Biography
New Orleans Center for the Gulf South and A Studio in the Woods welcome the Third Gulf South Writer in the Woods Desiree S. Evans. Gulf South Writer in the Woods is a residency program designed to support the creative work, scholarship, and community engagement of writers examining our region.
As a Louisiania native, Evans’ stories will be rooted in the bayou communities of the gulf south region. According to Evans, “Stories are my lifeblood, and for as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to use words to craft stories about my community – stories of the people I’ve known and loved and met all my life.” Her dystopian fantasy novel takes place 300 years in the future and will center the life of a heroic young woman grappling with a post climate change world where the majority of Louisiana is underwater. Her work weaves fantasy with science and Black futurism and will inspire us to consider creative solutions to how we live with water and resist our region’s colonialism. We are honored to support Evans in connecting with Tulane faculty and archives and providing time at A Studio in the Woods, as research support and inspiration for her upcoming novel and short fiction collection.
Desiree S. Evans is an award-winning writer, scholar, and activist from South Louisiana. She writes fiction for children, teens, and adults. She is a 2020 winner of the Walter Dean Myers Grant for children’s fiction awarded by the organization We Need Diverse Books. She is a contributor to the anthology Foreshadow: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading and Writing YA (Algonquin Young Readers, 2020). Her creative writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net,and has appeared in literary journals such as Gulf Coast, The Offing, Nimrod Journal, Cosmonauts Avenue, and other venues. Her work has received support from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA/Voices), Kimbilio Fiction, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Desiree holds an MFA in creative writing from the Michener Center for Writers at The University of Texas at Austin, an MA in international policy from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a BA in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.