I plan to discuss a new invariant of 3-manifolds called sutured Floer homology. This homology theory is defined for 3-manifolds with sutured boundaries, and generalizes the (hat version of the) Heegaard Floer invariants for closed 3-manifolds defined by Peter Ozsvath and Zoltan Szabo. In this talk, I hope to define the invariants and highlight some of their key properties. If time permits, I'll also discuss some applications of this new theory to contact geometry.