Kionna Walker LeMalle is a novelist, poet, speaker, and sought-after writing teacher. She has taught writers at every level from elementary through graduate school. Today, LeMalle is an executive writer for the University of Houston-Downtown and an adjunct professor in the Department of Narrative Arts at Houston Christian University. Through Houston’s Writers in the Schools, she served as writer-in-residence at Travis Elementary in the Houston Heights community, offered community writing workshops, and trained writing teachers.  Passionate about nurturing community among writers of all ages, LeMalle founded Writer.Teacher.Friend, a virtual writing group.

As the great-granddaughter of Houston’s Civil Rights legend, Beatrice Lehman Green, LeMalle knows first hand the difficulty and the necessity of telling the stories of the past. Through her fiction, she challenges readers to see hope in pain, resilience in trauma, and forgiveness after betrayal. A Southern girl at heart, she is drawn to stories both warped and shaped by the distinct American South, a region that fuels her imagination, as well as 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 work has been featured in table//FEAST, The Southern Quarterly, The First Line, The Bayou Review, and Devotion in the Open Air, an anthology published by Inked in Gray. Her novel, Behind the Waterline, won the Lee Smith Novel Prize and was published by Blair Publisher in 2025.

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