Description: These days, hot chicken is a "must-try" Southern food. Restaurants in New York, Detroit, Cambridge, and even Australia advertise that they fry their chicken "Nashville-style." Thousands of people attend the Music City Hot Chicken Festival each year. The James Beard Foundation has given Prince's Chicken Shack an American Classic Award for inventing the dish.
But for almost seventy years, hot chicken was made and sold primarily in Nashville's Black neighborhoods--and the story of hot chicken says something powerful about race relations in Nashville, especially as the city tries to figure out what it will be in the future. Hot, Hot Chicken recounts the history of Nashville's Black communities through the story of its hot chicken scene from the Civil War, when Nashville became a segregated city, through the tornado that ripped through North Nashville in March 2020.Brief description: Julienne Irons loves all things true crime but has a knack for creating fun voices, which makes her a great choice for children's books and adult novels. It's always fun for her to figure out where characters fit into the stories she gets to tell. She loves getting lost on adventures in inspiring riveting literary fiction, especially when the protagonist is either a woman or the story seeks to bring a voice to the voiceless. She's worked with the amazing Viola Davis on How to Get Away with Murder, Rob Lowe on Lone Star 911, and Nathan Fillion on The Rookie, and a number of other TV shows. With training from Tisch School of the Arts and various prestigious acting studios, she can bring any story to life with love and passion and truly enjoys the work she's so honored to create.