Voice & Vision: Presented by Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing, The Louisville Review & 21c Museum Hotel will feature five exciting writers for the season launch of the popular annual summer reading series. The program will take place on Thursday, May 15, 2025, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. at 21c Museum Hotel, 700 West Main St., in downtown Louisville, and is free to the public to attend.
The May program features writers Tracy Clayton, Sally Evans, Allie Fireel, Shannon Stocker, and Shona Tucker. Hosted by Katy Yocom. The evening begins with an art talk from 21c’s Assistant Curator Katie Wilson on the museum’s current exhibition, The SuperNatural 2.0, exploring the transformation from the post-industrial world into the bytes and pixels of the digital age.
This year marks the twelfth season for this fabulous and fun series, which celebrates the interrelatedness of the area’s vibrant literary and visual arts community. Complimentary light snacks and beverages will be provided.
ABOUT THE READERS
Tracy Clayton is an award-winning podcaster, producer, writer, and humorist from the West End of Louisville, Kentucky. She is the host of several well-known podcasts, including Another Round, Netflix’s Strong Black Legends, and Back Issue by Pineapple Street Media. She also serves as executive producer for Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ podcast Wiser Than Me, named Apple’s best podcast of the year for 2023. Tracy enjoys snacks, admires birds, and loves her mama.
Sally Evans is a writer, audio artist, and artful gatherer who grew up somewhere in the woods of New York State. After completing a master’s degree in theology, she worked as a campus prevention educator before starting her own voice-over business and working in public radio. Through all her roles, an evolving faith and connecting others to a meaningful mission have been a throughline. Sally completed an ordination process with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 2023. She works at the Center for Interfaith Relations as their Community Engagement Strategist and believes community building is essential to creating healthy citizens and restorative change. A believer that writing is a process of savoring and making sense of life, Sally writes curriculum and audio stories, has performed for Double Edged Stories and is a Moth Grand Slam winner. She lives with her wife, Paige Harlow, and spunky twin daughters in Old Louisville.
Allie Fireel (they/them) is a bipolar, non-binary, queer writer, performer and producer based in Louisville. A discipline-expansive theatre maker, Fireel is committed to destigmatizing neurodivergence and emerging queer identities through their work and creating with the understanding that our truest mirrors are those who are unlike us. As founding artistic director of the Louisville Fringe Festival and a co-founder of Three Witches Shakespeare, they are committed to forwarding hope, mischief, kindness, and righteous fuckery. As a journalist, Fireel believes that writing about the arts can be a vital and revolutionary act. The creation of theatre is the creation of community, and the future of art lies in the middle of the country as much as it does on its edges. They have numerous performance and writing/creating credits with Pandora Productions, Louisville Ballet, Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, Looking for Lillith, and many more. Their work received the 2018 Arts Louisville award for best new play.
Author Shannon Stocker is a fierce advocate for those with disabilities. She’s written picture books such as the 2023 ALA Schneider Family Book Award winner, Cybils Award finalist, Anna Dewdney Read Aloud Honor book, and contender for the Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Award and the Vermont Red Clover Book Award, Listen: How Evelyn Glennie, a Deaf Girl, Changed Percussion (Dial/Random House and Penguin UK), Can U Save the Day (Sleeping Bear Press), Warrior, and her most recently published YA novel, Stronger at the Seams.
Shona Tucker is a writer working on a film based on her solo show, Growing Wild. She is Chair and Full Professor of the University of Louisville Department of Theatre Arts. She has completed and hopes to clean up for publishing Mississippi Mud, a trilogy based on true stories of three “regular” African American women who make major moves that change their family’s history. The second part of the trilogy, Growing Wild, was part of the #HealMeToo Festival at the IRT theater in 2019. As an actress, Shona is an original cast member of the Broadway hit To Kill a Mockingbird and Broadway’s Death of a Salesman with Wendell Pierce. Other performance credits include numerous Off-Broadway and regional theaters. She has appeared in film and television and has an extensive directing resume as well. She is a Usual Suspect with NYTW, an AUDELCO Award winner, a Lincoln Center Director’s Lab alum and a Fulbright Scholar. BS: Northwestern University and MFA: NYU/Tisch.
ABOUT THE HOST
Voice & Vision co-director Katy Yocom is the author of the award-winning novel Three Ways to Disappear and co-editor, with Kentucky Poet Laureate Kathleen Driskell, of the anthology Creativity & Compassion: Spalding Writers Celebrate Twenty Years. She is the recipient of an Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship for excellence in the literary arts. She serves as associate director for communications and alumni relations for Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing. She is also prose editor of the award-winning literary journal Good River Review. She holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University as well as a degree in journalism from the University of Kansas.
Information about this event provided by Series Producer, Amy Foos Kapoor
This article appears in Apr 25 – May 8, 2025.