Ideas Festival Emory

Mike Lowery is a New York Times Best-Selling Illustrator who has worked on more than eighty books for kids, including "The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School" by Laura Murray, "Mac B, Kid Spy" By Mac Barnett, “I Do Not Want to Read This Book.” by actor Max Greenfield and a series with Jeopardy Champion, Ken Jennings. He's also the author of more than a dozen books, including “Pizza Shark,” the "Bug Scouts" series of graphic novels for kids, and the “Everything Awesome” series from Scholastic Books. He collects weird facts and illustrates them every day in his sketchbook. Mike lives with his wife Katrin and their two kids in Atlanta, GA. Visit Mike online at https://www.mikelowery.com or on Instagram at @mikelowerystudio.

Jon Goode is an Emmy nominated writer raised in Richmond, VA and currently residing in Atlanta, GA. Jon’s work has been featured in CNN’s Black in America, HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, BET’s Lyric Café and TVOne’s Verses and Flow. He has written radio commercials for McDonalds, print ads for Nike, and written and appeared in commercials, vignettes and interstitials for MTV, Comedy Central, VH-1 and TVLand/ Nick@Nite. Jon’s work earned him the 2006 Promax Gold for the best copyright in North America. In 2022 he won a gold American Advertising Award for Branded Content and Entertainment Non-Broadcast, a Silver Telly Award, and was again nominated for a Promax. Jon's collection of poems and short stories, Conduit, was #1 on Amazon for sixteen weeks. His debut novel, Mydas, was a #1 new title on Amazon for five weeks. Jon is a Fellow of AIR Serenbe, and a host and storyteller with The Moth.

Virginia Willis, James Beard-award winning chef, healthy eating guru, and culinary icon shares recipes from the brand new edition of her classic cookbook, Bon Appetit, Y'all. 

Ray  escaped the urban slums of Richmond, VA by joining the United States Army at the age of 17. As an infantryman and paratrooper, he served around the world and was awarded The Bronze Star and Combat Infantryman’s Badge, among many other decorations for his service. After 20 years, he retired and went back to school, earning his BS in Liberal Arts, MA in Public History, and EdS/EdD in Education Leadership, researching the relationship between parental behavior and African American academic success for his dissertation.  During his time as an adjunct professor at Appalachian State University, his most popular courses were “The Souls of Black Folks: An Examination of African American Social Culture” and “Storytelling: Life in the Narrative,” which explored historic and contemporary uses of storytelling and oral history in America. 

Ray’s stories have appeared in Readers Digest’s  Best Stories in America (2016) and  American Hero’s (2017) editions. He was selected as the 2017 Serenbe France Focus Storytelling Fellow (Atlanta, GA) and his stories have been featured on NPR radio shows such as The Moth Radio Hour, Snap Judgment, and Backstory as well as the Risk podcast, among many others.  As a competitive storyteller, Ray is a ten-time Moth Story Slam Champion, and winner of the 2016 National Storytelling Festival Story Slam. Sharing his stories across the US and Canada, Ray has made several appearances on Moth Mainstage, The National Storytelling Festival Exchange Place (2019) , and was part of the 2018 tour of Snap Judgment Live! 

In 2018, Ray has been named as the best known story teller in the south by Bitter Southerner magazine. Glynn Washington, host and producer of Snap Judgement, calls him “a storyteller’s storyteller.” He is distinguished for his exceptional accomplishments as a performer and spoken word performer and his training and experience as an educator and motivator.

Under the moniker Rose Hotel, Atlanta-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Jordan Reynolds crafts nuanced indie-rock that pulls from a palette of psychedelic shimmer and folk influence via her Southeastern roots. With a drive to pay homage to the legends of the art form, she uses the trappings of psychedelic rock not as source material, but as ornamentation, as she explores relationships, feminine rage, lust, temptation, blissful ignorance, frightening apathy, delusions, and illusions.

In a career spanning more than 25 years, Joe Henry has left an indelible and unique imprint on American popular music. As a songwriter and artist, Henry is celebrated for his exploration of the human experience. A hyper-literate storyteller, by turns dark, devastating, and hopeful, he draws an author’s eye for the overlooked detail across a broad swath of American musical styles — rock, jazz and blues — rendering genre modifiers useless.
Henry has collaborated with many notable American artists on his own body of work, from T Bone Burnett, Daniel Lanois, and Van Dyke Parks on one side of the spectrum, to Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Brad Mehldau, and Bill Frisell on the other. A three-time-Grammy-winning producer, Henry has made records for Bonnie Raitt, Hugh Laurie, Lisa Hannigan, Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens and Solomon Burke among many others.
Additionally, Henry has taken his musical talents to film and television. He has scored music for the films Jesus’ Son, Knocked Up, and Motherhood, as well as produced tracks for the film I’m Not There. His song “Stars” was featured in the closing credits in the fourth season of HBO’s Six Feet Under.
In 2013, Algonquin Press published, “Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World that Made Him,” a book co-written by Joe and his brother Dave Henry.
In 2016, Henry teamed up with Billy Bragg on the collaborative album Shine A Light: Field Recordings From The Great American Railroad. The pair were subsequently nominated as “Duo/Group of the Year” by the Americana Music Association.
American Songwriter called his 2017 release Thrum “Audacious and auspicious…akin to Van Morrison at his most impressionistic.”
Henry released his 15th solo album The Gospel According To Water on November 15th 2019 :
“These are simple, wise and sonically gorgeous songs.”—Rosanne Cash“
Here is the voice of a friend and brother who had been away too long. There is enough anger, enough misery in the world. Too many tears, fires and trampled flowers, so make room in your life for some beauty like this.”—Elvis Costello“.
In every track, there is gentleness and strength. His music is poetry.”-Gloria Steinem
Included in Barack Obama’s Favorite Music of 2019+ New York Times Best Songs of 2019
Henry’s 16th solo album “All The Eye Can See” will be released January 27th 2023. Henry is joined by more than 20 musicians, among them his trusted long-time musical companions and friends – his son Levon Henry on saxophone & clarinet, David Piltch on bass, Patrick Warren on piano & keys and John Smith on acoustic guitar.
It is an intimate album, highly emotional, amazingly quiet and beautiful, and relaxed, with simple yet skillful tunes, touching lyrics featuring 12 new and unforgettable songs, framed by an instrumental prelude and prologue.