This week on Inside Appalachia, Rae Garringer felt isolated growing up and thought she was the only queer person in a small town. But she learned otherwise. Now she’s collecting and sharing the stories of rural LGBTQ people from across the country. Also, surface mining changes the landscape in a way that makes flooding worse. And there’s no easy fix. And we meet an Appalachian village witch, who wonders: How come we don’t hear about more female cryptids? Why isn’t there a Mothwoman?
On this West Virginia Week, mental health continues to be in the spotlight with federal funds set aside to help finance multiple West Virginia programs. We’ll also hear statistics from the recent mass distribution of the lifesaving Naloxone drug.
On this West Virginia Morning, Bill Lynch speaks with science fiction and technology writer Corey Doctorow, who will present this year’s McCreight Lecture at the University of Charleston.
This week on Inside Appalachia, black lung disease is back. In fact, it never went away. Now, younger and younger miners are living with a particularly nasty form of black lung disease. Regulators and the coal industry have known about the problem for decades but they’ve been slow to respond. One reporter asks, “What would happen if thousands of workers in any other industry got sick and died just because of where they worked?”
On this West Virginia Week, we have a decidedly literary slant as we hear from Shepherd University's 2023 Appalachian Writer-in-Residence, and we also learn about Banned Book Week.