Sharon LaCour is a pianist, piano teacher, and author living in Lafayette, Louisiana. After growing up in New Orleans in a Cajun family and spending years up north, she returned to Louisiana where she has published over a dozen short stories in literary journals. Her debut novel, The Meeting of Air and Water, explores the connections between photography, identity, and Cajun culture across two generations of women photographers.

After 216 episodes of interviewing photographers, I never expected episode 217 would feature someone who isn’t a photographer at all. But Sharon LaCour’s story illustrates how photography can inspire creative work in unexpected ways.

I met Sharon through her son Daniel, a jazz bassist I photographed while documenting Virginia’s jazz community. During a post-sound check conversation, Daniel mentioned his mother had just published a novel inspired by Fonville Winans, a photographer who documented life in the Louisiana bayous from the 1920s through the 1990s. I immediately wanted to know more.

Sharon’s novel began taking shape when she received a gift in her thirties—a book of Winans’ photographs from the 1930s. “I had a great love of photography at the time,” she explained, describing how those images captivated her. The portraits especially moved her—faces of Cajun people along the coast, captured by a young photographer traveling the bayous in a beat-up houseboat. “It wasn’t until I found this photography book with the photographs by Fonville Winans that the book kind of took shape,” she told me.

The Meeting of Air and Water follows two women photographers separated by generations, both influenced by a Winans-inspired character who documents Cajun life along the Louisiana coast. Sharon weaves together themes of cultural identity, family heritage, and the power of photography to preserve disappearing ways of life. The book explores how one photographer’s gift of a camera to a young Cajun girl ripples across decades, connecting women through their shared passion for documenting real-life moments.

Since the two fictional photographers in Sharon’s novel were essentially street photographers—this conversation felt like a natural fit for our audience. Sharon’s connection to both Cajun culture and and street photography brings a unique perspective on how images can inspire stories that honor heritage and preserve history.

• Sharon’s Website