Yvette Childress

Yvette Childress is a New Orleans-based biographer whose books on Southern political and cultural figures have been translated into six languages. Raised in the American South, she spent over a decade working as an archival researcher and local journalist before transitioning to full-time biographical writing.

Her work focuses on the complex, overlooked histories of the Gulf Coast. In her book, Suite 434, she utilizes newly unsealed public records and personal correspondence to reconstruct mid-century political alliances and the quiet figures who shaped them behind closed doors.

She lives in the historic Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans, where she spends her spare time volunteering at local historical archives and restoring antique brass instruments.