To Catch a Craw
While scientifically correct, few West Virginians call them crayfish. Unless you’ve got a PhD, calling them crayfish around here marks you as someone out of place.
On Raymond Thompson’s “Appalachian Ghost”
Thompson captured photos of the place — the hills of WVA folding into each other like origami, holding mist and dew in the hollows. And he staged new photos which conjure these working men, bearing up under hours of physical labor, covered in white dust, looking otherworldly but also fully human and integral to the achievement.
No Son of Mine
I didn’t say, as they told me how they owned a boat and spent much of their summer cruising Maine’s coastline, that my mother’s biggest dream was to get out of West Virginia, that her biggest love was the ocean, that she hoped to die listening to the sounds of the waves.
Hollowed Out
How Pittsburgh-based EQT’s expansion in West Virginia set four families reeling, while state regulators trusted the company to answer their complaints.
Mon River Suite
Poetry by Grace Smith.
Making it Harder to Get Health Care in WV Prisons
In a last-minute special session, the GOP-led legislature rushed through a law denying care that corrections officials don’t deem “medically necessary.”
The Cost of Loss at WVU
Losing the entire world languages program may simplify a spreadsheet, but it will also send talented West Virginians outside state lines for better opportunities.
Saturday Afternoon at the Last Dog Track in America
How did greyhound racing survive in West Virginia—and how long can it last?
Wild and Wonderful Folklore of West Virginia
"Folklore is living and breathing, always evolving, and part of contemporary life—the twist you add to an heirloom recipe, a lullaby sung to a child at bedtime, the in-jokes that emerge among families, the vocabulary unique to a particular occupation, the beloved foodways of a certain place, the meme altered and shared among friends."
Imagining Queer Appalachian Futures
A conversation with Z. Zane McNeill, editor of 'Y'All Means All.'
The Most Dangerous People in the Country
In 2018, a West Virginia teacher’s secret Facebook group sparked a "union renaissance” in the tradition of Mother Jones.
The Great Railroad Strike in Pittsburgh
Excerpted from "An Alternative History of Pittsburgh."