Writing Program and CCS W&L Assistant Teaching Professor Michelle Grue was awarded a Regents’ Junior Faculty Fellowship, which provides $7,500 in summer research salary in the academic year 2023-24 to support her novel project entitled The Sea's Mercy.

Of her work-in-progress, Dr. Grue writes, “Black Americans with enslaved ancestors have long heard the legends about mermaids formed from captured Africans who ‘jumped from the ships, because they knew death was better than bondage’ (Killmonger, Black Panther, 2018). The Sea's Mercy, a novel-in-progress, builds off a short story I published in 2019 about what might happen if pre-existing Black mermaids rescued a captured African who jumped off the first slave ship to attempt to cross the Atlantic. Disgusted and angered that humans would dare pollute their waters in this way, the mermaids decide to prevent such ships from passing through their waters by allying with other mermaid clans and mythical sea creatures to prove European fears about sea monsters.”