Category Archives: Audio

Coal Layoffs and the Future of Southern WV

Boone County, WV, has lost more coal mining jobs than any other county in the nation, according to a recent analysis by SNL Financial–that’s a fifth of the county’s total labor force. Reporter Catherine Moore went in search for the human side of these staggering figures at the WV Coal Festival, held every year at the end of June in Madison. She talked to residents about how the layoffs are affecting everyday life in Boone County, and how they’re thinking about the future of their home. Listen here…

This short radio doc for WV Public Radio about the human impacts of coal layoffs in Boone County aired regionally on Inside Appalachia and Appalshop’s WMMT, as part of my work as an Appalachian Transition Fellow working with What’s Next, WV?.

“O Beulah Land” in Oxford American

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O Beulah Land,” my wandering longform essay about writer Mary Lee Settle, the women of Cedar Grove, and Appalachian transition, was published in the summer issue of Oxford American: The Southern Magazine of Good Writing. 

They also published a companion web-only piece–an audio teaser to my forthcoming hour-long radio documentary and some photographs of Cedar Grove by my pal, the photographer Roger May.