In this series, we introduce you to some of the writers in the all-star lineup for #SAS20 this March in the heart of the French Quarter.
Robert W. Fieseler is the 2019 National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association “Journalist of the Year” and the author of Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation, winner of the Edgar Award in Best Fact Crime and Lambda Literary’s Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging Writers. He graduated co-valedictorian from the Columbia Journalism School and lives with his husband and dog in New Orleans.
Jewelle Gomez, playwright, novelist, and poet is the author of eight books including the first Black Lesbian vampyre novel, The Gilda Stories, which has been in print more than 25 years. The novel will soon be seen as a television mini-series directed by award-winning director, Cheryl Dunye. Jewelle’s fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in over 100 anthologies from Home Girls to the Oxford World Treasury of Love Stories to Red Indian Road West. Her trilogy of plays about African American artists in the first half of the 20th century was commissioned by New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco where she is playwright-in-residence. The first in the series, Waiting for Giovanni, about writer/activist James Baldwin, premiered at NCTC and had its New York City premiere in 2018. Leaving the Blues, about singer/songwriter Alberta Hunter, premiered in 2017. The third play in the trilogy, Unpacking in P’Town, about a group of retired vaudeville performers, will premiere in 2021. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @VampyreVamp.
Edmund White is an American novelist, memoirist, and essayist on literary and social topics. Much of his writing is on the theme of same-sex love. His books include The Joy of Gay Sex (1977) (written with Charles Silverstein), his trio of autobiographic novels, A Boy’s Own Story (1982), The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1997), and his biography of Jean Genet. His debut novel, Forgetting Elena (1973), set on an island, can be read as commenting on gay culture in a coded manner. The American/Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov called it “a marvelous book.” His next novel, Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978) was explicitly gay-themed and drew on his own life. From 1980 to 1981, White was a member of a gay writers’ group, The Violet Quill, which met briefly during that period and included Andrew Holleran and Felice Picano. Critically acclaimed memoirs published by White include Our Paris: Sketches from Memory (1995); My Lives (2005); City Boy (2009); Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris (2014); and The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading (2018).
The annual Saints and Sinners LGBTQ Literary Festival will take place in New Orleans March 27-29. For registration information: Sasfest.org Any AMBUSH readers can register with a 20% discount by using the code Ambush20 when registering.
