"An Alternative Literary Festival," with a full weekend of events. Saints & Sinners was designed as an innovative way to reach the community with information about HIV/AIDS, particularly disseminating prevention messages via the writers, thinkers and spokespeople of the GLBT community, and to bring the GLBT literary community together to celebrate the literary arts. Tickets range from $15 to $100 for a weekend pass. One-day passes are available onsite and (until May 5) online. 504-581-1144

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New York State citizens will march each day in support of soldiers and Iraq Veterans Against the War. Final march on May 17 will be followed by the Fort Drum Spring Festival. Free admission. Join us for any or all segments of the marches. Can't walk with us but want to support us? Checks can be made out to "Citizen Soldier" (write "Nation/May March" in memo), 267 Fifth Avenue, No. 901, New York, NY 10016. For routes and more information, see www.nysmarchesforpeace.org.

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Poet Vittoria repetto will be reading at the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival, the alternative GLBT literary festival (504-581-1144). In a review of repetto's Not Just A Personal Ad, Chuck Forester wrote: "My joy in reading these poems was [r]epetto's rebel energy. She revels in her lust without avoiding her history.... For her sex is freedom to indulge her desire; it is not possessive but an exchange of pleasure. Growing up in an age when all things sexual were disguised in metaphor, or never mentioned. I found her candor refreshing and stripped of anxiety." Also featuring Aaron Hamburger, Fay Jacobs, Nathan James, Paul Lisicky and Gary Zebrun. included in the Festival Panel Pass. At St. Mary's Salon, The Bourbon Orleans Hotel, 717 Orleans St.

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160 years of American poetry with Hugh Fox, Richard Krech, Charles Potts, and John Oliver Simon. The poets were together in Berkeley in 1968 and are having a forty years later reunion tour. Fox is a multiple OAS and Fulbright Scholar and professor emeritus of Michigan State University. Krech, newly retired, was for decades a criminal defense attorney in Oakland. Potts' memoir of Berkeley in the 60s, Valga Krusa, was just republished from Green Panda Press. Simon was awarded a NEA fellowship for the translation of Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas. Bird & Beckett is at 653 Chenery Street. 415-586-3733.

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The second annual Houston Palestine Film Festival brings an honest and independent view of Palestine and its diaspora’s society, culture and political travails through the art of film. This group of groundbreaking cinematic texts rise above the degrading stereotypes or reductively politicized depictions of Palestinians. A major goal of the Festival is to directly expose our local community to the perspective of artists as a first step toward circumventing the many government and media filters that pollute our understanding of Palestine and the wider region. Visit www.hpff.org for more information.

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