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 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 London, England and discovered ‘Stars Fell on Alabama’ by Carl Carmer. Transfixed by the state’s history and a 19th century colony settled by Napoleonic exiles, he followed his curiosity to the source. After a few months spent working odd jobs and saving money, he set off on a great adventure from England to the American South – the untidy land of wistful melancholy that would shape his art and life. He’d eventually settle in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, finding in them a strange kinship and connection to his homelands.
When he was struggling to earn a spot at an art school, Julyan decided to take his own advice. He found the meeting point of all his particular interests and created a life there. He pursued his dream with conviction and certainty for so long that by the time he realized how difficult it would be, it was too late. He was an artist.
In this episode you’ll hear Julyan talk about his great adventure from England to Alabama, walking as a lifestyle, finding beauty where others don’t look, the never-ending story of American Ghosts, connecting Appalachia and the Scottish borders, the art of creating for yourself, creating a timeless children’s story for his son, and much more.
Location: Julyan's home | Asheville, NC
Buy his debut novel, A History of Saints
Mentioned in this episode, for you to explore:
The Mind of the South by W.J. Cash
Excerpts from The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Stars Fell on Alabama by Carl Carmer
Searching for the Wrong-Eyes Jesus
City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Bruce Chatwin: One of the Last Great Explorers
'There's No Memory of the Joy.' Why 40 Years of Superfund Work Hasn't Saved Tar Creek
Dark on Netflix
The Storied South by William Ferris
Helpmate Domestic Violence Services
How Erwin, Tenn. Is Reinventing Its Legacy of Killing Mary The Elephant
The Professor's House by Willa Cather
'Luddite' Teens Don't Want Your Likes
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
'Weather Vane' by Common Market
'Language of My World' by Macklemore
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Eugenics and Sex Harmony by Rubin Herman
Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane