Points South Live featuring Margo Price and Jodi Hays in conversation with Alice Randall

The Oxford American and 21c Museum Hotel Nashville are excited to announce a live taping of the Oxford American’s Points South podcast set to take place Monday, July 25, 2022 at 7:00 pm Central Time. The intimate evening of music and conversation will be held at 21c Museum Hotel Nashville (221 2nd Ave N, Nashville, TN) and is free to the public. Featured guests during the 75-minute program will include genre-bending vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter Margo Price playing a short selection of songs and discussing her forthcoming book Maybe We’ll Make It: A Memoir. Painter and mixed-media artist Jodi Hays, whose work seeks to create space for building and coming together, will also be featured on the program. Both Price and Hays will be interviewed by and share conversation with the event’s host, renowned author, songwriter, and scholar, Alice Randall.

Seating is limited, and reservations are required. Visit the registration page here to ensure your attendance.

The event, part of a limited series of Points South Live productions that Oxford American is presenting in select markets in the United States in 2022, is meant to celebrate the work of these two accomplished artists, while putting music and mixed media art in conversation—and specifically the lived experiences that have informed and inspired all three women in their respective crafts.

“Maybe We’ll Make It takes place over the better part of a decade when I was struggling to make a career as a songwriter and an artist. It’s a love story about loyalty, loss, grief and forgiveness. It’s about finding freedom from substance abuse and addiction and fighting for the freedom to be myself in the music business,” Margo Price explains. The GRAMMY-nominated singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist will release her first book, a memoir, on October 4, 2022 from the University of Texas Press. Price’s story is one that many aspiring artists will relate to, especially those that don’t always fit the industry’s idea of a star. But the book’s personal revelations—overcoming substance abuse and financial hardship, as well as the passing of a newborn son—are an honest reminiscence of reclaiming her power over years of tragedy and despair. Part of the American Music series from the University of Texas Press, Maybe We’ll Make It explores what it takes to build a life and to feel complete when the establishment tries to hold you back.

“I come from gardeners, teachers, believers, sinners, moon-lighting loggers, makers, millners, cooks, healers, pharmacists, and grocers. I come from the American South, a place where the kitchen and the pharmacy are the same room,” says painter Jodi Hays. Using everyday materials of a southern palette—often reclaimed textiles, fabric, and cardboard—Hays constructs expressive marks that nod to resourceful labor, mostly of women. Her work has been shown throughout the United States, including at the Brooks Museum, Fisk University, Vanderbilt University, and Boston Center for the Arts. She was a 2019 Finalist for the Hopper Prize, and has received fellowships and grants from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and Tennessee Arts Commission. Hays will open a solo show at Los Angeles’s prestigious Night Gallery in June of 2022.

Alice Randall is a New York Times best-selling novelist, award-winning songwriter, educator, and food activist. A graduate of Harvard University, she holds an honorary doctorate from Fisk University, is on the faculty at Vanderbilt University, and credits Detroit’s Ziggy Johnson School of the Theater with being the most influential educational institution in her life. She is widely recognized as being one of the most significant voices in 21st century African-American fiction. One of Randall’s many gifts is her ability to cover expected territory in unexpected ways and make unexpected territory accessible. Her most frequent topical explorations include: fiction, fiction writing, and literary theory; soul food cookbooks, Black foodways, and Black Cocktail culture; Black presence and influence in country music, countr lyric in American culture, and country music through a feminist lens. She’s the recipient of numerous awards and high honors, including the NAACP’s Image Award (2016) among others.

This is the second event of Oxford American’s 2022 Points South Live series. Events in Durham, NC and Austin, TX will be announced at a later date.