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Frank Perez

Home Featured Authors & Panelists Featured Participant Lineup 2025 Frank Perez

Frank Perez is a writer, teacher, tour guide, and public speaker who also serves as the executive director of the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana. He has authored several books on New Orleans queer history and written hundreds of articles on the same topic. His publications also include a number of scholarly articles in academic journals as well as a number of poems and short stories in various literary journals. 

Schedule

2:00 pm to 2:45 pm
Outside Museum, North Tent
Rainbow Fleur de Lis: Essays on Queer New Orleans History
Frank Perez with moderator Alecia P. Long

3:00 pm to 3:45 pm
Cavalier House Books Tent
Book Signing

Rainbow Fleur de Lis: Essays on Queer New Orleans History

Rainbow Fleur de Lis: Essays on Queer New Orleans History is an anthology of eighty-five short, easy-to-read essays that originally appeared in Ambush Magazine and French Quarter Journal. Author Frank Perez has collected essays on a wide variety of topics in LGBTQ+ history and arranged them into multiple sections. Each section contains five essays and begins with a brief introductory overview that ties the individual pieces together.

The book opens with Gay Carnival and provides a unique glimpse behind the scenes of this distinct New Orleans tradition. “Bars and Gay Spaces” examines the ever-shifting queer centers of gravity throughout the French Quarter. The section on the AIDS epidemic demonstrates how, by the end of the 1980s, New Orleans was a model city for providing AIDS-related services. “Arts and Letters” highlights figures such as lesbian photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston and playwright Tennessee Williams. The next section looks at homophobia in New Orleans in the 1950s. “Activists and Activism” traces the birth and rise of queer activism in New Orleans. Historical surveys of several organizations are then provided, followed by a unit on the Up Stairs Lounge fire. A section on Southern Decadence follows before the book turns its attention to how gay men saved the French Quarter a hundred years ago. Several legendary entertainers are then featured, as is the history of Pride in New Orleans. The book closes with a section on historical scholarship and several interview transcripts. Altogether, these essays provide an invaluable resource on New Orleans LGBTQ+ history.