Arts & Culture

With only two days left until Christmas, how many of you are still out looking for that one final gift? Well, there’s lots of ways to find that last present – big superstores, malls, or online – but what about shopping locally?  The West Virginia Small Business Administration says, small, local businesses employ nearly half of all West Virginia workers.

This week's Inside Appalachia is a special holiday edition.  We hear stories of Christmas past, present and hope for the future. We’ll check in with West Virginians still recovering from historic flooding that hit about 6 months ago, find out how to avoid gaining weight, hear a story about a welcomed Star of David on a Christmas tree, and more.

Paula Riley Thomas was living in Alexandria, Va. in 1991 when her son James was born. She moved back to McDowell County, W.Va. when James was a year old to escape a domestic violence situation. She struggled to recover emotionally but found some hope in her Christian faith and writing poetry.

Listen to hear her story and a poem she wrote about her son, James, shortly after she moved back to McDowell in 1992.

Ever hear the word 'Affrilachian'? In the 1990s, a poet in Kentucky named Frank X Walker came up with the term. It refers to African Americans living in Appalachia. 

“To us it was about making the invisible visible, or giving voice to a previously muted or silenced voice,” Walker told the Appalachian Studies Association during its 2016 conference at Shepherd University.

If you’re out-and-about West Virginia bookstores or gift shops this Christmas, you may come across a coffee-table book set titled, Panhandle Portraits: a Glimpse at the Diverse Residents of West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle.

This article has been updated to clarify the desription of Breitbart News Network.   

West Virginia University President E. Gordon Gee released a statement today that defended his decision to allow Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on campus while also condemning Yiannopoulos' attack on a faculty member. 

West Virginia University’s Women’s Soccer team will make its debut in the Women’s College Cup Friday. It’s the team’s first trip to the NCAA Women’s Soccer Final Four.

West Virginia University is hoping to continue a season of firsts after the Mountaineer Women’s soccer team spent most of the year at the top of national polls and is the number 1 seed in the NCAA Women’s Soccer Tournament. They’ll meet the University of North Carolina in the first of two games Friday in San Jose, California, in the College Cup. WVU head coach Nikki Izzo-Brown said it’s not time to admire they’re successful season just yet.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting and StoryCorps have teamed up for a series of conversations about religious faith told by West Virginians. We'll be bringing you these conversations over the next few weeks. We begin the series with Ronald English and James Patterson. Both men are ministers in Charleston. They also share the experience of challenging racism during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and '60s.

In this episode of Inside Appalachia, we're taking a look at the myths and truths of the wild turkey, thanks to the folks at the podcast With Good Reason. We’ll find out if turkeys really can fly, meet a man who became a “turkey mother,” and find out what color turkey went out of style.

Music has traditionally played a big role in the culture of Appalachia, and it seems that other countries are taking notice of the region’s rich musical tradition. In this episode of Inside Appalachia, we’ll hear from the tourism music trail in West Virginia called The Mountain Music Trail (MMT) Since we last heard from them, they have grown. The MMT recently was a finalist in the British Guild of Travel Writers 2016 tourism initiative awards in the “wider word” category, and was recognized as one of the top three destinations in the world. 

Award-winning author Charles Frazier is 2016's Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence at Shepherd University. Frazier was born in Asheville, North Carolina and spent time as a teacher before he published his first novel, Cold Mountain, in 1997.

Linda Pastan has had a prolific career during the course of which she won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and twice was named a finalist for the National Book Award. She is, as well, past poet laureate of Maryland.