By Taylor Starek Amanda Page didn’t set out to be a filmmaker. The 46-year-old is a Columbus-based writer and founder of Scioto Literary, a nonprofit that supports storytellers in Scioto County. She found her way to filmmaking thanks to a case of writer’s block. She was struggling to pen an essay on her hometown of Portsmouth, located in southern Ohio, … Read More
The Storytellers: Yemi Oyediran
By Taylor Starek Secret American lives. That’s what Yemi Oyediran calls the often-overlooked experiences of racial and cultural minorities. And those stories matter. So Oyediran, the child of immigrants from Nigeria, co-founded a company to tell them. Oyediran—alongside friend and business partner JP Leong, who is Chinese American—runs AfroChine, a production company that not only partners with Cincinnati arts organizations … Read More
The Storytellers: Shawn Rech
By Taylor Starek Everyone told Shawn Rech it wouldn’t work in Cleveland. He couldn’t be a filmmaker here—he’d have to go to Hollywood. Rech was unphased. His first project, a local TV program, focused on unsolved crimes. “People told us we’d never have the production values,” he said. “[They said] we’d never get it on TV.” Rech’s program not only … Read More
A Vibrant Appalachia
Ohio Humanities is a proud supporter of humanities work throughout Ohio’s Appalachian communities, where funds are in high demand and other support is much less common than in larger cities. From a walkable outdoor exhibit in an Athens park that highlights the important role the humanities have played in the region to LatinX storytelling by Southern Ohio Folklife, we are … Read More
My Ohio with poet and educator David Baker
Poet and educator David Baker has lived in Ohio for more than thirty years, and his poetry springs directly out of his life and experiences here. These poems illuminate our villages and farms—from Lake Erie to the Ohio River—our big-city gardens, small-town neighborhoods, and family life. David is also one of the country’s leading eco-poets, devoted to the natural world—the … Read More
Honoring Stories through Narrative Medicine
In this talk, Akron Children’s Hospital Narrative Medicine Coordinator Nicole Robinson introduces us to the emerging field of narrative medicine and how it provides a path for all to engage in the human experience of illness, health, and healing. We look at the ways that stories, through close reading and reflective writing, have the ability to deepen our understanding of, … Read More
Visual Art, Clinical Mastery, and the Challenge of Uncertainty in Medicine
How a clinician performs in uncertainty has the potential to include them in medicine’s best moments, or its deep entanglement with unwellness. It has the potential to make or break a patient’s life. In this talk, artist and educator Alexa Miller identifies uncertainty as a profound lever for transformation in, and the unexpected ways in which uncertainty can be harnessed … Read More