Amy Brooks, Program Director and Dramaturg for Roadside Theater, is a 5th-generation West Virginian who returned to Appalachia just before the 2016 election cycle. Through her work in community-based theater for social change she explores the confluence of dramatic narrative (“What is the story we choose to tell onstage?”) and public narrative (“What is the story we are called upon to tell about ourselves, our community, and our future?”) in intercultural rural-urban performance. She is the former Humanities Director of the Contemporary American Theater Festival and co-creator of Rural Arts Weekly, a Twitter forum for policy and practice in rural creative placemaking.