Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts (LSMSA) alum Stephanie Soileau (’94) will spend several days visiting the Natchitoches campus of her alma mater during the week of March 16. Soileau, who currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Chicago, will visit creative writing classes and will present a public reading at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 19 at LSMSA’s Center for Performance & Technology (CPT) Recital Hall. There is no charge to attend Soileau’s public reading and all members of the public are invited. The CPT Recital Hall is located on the west side of LSMSA’s High School Building at 715 University Parkway. For more information on visiting campus, contact the school at (318) 357-2500 or info@LSMSA.edu.

Soileau's collection of short stories, Last One Out Shut Off the Lights, was published in 2020 by Little, Brown & Co., and her debut novel, Should the Waters Take Us, is forthcoming from Doubleday in 2026. Her work has also appeared in Best American Short Stories, Glimmer Train, Oxford American, Ecotone, Tin House, and New Stories from the South. Soileau’s writing has been supported by fellowships from the Wallace Stegner Fellowship Program at Stanford University, the Camargo Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has taught creative writing at the Art Institute of Chicago, Stanford University, and the University of Southern Maine. Originally from Lake Charles, Soileau now lives in Chicago and is an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Chicago.