I painted strangers’ nudes to find peace during the pandemic
This global slowdown gave me the opportunity to explore the way I see myself and others in a way I don’t think I previously could have had I not been forced.
Meet Alex Walsh, swimmer and Olympian from Nashville
27Nashvillian and 2020 Harpeth Hall graduate Alex Walsh, 20, will compete as a first time Olympian in Tokyo. Walsh dominated local and state swimming competitions throughout high school, taking home the individual state championship twice and will now take the world stage as an Olympic athlete. Her younger sister, Gretchen [...]
Meet Erica Bougard, heptathlete and Olympian from Tennessee
Erica Bougard didn’t make the cut for the 2016 USA Track and Field team. The failure, she said, “set off a fire in me.” This year, on her birthday, Bougard will be boarding a plane headed for the Tokyo Olympics. Bougard will compete in the heptathlon, which consists of 100-meter [...]
The story of Lex Gillette, a N.C. blind long jumper headed to the Paralympic Games
Back in 2004, a blind teenager from North Carolina sprinted down the 130-foot runway inside the Athens Olympic stadium in Greece, the birthplace of the ancient Olympic games and where the first modern games was hosted in 1896. The magnitude of the moment didn’t overcome the 19-year-old who was competing [...]
Meet Cheta Emba, Olympian from Richmond, Va.
Cheta Emba, 28, says she didn’t start playing rugby until she was 20. Initially, rugby was a good way to cross-train for her role as goalkeeper on Harvard’s women’s soccer team. But it was rugby, not soccer, that is bringing the Richmond, Va., native to her first Olympics this summer [...]
Kendra Gayle Lee, of Atlanta’s Bookish, wants you to diversify your bookshelf
Kendra Gayle Lee remembers the first time she read a book with an LGBTQ character who got to live “happily ever after.” “It was the first book that I read where the lesbian didn't have to die at the end,” Lee said, referring to Rita Mae Brown's 1970s lesbian coming-of-age [...]
Meet Tray Wellington, the Black bluegrass banjoist breaking barriers in Appalachian ‘mountain music’
Mountain music has a long history of Black artists who often go unnoticed, their stories untold. But Tray Wellington, a Black three-finger-style banjo player born and bred in mountain culture has created his own authentic sound in bluegrass music. Bluegrass music is traditionally depicted as overwhelmingly white, but is now [...]
‘Are these nails worth an argument?’: Why this Alabama drag queen works to maintain their family’s peace
“My dad has gotten sicker and sicker from heart issues…It’s hard for me to say, ‘Well I don’t come to your house because you don’t accept me and you don’t accept my relationship with my husband.’" Sam continued explaining the complexities of their family dynamic in an even, conversational tone [...]
Hurricane season: Creative, low-cost ways to survive and recover
As climate change heats up our oceans, hurricanes will get stronger and more destructive. That’s bad news for everyone living on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. But it’s especially bad for the millions of low-income people who lack the resources to evacuate, properly prepare or recover. This year, the National [...]
Shunned by church and family, he started his own LGBTQ support group
Six years ago, Bryan Fuenmayor’s family disowned him. He came out as gay at 31, spurring his departure from the Jehovah Witnesses and the loss of his family and most of the friends he’d made since coming from Venezuela as a child. “It got a point where it was either [...]
