Story Made Podcast

Our conversation this week is with Chloe Maxmin & Canyon Woodward. Chloe is the youngest woman ever to serve in the Maine State Senate. She was elected in 2020 after unseating a two-term Republican incumbent and (former) Senate minority leader. In 2018, she served in the Maine House of Representatives after becoming the first Democrat to win a rural conservative district. Canyon is a political str...

Our conversation this week is with Hilda Downer. She's an Appalachian poet, retired psychiatric nurse and English instructor at Appalachian State University, member of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative, and most importantly, a child of Bandana, NC.  In this episode we talk about Hilda's love for Bandana, the mica and feldspar mines as a haven, seeing beauty in what others see as ugly, w...

Our conversation this week is with Vivian Gibson. She's the author of 'The Last Children of Mill Creek' - a bestselling memoir about growing up in the 1950s in a segregated St. Louis neighborhood, a life-long entrepreneur, the Missouri Library Association's 2022 Missouri Author of the Year, a 2020 Missouri Humanities Council Literary Achievement Award winner, and most importantly, a child of Mill...

Our conversation this week is with Annie B. Jones. She's the owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia, host of the 'From the Front Porch' podcast, and child of Tallahassee, Florida.  In this episode we explore the power of ordinary stories, the beauty and challenges of small-town life and business, how faith built The Bookshelf, her evolution as a From-Away in Thoma...

Our first conversation of 2024 is with John T. Edge. He's an acclaimed author, the host of TrueSouth on ESPN/SEC Network, Director of the Mississippi Lab at the University of Mississippi, the founding director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, resident of Oxford, Mississippi and child of Jones County, Georgia.  In this episode John T. takes us back to his childhood in Clinton, Georgia, talks abou...

Our conversation this week is with Garrett Martin: award-winning filmmaker, owner of VentureLife Films production company, and child of Hamilton, Virginia.  Martin has worked on numerous documentaries with his last feature, UNBOUNDED, receiving multiple international awards and has been shown around the world. His current feature, THE RIVER RUNS ON , is making its rounds through the film festival...

Our conversation this week is with Elaine McMillion Sheldon: Academy Award-nominated, Peabody-winning, and two-time Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and daughter of West Virginia. She premiered her latest feature-length documentary, KING COAL, at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. She is the director of two Netflix Or...

Our conversation this week is with Nina Parikh - Director of the Mississippi Film Office, filmmaker, producer of Sundance award-winning film 'Ballast', and child of Mississippi.  Listen to us talk about a timeless love story, searching for and deepening roots, the making of 'Ballast' and loving words from Roger Ebert, launching a career in Eudora Welty's living room, 25 years of connecting the wor...

Our conversation this week is with H.C. Porter - Vicksburg-based photographer, painter, printmaker, owner of H.C. Porter Gallery, and child of Jackson, Mississippi.  Listen to us talk about her initial joys in life, combining artistic interests, seeing Millsaps Avenue, the influence of Studs Terkel and Eudora Welty, the stories behind 'Backyards and Beyond' and 'Blues @ Home', and learning how to...

Our conversation this week is with Brent Martin - author, conservationist, educator,  Executive Director of the Blue Ridge Bartram Trail Conservancy, 2022 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award winner, and longtime beloved member of the Cowee community in Macon County, NC. Listen to us talk about Brent writing a book on the wild and beautiful life of George Masa, William Bartram's story and what he...

Our conversation this week is with Julyan Davis - artist, writer, narrative painter of the American South and West, explorer of lost stories, child of England and citizen of the world. "If you're able to find beauty in what everyone else doesn't consider for a second, there's a great richness in that. In a way you've made your own discovery." In 1988, Julyan wandered into Sotheran's Rare Books in...

Our conversation this week is with Elon Justice - filmmaker, writer, creator of the Appalachian Retelling Project, and child of Pikeville, Kentucky.  "Challenging the narrative of Appalachia - one story at a time." Raised in Eastern Kentucky, Elon heard stories from her family that taught her who she is and where she comes from - and to be proud of it. But she also saw firsthand how negative, ster...

Our conversation this week is with Suzi Altman: photographer, caretaker of folk-art treasure Margaret's Grocery, and Mississippian by way of Youngstown, OH and New York City.  "I couldn't just let that be forgotten or overlooked." When Suzi moved to Mississippi, she received the gifts of friendship with James Meredith, "Preacher" Dennis, and Margaret Rogers Dennis. She didn't take them for granted...

