Welcome to episode 21 of From the Front Porch, a collection of conversations on books, small business, and life in the South. I'm Annie Jones, owner of the Book Shelf in downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and today I'm joined by Amanda Stringer, CEO of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, and a coordinator of Tallahassee's upcoming Word of South Music and Literature Festival.

We'll be chatting all things Word of South, including why locals need to come out and show their support

rain or shine.

Hey Amanda!

Hi, thank you for having me.

Okay, so tell me quickly what you do at the symphony and how you got involved in Word of South.

Well it's an interesting and long story, but at the symphony I am the CEO so I do all the managing

side of things for the orchestra.

Over two years ago I became involved with the night communities KCCI group so it's a

catalyst group that takes on a project, you develop and design a project,

and try to implement it within one year.

It's a kind of community service initiative.

And I was in the KCCI group and we decided we wanted to start a music festival and that the symphony would actually house the festival.

And as time went on, it became apparent that that was a little bit too much for a volunteer group

to try to manage on its own. So I met Mark Muschen who also wanted to have a

literary festival start and he put his head together and said, well, why don't we

merge these two disciplines of writing in music

and start a literature music festival?

So we talked about that for a while and I was just kind of helping

him brainstorm and then he came to me and asked me if I would manage the

festival for him. So that's how it all got started. It was a long time ago and it's morphed a lot since then and turned into a big gargantuan

mammoth of a festival, but it's very exciting.

...