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Since 1967, Foxfire has been a storehouse of traditional Appalachian knowledge that still helps people today.
It continues to preserve music and history, but part of Foxfire’s heritage has been recording the stories of Appalachian women.
This week, Inside Appalachia explores Foxfire — its past, present and future.
In This Episode:
Foxfire began in 1967 as a student-run magazine in North Georgia. It was a way for high school students to collect and share the wisdom and lore from their community members. They named it “Foxfire” after a fungus in the region that glows in the dark.
Over 50 years, it’s grown into a book series, a magazine, a museum and an oral history archive. One of those oral histories is from 1975 and captures the kind of knowledge that Foxfire collected.
A lot of the women in older archival Foxfire interviews said that they “didn’t work” but so many Appalachian women were midwives, mothers and business owners.
Foxfire’s latest collection features 21 women in the book called, The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Women, edited by then Foxfire education director and museum curator Kami Ahrens. Mason Adams has more.
In 2020, Blue Ridge Public Radio partnered with Ahrens to record oral histories and aired them on the radio. BPR’s Lilly Knoepp shared a few.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn, Sean Watkins, The Steel Woods, and Dr. Kathy Bullock and her class at the John C. Campbell Folk School.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.
You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
You can find us on Instagram, Threads and Twitter @InAppalachia. Or here on Facebook.
Sign-up for the Inside Appalachia Newsletter!
Inside Appalachia is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
Us & Them host Trey Kay takes a look at the closing of a newspaper in Welch, West Virginia and investigative journalism students examine the use of opioid funds for harm reduction.
Continue Reading Take Me to More NewsAcross the nation, there are more and more local news deserts; communities with no local newspaper, television or radio station to cover what’s going on. When a small town paper like The Welch News in McDowell County, WV, can’t compete and shuts down, losing those local eyes and ears can affect accountability because no one is there to watch over things. When local news sources vanish, a community can also lose its sense of cohesion and identity. This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center. This story was also honored with a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Best News Documentary and by the Virginias Associated Press Broadcasters for Best Documentary.
Continue Reading Take Me to More NewsWest Virginians have one more flight destination to consider from Charleston, and a student led investigation delves into whether opioid settlement funds are really helping kids stay away from drugs.
Continue Reading Take Me to More NewsThis week, people with mental health challenges or substance use disorder often end up in jail. But crisis response teams offer another way. Also, one year after the Mountain Valley Pipeline went into service, people who live directly in the pipeline’s path have received compensation. But not everyone. And, the Sacred Harp songbook gets an update for the first time since the early 1990s.
Continue Reading Take Me to More News
