Vishwesh Bhatt is the chef at Snackbar in Oxford, Mississippi. A native of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, he is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and Johnson and Wales University. He moved to Oxford for graduate school, abandoned academia for restaurant kitchens, and never looked back.

Jodi Bronchtein is the Wine Director of Sean Brock’s Audrey and June Restaurants in Nashville, Tennessee. She started her wine career with Brock at McCrady’s Restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina. Bronchtein is an Advanced Sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers, and she is thrilled to be pairing Virginia Wines as the first winery she ever visited was Barboursville Vineyards.

Alfred Conteh, the 21c Museum Hotel artist at the symposium, is classically trained and has practiced his craft for more than 20 years. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from Hampton University and a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from Georgia Southern University. Conteh is a painter, illustrator, and sculptor who works to shed light on the current realities of African American people.

Bart Elmore is Associate Professor of History and a core faculty member of the Sustainability Institute at Ohio State University. His work focuses on the ecological footprint of large multinational firms, and his latest book, published in May 2023, is ​​Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet.

Britt Fox, the 2023 Cathead Bartender in Residence, loves to tell stories. Fox has mixed cocktails at many venerated DC institutions, and these days you’ll find Fox shaking rum daiquiris most nights at Cotton & Reed. They reside in Northeast Washington DC with their wife and two dogs.

Derek Hicks is Associate Professor of Religion and Culture at Wake Forest University. He researches broadly in the areas of African American religion, religion in North America, race, the body, religion and foodways, theory and method in the study of religion, Black and Womanist theologies, and cultural studies.

In the Spirit formed over twenty years ago when storyteller Emily Lansana and vocalist Zahra Glenda Baker came together. Based in Chicago, Lansana and Baker have developed an extensive repertoire of stories that carry their audiences on enthralling journeys. Each performance celebrates the power of the word to connect, uplift and transform.

John Kessler, the former dining critic for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, now calls Chicago home. He serves as dining critic for Chicago Magazine, and his writing also appears in publications like Garden & Gun and SFA’s Gravy quarterly.

Zaire Love is SFA’s award-winning Pihakis Documentary Filmmaker whose mission is to honor, amplify, and archive the stories and voices of the Black South. Love is a graduate of Spelman College, and has two graduate degrees: an M.Ed. from Houston Baptist University and an MFA from the University of Mississippi.  In addition to her work with SFA, she is an adjunct associate professor at the University of Mississippi and is creates work with her studio, Creative Cornbread.

Claudia Martínez is the 2023 Karen Barker Baker. She grew up in a Venezuelan family that likes to both cook and eat. As a small child, she enjoyed spending time in the kitchen, tasting various kinds of food and learning from her family members and culture. She currently lives in Atlanta and is Executive Pastry Chef at Miller Union.

Angie Maxwell holds the Diane Blair Endowed Chair in Southern Studies and is Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas, where she also serves as the Director of the Diane Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society. Maxwell is a Truman Scholar who received her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas.

Adán Medrano is a food writer, chef, and owner of JM Communications. He specializes in the indigenous cuisine and cooking methods of Texas and the Americas, and spent 23 years working across Latin America, Europe, and Asia. Medrano is the president of The Texas Indigenous Food Project and the founder of the San Antonio CineFestival, the first and now longest-running Latinx film festival in the U.S.

Nicole Mills was born and raised in the Philippines. She moved to New York and attended the French Culinary Institute in Soho before beginning her culinary career began with Union Square Hospitality Group. In 2013 she joined the Link Restaurant Group to be part of the opening team at Peche Seafood Grill, and since 2019 she has been Chef de Cuisine at Peche.

Chad Newton and Gracie Nguyen are chef-owners of East Side Bánh Mì in East Nashville, Tennessee. Centered around classic Vietnamese cuisine, their restaurant has traditional flavors with locally-sourced ingredients using family recipes.

Ethan Payne is a musician, photographer, and documentary filmmaker living in Atlanta, Georgia. His work has been featured in Oxford American, ArtsATL, and The Bitter Southerner. “We Travel,” the film he created with Brian Foster for SFA’s 2020 Fall Symposium, won awards from the Berlin Independent Film Festival and the Ouray Film Festival. Payne plays music with his band Easter Island and tells stories about the forgotten, tossed-away South.

Alex Perry and Kumi Omori initially planned to open a restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina, but after two years of location scouting, they realized the costs would be astronomical. While regrouping in Perry’s hometown of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, they found a downtown location that they fell in love with: a historic house turned bookstore turned shoe repair with a highly motivated seller. In 2013, they opened Vestige, a restaurant inspired by ingredients from the Gulf Coast.

Sheeka Sanahori is a freelance journalist and video producer with several years of experience in reporting and video production. She writes about the intersections of travel with culture, history, and the outdoors. In 2022, she created Inherited Travel, a newsletter for travelers who want to make socially conscious decisions that benefit local communities.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble lives and writes in Montgomery, Alabama.  She is a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow (Poetry), a Cave Canem Fellow, and an Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellow (2017, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in various journals including Poetry Magazine, The Louisville Review, The Offing, The Rumpus and Poet Lore. Trimble is also Professor of English and chairs the Department of Languages and Literatures at Alabama State University. 

Chris Williams is chef-owner of Lucille’s, a restaurant he co-founded in 2012 with his brother, Ben, in Houston’s Museum District. The restaurant is named after his great-grandmother, Lucille Bishop Smith, who was a cook, teacher, cookbook writer, and entrepreneur. Williams is also founder of the nonprofit Lucille’s 1913, which aims to combat food insecurity in underserved communities.

Joe York is a documentary filmmaker, producer, director, and editor with a passion for helping people tell their stories. From 2005 to 2015, he worked at the University of Mississippi’s Southern Documentary Project and the SFA, producing more than 50 short films and four feature-length films focused on the culture, food, music, history, and social issues of the American South. His work has been featured on PBS and in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Garden & Gun, among other outlets.