Joie de Vivre Louisiana Arts & Culture Festival

Join Joie de Vivre for our 1st annual Louisiana Arts & Culture Festival!

This two-day gathering focused on “South Louisiana & Literature” will bring together local and national novelists, short story writers, poets, and artists with our wider community to celebrate the feast that is our Catholic faith and the literary and visual arts.

Gather with us on the grounds of Saint Joseph Abbey, burial place of Walker Percy, where beneath majestic oaks and soaring pines the liturgical and artistic treasures of the Church continue to nourish each other. In this storied literary setting, minutes from Covington and only an hour from New Orleans, we’ll delve into the rich relationship of world and word, considering, through voices past and present, how South Louisiana continues to inspire its own literary tradition and how that tradition interacts with the wider literary world.

Together, we’ll enjoy keynote presentations, art exhibitions, concurrent lectures and workshops, poetry readings, a Mardi Gras murder mystery verse play, Liturgy of the Hours and Mass with the monks, happy hours, leisurely strolls on the Abbey grounds, and optional housing accommodations at the Abbey.

Featured speakers include Timothy Gautreaux, Katy Carl, James Matthew Wilson, and J.C. Scharl.