Quick-Fire Quips is a questionnaire where we get to know people who stand out in the State of Alabama!
Today, Alabama Public Radio host Baillee Majors talks with Leslie McCrory, Director of the event at the Shoals Storytelling Festival, happening May 14–16 at The Shoals Theatre on N Seminary St. in Florence.
Listed as a Top Twenty Events in the Southeast, the weekend offers a variety of "talented voices sharing captivating, funny and heartfelt stories."
2026 Featured Storytellers include:
—Donald Davis
—Dolores Hydock
—Bil Lepp
—Eric Kirkman
—Johnny Thomas Fowler
—Jennifer Armstrong
Baillee: Hey, Leslie, how are you?
Leslie: I am terrific. Thanks for having me on.
Baillee: For those who are unfamiliar, what is the Shoals Storytelling Festival?
Leslie: Well, we're in our 15th year. It started at the college, UNA—University of North Alabama—and had great support there. And then we shifted to a non-profit and we're at The Shoals Theatre.
The Storytelling Festival is professional storytellers that come to Florence and tell stories of a variety. And we don't have a theme or a focus; they tell us what they want to talk about, and it goes Thursday night, all day Friday, all day Saturday.
We have folks gather, we laugh, we have fun together and explore Florence while they're here.
Baillee: What is your role with the festival?
Leslie: I am the director. I'm the only paid volunteer.
Baillee: How long have you been in that role?
Leslie: Three years.
Baillee: Do you like it?
Leslie: I love it... I feel passionate about keeping it in Florence. It's a special little gem that a lot of folks don't know about. Even the locals don't know about it. It's a treasure.
We get all kinds of talented people coming to town. Some of them are musicians and storytellers and some are just storytellers. And it's a treasure.
Baillee: Go ahead and throw out some social media handles and the website, anything where people can find you online.
Leslie: We do have a website, and it's ShoalsStorytelling.com, and we do have a Facebook page, Shoals [Front Porch] Storytelling Festival.
(If you'd like to make a donation, you can do so by PayPal, Venmo or credit card. Click here for more details. You can mail a check to: Kennedy-Douglass Center, 217 E Tuscaloosa St., Florence, AL 35630)
Baillee: Now that introductions are done, let's get you warmed up to answer the questionnaire! And to do that—you know what's coming— I want you to say "Quick-Fire Quips" three times fast.
Leslie: Okay. Quick-Fire Quips, Quick-Fire Quips, Quick-Fire Quips.
Baillee: Amazing.
Leslie: I practiced.
Baillee: Did you? Well, it paid off.
Leslie: Thanks!
Baillee: Here's the first question: What comes to mind when you hear "Alabama"?
Leslie: Home. I grew up here, but so many people have negative connotations about Alabama. And so I am here to help change that. You know, dumb, barefoot, ignorant... uneducated, that kind of thing. And the civil rights issues.
Baillee: What is a hidden gem in the Shoals that you think more people should know about?
Leslie: Oh, I have a long list! Music. The music that was created here and the music that continues. We have music on every corner almost every week.
The [Tennessee] River, which is dammed, and we have lakes to use for swimming, boating, skiing, sailing and fishing.
I think we also have culture that folks don’t even realize. We have a symphony [Florence Symphony Orchestara]. We have adult theatre. We have a children's theatre. We have not just theatre in Florence; we have theater across the river as well.
We have incredible history and a wonderful arts center where they highlight the history of our Native Americans, The Civil War house, W.C. Handy.
Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned to build a building here in Florence [Rosenbaum House], and it's the only one in Alabama.
And the University of North Alabama brings lots of interest and lots of culture and creative uses in music. I feel like it's a treasure.
Baillee: What is your favorite thing about living in Alabama?
Leslie: The connections. The community. The ease in which I can move around. Family. Old friends and new friends.
Baillee: Okay. Well, what is something that you don't like about living in Alabama?
Leslie: Summer heat and humidity.
Baillee: How do you prepare for the summer?
Leslie: I sit on my porches. I have a screened porch and a front porch, and I turn on fans... Lots of cool water, and I also like swimming. If there's a pool or a lake or something to jump into, I'm there.
Baillee: What are some other activities that you enjoy?
Leslie: I love travel. I love gardening. I think that I keep my mental health by gardening and walking and seeing, you know, the trees, the flowers.
Baillee: You talked about sitting on your porch, which is a very Southern thing... Do you have a favorite Southern phrase?
Leslie: Well, I say often, "It ain't fitting." And some people don't understand it, but it just isn't okay. It's the translation. But I say that a lot. I say "y'all" a lot.
Baillee: Yeah. It's in the Southern handbook... Let's talk a little bit more about storytelling. How important is storytelling in Alabama?
Leslie: Extremely important. We actually have three festivals that I'm aware of. We have one here, one in Athens, and also one in Troy... I think that folks are realizing how important it is. One of the oldest art forms is storytelling, and they're beginning to understand it's really significant.
Baillee: Can you talk about the impact of storytelling when it comes to connection and community, being together and how it draws us together?
Leslie: That is the magical part. I think of the storytelling here in Florence, where you have people gather together... it's the laughter or the excitement or the intensity or whatever shared. Then folks go out of the theater chatting and chatting.
We had folks coming from 11 states last year, and oodles of counties in Alabama and then, of course, Tennessee and Georgia and all around.
