One of the main initiatives I wanted to do when I started at the Lillian E. Smith Center was a podcast highlighting various topics related to Smith. These included her life, her work, her current impact, her legacy, and the ways that the center, scholars, artist residents, and more continue to carry on her legacy. As such, I debuted “Dope with Lime.” Today, I want to share with you information about the podcast and a few of the episodes.

Note: the following is the short piece I wrote for the latest issue of “A View from the Mountain.”

Named after Lillian Smith’s column that she wrote in the pages of the journal that she co-edited with her partner Paula Snelling from 1936-1945, “Dope with Lime” showcases interviews with scholars, artists, readers, and more.

Colloquially, dope with lime referred to cutting the sweetness of Coca-Cola with lime juice. In her bloglike columns, Smith used biting satire to comment on Southern life and letters. The podcast carries on the conversational nature of Smith’s editorials by having discussions about wide-ranging topics from teaching Smith in Europe to artist residencies at the center.

The first six episodes of “Dope with Lime” provide unique perspectives on Smith and the work being done at the LES Center. We talk with Michał Choiński about his trip to the LES Center last fall and about teaching Smith in Poland. With Julie Buckner Armstrong, we discuss her current book project and her residency at the LES Center. With Andrew Beck Grace, we speak about how Smith’s Killers of the Dream impacted and informed the NPR podcast White Lies which he co-hosted with Chip Brantley. 

We also speak with Ben Railton about discovering Smith and presenting at last October’s symposium, with Eileen Boris about the reference to Smith’s Strange Fruit in Chester Himes If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), and with Nicole Robinson about her work as a narrative medicine coordinator and writing at the center.

We are currently organizing season two of “Dope with Lime” which we hope to premier sometime this fall. Until then, check out season one on SoundCloud, iTunes, or where ever you get your podcasts.

Episode 1: Michał Choiński

In the first episode of “Dope with Lime” I spoke with Dr. Michał Choiński. He is an Assistant Professor of English Studies at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. His first book, The Rhetoric of the Revival: The Language of the Great Awakening Preachers, is part of the New Directions in Johnathan Edwards Studies. His latest project, Southern Hyperboles: Metafiguartive Strategies of Narration just came out from LSU Press. In this project, Dr. Choiński examines renderings of the gothic and the grotesque in authors such as Katherine Anne Porter, Katherine Du Pre Lumpkin, Tennessee Williams, Lillian Smith, and more. As well, he has a new chapbook of poems from Hedgehog Press entitled Gifts Without Mapping. I spoke with him about teaching Lillian E. Smith in Poland and his recent visit to Piedmont College.

Episode 3: Andrew Beck Grace

In this episode, I spoke with Andrew Beck Grace who teaches Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama. Recently, Andy, along with Chip Brantley, hosted the podcast White Lies on NPR. White lies investigated the 1965 murder of Reverend James Reed, a Unitarian minister and civil-rights activist, in Selma, Alabama. We talked about White Lies and Lillian Smith’s impact on the podcast.

Episode Six: Nicole Robinson

In this episode, I spoke with Nicole Robinson, the Narrative Medicine Coordinator at Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio. Previously, she worked as the Assistant Director of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University. She has an MFA from Ashland University a BA in English from Kent State University. Recently, she was an artist resident at the Lillian E. Smith Center. We discussed her work as the narrative medicine coordinator and her stay at the LES Center.

Currently, I’m working on season two, so stay tuned to the LES Center’s SoundCloud, iTunes, or wherever you listen to your podcast.