Hi everyone! Happy Wednesday! We’re taking a break from this week’s topic for something very special. We know that all of you on the porch have been waiting and wondering… who in the world could POSSIBLY fill the empty glass slippers of our departing Belle Wednesday?
Who could step confidently onto the porch and keep the mid-week conversation going? Who could take us to an interesting part of the South, into another writing life, into another Southern family?
We’ll we’re happy to tell you that this Mississippi Belle fits the bill. She’s an amazing writer, and just a plain ol’ fun person to have a conversation with. She’s a former editor, children’s book author, literacy advocate, and a host of other things. Her first novel, Into The Free, made the New York Times and the USA Today Bestseller Lists, and took the literary world by storm.
She’s been a BelleView visitor before, and now we’re so proud to welcome her onto the porch full-time. She’s Julie Cantrell, and she’s our new Belle Wednesday!
Isn’t she adorable? We did a little interview with our new Belle, so you could get to know her, too.
Welcome, Julie! We’re so happy to have you!
Thank y’all for letting me join such an amazing group of talented women, but my, oh my…what BIG shoes I’ve been asked to fill. I’ll never be able to replace the phenomenal superwoman, Mary Beth Whalen, but I’ll sure have fun trying to follow her tracks. Thank you for welcoming this old lady to your porch (I turned 39 yesterday and am feeling the pain!). Here’s hoping we’ll still be spinning stories together when we’re all capped in blue hair.
Ten words or less: Who is Julie Cantrell?
Christian, mother, wife, friend, teacher, volunteer, farmer, writer, and klutz.
What’s the most fun part of the writing journey?
What do you love most about the South?
Hmmm…Well, I’ll pull from something I wrote recently for the Journal of Sustainable Living when I was asked by the Gaining Ground Institute to write about the Southern Good Life.
The Southern Good Life is waking in the morning to the sound of geese migrating through a cold winter dawn. It is the Saturday sound of fiddles and banjos at a local farmers’ market. It is the crow of the rooster, the howl of the coyotes, the heavy hooves of horses galloping across the orange horizon. The Southern Good Life is neighbors dropping by to chat, usually with food in hand. It is handshakes and friendly waves and high-fives and thumbs-ups, even when you’re covered in hay and mud and sweat. It is fresh eggs, brown and blue and green; and warm milk, heavy layer of cream.
The Southern Good Life is heat and humidity and hundreds of mosquito bites, but you don’t notice them at all because the smell of jasmine and honeysuckle numb your other senses. It’s ice-cold tea, sweet as syrup, and bees buzzing round their hive. It’s stray dogs and barn cats and litter on the streets, but you don’t mind because you turn the curve to see magnolias with blooms as big as balloons ready to lift you away.
It’s red-dirt backroads and Emmy Lou Harris and Shannon McNally. It’s artists and potters and writers and singers; it’s football and pageantry and parades and fireworks. It’s bike lanes and loud mufflers, mud-riding and gun racks, Thacker Mountain Radio and bookstores. It’s the Nobel Prize and save-your-life research, Gulf Coast fishing and plantation homes, heartbreaking history and plenty of hope.
The Southern Good Life is blueberries eaten straight from the bush, deer competing for our pears, and mail carriers who call us by name. It’s Hi and How are y’all? It’s Where you been? And How’s your Mama? It’s What church do you go to? And How can I help? It’s porch swings and quiet Sundays. It’s good dirt and good folks. And after years spent trying to leave it, we are now convinced, the Southern Good Life is for us. We’re glad to be back. Home.
Tell us about your family’s farm.
My husband and I have always wanted to run a farm. When we hit our mid-life era, we decided it was now or never (kind of like writing a novel). We dove in head first and launched a small sustainable farm in Oxford, Mississippi, a town we’ve been proud to call home for eight years. We now partner with local restaurants to provide organic vegetables, berries, honey, and eggs. We also raise sheep and dairy goats, and we have horses, cats, and dogs as well. This entire adventure has been a learn-as-we-go experience, and it’s been an incredible process for our family.
Tell us about your children.
I’m an uber-proud Mama of two amazing kiddos. I know every mother feels this way, but seriously, even if I wasn’t their mom, I’d still think they were incredibly cool. They teach me more each day than I could teach them in my entire lifetime, and I’m just grateful for every second we get to spend together. I’m one of those moms would will have a VERY hard time letting them leave the nest. Poor things are probably warped for life.
You write, you farm, you parent, and you are a teacher too?
Yep. I absolutely love teaching English as a second language to Kindergarten and First Grade students. I am a speech-language pathologist, and I’ve always been fascinated by language development. This job allows me to do what I love while getting to work with the most amazing students in the entire school system. No doubt. Plus…working with five and six year olds is just too much fun.
You’re also a literacy advocate. Tell us about that.
I serve on the board for our local literacy council and am a dedicated volunteer. I have always been passionate about providing quality reading instruction and consistent literature access to all people. I’m excited our council has launched many programs that have made a direct impact in our community, and I look forward to sharing more about literacy as I join the Belles on Wednesdays.
Anything else you want folks to know about you before you take over the Belle Wednesday slot?
Just that I’m incredibly honored to be here and greatly appreciate everyone who makes this nervous newbie feel at home in the midst of such fabulous folks. I feel like I should be able to come up with some brilliant southern saying to sign off, but honestly, there’s no adequate way to express what I’m feeling, so I’ll just end the way I began:
Thanks y’all!
