By background a storyteller, I became a published author in 2012 with the memoir THE LITTLE BOOKSTORE OF BIG STONE, which was about the power of books in a small community considered “too disinterested in reading” to host a bookstore (read: dumb). The bookstore became a community hub, a third place where people could be themselves, their best selves. People whose jobs were beneath their intellectual abilities, whose opportunities were limited by circumstance, whose spirits were unbroken by any of that, became our customers and friends.

We closed the store in 2019 and entered “retirement” in Wytheville, VA. COVID struck soon after, and I began working more on “storytelling gone wrong,” aka misinformation campaigns. Two books later I had written so much on Appalachian and misinformation that I was being asked to speak on it as a regular topic. Again, the underpinning theory was about ignorance among those targeted by misinformation campaigns.

This is my background as a writer. As a human, I went to journalism school at UT Knoxville, got a master’s in Storytelling at ETSU, did my PhD in Newfoundland, married a Scotsman and lived in Fife, Scotland for several years before coming to the States and opening our bookstore, while also running a medical non-profit. Sometime in there I earned a MPH from VT. Currently my civic energy is devoted to trying to get a warming/cooling center open in Wytheville as climate change turns homelessness into an exponentially larger problem.

I also run something called the Community Nourishment Project (CNP) which takes medical students monthly to a rent-controlled housing complex where they cook a meal for the residents and play educational games with the kids, or host craft activities or seasonally themed parties. This project has taught many doctors in training to look at economically challenged and disenfranchised individuals and groups with more nuanced understanding. There is a big difference between making bad choices, and having no good choices to make. Medical microaggressions toward people in distressed economic circumstances are as unacceptable as they are to people of different race, ethnicity, or sexuality and gender that differ from their medical provider’s. CNP, entering its fourth year, might be my favorite medical education project in my 12-year career running a medical education non-profit.

Most of my writing comes down to power differentials. Awareness of people whose voices are squeezed out of public conversations. A famous proverb says “History is written by the winners; songs and stories are written by the losers.” As America divided more and more along political, religious, and economic lines (with some serious overlap between these) I wrote books and collected stories about disenfranchisement. I also reconnected with traditional storytelling In the fables is both wisdom and comfort: the wisdom to help others see themselves as their best selves, and the comfort that there really is nothing new under the sun; old societal problems just get repackaged.

I like the idea of casting transport riding and riders as heroes of their own lives on their own hero’s journeys. I teach writing for aspiring memorists, and the amazing power of unlocking people’s stories within them, of observing life casually and describing people to themselves, has always fascinated me.

I was also briefly, in Scotland, involved with a group that wrote songs and stories based on transit riders; they set overhead conversations to music, and made trying to reach the shops to feed one’s children into a classic folktale archetype about winning over adversity, defeating monsters, and a mother’s love.

What if Little Red Riding Hood met the wolf on the bus instead of in the woods? What if Rapunzel were stranded in a bus station instead of a tower? How doe the giant from whom wondrous things are taken become the villain instead of the hero? What fairy tales, what fables, what classic tropes of adventure, adversity, and perseverance are on public transport?

That’s what interests me.

I enjoy Roanoke as a day out from Wytheville. I’ve done a handful of book events in bookstores and libraries there, and am particularly fond of the shops BOOK CITY and BOOK NO FURTHER. When we moved to Wytheville, I planned to visit the Hoot and Holler but COVID shut that down until this year. (We are going in April.)

I like the downtown square, and enjoy the old buildings and “star” of the downtown center. Riding the bus and connecting to trains at the depot has been a part of my annual commute to Richmond since before we moved to Wytheville. The depot is both easy to use and a lovely space.

Oddly enough, I am also inspired by the Carilion complex by the river; I visit there often for work and find the people who work there dedicated and great at talking about their city (by birth or by choice) in lovely ways. So much of medicine is economic development in another package; I really like the Carilion center as a place of benevolent power. And I like the way nervous/frightened people are treated well within that power; I have seen this often in care centers.

Lastly, there are some amazing food choices in Roanoke that reflect its quiet yet essential diversity. Cedars of Lebanon remains a favorite, along with the Indian curry house. Downtown Roanoke appears to visitors like a city that understands itself, that knows the diverse moving parts that make up its landscape are equally valuable. It is a lovely place to be and an easy place to navigate for the most part. That said, I have never tried to ride the bus to some of its more densely populated housing areas, particularly rent-controlled apartment complexes. They might not say the same and this is something I would be eager to explore.