Saints and Sinners Festival Fun, Fun and More Fun!

Posted bySheila Morris 4 Comments on Saints and Sinners Festival Fun, Fun and More Fun!

I served on a panel with other authors Rich Barnett, Martin Hyatt, Martin Pousson and moderator Jeff Mann. The topic was Home is Where the Art Is: Or is It?  So fascinating to hear everyone’s stories about the impact our beginnings have had on our writing…from Appalachian mountain man to Louisiana Bayou boys, from Voodoo practicing to Pentecostal preachers, from families and extended families who couldn’t understand us –  we escaped to places away from home like San Francisco, New York City, Rehoboth, Delaware; Columbia, South Carolina. The journeys became the impetus for our words.

I had an opportunity to read an excerpt from my short story that is included in the Saints and Sinners Anthology for 2017. It was really fun! Pretty and my other two Peeps who made the trip from South Carolina were the best support anyone could have had…really made it much easier to read when I saw them beaming in the audience.

Beignets anyone??

You bet!

Peep Posse in New Orleans

Our good Columbia friends Nekki and Francie met us in NOLA and we have been women on a roll in the Big Easy. Francie and I watched the Gamecock men bust everyone’s brackets this afternoon from a perch at the Boomtown Casino while Pretty and Nekki took a historical tour of the city where they saw a poster for a Chris Rock concert tonight. Enough said.

So, if you’re looking for us tonight, go to the Saenger Theater and get ready to throw down with Chris!

Published by Sheila Morris

Sheila Morris is a personal historian, essayist with humorist tendencies, lesbian activist, truth seeker and speaker in the tradition of other female Texas storytellers including her paternal grandmother. In December, 2017, the University of South Carolina Press published her collection of first-person accounts of a few of the people primarily responsible for the development of LGBTQ+ organizations in South Carolina. Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home will resonate with everyone interested in LGBTQ+ history in the South during the tumultuous times from the AIDS pandemic to marriage equality. She has published five nonfiction books including two memoirs, an essay compilation and two collections of her favorite blogs from I'll Call It Like I See It. Her first book, Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing received a Golden Crown Literary Society Award. Her writings have been included in various anthologies including Out Loud: the best of Rainbow Radio, Saints and Sinners New Fiction from the 2017 Festival, Mothers and Other Creatures; Cowboys, Cops, Killers, and Ghosts (Texas Folklore Society LXIX). She is a displaced Texan living in South Carolina with her wife Teresa Williams and their dogs Spike, Charly and Carl. She is also Naynay to her two granddaughters Ella and Molly James who light up her life for real. Born in rural Grimes County, Texas in 1946 her Texas roots still run wide and deep.

4 replies on “Saints and Sinners Festival Fun, Fun and More Fun!”

  1. Congratulations on your award & The Final Four! I truly enjoy reading your blog- I look forward to it every day- kind of like my grandfather who was a farmer all his life. At 12:00 he had lunch- turned on the radio and listened Paul Harvey- and he always tuned in for the rest of the story! I do the same with your blog! Take Care!

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