Plan now to attend the 2009 Saints and Sinners Literary Festival!

Ellen Hart

Benoit Denizet-Lewis

Yes, it's time to start making your plans to join us in the French Quarter for Saints and Sinners 2009! This year, we've bowed to pressure and moved the Festival back a week--so instead of Mother's Day weekend, this year it's the weekend of May 14-17. We're putting together a pretty amazing line-up of panels and speakers this year, and you definitely don't want to miss out! Speakers this year will include Michael Thomas Ford, Michael Lowenthal, Elana Dykewomon, Jess Wells, Greg Herren, Radclyffe, and a whole lot more!

This year's master classes are pretty amazing--here's the line-up: Michael Gross from the Authors Guild: Book Contract Workshop; Ali Liebegott: Me, Me, Me, and More About Me: A Personal Narrative Workshop; Jess Wells: Writing Credible, Creative Historical Fiction; Michael Thomas Ford: Reality Check--Can You Really be a Full-time Writer?; Benoit Denizet-Lewis: Telling (True) Stories: Researching and Writing Compelling Nonfiction; Radclyffe: The Truth about Blood and Guts: Writing Realistic Medical Scenes; Greg Herren: Let's Talk ABout Sex: How to Use Eroticism Effectively in Prose; and Ellen Hart: Learning to Love the Wastepaper Basket: The Art of Revision. The master classes are always interesting and in formative. They also tend to fill up fast, so definitely get your tickets sooner rather than later!

As you know, Saints and Sinners was originally founded not only to provide a place for LBTQ writers, editors, and publishers to get together, network, and share experiences in this crazy publishing business, but also to raise money for the NO/AIDS Task Force as it continues its ongoing struggle to fight this epidemic, prevent new infections, treat and assist those already infected, and spread awareness in the New Orleans community.