The Roanoker March/April 2024 - 26

WOMEN
" It felt like a
rebirth.
All the fractured
pieces of who I'd been
came back together
in a bolt of
lightning. "
I
t was in the spring of 2011 - a time when
Hunsaker still felt untethered - that she decided
to pay her mother a visit. " My mom was doing
costumes for the Hollins theatre, so I flew in and
surprised her for the show, " she remembers. " It was in
April, and all the flowers were blooming... I remember
stepping off the plane and smelling the spring air, and I
thought, 'I need to feel this again...' It felt very hopeful. "
By the time she returned to Austin, Hunsaker had
the first inklings of a plan... and some surprising news
for her family.
" I came back from that trip and said, 'I need to be done
here,' " she remembers. Lee says her husband was quick
to support the move, even though it meant uprooting
his own life and traveling long-distance for work. And
that sacrifice was pivotal: " For whatever reason, Roanoke
called me back, " she says. " I missed the mountains, and
I needed to fall into the bosom of that... I needed the
cocoon. "
And so, determined to begin again, Lee was back in
her hometown by August.
The great surprise of Hunsaker's life, perhaps, is that
Roanoke was right where she'd left it ... but a little more
colorful and creative this time.
" Roanoke felt like a different place, " she says. " There
was cool food, the greenways, the breweries, the beer
revolution ... And I could feel the arts part of it coming
back to life. "
Lee settled in quickly, enrolling her son in the same
26 MARCH/APRIL 2024
school she'd once attended. She met fellow moms, and
she joined a writer's group at Hollins University. It was
that final move that provided Lee with the first clues
as to what role she might inhabit next - this time as a
storyteller. But she wasn't sure what that looked like until
she took a trip back to Austin, and chance - Lee might
prefer the word " magic " - provided the answer. During
her trip, she says she stumbled on a posting about a live
storytelling show in a pizza parlor, in the style of " The
Moth Radio Hour. " On a whim, she decided to attend,
and she'll never forget what happened next:
" I walked in the door, and I burst into tears with the
energy of it and how present everybody was, how leanedin
everyone was, " she says. " It was an electric feeling to
be sitting there ... And I thought, there is no reason not
to do this in Roanoke. "
T
he rest, as they say, is history. Back home,
Lee reached out to friends who owned
Sweet Donkey Coffee, booked a time for a
show and put out her first call for storytellers.
The response, she says, was overwhelming: " It was
right place, right time. I could tell the people submitting
stories were ready for it. "
One repeat storyteller, Tom Landon, deftly describes
the appeal that brought people out to Hoot and Holler,
and that kept them coming back: " [Lee's] events are such
great examples of both individual empowerment and
community. The crowds are the nicest, kindest audiences
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ASHLEY WILSON FELLERS
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The Roanoker March/April 2024

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