Sean Dietrich said when he first visited Bowling Green, he met a group of fans he didn’t know he had – Mennonites.

“I didn’t know I had Mennonite fans,” Dietrich said. “They were just precious – they were so kind to me.”

After he met his Mennonite fans during his last visit to Bowling Green, Dietrich said he felt “humbled.” He stated that the following morning, he was able to meet more Mennonites who were fans of his work.

“They all knew who I was and I just about started crying,” Dietrich said.

Dietrich will have the chance to meet his fans again as he comes back to Bowling Green on March 1 for a visit to The Capitol at 6 p.m. A writer, columnist and “stand-up storyteller,” Dietrich is known by fans as “Sean of the South” for his columns, which appear each Sunday in the Daily News Reader section, which focus on Southern life and culture. Dietrich’s columns have been published in newspapers and magazines across the Southern United States.

A native of Missouri, Dietrich currently lives in Florida. He said his start in writing came from reading newspaper columns from writers Mike Royko, Lewis Grizzard, Will Rogers and Erma Bombeck.

“I just liked the conciseness of it, the brevity of it, so that’s what I wanted to do,” Dietrich said.

Dietrich is also a musician. He said when he worked a construction job, he would play music at night, sometimes seven nights a week. He said the music he plays is a mixture of “bluegrass and old-time American standards” and music is incorporated into his act.

“That’s part of the shows I present,” he said.

Dietrich said his shows began “by mistake” when he began bringing his guitar along to his storytelling sessions.

“People would ask me to come speak and I said, ‘You don’t want to hear me speak,’ so i brought my guitar,” he said. “I told stories and then I’d play a song and then a decade later, there’s my act – the audience chose my act.”

Dietrich said his love for the South stems from its tradition and heritage, citing examples of men opening doors for women, men offering their seats to women and culinary traditions such as potluck dinners.

“There is a profound adherence to the old ways here,” he said. “It’s not as up-front as it used to be in our daily lives, but it’s definitely underneath a lot of our traditions.”

Magnolia Gramling, manager of the Capitol, said she feels Dietrich is a “necessary voice” and is able to remind audiences that we “are all people.”

“He reminds me of someone that I knew growing up, and I think a lot of people feel that way,” she said.

Gramling said tickets are still available for Dietrich’s March 1 date at the Capitol. Tickets can be purchased online at capitolbg.org/get-tickets/