Richelle Putnam is a Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC) Teaching Artist/Roster Artist (Literary), a Mississippi Humanities Speaker, and a 2020 and 2014 MAC Literary Arts Fellowship recipient. As the senior editor and head writer for The Bluegrass Standard (BGS) Magazine, she plans each issue, which includes finding the stories to cover, assigning those stories, making sure they are received by deadline, edits the stories, and uploads them into the system for the Creative Director. She handles the story uploads for the BGS website.

For close to five years, she was a talk radio host for Supertalk Mississippi 103.3 for two shows: Behind the Scenes and Looking Back. She still loves interviewing people

Her YA biography, The Inspiring Life of Eudora Welty (The History Press, April 2014), received the 2014 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards Silver Medal and was nominated for the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award, nonfiction category. She is also the author of Lauderdale County, Mississippi; A Brief History (The History Press, 2011) and co-author of Legendary Locals of Meridian, Mississippi (Arcadia Publishing, 2013). Her book, Mississippi and The Great Depression, was released November 13, 2017, by The History Press and was nominated for the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award, nonfiction category, and is a 2017 Foreword Indies Book Awards Bronze Medal recipient in the regional nonfiction category. In November 2021, Arcadia Publishing released her latest book Mississippi In the Great Depression, with more than 200 photos, as an “Images of America imprint.” Her new book, A Guide to Mississippi Museums was released January 8, 2024, is co-authored with internationally renowned storyteller, mixed-media artist, and author Diane Williams,

The Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office Commissioned Richelle to write the history of the nine counties (Clarke, Kemper, Lauderdale, Newton, Neshoba, Leake, Smith, Scott, Jasper) in East Central, Mississippi, for the 2017 Mississippi Bicentennial book released December 2017.

She co-wrote Was It Worth It, which won first place in the Tallahatchie Riverfest’s William Faulkner Playwriting Competition and performed several times on stages around Mississippi. Richelle also co-wrote Women of Potta Chitto and the soundtrack. The play was shown on two community theatre stages, and she performed the soundtrack in venues around the state.

Pif Magazine, The Copperfield Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, and several bestselling anthologies have published her work. She has contributed to Parents & Kids Magazine, Social South, Portico, Well Being, eat. drink. Mississippi, and Mississippi Magazine. As a singer-songwriter, radio and Internet stations and American Songwriter Magazine have featured her songs, including American Songwriter Magazine.

She earned her BS in Marketing Management at Western Governors University and received her Master of Arts in Creative Writing at the University of North Alabama. As a writing instructor and teaching artist, she aims to help children and adults experience the beauty of words and realize their power.