Chloe Maxmin & Canyon Woodward
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 strategist, author, and trail runner who served as Chloe's campaign manager in Maine. Together they wrote "Dirt Road Revival: How to Rebuild Rural Politics and Why Our Future Depends On It" and...
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Hilda Downer
Story Made Podcast
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, walking and tasting nature, seclusion as a reason to get together, an infinite connection through landscapes and music, poets projecting themselves into the future, finding her place at Wiley's...
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Vivian Gibson
Story Made Podcast
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 Creek in St. Louis, Missouri. In this episode we talk all about Vivian's memoir, why the story of Mill Creek is so important, writing the story you want to read, the lasting influence of her mother...
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Annie B. Jones
Story Made Podcast
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 Thomasville, work as humility, her wonderful team of booksellers and communal support, an honest (and refreshing) take on Amazon, and the strength given by "weak ties" inside a bookshop. Visit ...
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John T. Edge
Story Made Podcast
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 about the infuence his mother and father have had on his life, explores the vicissitudes of his career, shares his fascination with lost worlds and underworlds and Underground Atlanta, gives us a...
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Garrett Martin
Story Made Podcast
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 circuit and will premiere in 2023. His clients include organizations such as BBC, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, National Parks Conservation Association, Eastern Band of Cherokee and...
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Elaine McMillion Sheldon
Story Made Podcast
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 Original Documentaries - "Heroin(e)" and "Recovery Boys" - that explore America's opioid crisis. In 2013, she released "Hollow," an interactive documentary that examines the future of rural...
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Nina Parikh
Story Made Podcast
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 world & Mississippi through film, how to get stuff done in a polarized world, belonging and not being enough of anything, and seeing the story in everything. Location: Mississippi Film...
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H.C. Porter
Story Made Podcast
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 tell stories outside of Mississippi. Location: H.C. Porter Gallery | Vicksburg, Mississippi Buy and Follow HC Porter on and
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Brent Martin
Story Made Podcast
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 can still teach us two centuries later, the vicissitudes of conservation work, seeing difference differently, finding common ground in the wild, nature and the numinous, and finding/maintaining...
info_outlineOur conversation this week is with Curtis Rayborn, a living history lesson on Tuskegee, Alabama. He's a former student and employee at the Tuskegee Institute, retired Alabama Army National Guard member, volunteer at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, and marvelous storyteller.
"I was dying of curiosity." This is what Curtis remarked about his encounters with one woman who he eventually learned was an important part of the Tuskegee Airmen Experience. He had so many questions. He needed to know more. But he understands that all the knowledge he's gained since moving Tuskegee in 1967 is worth nothing if he doesn't share it. That's how he's lived for over 50 years, learning about the place that shaped him and spreading the word to anyone who will listen.
I met Curtis during my April 2021 visit to Tuskegee at the Rayborn Manor Bed and Breakfast, owned and operated by his wife Leoncia (also an amazing person). His immense love of Tuskegee and its history lit me up so much that I, too, had to know more. So I returned to listen to Curtis share his everyday experiences with the Tuskegee Airmen, the history of the Tuskegee Institute and its impact on him and the world, and so many more cool stories about "little Ol' Tuskegee".
Stay at the Rayborn Manor Bed and Breakfast
Visit the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site
Mentioned in this episode:
The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker
Robert Russa Moton of Hampton and Tuskegee by William Hardin Hughes and Frederick D. Patterson
Knowing Mandela by John Carlin
Moton Field/Tuskegee Airmen Special Resource Study by the National Park Service
A Century of Agriculture in the 1890 Land-Grant Institutions and Tuskegee University by B.D. Mayberry
The Fifth Chinese Daughter by Jade Snow Wong
Wings for This Man (Documentary Short Film)