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SouthBound: Chuck Culpepper On Life As A World Traveler, A Gay Man And A Sportswriter

Photo courtesy of Chuck Culpepper

Chuck Culpepper and I were friends for years before I ever met him — we used to talk about music and storytelling on a chat room created by some fellow writers back in the Internet’s dial-up days. Chuck is one of the few openly gay male sportswriters in America. 

Credit Photo courtesy of Chuck Culpepper

He’s also a sort of real-life version of the George Clooney character in “Up In the Air” — he roams the world so voraciously that he went years without an official address. What has he seen on all those travels? And why has he kept moving for so long? That’s what we’re about to find out.

These days Chuck writes about sports for the Washington Post. He was in Charlotte last week for the ACC men’s basketball tournament. Here’s what he wrote about Duke star Zion Williamson’s performance in the tournament: “… the event gave a sort of demonstration of basketball evolution, how in the year 2019, humanity can fashion a 285-pound man who moves like an optical illusion.”

Nobody else writes like Chuck Culpepper.

Let's keep the conversation going. Who do you want to hear from next on the SouthBound podcast? Submit your idea in the box below. You can also send a tweet to @tommytomlinson or @wfae, and email me at ttomlinson@wfae.org.

Show notes:

New episodes of SouthBound will come out every other week on Wednesday. Subscribe:

Apple Podcasts    Google Play     Stitcher     NPR One

SouthBound is a production of WFAE. Our host is Tommy Tomlinson. Our producer is Nick de la Canal. Our audience engagement manager is Joni Deutsch, and our main theme comes from Josh Turner.

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