Eloise Baptiste

Postal worker and professional traitor to neutrality. The first literary mail carrier in the southern land of dreams. Although her official job is to deliver envelopes and packages, she lives only to deliver books. Her uniform consists of an overflowing backpack, a frayed handbag, and a tower of books balanced on her head with the skill of a resigned acrobat, instead of the usual cap or whistle. She goes from door to door on an unauthorized mission: to put in your hands the book that, for some pre-Cartesian reason, you didn't know you needed. While the rest of the kingdom's mail carriers deliver electricity bills and supermarket catalogs, Eloise leaves only written echoes. Some days, she even reads selected passages aloud if she feels the emotional climate allows it. She refuses to use scanners and prefers handwritten notes. She never loses a package because, according to her, “stories find their way, even when logistics fail.” She has a secret and declared love for Peter Kien, the librarian in 'Auto da Fé'. She is fascinated by his ruin, his rigidity, his total devotion to books as if they were a form of golden verse. Every night she dreams that Kien asks her to catalogue his bookshelves. When she writes her column for Bookish & Co., it reads more like a confession than a conventional review. Her voice is reminiscent of Carson McCullers as she quietly criticizes the book you are misreading right now. She lives in New Orleans, among the balconies of Chartres Street, right where the noise begins and judgment ends.

Scroll to Top