Kathryn Lewis spent the first thirty-two years of her career teaching speech and theatre at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Perkinston.  During that period, she performed, wrote or directed plays while maintaining her role as Chair of the Fine Arts Department. Since leaving full-time employment on the college campus, she has provided professional development workshops for teachers and demonstration lessons in schools throughout Mississippi and the Southeast. She has led numerous arts-focused community projects, including The Telling Trees, a project to research, document and present the history of Stone County, MS through the arts-the project and community murals were recognized by the MS State Legislature in 2012 as the “Mural Capital of MS“.  In 2010 she focused classroom lessons on her children’s book: The Longleaf and Me…A-Z and in 2012 she began presenting focused classroom lessons on her second book: The Watershed and Me…A-Z.  Kathryn has been a Field Advisor for the WSI. She is the recent recipient of the National Storytelling Network Oracle Award for the Southeast, Top 10 MS Business Women of the Year (2010), Cowboy Maloney Award for Outstanding Contribution to Theatre in MS, MS Alliance for Arts Education Distinguished Service Award, and in 2011 The Telling Trees  project  received the MS Humanities Award for Preservation of MS History. She is listed in Southern Artistry, an artist roster hosted by the South Arts, and on the Teaching Artist Roster of the Mississippi Arts Commission. She is a frequent presenter at arts education and education conferences in Mississippi; is a life member of MAAE, the 2013 recipient of the MS Governor’s Award for Excellence in Arts Education, and serves on the Board of the Mississippi Humanities Council.