McNeese Students Write Stories and Poems for Riverside Park  

McNeese State University graduate students worked with the city of Lake Charles to create an interactive element for the walking trail at Riverside Park. 

The project started during a graduate-level creative writing class where associate English professor Dr. Wendy Whelan-Stewart and English professor Dr. Keagan LeJeune challenged the students to reconnect with the local ecosystem in Southwest Louisiana. The professors assigned the students a plant or animal to research and learn its place in the habitat, culture and history of the region.   

“We wanted to immerse our students in Southwest Louisiana habitat so that they could value it, speak for it and connect with its non-human inhabitants,” Whelan-Stewart said. “The students loved the class and affectionately called it the ‘plant class’.” 

The students wanted to continue their work beyond the classroom, and Whelan-Stewart suggested Riverside Park.  

“Wendy had the brilliant idea of developing a QR trail in the park. When we approached the city with this idea, the administration loved it and was eager to partner with McNeese, celebrate the work of our students and showcase the beauty of Riverside Park,” LeJeune said. 

Along the trail in Riverside Park, visitors can use their smart devices to connect with a collection of meditative poetry, short pieces of fiction and brief bits of prose written by the students.  

“We love leveraging partnerships to enhance our public spaces and having the opportunity to engage with the McNeese Master of Fine Arts Program is a huge win,” said Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter. “Situated along the Calcasieu River, Riverside Park is one of our city’s most scenic assets.” 

Each piece will enhance the visitor’s connection with the park and deepen the experience. Featured plants and animals include spiderwort, spider lily, wasp and mussels. 

“I have long loved Riverside Park for its natural beauty and quiet. You see an authentic Southwest Louisiana ecosystem,” Whelan-Stewart explained. “I regularly see bald eagles, cormorants, alligators and evidence of deer and armadillos. The plants are the ones my Creole ancestors harvested for their food, medicine and pleasure.” 

McNeese graduate student Ben Watson, of Boise, Idaho, built the website the QR codes connect to and wrote the piece that is connected to the first sign on the trail. Watson is a third year Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in creative writing student. 

“I hope that people will take an opportunity to engage a bit more fully in the natural world and have a bit more quiet,” Watson said. 

Recent graduate, Taylor Mahone, of Oscala, Florida, focused on cleavers, alligators, coastlines and bodies of water in the class. She hopes visitors to the park will think about how the stories and myths of Southwest Louisiana are inextricably connected and intertwined with their own stories.  

Abigail Skinner, also a recent graduate from Rancho Santa Margarita, California, focused on cattails. Both Mahone and Skinner earned an MFA in creative writing and a Master of Arts in English. 

“I hope people will be better able to experience the way creative writing can represent the environment around them and try their hand at engaging with the environment through art,” Skinner said. 

Mahone and Skinner worked together on curating the collection to form a narrative to encompass the length of the trail. 

“We want everyone in Southwest Louisiana and beyond to know about this park and appreciate her grandeur, and through our enhanced programming, more people are visiting Riverside than ever before. The addition of this QR Code Trail displaying the work of these talented students is something we hope will attract even more visitors,” said Hunter. “We thank Dr. LeJeune, Dr. Whelan-Stewart and all of their students for their dedication to improving quality of life in the city of Lake Charles.”