Hello everyone, and welcome to Speaking with Joy, a podcast to fill your soul, challenge your mind, and make you brave.

I'm your host, Joy Clarkson, and an evangelist for all things good, true, and beautiful.

So make yourself a cup of tea, find somewhere comfortable, and let's dive in to this week's episode.

Hello everybody and welcome back to Speaking with Joy. I am happy to welcome you back to another

episode in the series that I've been calling in my mind, the Escape Cast, which are just episodes

aimed at giving you an hour of sanity and beauty and goodness and wholesome distraction in this strange time

that we are all living through with the COVID-19 pandemic. And one of the things that I have been

so delighted by and actually kind of grateful for is that having this empty space kind of pushed me

to reach out to some people who I have enjoyed their work or admired

their work from afar and either either because I actually was too busy or because in my brain

I had the perception of being too busy I just kind of hadn't reached out to but I've gotten to

reach out to and chat with many people that I I'm'm just glad that I finally did it. And today I

have the great fun of welcoming one of those people onto my show. And that is Gracie Olmstead.

So welcome to speaking with Joy, Gracie. Thank you so much for having me. It is an honor and a joy

to get to be on the podcast with you. Oh, well, I'm so excited for today's conversation,

mainly because they've been things that I've wanted to ask you about before.

So now we get to talk about it and have a conversation over a podcast.

So Gracie, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Who are you?

Where are you?

And what do you do?

What are you passionate about?

...