Raised in Bayou la Batre, on the Alabama Gulf Coast, my creative writing and multimedia projects feature my ancestral lands, lineages, and queer longings. I explore queer-of-color themes rooted in rural coastal settings and southern port cities; specifically, Bayou la Batre, Coden, Mobile, New Orleans, Biloxi, and Baltimore. My projects present local and regional Black and Indigenous southern folklore, dialect, foodways, religious and spiritual practices, music, and cultural events.
Biomythography Bayou is a decolonizing narrative portraiture project featuring experimental performative writing. With an emphasis on queer, intersex, trans, and femme embodied knowledges, this manuscript engages West African worldviews, Poarch Band (Creek Nation) wisdom, and Black Catholic Creole cosmology, offering readers archival histories, contemporary political discourse, and tellings from the ancestral imaginary. Paring contextualizing non-fiction essays with biomythographic narrative portraiture, Biomythography Bayou presents local and regional Black southern folklore, dialect, foodways, religious and spiritual practices, music, and cultural events. These are celebrated in the portraits and conveyed from the first-person viewpoint of the narrative characters with generational and place-based connections that reveal themselves throughout the text. Book proposal submitted (MS Invited/Under Term of Exclusivity, The Griot Project Book Series, Bucknell University Press)
Poetry
Lewis, M. (in press). Thunder Cake. In J. Crews and M. Walsh (Eds.), Queer Nature. Philadelphia, PA: Autumn House Press.
Lewis, M. (2020). Catfish Mardi Gras Queen. In Judd, Bettina (Ed.), Auburn Avenue, Autumn/Winter. Atlanta, GA.
Lewis, M. (2017) We Take On. In Stephanie Andrea Allen and Lauren Cherelle (Eds.) Serendipity: Black Lesbian Literary Collective. Fall/issue 2.
Art exhibitions, Dance Performances, & Readings
“Biomythography Bayou,” Goucher College Alumni Writers Series, March 1, 2021
“Biomythography Bayou,” The Art of Change Agency, por medio de la pluma: writing to change the world reading series (online), June 26, 2020
“Biomythography Bayou,” Auburn Avenue, Special Issue GENDER reading Series (online) May 8, 2020
Intersections, Joyce Gordon Gallery, Oakland CA, June 2006
World Arts Focus Washington DC/ Takoma Park: Artist Cooperative and Studio Complex Open Studio, Tacoma Park, MD, July 2005
Humaneyes: Kinfolk and Kulture (solo exhibition), Towson University Union, Baltimore, MD, January 2005
The Door Project, Eubie Blake Jazz and Cultural Center, Baltimore, MD 2005
The Voices, The Vanguard Artist Collective, Movement Emporium/World Arts Focus, Washington DC 2005
s’Lottery Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, MD 2004
Out the Box, Rocket Salon, Washington DC 2002
Dr. Mel Michelle Lewis 