Exploring Our Stories. StoryBoard Memphis is a nonprofit multimedia resource for news and feature-length stories on local arts, culture, history, and community. This podcast is a longer cut of the half-hour radio show that airs on Memphis's FM 89.3 WYPL each Sunday evening at 5:30 PM. Taken right out of the pages of StoryBoard Memphis, this show asks Memphians to talk about their passions, their initiatives, or to just talk about what makes Memphis, Memphis.
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episode 66: SB 30 Episode 66: Writing historical fiction with Memphis author Susan Cushman
“My characters meet at Ole Miss, when there were very few Black students on the campus, in 1966. In February of 1970, on campus, a group called Up With People gave a concert. And there was this huge protest where 60 Black kids were arrested. Eight of the those students came to be known as the Ole Miss Eight. (The character) John is a composite of two of the men who were part of the Ole Miss Eight.”
That’s author Susan Cushman, talking about writing her book John and Mary Margaret, and how she weaved her fictional characters into the very real and historical civil rights events in Mississippi and Memphis during a fifty-year span. Join host Mark Fleischer as he talks to Ms. Cushman about her new novel and the practice and teaching of writing.