kathryn tucker windham
spoken word stage
ashley m. jones
brooke champagne
carolyn hembree
john giggie
kathryn tucker windham
spoken word stage schedule
The Kathryn Tucker Windham Spoken Word Stage is sponsored by The Poarch Band of Creek Indians
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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19
​ 10:00 am – University of Alabama Undergraduate Creative Writing Students
11:30 am – Pure Products Writers
1:00 pm – Charlie "Tin Man" Lucas, stories about Kathryn Tucker Windham
2:30 pm – Carolyn Hembree
3:30pm – Brooke Champagne
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20:
11:00 am – Pure Products
1:00 pm – Black Warrior Review
2:00 pm – John Giggie
2:45 pm – Ashley M. Jones, Alabama Poet Laureate
listed in order of appearance
about the artists
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Charlie "Tin Man" Lucas is an Alabama folk artist whose work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. Lucas makes figural sculptures and mixed media wall hangings from materials that others have discarded. Charlie became friends with storyteller Kathryn Tucker Windham at a dinner party in France, where he heard Kathryn say she longed for a tomato sandwich. Eventually, they lived next door to each other in Selma.
Lucas said he appreciates opportunities to share stories about his friend who went about her life in simple ways. “Miss Kathryn brought balance to my life and I needed balance,” Lucas said. “She came in my life to be the scale for me.”
Carolyn Hembree is the author of "Skinny" and "Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine and Other Ways to Escape a Plague," and "For Today." She is associate professor at the University at the University of New Orleans and serves as poetry editor of Bayou Magazine.
Brooke Champagne is the award-winning author of Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy, published with the Crux Series in Literary Nonfiction at the University of Georgia Press. Nola Face received starred reviews from Kirkus and Independent Book Review, and was a silver medalist in Southern Nonfiction for the 2024 Independent Publishing Book Awards. Champagne’s work has been selected as Notable in several editions of the Best American Essays anthology series, and she is the recipient of the 2023-2024 Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellowship in Prose. She lives with her husband and children in Tuscaloosa, where she is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA Program at the University of Alabama.
John Giggie is Director of the Summersell Center for the Study of the South and Associate Professor of History at the University of Alabama. He is the author or editor of six books, most recently Bloody Tuesday: The Untold Story of the Battle for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa (Oxford, 2024). He is founder of Alabama Memory, a national effort to recapture and memorialize the over 800 lives lost to lynching in Alabama, and Queer History South, an oral history program documenting the lives of LGBTQ+ citizens in West Alabama. His research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Louisville Center for the Study of American Religion, the Lilly Foundation, the Pew Foundation, and the American Historical Association. He has been a commentator for National Public Radio, Alabama Public Radio, CNN, C-Span, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, Smithsonian Magazine, The Birmingham Watch, BET.com, and Reckon South.
He is the creator of “History of Us,” the first Black history class taught daily in a public school in Alabama, and the West Side Scholars Academy, a middle school enrichment program teaching about social justice and civil rights. He has been recognized as a Distinguished Fellow in Teaching by the College of Arts and Sciences and Outstanding Faculty by the Center for Community-Based Partnerships at the University of Alabama. At the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he began his career, he was awarded the Presidential Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching and the Honors Alliance Award for Outstanding Teaching.
Ashley M. Jones, Alabama poet laureate, is the first person of color and youngest ever to hold the post, in its 93-year existence. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Ashley's work focuses on her Black Southern identity and the ways in which the South plays a vital role in understanding the triumphs and errors of this nation. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, where she was a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow. In 2021, she served as a guest editor of POETRY Magazine, and in 2022, she received a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. Ashley and her work have been featured at CNN, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Good Morning America, BBC, ABC News, The Rumpus, The Oxford American, The Bitter Southerner, POETRY, and other outlets.
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She has received fellowships and awards from organizations including the Academy of American Poets, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Hedgebrook, and The Independent Publishers Book Awards. Ashley’s debut poetry collection, Magic City Gospel, won the silver medal in poetry in the 2017 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Her second book, dark // thing, won the 2018 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry from Pleiades Press, and her third poetry collection, REPARATIONS NOW! was on the longlist for the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. She is also the co-editor of WHAT THINGS COST: An Anthology for the People.
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who was
kathryn tucker windham?
In celebration of Kentuck's 50th anniversary (2021), Kentuck Art Center renamed the Spoken Word Stage to honor the late journalist/storyteller/Alabama legend Kathryn Tucker Windham.
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The Spoken Word Stage at the Kentuck Festival of the Arts would not exist if not for Kathryn.
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In the early years of the Kentuck Festival, there was no storytelling stage - just a circled spot on a map, where someone would tack up a sign with her name, and times. She'd walk the festival grounds, then wander back whenever a crowd of children gathered.
Kentuck Art Center and Festival is honored to dedicate the stage to Kathryn. In addition to the performances listed below, attendees can look forward to listening to old recordings of Kathryn telling her ghostly tales.
Kathryn used to say "Storytelling is a way of saying 'I love you.' I love you enough to tell you something that means a great deal to me."
The power of spoken word transcends time and generations. It is Kentuck's hope that honoring Kathryn Tucker Windham with this stage dedication will stir feelings of nostalgia for those who grew up reading her stories, and introduce a new generation to the magic of storytelling. Or, in Kathryn's words, the magic of saying, "I love you."
Learn more about Kathryn's life and legacy here.
