Press from all over the area

The Baton Rouge Advocate has a nice story about the Festival today by its books editor, Greg Langley. Among the things he says:

The Tennessee Williams/French Quarter Literary Festival is a great opportunity to go back to New Orleans, help out with the city’s recovery a little and get a whole lot back. It’s a high-profile literary event that spotlights the best of New Orleans. If you live in The Advocate’s circulation area, then you’re within no more than a couple of hours’ drive of New Orleans. Hop on the interstate and go. Make a day of it. Get some of that great food you remember. Be entertained. See some live theater. Get a book by a great writer and get a great writer to sign it. It’s a rare opportunity.

The Louisiana Weekly has a writeup on the appearance of Yusef Komunyakaa:

Komunyakaa is the author of 12 books of poetry, among them Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. His Thieves of Paradise and Talking Dirty to the Gods were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other honors include a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the William Faulkner Prize from the Universite de Rennes, the Hanes Poetry Prize and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is Professor and Distinguished Senior Poet at New York University and served as a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets from 1999 to 2005. His most recent book is Gilgamesh, a verse play (concept and dramaturgy by Chad Gracia), published by Wesleyan University Press in November 2006.

Also, from Sunday's New Orleans Times-Picayune:

The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival is among the 39 winners of the 2006 James Patterson PageTurner Awards, described in the citation as "a New Orleans literary festival that continues to bring excitement and fun to a community still dealing with the effects of Hurricane Katrina." The award includes a cash donation of $5,000.