Recently, J. Kastely, the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston described Shrimp Boat Projects in a way that we think helps best explain the core intentions of the work. (Faculty and students from the Creative Writing Program will be participants of Shrimp Boat Projects)

“So the overarching organization of the project is an investigation and response to the work of shrimping, seeing it as a set of historical, cultural, economic  and material practices that take place within a particular natural environment that is itself being shaped partly by historical, cultural, economic, material, and political practices.  The project seeks to understand, intellectually and artistically, a particular form of localized labor, to understand the value that inheres in such practices, and the forces that are shaping and possibly endangering these practices.  This is an effort by artists to understand a region in its unique particularity by understanding in a complex way a form of labor that is peculiar to that region.”