Elle Perry

Elle Perry is arts and culture editor at The Daily Memphian, with a body of work that treats the local creative ecosystem as a beat in its own right rather than a calendar of entertainment options. Her coverage connects music, visual arts, theater and community festivals, often tying individual performances or exhibitions to the people, institutions and histories behind them. She pairs deep, long-running arts reporting with practical guides, newsletters and podcasts that help readers understand not just what to see, but why it matters.

Music scene, venues and live performance

Perry covers music as an ongoing story of artists, venues and audiences, not only as isolated shows.

Recent work includes pieces on a teen music lab named for late music producer Tay Keith and coverage of Tay Keith’s death at 29, tracing how his career and legacy intersect with youth-focused music spaces and contemporary hip-hop production. She regularly writes about major concerts and series such as Live at the Garden, including reporting on replacement headliners for scheduled acts and what those changes mean for the season’s lineup and audience expectations.

Her writing also tracks genre-specific nights and festivals - from nu metal and power pop bills at outdoor venues to celebrations tied to artists like Beyoncé - framing them in terms of fan communities, performance context and the broader live-music calendar.

Arts Beat and deep-dive creative coverage

Beyond daily stories, Perry anchors The Arts Beat, a weekly offering that promises a deep dive into arts, music, dance, theater, fashion, film and events. In that format she moves past listings to explain why particular shows or exhibitions matter, highlighting creators, curators and organizers and drawing connections between different parts of the arts scene. Her Arts Beat coverage has included focused looks at institutions like the Brooks Museum, spotlighting specific installations and alumni while situating them within ongoing conversations about where art is shown and how audiences encounter it.

The newsletter-style approach, combined with her role on The Daily Memphian’s AM/DM podcast to “set up the week ahead” for arts and culture, gives her work a planning function as well as an analytical one, making her a key interpreter of what the coming week’s creative offerings represent.

Visual arts, theater and cultural institutions

Perry’s archive shows sustained attention to visual arts and theater, often through profiles and scene pieces that introduce readers to working artists and playwrights. She has written “Meet” features on residents of artist live-work spaces and on groups of local playwrights, using interviews and on-site reporting to explain how they make work, collaborate and sustain creative careers. Coverage of AAPI Heritage Month with food tours and art exhibitions, and Hispanic Heritage celebrations paired with festivals such as CY Fest, reflects her tendency to treat heritage observances as cultural stories grounded in specific venues, organizers and audiences rather than purely ceremonial events. Her writing on exhibitions and installations, including textile and fashion-focused work, brings together artist biographies, medium and technique, and the institutional context in which the work is shown.

Community events, guides and culture-at-large

Alongside arts reporting, Perry produces service-oriented guides that map out how culture plays out across the city in daily life.

Recurring “to-do list” pieces cover everything from rivalry watch parties and movie screenings to barbecuing classes and multi-day festivals, blending concise event information with an emphasis on atmosphere and the kinds of experiences each event offers. Heritage, neighborhood identity and civic institutions recur in these guides, as she weaves in libraries, museums, parks and community spaces as stages for cultural life.

She occasionally steps into adjacent beats when they intersect with culture - for example, updates related to professional sports framed through fan experience and promotional events - but the through-line remains how entertainment and culture function together at ground level.

Newsroom leadership, mentoring and broader publishing footprint

Perry’s role extends beyond her own bylines into shaping coverage and developing new journalists. She writes recurring pieces introducing The Daily Memphian’s interns across spring, summer and fall cycles, outlining their backgrounds and areas of focus, which reflects her work as internship coordinator and her involvement in the digital desk. Professional bios describe her as having covered arts and culture and related subjects for nearly two decades, with experience as a digital producer and social engagement manager for a business journal, as coordinator of a county-wide high school newspaper program and as an editor for a pop-culture website. Her work has also appeared in outlets including High Ground News, the Memphis Flyer, Next City, Inside Memphis Business, Number: Inc and the Memphis Business Journal, underscoring a publishing footprint that spans local news, business reporting, niche arts publications and national urban-issues coverage. Across these roles she consistently approaches arts and entertainment as a serious, community-shaping beat, bringing the same rigor to a teen music lab or neighborhood festival that she does to major institutions and headline concerts.