Blatty Featured Author at 2025 Tennessee Williams Literary Festival
March 26 - March 30
JT Blatty, Snapshots Sent Home, is a featured author at the 2025 Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival, to be held March 26-30, 2025.
Now in its 39th year, the festival is a five-day literary event held each spring in New Orleans’ historic French Quarter that attracts participants from around the world. Festival activities include writer’s craft sessions, literary discussions, theatre events, walking tours, and other special events.
Local independent bookstore Octavia Books will serve as the festival bookseller. The book fair is open during the Festival weekend on the mezzanine level of the Hotel Monteleone. The book fair is near festival headquarters and the Queen Anne Ballroom, where many of the events will take place.
JT will participate in a literary discussion panel discussing the art of memoir on Sunday, March 30, 11:30 – 12:45 PM CT.
THE ART OF MEMOIR
What is memoir but a report from the center of the self? Free of restraints and determined to exist. A letter to a past self and a consideration of a future self. The memoir writers on this panel represent a variety of selves, born from distinct experiences. Larry Bagneris is the author of Call Me Larry, A Creole Man’s Triumph over Racism and Homophobia, his story of growing up gay in New Orleans in the 1950s and political activism in Texas, where he founded Houston Pride Parade, then returning to his hometown. Pretty is the memoir of KB Brookins, a Black Trans writer, who offers a vibrant portrait of queerness, masculinity, and race. Combat veteran JT Blatty writes about her photography and oral history project, documenting the lives of Ukrainians in the Donbas region in Snapshots Sent Home. The author of numerous novels, Bernice L. McFadden delves into memoir with First Born Girls, her family history that traces the entwined generations of mothers and daughters. The panel is moderated by Constance Adler, author of the memoir My Bayou, New Orleans Through the Eyes of a Lover and a debut novel Sight Unseen.
The panel takes place at the Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Ballroom. The cost to attend is $10 or Lit Pass or VIP Pass.
For more information, visit the festival website.
JT Blatty
JT Blatty is the author of Snapshots Sent Home: From Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine—A Memoir (Elva Resa, 2024). A US Army combat veteran and photographer, JT went to Ukraine in 2018, drawn by the familiarity of war and those who serve in wars. As she embedded with Ukrainian volunteer soldiers to document their stories, her story began to blend with theirs.