Writers, chefs, musicians, actors and fans have come to town to celebrate one of the South’s best-known authors in the way we do it best in the South:  with a festival!

The 23rd Annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival (through March 29) is an opportunity to see, hear and talk to fellow book lovers about books, authors and writing.

One of Friday’s featured authors is Dr. Brad Gooch, a Guggenheim fellow who just published what some are calling a definitive biography, “Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor.” Brad’s research took him to Milledgeville, Ga., home of the biennial Flannery O’Connor Symposium and Flannery’s family home, Andalusia. (While on faculty at Georgia College in Milledgeville, I worked with a PR Campaigns class to promote the symposium. Flannery attended Georgia State College for Women, as Georgia College was known then, graduating in 1945. Go Flan Clan!)

In addition to his O’Connor book, Brad has written books on topics as diverse at poet Frank O’Hara and singers Hall and Oates. Fashion designer Diane Von Furstenburg selected Brad as one of The Beautiful People, proclaiming, “He’s talented, elegant and handsome.”

If you’d like to see Brad up close and personal, he’ll be in the Bourbon Orleans Ballroom at 1 p.m. as part of a panel discussing “The Seven Deadly Sins as Inspiration for Writing.”

If you can’t make the panel discussion, listen for an interview with Brad on Writers’ Forum (Saturdays at 8:30 a.m.; Sundays at 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 p.m.) on WRBH-88.3 FM, hosted by our very own Dr. Sherry Lee Alexander.