Elaine McMillion Sheldon

Our conversation this week is with Elaine McMillion Sheldon: Academy Award-nominated, Peabody-winning, and two-time Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and daughter of West Virginia.

She premiered her latest feature-length documentary, KING COAL, at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. She is the director of two Netflix Original Documentaries -  "Heroin(e)" and "Recovery Boys" - that explore America's opioid crisis. In 2013, she released "Hollow," an interactive documentary that examines the future of rural America through the eyes and voices of West Virginians.

Listen to us talk all about KING COAL, the highlight of her life/career, film and processing grief, fiction as a way to be honest, self-definition and creativity, learning to watch your tone, overcoming limiting narratives, the struggle of memory and change, the power of having death in your mind, a strange and beautiful funeral, Louise McNeill and other unknown artists, stories as salvation, and the mythic character of Elaine’s Paw Paw.

Location: Elaine's office at the University of Tennessee | Knoxville, TN

Upcoming screenings for KING COAL

KING COAL | Official Trailer

Hollow - An Interactive Documentary

John Prine - Summer's End Offical Video (directed by Elaine)

Find the rest of Elaine's films on her website!

Mentioned in this episode: 

The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

The Other Others – First Law and Songlines

Dr. Anne Poelina

Dr. Mary Graham

Alexis Wright

West Virginia Culture Center

Moments by Mary Oliver

Super Duty Tough Work Podcast

Alysia Santo of The Marshall Project

Howard Berkes

Death and Dying in Central Appalachia by James K. Crissman

The photographs of Finley Taylor

Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O’Connor

Hill Daughter: New and Selected Poems by Lousie McNeill