Announcing Gulf South Writer in the Woods Desiree S. Evans
March 16, 2021
A Studio in the Woods and New Orleans Center for the Gulf South are pleased to announce Desiree S. Evans as the third Gulf South Writer in the Woods, a joint program designed to support the creative work, scholarship and community engagement of writers examining the Gulf South region.
Desiree S. Evans will be completing work on a dystopian literary fantasy novel set hundreds of years into the future along what remains of the Gulf Coast. The novel tells the story of an African-American woman and her family surviving in a post-climate change world where most of Louisiana is under water. In this phantasmagorical new landscape, monsters of myth and legend converge alongside stories of our past and dreams of our possible futures. As a work of speculative fiction and eco-fabulism, the novel makes its home alongside the growing canon of literature exploring the effects of anthropogenic climate change. Desiree will also spend time editing her short-fiction collection — an interlinked series of stories steeped in the folklore, mythology, and history of the bayou communities of rural Louisiana. As a Louisiana native, the Gulf South region plays an important role in Desiree’s writing. In taking readers into her speculative Southern landscapes, she aims to showcase the rich heritage and cultural traditions of a place that is sometimes more water than land. Desiree’s stories exist in a space where storms and rivers rage, where ancestors call, and where magic just might be real enough to touch.