Lynn Oldshue grew up on a catfish farm in Yazoo City, MS. After graduating from Mississippi State University, her first job was working at the Saenger Theatre in downtown Mobile. She is married with two boys and lives on a farm in Fairhope. She started The Southern Rambler magazine five years ago to tell the stories of artists and musicians on the Gulf Coast. This year The Southern Rambler won the Nappie for Best Blog/Website from Lagniappe. Oldshue has written features on editorial cartoonist J.D. Crowe, columnist John Archibald, artists Tut Riddick and Bruce Larsen as well as musicians Emmylou Harris, St. Paul and the Broken Bones and The Revivalists.
An interview with photographer Vincent Lawson about his pictures of the homeless in Mobile, and a story about the city’s bus riders, changed her direction. She started the vignette series Our Southern Souls after telling the stories of people who take the bus for hours every day to get to minimum wage jobs, school, medical appointments and grocery shopping. Almost 850 stories over two years include people who survive cancer, flee from war and persecution, take care of spouses with Alzheimer’s, wait for acceptance letters into graduate schools and serve hot dogs to the homeless. She has interviewed flood victims in Louisiana, parents grieving of the death of a child, and nomads living in caves in Morocco. This summer, her stories and pictures from Havana, Cuba hung on the walls of the Alabama Contemporary Art Center in their “Sister Shores” exhibit.
She also started the series Faces of Mobile, featuring street photography in the downtown area illustrating the beauty and diversity of the city, one image at a time. She believes that stories still matter, show our humanity and help us understand how much we have in common