Meet Dorathy Anne Carver — better known as Dora — the young protagonist of my original short story Spell of the South. The story unfolds in 1913 in the fictional town of Roadsway, Kentucky — a small, majority-Black community where Dora’s father pastors the church. In the wider world, the Great Migration is reshaping the South, jazz is rising in the cities, and Louisville pulls at small-town imaginations like a magnet. Dora is a talented singer with second sight — a gift her father fears comes from the devil — and she longs for the wider world beyond Roadsway. She’s the first character I’ve developed end-to-end from my own writing into illustration.

College for Creative Studies – 2025/26