Kionna Walker LeMalle is the winner of the Lee Smith Novel Prize for Behind the Waterline, coming from Blair Publisher in March 2025.

Behind the Waterline tells the story of a teenager, Eric, and his eccentric grandmother, who decide to ride out Hurricane Katrina together in his second-floor bedroom. Eric—in a dream, a hallucination, or something else—discovers a room beyond his closet wall, a place he has never seen, where, ultimately, he discovers the history of his people—those he sorely misses and those he never knew.