Episode 22: How to Edit the Arts Beat with Elle Perry

Elle Perry is Memphis's go-to Arts & Culture editor at The Daily Memphian, a self-described generalist who can hit five art gallery openings in one night.

Her love affair with the arts began in third grade when a speech therapy teacher took her to see The Nutcracker, then deepened in college when she discovered the broke student's paradise of gallery openings (free wine and cheese). Elle's nosiness-turned-superpower drives her journalism, giving her permission to ask deeper questions while building genuine connections with artists. She approaches art like a tactile kid who wants to touch everything, drawn especially to abstract works that mess with your head and make you turn sideways to look. This constant consumption of Memphis's vibrant arts scene—from the bold, bright colors she sees recurring in local work to ballet adaptations and underground galleries—directly feeds her creative writing projects, including a novel inspired by The Warmth of Other Suns and a comedy script about female relationships.

We talk about her newsletter "Things I Saw This Week" and how she curates underappreciated stories like the real Nashville hot chicken origin story, developing listening skills as an introverted journalist who gives people permission to overshare, discovering Memphis galleries to the college spaces people overlook, transitioning from AP style journalism to creative writing and learning you can't autopilot a novel like you can news stories, reading craft books and trying to build daily writing habits while cutting back on mindless social media scrolling, and her dream of creating deeply specific Memphis-based films and books that make you feel like you've been there even if you haven't.