Kathryn Rodenmeyer
Jackson native Kathryn Rodenmeyer, 37, was described to me as a filmmaker, so when I met her in her Fondren home, I first asked her about her work in film.
Mike Padilla
Mike Padilla, 20, a Millsaps College student—an actor, a director, a techie and an award-winning playwright—is involved in the theater at Millsaps on every possible level. Right now he's working …
Spit McGee
I had only known Willie Morris through his books. It was his words, read in faraway places like Colorado and Manhattan and Nantucket, that helped me realize how southern I …
Cheryl Lasseter
Cheryl Lasseter, the weekend morning anchor at WLBT-TV3, was Cheryl Frazel when she arrived in Jackson, a Baltimore native who grew up in a suburb. While earning her communication degree …
Joecephus Martin
Joecephus Martin, 24, is comfortable in his own skin. As I watch the time, he sits back in a black leather chair, and says, "I'm from the South, I don't …
Ann Williams
Ann Williams, 54, is a bit tough, a little hard to take in at first. But that's because she's passionate. And she speaks the truth.
Andy Hilton
Andy Hilton, with his curly-blonde locks, seems like any 24-year-old—slightly laid-back and slightly restless, ever ready to talk about ideals. What surfaces, however, is a great sense of his unique …
Richard Weiss
Before Richard Weiss, 36, got busy providing art house and other indie films to Jacksonians, he worked in the tech industry. After cutting his teeth renting foreign films at Video …
David Dennis, Jr.
Tall, slim, wearing his hair in neat, short braids, David Dennis Jr. looks like a high school basketball player, maybe on his way to play in college—if he's got the …
E. Willander Wells
"Elegance" is a word that keeps surfacing in conversations with fashion designer E. Willander Wells as we sit outside Broad Street bakery.
Charles Hooker
Charles Hollingsworth Hooker Jr., 58, holds dear his faith, family, furniture—mid-century modern business furniture, that is—and jazz. After growing up in his father's downtown business, the Mississippi Stationery Company, the …
[Jacksonian] DJ Phingaprint
Timothy Washington's dreads are not a fashion statement, but a cultural and spiritual move the 25-year-old undertook eight years ago. "I always had a little Afro," he says, "but I …
Denise Halbach
With an eyebrow arched and a gleam in her startlingly blue eyes, Denise Halbach captivates her audience immediately. The Louisiana-born, Jackson-raised dramatist begins our conversation with a surprising fact. "I …
Earl Fyke IV
Sitting at the round corner table at Hal & Mal's—his team's Pub Quiz table—I realized that with young men like Earl Fyke IV around, there's reason to hope. This 24-year-old …
Margie Thompson
Margie Thompson's second-grade classroom blooms. Dancing bears proclaim the longness and shortness of vowels. Colors swirl, and pep-talk art tells children that they can excel in math, in literature, in …
