Barbara Ewell has published on various topics: Michael Drayton, Kate Chopin, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, southern literature, Louisiana women writers, and most recently, an anthology, Southern Local Color: Tales of Region, Race and Gender. Recent lectures have linked the experience of post-Katrina New Orleans with the work of Kate Chopin, and she also was the keynote speaker at the Faulkner and Chopin Conference at Southeast Missouri University.