How West Virginia got stuck in "The Coal Trap" — and missed out for ten years on the clean energy revolution — is a story worth a book. How the state might get out of the trap” A Q-and-A with the author of that book.
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Kick-starting a Youth Poet Laureate program in West Virginia’s capital city
Attention, high school-age poets and their teachers, friends, and parents: a Youth Poet Laureate program is underway in West Virginia's capital city. Here are some details.
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5 QUESTIONS: From West Virginia to the San Francisco Bay and beyond
D. Scot Miller was a bright student from Dunbar, West Virginia, considered transgressive in class as he had a vision of how things might be better. What happened next bounced him to the other side of the country and a lively career as a writer, poet, thinker, and creator of The Afrosurreal Manifesto.
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5 QUESTIONS: Creating the universe with God, Gravity, Darkness & friends
John Berry is not shy in taking on poetic tasks, including "The Broken Poem and Other Strange Ideas About God," which tracks the offhand creation of the universe as God and buddies like Gravity and Darkness lend a hand.
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Chris Haddox tells stories from the hills, plus unexpected ones, too
On the occasion of the March 2022 release of his CD of high songcraft from the Appalachian hills, here's the world-premiere music video of the Chris Haddox tune "A Soul Can't Rest in Peace Beside the Four Lane — and a chat with the artist about songwriting and life.
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Q&A: “Where Sky Meets Eternity” documents an extraordinary artistic hand-off in the WV hills
The documentary "Where Sky Meets Eternity” profiles an ambitious, offbeat art project from deep in the West Virginia hills, as 12 artists bounced off each other's work in often surprising, unexpected ways.
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LISTEN/IN: Michael and Carrie Kline on the art and craft of of hearing & sharing stories
Michael and Carrie Kline sing and listen for a living. But what their songs and stories actually do is affirm "the depth and breadth of cultures under siege by forces of systemic oppression often threatening their very existence."
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COVERSTORY: Lady D, In Her Own Unfiltered Words
You might say Doris A. Fields, better known as Lady D, is having a well-deserved moment. Several, actually. We check in with one of West Virginia's finest singer-songwriters on the occasion of the release of her new CD, the heat-seeking "Disturbing My Peace."
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5 QUESTIONS: Bhante G on meditating via ZOOM, daily mindfulness and facing death
It is perhaps not as well known as it should be that a much-beloved, 93-year-old global figure in Buddhism has called West Virginia home since 1985. We check in with him on ZOOM meditating and more.
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IN MEMORIUM: Giancarlo DiTrappano
Recalling "Tyrant" book editor, "bad boy" of publishing, and Charleston, West Virginia native Giancarlo DiTrappano.
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POETICS: The Art of Being West Virginia’s Poet Laureate
We sit down — digitally — with longtime West Virginia poet laureate Marc Harshman and quiz him about his "Dispatch From the Mountain State" in the NYTimes and the obligation of a poetry to be the sort of "political being" described by W.H. Auden.
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5 QUESTIONS: When Life Hands You Quarantine, You Make a Web Series Out of It
Curren Sheldon and Tijah Bumgarner are the wizards behind the extremely entertaining web series, "Quarantine Life," which asks—and answers—the question: What do two mondo-talented West Virginia filmmakers do during a global pandemic that has locked down the usual creative projects into which they had been pouring their life force?
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MARIE MANILLA | Part 1: Driving By Her Own Headlights
Huntington WV native Marie Manilla is an award-winning fiction and non-fiction author. In a "5 Questions" interview, she talks about the highs and lows of writing; the 'snotty literati,' who use labels to belittle writers; and the novel she scrapped after hearing pre-publication reactions by African American and transgender sensitivity readers.
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VIEW FROM THE PLAYGROUND: On Changing Stonewall Jackson Middle School’s Name
As adults decide the future of Stonewall Jackson Middle School's name at meeting Monday, July 6, 2020, we visited a playground in Charleston WV to find out what a group of students thought about the idea.
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STEPHEN SMITH | Part 1: On His Long-Distance, Grass-roots Run for Governor
As part of a new WestVirginiaVille series called, "Conversations," we sit down with 2020 West Virginia gubernatorial Democratic candidate Stephen Smith as he winds down a two-year, grass-roots campaign to upend the long reign of what his campaign dubs the "good old boy network" in state governance.
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DON WEST | Part 1: Not An Easy Path
Don West was not a warm and fuzzy person or "a creator of comfort. He was a ceator of action." It could be uncomfortable, but the labor activist and poet left a legacy to be explored in a WVPB documentary that debuts Sunday, June 7, 2020
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5 QUESTIONS: Colleen Anderson on the Art of the Op-Ed Limerick
Colleen Anderson is a leading light in the Op-Ed Limerick Movement of the Trump Era. We're actually unsure whether anyone else writes Molotov limericks in response to the daily depredations of Trump and his minions and toadies. We had '5 Questions' for her.
