Bristow, Gwen

The Louisiana Women Writers Symposium Collection primarily consists of correspondence and photographs. This correspondence relates to the organization of the symposium and the publication of essays presented at the symposium in an expanded volume. The included photographs depict various Louisiana women writers and were used as illustrations for the Louisiana Women Writers essays and bibliography.

The Louisiana Women Writers Symposium was held on September 19-20, 1986 at Loyola University New Orleans. The conference was funded by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and co-sponsored by Loyola University and the Women’s Studies Consortium of Louisiana. It was co-directed by Dorothy H. Brown and Barbara C. Ewell, faculty members of the English department of City College, Loyola University.

The symposium featured sixteen scholars and moderators and a reading by Ellen Gilchrist over the course of a day and a half, and selected presentations from the conference were published with additional essays in 1988 by the New Orleans Review and by LSU Press in 1992 as a book entitled “Louisiana Women Writers: New Essays and a Comprehensive Bibliography."