Our Story
Stories are the oldest archive we have.
Million Memory Project exists because the stories people carry — in their voices, photographs, and memories — deserve the same care and permanence as any historical record.
Why we exist
Stories disappear every day because no one had the time or the tools to save them. We exist to change that.
Where it began
A question about what gets remembered — and what doesn’t.
We started in Western North Carolina, recording oral histories and documenting Appalachian communities. The work showed how much was close to being lost, and that the problem wasn’t only regional. Stories everywhere were disappearing, with nothing in place to preserve them at scale.
Then, as the project was coming together, Hurricane Helene hit our hometowns, including Hot Springs, NC, in September 2024. In the recovery, neighbors shared their photographs and what they had lived through, and we saw how much a community can hold on to when it does that together. That became Through Our Eyes: one book, 48 contributors, and an archive now hosted by UNC Chapel Hill. It came out in September 2025, on the first anniversary of the storm.
Each of our imprints began with one book. Through Our Eyes was the first from Million Memory Project. In February 2026, Spring Creek opened the Appalachian Memory Project with oral histories recorded at the town’s old schoolhouse, now its community center. In April 2026, Abigail and the Journey of a Pack Horse Librarian, a Chatham Rabbits song turned into a children’s book, launched Sound Archive Books at the Public Library Association Conference.
Those books showed us what is possible when a community records its own history. Million Memory Project was built to make that possible anywhere, for communities, artists, cultural organizations, and the public record.
The people behind it
Mitchell Davis
Founder & Director
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Mitchell Davis is a publishing entrepreneur and producer. He co-founded BookSurge, an early print-on-demand company that Amazon bought and later merged into what is now Kindle Direct Publishing. He later founded BiblioLabs, whose tools helped libraries share local history and community publishing; it was acquired by the nonprofit LYRASIS in 2021.
Based in Western North Carolina, he is also a founder, partner, and resident at Rare Bird Farm, a gathering place for intimate cultural and musical events.
Donna Ray Norton
Ambassador & Coordinator
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Donna Ray Norton is an eighth-generation Appalachian ballad singer, storyteller, and culture bearer from the Sodom Laurel community of Madison County, North Carolina. She carries forward one of the oldest unbroken non-Indigenous oral traditions in the United States, learned through generations of her family.
Alongside performing, she documents and preserves the traditions of her family and community, and helps others do the same, so these songs and stories are still sung and told.
Kevin Reese
Production & Technology
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Kevin Reese is a sixth-generation Madison County native. He spent more than a decade touring as a musician with longtime collaborator Pierce Edens, playing Appalachian-infused folk rock.
As Production & Tech Lead at Sound Archive Books, he builds the software that helps artists turn their lives and work into books. In Hot Springs, he also works on public information, an artist residency, and recovery after Hurricane Helene.