Kionna Walker LeMalle

Kionna Walker LeMalle is a novelist, poet, speaker, and sought-after writing teacher who has taught writers at every level, from elementary school through graduate studies. She currently teaches in the Department of Narrative Arts at Houston Christian University and remains on the faculty roster for Houston’s Writers in the Schools, continuing her investment in developing young authors. Passionate about nurturing writers, LeMalle also runs Writer.Teacher.Friend, a virtual writing group.

As the great-granddaughter of Houston civil rights legend Beatrice Lehman Green, LeMalle understands firsthand both the difficulty and necessity of telling stories of the past. Through her fiction, she invites readers to find hope in pain, resilience in trauma, and forgiveness after betrayal. A Southern girl at heart, she is drawn to stories shaped by the culture and history of the American South, a region that inspires her imagination and deepens her belief in the restorative power of community, the church, and the second line.

LeMalle earned her Bachelor of Arts in Education from Xavier University of Louisiana, a Master of Education from the University of New Orleans, and an MFA from Houston Christian University. Her creative work has appeared in table//FEAST, The Southern Quarterly, The First Line, The Bayou Review, and Devotion in the Open Air, an anthology of short stories published by Inked in Gray. Her debut novel, Behind the Waterline, won the Lee Smith Novel Prize and was selected as the inaugural book club pick for The Southern Review’s 2025 Southern Summer Book Club.

LeMalle has been married to her pastor and best friend for more than twenty-seven years. Together, they have four children and one granddaughter, to whom she hopes to leave a lasting legacy of story.