Baillee: Do you want to talk about some of the headliners in the lineup for this year?
Leslie: Sure! We have Bil Lepp coming back from West Virginia, and he has won the award of best liar n West Virginia. So he does embellish his stories from time to time, and is just wonderful.
Dolores Hydock is returning, and she often does history, like the story she tells about the women who were in a covered wagon crossing the country, or the women that flew around the world for the first time, which wasn't done back then.
Jennifer Armstrong is coming from Asheville. She uses music and story together, and she says she focuses some on Appalachian and some on personal stories and history.
Johnny Fowler is coming from South Carolina, and he uses a little music and some stories as well from the South.
We have Dr. Eric Kirkman, who is the principal of Kilby Laboratory School here in Florence. He's also an incredible musician. Last year... he impersonated W.C. Handy during his time with us. And the crowd loved him. And many evaluations said, "Bring him back! More of him!"
Donald Davis, not to be forgotten! I call him the grandfather of storytelling, and he is an amazing storyteller. The humor is what comes out in a lot of his stories.
And we have two Moth Radio Hour winners, and they're going to tell 10 minute stories.
Baillee: Would you consider storytelling an art?
Leslie: Absolutely, yes. And if you listen to the professional storytellers that we happen to have, or any professional storyteller, you know that it's an art.
All the folks that are coming to us have a sense of timing, to have a sense of telling a story and the intensity or the humor. It's an art.
Baillee: what would you consider to be the keys to telling a good story?
Leslie: Oh my gosh, timing would be one of them. The story content is another one... How they deliver, and how they present.
I think part of it is feeling an emotion, being able to relay that to a crowd so that you're moving the crowd and moving the community in a path that is safe enough to go through, yeah.
Baillee: What would you say makes the storytelling festival special?
Leslie: One, that it's small and there's only one stage. And we do take some nice breaks so that folks can enjoy the food in Florence and can walk to them. We make a list of all the restaurants that are walkable and give their address and the sort of flavor of the food.
The theater in itself is a historic movie house, and it's now been converted to theater and storytelling and music... We have a marvelous sound and lighting fella who works really closely with each teller to meet their needs for sound and so forth.
We have Arts Alive in our park, which is on Saturday and Sunday. And we're Thursday, Friday, Saturday, so the food trucks go up and the art is in the park. And that's another special event in Florence!
Baillee: So Leslie, do you like to tell stories?
Leslie: Not formally... I do a little here and there, not formally.
Baillee: Can I ask when you do informally, what do you talk about in your stories?
Leslie: Family. Experiences... That or our special trips.
Baillee: We're at the bottom part of the questionnaire. So, just some miscellaneous stuff next. Do you have any superstitions or irrational fears?
Leslie: No.
Baillee: No?
Leslie: No, no. I'm more grounded that way.
Baillee: Tell me something on your bucket list.
Leslie: I would like to take a cruise to Alaska... The wildness of Alaska: the glaciers, the animal and the pretty parts that I've heard about.
Baillee: Who was your childhood hero?
Leslie: There is a woman here in town who was a leader, and she was before her time in a lot of ways here in Florence. She marched during the Civil Rights when nobody else I knew was doing that. She was a Peace Corps volunteer when it wasn't as popular for women.
She was the first female director of our church summer camp, when the church was not hiring female ministers or anything like that, she was given that role. And she's just continued to be a mover and a shaker.
She also believed so firmly in the path of a particular minister in the church that she decided she was shifting churches. And it was not something folks did back then, but because of his beliefs in the Civil Rights, she couldn't tolerate it.
She just was up there and helped me. She was also on the committee to send me to Scotland [as an exchange student].
The other two, I'll just mention briefly are Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett—and, of course, Dolly Parton later. They just were up there. They were also in our living room.
Baillee: Do you have any heroes today? Are these people still your heroes today?
Leslie: Dolly Parton is still, with her work, and books and giving and her music.
Baillee: Yeah, the Imagination Library!
Leslie: I have a few gentlemen that were my heroes in our field, and unfortunately, both of them are gone. But they moved me through, educated me, supported me.
One of them was hired by Yale to do some special work on supervision of therapists, and he had just adopted me along the way. Another one was an incredible family therapist. He was an incredible person.
One that was working with Yale when he died was David Powell, and the other one was John Edwards, who was working with UNC and Duke.
Baillee: It sounds like you had a wide variety of heroes, but in a lot of different impactful ways.
Do you have a favorite getaway spot in Alabama?
Leslie: I love the beach. And I also love sitting somewhere on our river here and watching storms and watching them come across the water.
My grandmother and grandfather lived on Wilson Lake, which is part of the Tennessee River, and we would sit in their living room. And you could watch the storm— with the white caps and so forth—come across, and then the rain would come. But you could see all of it developing. And I loved it.
Baillee: All right, Leslie, here's the last question: what does Alabama need?
Leslie: I would love for our reputation to change, but then I was afraid that more people would move in and get crowded.
More libraries.. I also would say we also need more hands in the dirt, you know, along with food and other things that are basic.
Baillee: That's it for today's Quick-Fire Quips, a questionnaire where we get to know people who stand out in the state of Alabama.
That was Leslie McCrory, Director of the event at the Shoals Storytelling Festival, happening May 14–16 at The Shoals Theatre on N Seminary St. in Florence.
I'm your host, Baillee Majors. Find us at APR.org for more Quick-Fire Quips!
