Dr. Rabalais Wins the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities' Documentary Photographer of the Year Award

Dr. Kevin Rabalais, a Professor of Practice in the Department of English as well as a proud alumnus (’98), has won the 2026 Documentary Photographer of the Year Award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. LEH notes that “Rabalais’ photography appears regularly in Acadiana Profile, 64 Parishes, and Louisiana Life.” He is a two-time recipient of the Alex Waller Memorial Award, which recognizes the best writing among all award winners from the Press Club of New Orleans, as well as multiple International Regional Magazine Association awards for writing and photography. For his novel, The Landscape of Desire, Rabalais received a Sydney Morning Herald Award for Best Young Australian Novelist. With his wife, Jennifer Levasseur (also a Loyola grad), he is co-editor of Novel Voices: Conversations with 17 Award-Winning American Writers and Conversations with James Salter. About his upcoming book, First, the Body: Field Notes from a Carnival Dreamscape, Booker Prize-winning author Michael Ondaatje writes, “In stunning photography and writing, Kevin Rabalais provides a joyous description of delirium. This is a magical witnessing of an event that feels on the edge of chaos. It is a wonder.” Rabalais also teaches in several of Loyola’s summer study-abroad programs, including in Ireland and Prague.