Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren
Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren are married documentary filmmakers based in Richmond, Virginia. Through their production company, Field Studio, they make media at the intersection of history and social justice, crafting independent documentaries as well as videos for nonprofits and universities.
Hannah and Lance’s first film, That World is Gone: Race and Displacement in a Southern Town, won the Audience Award for Short Documentary at the 2010 Virginia Film Festival.
Their latest film, An Outrage, about the history and legacy of lynching in the American South, premiered at the Smithsonian Museum of American History in March 2017. An Outrage has since received the Audience Award at the Indie Grits Film Festival and the Jury Award for Best Documentary Short at the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival Through a partnership with the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance project, An Outrage and a complementary curriculum are now available to nearly 500,000 teachers across the United States.
Elvatrice Belsches
Elvatrice Belsches is a researcher, lecturer, and author whose interests include chronicling the African American experience.
Elvatrice is currently serving as an External Scholar for an NEH grant awarded to Reynolds Community College that connects the college to local history repositories and museums.
In 2014, Elvatrice served as a researcher for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln under two-time Academy Award-winner Rick Carter. She authored eight entries for the African American National Biography published by Oxford University Press.
The National Park Service in 2009 commissioned Elvatrice to research, author, and narrate the Historic Jackson Ward Podcast Tour, which chronicles the largest National Historic Landmark District associated with African American history and culture.
Elvatrice is a graduate of Hampton University and Virginia Commonwealth University, and has several publications and documentaries in development.
Robert Moss
Robert Moss is a food and drinks writer and culinary historian living in Charleston, South Carolina. He is the author of several books on Southern foodways, including: Southern Spirits: Four Hundred Years of Drinking in the American South, With Recipes; The Barbecue Lover’s Carolinas; Barbecue: The History of an American Institution; and Going Lardcore: Adventures in New Southern Dining.
Robert is the Contributing Barbecue Editor for Southern Living and the Southern Food Correspondent for Serious Eats. His work has also appeared in publications such as Garden & Gun, Saveur, the Los Angeles Times, the Charlotte Observer, Texas Monthly, the Columbia Free Times, and Early American Life. With Hanna Raskin of the Charleston Post & Courier, he hosts "The Winnow," a podcast about dining in the South and beyond.
Raised in Greenville, South Carolina, Robert attended Furman University and received a Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina.
Jennifer Jackson Hardy
Jennifer Jackson Hardy is the great-great-granddaughter of John Dabney. She was born and raised in New York City but longed for a country life and to work with animals.
She discovered a love for horseback riding on visits to a childhood friend in northern Virginia. She began working with horses at a Long Island race track while a teenager, and spent her last semester of high school interning at a horse farm in Kentucky.
Jenny attended the University of Kentucky. She and her husband Jonathan have two grown children, Elsa Julien and Jeremy Hinkson.
After three varied careers — working with thoroughbreds on a race track, co-running a family bakery, and teaching elementary school at a progressive Brooklyn public school — she recently retired and is enjoying semi-country life in Lexington, Kentucky.
She now spends her time riding her horse, Dance With Joy, as often as possible.