie of the
Mind, STANLEY. N.O. credits
include Airline Highway, Venus in
Fur, Orpheus Descending, Baby Doll,
The Lily’s Revenge and Pump Boys and
Dinettes. Regional credits: Detroit,
Airline Highway, Venus in Fur, Stanley
Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire,
Charlie Chaplin in Silent Lives and
George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful
Life. Todd starred in the feature film
Wendell and the Lemon. Other TV/
Film: The Purge, The Preacher, Claws
(TNT), Bigger (Julianne Hough),
Cmon, Cmon (Joaquin Phoenix), The
Heart Wants What It Wants.
Reina David
is an aspiring
Garifuna
author and
talented artist
from Santa
Fe Colon,
Honduras. She currently resides in
New Orleans. Her novel is titled
Patti’s Compromising Positions.
34 TENNESSEE
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
WILLIAMS &
& NEW
NEW ORLEANS
ORLEANS LITERARY
LITERARY FESTIVAL
FESTIVAL
34
Sakinah A.
Davis, DMA,
is an Assistant
Professor of
Voice and
Director of Opera Workshop at
Xavier University of Louisiana. She
studied voice at DeKalb School of
the Arts and Spelman College and
earned masters and doctoral degrees
in classical voice performance at
the College-Conservatory of Music
at the University of Cincinnati.
She has sung with NANOWorks
Opera, Opera Fusion: New Works,
Americolor Opera and Atlanta
Opera’s “24-Hr Opera” workshop.
Davis has been a voice instructor
and lecturer at Spelman College and
Clark Atlanta University and a choral
teaching artist with the El Sistema-
inspired Atlanta Music Project.
Danielle del
Sol is the
executive
director of the
Preservation
Resource
Center
of New Orleans. Before that, she
served for seven years as the PRC’s
communications director, and as
the editor of the center’s monthly
magazine, Preservation in Print. She
is an adjunct lecturer in the Master
of Preservation Studies program at
Tulane University, her alma mater.
Anthoullis
Demosthenous
studied History
and Archaeology,
Byzantine
Culture and
Civilization,
and Humanities and Theater at
the Universities of Athens and the
Aegean (BA, MA, PhD, Post-Doc).
He has published books and articles
in academic journals, including
“Saint Tennessee Williams on Stage,”
Broken Gates: Directing Tennessee
Williams’ Night of the Iguana, and
“Finding Tennessee Williams.” He is
also a freelance director whose work
includes The Angel in the Alcove for
Provincetown TWTF, The Night
of the Iguana, Desire and the Black
Masseur, and The Rose Tattoo.
Adeline
Dieudonné
is a Belgian
author
who lives
in Brussels.
Real Life,
her debut novel, was published in
France in 2018 and has since been
awarded most of the major French
literary prizes: the prestigious Prix du
Roman FNAC, the Prix Rossel, the
Prix Renaudot des Lycéens, the Prix
Goncourt―Le Choix de la Belgique,
the Prix des Étoiles du Parisien, the
Prix Première Plume, and the Prix
Filigrane, a French prize for a work
of high literary quality with wide
appeal. Dieudonné also performs as a
stand-up comedian.
Nancy Dixon
is a scholar
and writer of
New Orleans
literature. Her
books include
Fortune and
Misery: Sallie Rhett Roman of New
Orleans (LSU Press, 1999), which
won the 2000 LEH Humanities
Book of the Year, N.O. Lit: 200 Years
of New Orleans Literature (Lavender
Ink 2013), and New Orleans and
the World (LEH, 2018), the city’s
tricentennial book. Her most recent
article, “The African Diaspora and
the New Orleans Canary Islanders/
Isleños” is in the current issue of La
Creole: A Journal of Creole History &
Genealogy. Dr. Dixon is Associate
Professor and Director of the English
Program at Dillard University.
Samantha
Downing,
a Bay Area
native, has
written a
dozen novels
over the past
two decades despite never having
formally studied writing. My Lovely
Wife is the first manuscript she
submitted. This domestic thriller
was snapped up by Berkley and will
be published on March 26, 2019.
Downing lives in New Orleans and
is wrapping up her next novel, He
Started It, which will be published
in April.