Sheila Brown Kinnard voices a role inspired by her mother
Publisher’s note: this is one of fifteen short pieces introducing the actors of The Real Education of TJ Crowley: Coming of Age on the Redline. Fifteen actors, twenty-four roles, nine hours of audio. One actor at a time, with a clip to hear.
MEET THE CAST · No. 3 of 15
Grant Overstake recorded the material behind this scene on a visit to the Brown family home, made while he was researching the book.
Brown Kinnard voices Mrs. Lorraine Washington, the role built from that visit and from her own mother, Josephine “Jo” Brown, the first Black woman elected to the Wichita school board, in April 1971. Brown Kinnard was appointed to that same board in May 2026, months after her mother’s death, filling the at-large seat left vacant by the death of Melody McCray-Miller. “This is just a full circle moment for me, and I’m just overjoyed,” Brown Kinnard said of the appointment.
Jo Brown founded the ARISE ensemble, African Americans Renewing Interest in Spirituals, in 1988 to keep those songs alive. The choir’s recordings score the drama itself, and Brown Kinnard sings among its soloists. The music her mother gathered is the same music her daughter now performs.
The clip to hear finds Mrs. Washington walking a young guest past the family photographs: a frame of three generations of doctors, then one more portrait she saves for last. It is Robert’s grandmother, a Fisk University student who once toured with the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The record TJ has been hearing through the fence all along is her voice.
TJ Crowley is a storybook hero. The Fisk Jubilee Singers are real history, and so is the choir Brown Kinnard’s mother built to keep their music alive.
Follow along in the scriptbook
Adapted from Grant Overstake’s novel, winner of the Kansas Authors Club book award. The scriptbook prints the word-for-word performance script, exactly as the cast performs it. Bonus material, discussion questions, and educator guides included.
Get the scriptbookThe audio drama has won
- 2025 Audie Award, Young Adult
- IPPY Outstanding Book of the Year, Audiobook
- AudioFile Earphones Award
About this project
This series is published by Grain Valley Publishing Company, LLC, in support of The Real Education Project, the nonprofit arts and education effort that carries the drama into classrooms and public listening events.
A note on how this happened. At the 2025 Audie Awards, the Young Adult category came down to five finalists. Four were the audio divisions of some of the largest publishers in the world: Macmillan Audio, Simon & Schuster Audio, Penguin Random House Audio, and HarperAudio. The fifth was a publishing company in Wichita, Kansas, working with Blackstone Publishing. That one won.
Made possible by the fiscal sponsorship of the Youth Educational Empowerment Program and in part by the Kansas Arts Commission, which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Fifteen actors voice twenty-four roles across 9:07:47 of audio. Directed and produced by May Wuthrich. Executive producer Grant Overstake. Recorded at John Marshall Media, New York City, and distributed by Blackstone Publishing.
The scriptbook these actors perform from is also free to perform yourself. The Redline Scenes releases scene cuttings from The Real Education of TJ Crowley for speech and forensics competition and classroom use, free to perform and cleared to compete, at no charge and with no separate contract.