Kionna Walker LeMalle
Speaker
Kionna Walker LeMalle crafts stories and poetry from the distinct culture and history of the American South. Her work has appeared in table//FEAST, The Southern Quarterly, The Bayou Review, and Devotion in the Open Air, an Inked in Gray Press anthology. She earned her MFA at Houston Christian University, where she now teaches graduate students in the Department of Narrative Arts. Her debut novel, Behind the Waterline (Blair, 2025), won the Lee Smith Novel Prize, selected by contest judge Deesha Philyaw.