Amy Bluemel is Chickasaw, an award-winning storyteller, artist, and co-founder of the stomp dance troupe Chikashsha Hithla. Amy travels around the country storytelling and educating about Southeastern tribal culture. She plans to use her residency to research a story documented by Spanish missionaries in the 1500s. It is about a southeastern king that was transformed into thunder and lighting and has a focus on the origin of stickball. This story was lost and has not been told in hundreds of years: she wants to bring this story back to life.

Headshot by Carl Bluemel