The recent passing of actor Burt Reynolds has left the nation celebrating the man Rolling Stone deemed “The Last Good Ol’ Boy movie star.” His career spanned decades and roles in films like “Smokey and the Bandit” and “Boogie Nights” made him a household name, but in Appalachia, Reynolds is […]
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It’s been more than five years since documentary filmmaker Sean Dunne of Peekskill, NY, released Oxyana. The IMDb description reads, “The ‘Hillbilly Heroin’ epidemic that’s slowly rotting the soul of rural America.” As the film begins, a harrowing mist rolls over the hillsides and wooded ridges of Oceana, WV , while […]
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In 2017, Canadian visual artist Lucas LaRochelle created the experimental project “Queering the Map,” a community-generated interactive map in which individuals across the world can chart a cartography of memory and experiences. In describing the project, LaRochelle wrote that the project is to “collectively document the spaces that hold queer […]
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“You’re not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling? And that accent you’ve tried so desperately to shed: pure West Virginia. What is your father, dear? Is he a coal miner?” Agent Clarice Starling of the 1991 horror classic “The Silence of the Lambs” was […]
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In recent months, the media spotlight on Appalachia has resulted in complicated conversations about whose mountains we inhabit and who’s telling our stories and how. This conversation rapidly escalated from a slow boil to a forest fire. I met with Aaron Carey of the Apalači folk metal band Nechochwen — […]
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