Wendy A. Gaudin
- Type of work
- Literary Artist
- Location
- Louisiana
- Year
- 2026
Wendy A Gaudin is a historian, a vernacular beadworker, and an interdisciplinary writer whose work centers Southern-descended, mixed-heritage and mixed-race populations and histories. Gaudin writes across genres, including creative nonfiction, autoethnography, oral history, narrative poetry, and personal narrative. Her research and scholarship focuses primarily on the overlapping themes of race and hybridity, skin color and ancestry, migration and family, erasure and memory. Her first prose monograph, “Sunset Limited: An Autobiography of Creole” (LSU Press, 2025), straddles autoethnography, historical narrative, and creative nonfiction. While at A Studio in the Woods, Gaudin will be working on her second prose monograph, currently titled, “Barbara Ann: A Life, Recovered.” It further explores the migration of Black and mixed-heritage people from the Deep South to the West Coast, and addresses narratives of childhood disability, medical racism, institutionalization, and family history.
Photo by Bart Everson.
“The surrounding environment supported my writing because the only ‘distractions’ were inspirational to my writing process. The vultures circling in the skies above the Writer’s Cabin were mesmerizing; it felt like they were watching over me. Being so close to the Mississippi River is magical and, because I’m writing about New Orleans history and people, it is an important place to ponder and to imagine. I’m grateful for ASITW for focusing specifically on Gulf Coast, Mississippi River, and Louisiana subject matter — it is so important that Deep South artists and writers have a space like this to contemplate, to explore, and to focus.” – Wendy Gaudin
