Hermelinda Cortés (she/they) is the daughter of a Mexican immigrant father and a white factory-workinʼ mama. Raised in the country amidst the Southern delicacies of potato salad and mole, she is a working class Xicana Queer Feminist mama from the heart of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. A luddite techie at heart, she schemes and daydreams about liberation and movement driven communications to build lasting connections between communities and to strategically dismantle systems of domination. She currently works on narrative power building at ReFrame after a decade of organizing and communications brujería. Hermelinda returned to the rolling blue hills of Virginia in 2012 where she writes, cooks, and kicks it with her dogs, kid, chickens, and chosen familia. She believes in the magic, alchemy, strategy, and revolutionary possibilities of small towns and rural people.

(Photo: Hermelinda and her dogs Luna and Valiente)

Season 1 Assistant Editor + Musical Magic

Tommy Anderson (she/they) came up through a hard scrabble life in East Kentucky, where the magic of the woods and the guidance of a found community of creators and storytellers gave her her roots. Tommy learned to express herself with sound starting as a baby beating on pots and pans. Later in life she worked as a teacher and program coordinator for two after-school traditional mountain music programs: WiseJAMs in southwest Virginia and WMMT’s Passing the Pick and Bow in east Kentucky. Tommy learned the technical side of audio and visual production as a teenager at the Appalachian Media Institute, a project of Appalshop Inc. in Whitesburg, Kentucky, where she spent half her time as an intern/youth producer and the other half as a trainer. Knowing the importance of being able to speak and be heard, Tommy uses all the well-worn tools in her arsenal to amplify and motivate the voices and spirits of those who yearn to be heard and felt. (Photo: Tommy and her dog Goo)

Lewis Raven Wallace (he/they/ze) is an independent journalist. Ze is the author and creator of The View from Somewhere, a book and podcast about the history of journalistic "objectivity" and how it has been used to uphold the status quo and exclude voices from oppressed communities. He is also a co-founder and the director of education for Press On, a southern journalism collective that supports journalism in service of liberation. Lewis focuses on the voices of people who are geographically, economically and politically marginalized, and loves stories about water, place and collective action.

Lewis is white and transgender and lives nearby to the lands of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, on territory that once also belonged to the Eno tribe, in Durham, NC. He also lives down the road from Stagville, one of the largest forced labor camps in the South during slavery, in the Bragtown neighborhood where many descendants of Stagville live and continue to tell their stories.

(Photo: Lewis and Dogwood the pig)

Season 2 Sound Designer

Hideo Tokui (he/him) grew up on the North Shore of Massachusetts, taking care of his four goats on several acres of land owned by his white grandparents. He is a survivor of a decade of child labor; his grandparents put his sisters and him to work cleaning their house, taking care of their seventy chickens and acre of vegetables each summer. His sweetest memories of growing up in the country are at the Parker River estuary where he and his sisters would swim after long, hot days in the garden. After years in public radio and contract work with corporate media companies, Tokui is now a freelance audio producer and instructor based Durham, NC, territory that was once a center of commerce and life for the Eno people. The Eno River is now a place of deep comfort and healing for him as he moves through the woods and water with his pack of tiny dogs. Tokui is the creator of his own memoir podcast, Growing Up Moonie, stories from people who grew up in the Moonies cult like he did. He also has his own audio production and instruction company. A Chili Bowl Production teaches the skills of audio production, coaches new producers, and assists others in bringing their stories to life. Most of his days are spent with his two dogs (Stanley and Sofie), roommate, and innumerable plants. (Photo from left to right: Hideo, Stanley, Sofie, and roommate).

Sharon P. Holland (she/her) chairs the Department of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she teaches feminist, queer, and critical race theory. She is a graduate of Princeton University and holds a PhD in English and African American Studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of RAISING THE DEAD: READINGS OF DEATH AND (BLACK) SUBJECTIVITY , The Erotic Life of Racism, and the co-author of a collection of trans-Atlantic Afro-Native criticism Crossing Waters / Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country. Sharon is also a horse riding, gardening, big-truck driving country queer who shared her story with this project in June 2017!

Sharon lives in unincorporated Chapel Hill, on an African-descended road (former name was "Old Colored Road"), held by the descendants of the enslaved for generations. She lives on Occaneechi, Shakori, Eno, and Sissipahaw peoples' land.

(Photo: Sharon and her horse Annie)