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October 27-28, 2023
Southern Foodways Symposium ⟶
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October 27-28, 2023
Southern Foodways Symposium ⟶

Oral Histories

The SFA oral history program documents life stories from the American South. Collecting these stories, we honor the people whose labor defines the region. If you would like to contribute to SFA’s oral history collections, please send your ideas for oral history along with your CV or Resume and a portfolio of prior oral history work to info@southernfoodways.org.

< Back to Oral History project: COVID-19 Project

ORAL HISTORY

Lillia Callum-Penso

The Greenville News

Lillia Callum-Penso was born 1981 in Atlanta, Georgia. Callum-Penso attended the University of Georgia and majored in journalism, with a concentration in magazine journalism. After graduating from college in 2004, she began working with a weekly newspaper in Greenville. Because of her background in magazine reporting, Callum-Penso became a features reporter. Multiple restructuring of the newspaper shifted her focus to a multiplicity of topics. Throughout her career, she has written features about everything from home and garden to fashion.

Writing features allows Callum-Penso to explore communities and learn more about people within her town in a new light. In 2015, the company restructured again, and they hired her as a food writer. In addition to her food beat, Callum-Penso works a rotating breaking news schedule and helps on larger reporting projects, such as reporting on the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of Greenville Public Schools. While she writes about food, Callum-Penso doesn’t consider herself an expert in food. Like her past experiences at The Greenville News, she is interested in what the people behind the recipes can tell us about the community identity. Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic, Callum-Penso juggled responsibilities of parenting and work.

Date of interview:
2020-05-29

Interviewer:
Michelle Little

Photographer:

Download Transcript Download Transcript 2

“

I wrote about that, and it’s something that I still—I’m still pushing the issues a little bit, not necessarily around protests, but in a broader sense, like what is the role restaurants play in the broader good of community? So, for instance—because they did get a lot of support, and restaurants here got PPP money and the EIDL loans, and one thing that really helped a number of restaurants here was CARES Act money that went towards feeding the community. . . And, of course, food insecurity has grown, hunger has grown, especially among children without, you know—and so I just thought—to me, I thought—I loved seeing that. I loved seeing that action. You know, it helped restaurants, it helped the community, and what struck me is that it happened so fast. People were able to pull that together so fast, and I’m like, 'Oh, my god. So, there’s now this infrastructure in place, like you know how this can be done.'" - Lillia Callum-Penso

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