Lana Laws Downing

Lana Laws Downing is a retired educator who lives and writes in Franklin, Louisiana. South Louisiana is the setting for all four of her published works, including Heaven and High Water (2011) about her mother’s early life in a cypress lumber camp; and three short novels, Jon Teel (2018), T-Garçon of Grand Isle (2018), and Grand Isle Farewell, (2021).

Lana grew up in Franklin, attended college in San Antonio and Milwaukee, WI, married and moved to the Texas Panhandle in 1964. She and her husband Trent moved back to Louisiana in 1985, and have resided there since. They are the parents of two daughters and grandparents of three.

Lana writes about the people and places she knows best, South Louisianians.