know, a Lesbian, Gay all those transgender and bisexual and every possible variation of with acceptable morays. So, I just kicked that off with them, it’s always a deeply satisfying event. It’s just men in high heels and women in leather jackets and New Orleans carpet I mean really.
The thing with sinners is to a certain extent we are profoundly adventurous (she means the writers who attend). We give off interesting characters and become completely enthralled and begin to imagine that, we ourselves, are interesting characters. Which is not always entirely true. The reality is most writers… to be a successful writer, is to be someone (she pauses here to think) we’re hermits… that is to a large extent interior, and removed and that’s not like the actors and performers that you often see in New Orleans. (giggles)
Saints and Sinners is the alternative literary festival that coincides with The Tennesee Williams Festival in New Orleans. Fourteen years ago they began as a way to give a voice to concerns and assist in the prevention of HIV/AIDS in the LGBT Community. Dorothy is very involved in this organization of writers and presented a class on “Lucid Dreaming” for the conference in 2016. This year she participated in a panel titled “When the Political is Even More Personal: Writers in this New Contemporary Climate” about writers “taking up the mantel of resistance” (SAS 2017) she also read some of her work aloud during an additional session. Dorothy is known to be very socially and politically active. She has stood up for women’s and LGBT rights since before I was born. In the excerpt following this interview she states that HIV/AIDS has run rampant through the community and speaks on the need within the community to honor the dead. Dorothy worked for many alternative presses championing these movements and is seen as a very strong and outspoken woman writer and activist, so I questioned this hermit image she gives of the writer.
JGH:But, you were very outspoken, weren’t you in your activist days?
DA: I learned to be outspoken.
JGH: You kind of have to right? You don’t want to but you do.
DA: Yeah, and you get confronted, and you know, you’re either going to back off and hide or you’re going to learn to stand up for yourself, and that means you become more and more outspoken. And then of course,
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