Our conversation this week is with Lee Stockdale - acclaimed poet, Army veteran, and winner of the 2022 United Kingdom National Poetry Prize.   For 10 years, Lee felt a slab on his head - to infinity in every direction - weighing him down. His father, Grant Stockdale, was close friends with John F. Kennedy and, overcome by grief, jumped to his death ten days after the assassination. Due to the sha...

Our conversation this week is with Castel Sweet: Hip-Hop lover and scholar, Sociologist, Director of Community Engagement at the University of Mississippi, and child of Memphis, Tennessee.  So much good stuff in this episode: Hip-Hop feeling like home. The influence of Big K.R.I.T. and Outkast. The struggle of staying true to yourself. Music opening worlds and reminding you who you are. The discon...

Our conversation this week is with Jordan Rushing, Warren County's Old Court House Museum historian and child of Vicksburg, Mississippi.  How can you play and still accomplish something cool? I love that question. We talk in this episode about life-changing teachers, the legacy of Gordon Cotton, learning and work as play, Eva Whitaker Davis and the story of the Old Court House Museum, clandestine...

Our conversation this week is with Tema Stauffer - photographer, Associate Professor of Photography at East Tennesse State University, curator, writer, and child of Kalamazoo, MI (and North Carolina, technically). Her most recent work,  Southern Fiction, explores settings that shaped the literary imaginations of 20th-century Southern writers. (welcome back to our trusted friend, Eudora Welty!)  Th...

Our conversation this week is with Julian Rankin - Executive Director of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, former Director of the Center for Art & Public Exchange at the Mississippi Museum of Art, author of Catfish Dream: Ed Scott's Fight for His Family Farm and Racial Justice in the Mississippi Delta , and child of both Mississippi and North Carolina.  Lots of good stuff in this episode. The mon...

We're kicking off 2023 with the wonderful Ellen Rodgers Daniels - Executive Director of the Mississippi Book Festival, Lemurian elder, photographer, and child of Rolling Fork.  This episode is full of good stuff. The magic of books. Ellen's serendipitous path to leading the MS Book Fest. The realness of John Evans and Lemuria. Meeting your heroes as a job. Loving on libraries. Children's authors d...

Our final conversation of 2022 (!) is with W. Ralph Eubanks - acclaimed author, professor at the University of Mississippi, former director of publishing at the Library of Congress, and fellow University of Michigan graduate.  "The bookmobile opened up the world to me". When those wheels hit the gravel on the road to his childhood home, Ralph found refuge in the cool air and stories contained insi...

Our conversation this week is with Katie McKee, Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. What fascinates you? Answering this question honestly can lead to a life of constant learning and lifelong company from some interesting people - even if they're long gone. For Katie McKee, one of those people is Reconstruction-era writ...

Our conversation this week is with Jen Harr, founder of Cornbread & Roses, an LGBTQ+ community space and therapy center in Sylva, North Carolina. "bread for all, and roses too." CBR is a space for people who don't feel like they belong in this world. Rather than stand idle and passively decry the place she was raised, she came home and started building to make it better. By carving out the space s...

Our conversation this week is with Dawn Gilchrist, devoted teacher, marvelous writer, attender to words, and advocate for social change in her home of Western North Carolina. "What possibilities lie dormant that can be teased out if I can figure out what engages their mind?" This sums up Dawn's life and career. In every single human story she sees shared humanity. She wonders about people and atte...

Our conversation this week is with Clinnesha Sibley: child and mother of McComb, Mississippi, playwright, poet, literary arts educator, and purveyor of real stories. Who are you accountable to? A simple question brought Clinnesha Sibley back home to do the same thing she did when she was a child: write and tell stories. She thought about the most powerful stories she'd ever heard, and they weren't...

Our first conversation of the season is with the honorable Ebony Lumumba, Ph. D. -- mother to her babies Alaké and Nubia, Department Chair and Professor of English at Jackson State University, and loving champion of her home community in Jackson, Mississippi.  Motherhood is powerful. In all matters of life, Ebony embodies and shares the love mothers gave to her. In this episode you'll hear Ebony t...