Registration is open! Check out the session schedule! Hotel reservations are now open.
Check out the Featured Speakers
Mona Lisa Saloy, Ph.D., Louisiana Poet Laureate
Friday October 20, 2023 8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
Mona Lisa Saloy, Ph.D. Louisiana Poet Laureate (2021-2023), is an author, folklorist, educator, scholar of Creole culture in articles, documentaries, and poems about Black New Orleans before and after Katrina. Saloy is Conrad N. Hilton Endowed Professor of English at Dillard University. Poetry books: Red Beans & Ricely Yours, won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Second Line Home, celebrates New Orleans Black Creole culture. Recent pubs include The Chicago Quarterly Review, Vol 33; Black FIRE!!! This Time Anthology; and in Tribes journal NYC; and Obsidian journal, 2022; in Persimmon journal 2023. Newest book: Black Creole Chronicles, University of New Orleans Press, 2023. Mona Lisa Saloy writes for those who don’t or can’t tell Black Creole cultural stories. www.monalisasaloy.com Tweet to @redbeansista
Ben Jaffe, Bass | Creative Director, Preservation Hall Jazz Band
Saturday, October 21, 2023 10:30 a.m – 11:30 a.m.
As son of co-founders Allan and Sandra Jaffe, Ben has lived his whole life with the rhythm of the French Quarter pulsing through his veins. Raised in the company of New Orleans’ greatest musicians, Ben returned from his collegiate education at Oberlin College in Ohio to play with the group and assume his father’s duties as Director of Preservation Hall. Today he serves as Creative Director for both PHJB and the Hall itself, where he has spearheaded such programs as the New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund.
