Lue Palmer is an environmental journalist and writer of fiction on Black relationships to nature, the fantastic in the everyday, and the retelling of history. They have roots in Portland, Jamaica and are currently at work on their novel, The Hungry River. They are a recipient of Columbia University’s Lynton Prize for Book Writing, the Journey Prize, and the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship.

Palmer’s residency project, The Hungry River, is a speculative novel and a Black mythology of climate change, that follows Patience and her family, fractured between Nigeria, Jamaica and Louisiana as their choices interact with the fate of the climate. It chronicles their love affair with nature over 250 years and into the future. Over the six weeks of the residency, Palmer will write the final third of the novel, where Patience’s descendants fight for the fictional town of Augustine, Louisiana — once a safe haven for down-low queers — as industrial development threatens to erase them from the map.

Headshot by Royal del Sol