A few months ago, I read an essay in The New York Times by Margaret Renkl entitled “Telling the Truth in a Story-Haunted South.” She writes about a PBS series Southern Storytellers, directed and produced by Arkansas filmmaker Craig Renaud, which features poets, songwriters, screenwriters, novelists, historians, and memoirists who grew up in or reside in the South. Since then, I’ve watched the three episodes of the documentary with my husband, and it’s inspiring to see the enormous talent of US Southern artists featured there.
Since I grew up in Arkansas, I was especially interested to learn about Arkansas based Renaud Brothers Films led by Craig Renaud. Renaud with his brother Brent Renaud have made several highly acclaimed documentaries. Tragically, in 2022, Brent Renaud was killed while documenting the refugee crisis in Ukraine. See more about Renaud Brothers Films at this link.
Southern Storytellers features several of the many “storytellers” from Arkansas, some I’m familiar with, others of which I hadn’t heard. For example, Mary Steenburgen, who we know most often for her roles in movies or TV shows, talks about her career as a songwriter and singer. We even hear her sing a love song to Ted Danson, to whom she is married. Other featured storytellers with Arkansas connections are Qui Nguyen, a playwright, screenwriter, and director, whose parents met in an Arkansas refugee camp after fleeing Vietnam when Saigon fell. There is also country songwriter and singer Justin Moore, who lives in Arkansas, and Billy Bob Thornton, musician, singer, screenwriter, and actor.
Other featured Southern storytellers are Thao Nguyen, singer-songwriter from Virginia; Jesmyn Ward, novelist, from Mississippi, who teaches at Tulane in Louisiana; Natasha Tretheway, US Poet Laureate (2012-2014) from Mississippi; David Joy, novelist from North Carolina; Lucie Silvas, British singer-songwriter, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee; Adia Victoria, singer-songwriter and poet from South Carolina, who lives in Tennessee; Jericho Brown, poet from Louisiana, who teaches at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia; Lyle Lovett, singer-songwriter from Texas; Jason Isbell, singer-songwriter from Alabama; and the list goes on.
See this link: “Meet the Musicians In ‘Southern Storytellers’ | Jason Isbell, Thao Nguyen, Adia Victoria, & More,” for an overview of a few artists featured in the documentary. Or better yet, just watch the documentary on PBS.
Karen T Miller 