Willie Carver On Dolly Parton, Queerness And Being Mortal

This conversation originally aired in the Sept. 6, 2026, episode of Inside Appalachia.

Dolly meant a lot to educator, author and poet Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr. from east Kentucky.

Inside Appalachia Producer Bill Lynch spoke with Carver about the loss of Dolly Parton.   

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

Lynch: Dolly Parton has occupied many different spaces. She’s been a musician, a businesswoman, an actress. What spaces did she occupy for you? 

Carver: One of the things I remember about my childhood is my mom would always have these moments -- like there’s this special episode of “Ricky Lake” and I want you all to watch it so that you can understand this concept. And we knew that we were meant to learn something important.  

The earliest memory [of Dolly Parton] I have is when “Silver and Gold” was released. She grabbed us and made us sit in front of the television to watch it so that we could then have a conversation about what it meant to die, what it meant to love people.  

I think the other story that she was trying to teach us is here is Dolly Parton sounding exactly like us. We had just moved into a single-wide trailer that had really good heating. We had lived in a really old house without electricity before that, and Dolly is sitting on the front porch of this wooden shack that looked so much like the house we had just lived in.  

There was a message there, too, about dignity that she wasn’t going to say out loud. That’s the space that Dolly occupied. She always was right there with us in whatever level of poverty that we might have found ourselves in at the time, because she had been there, too.  

No matter where she went, she kept us front and center and made it look beautiful. 

Lynch: When famous people pass, why does it affect us as much as it does? 

Carver: RuPaul says it’s because it reminds us that we’re moving through time as well. We don’t like the feeling of things losing ground, feeling uncertain.  

I think with Dolly it’s bigger than that. Dolly was genuinely a good heart, and it is hard to find. Dolly managed to become so beloved doing things that a lot of us have been forced to feel shame about -- having simple morals, about believing in goodness of people, about wanting to do the right thing in a world that consistently tells us otherwise.  

I think it means a lot to us all for that very reason, because it might feel for us like it’s the end of that belief, that heart that we all sort of want to wear, want to think matters. 

Lynch: Looking back at your experiences with watching and listening to Dolly Parton, do you have a favorite song, a favorite movie, or even a favorite moment? 

Carver: I loved seeing her hogtie the boss in “9 to 5.” I loved every pithy saying that she had on “Steel Magnolias.”  

Probably my favorite is “There’s no such thing as natural beauty. You remember that or we’re all out of a job.” 

But what she always does and what she always did is she managed to say something that doesn’t sound nearly as big or philosophical as it actually is. It was one of her very many gifts that she would deliver something that sounded like simple, country advice, but deep under it was an entire framework about reality, about why we’re here.  

That’s, I think, that’s why she’s so quoted. 

Lynch: Her impact on the gay community. Can you speak a little to that? 

Carver: For a lot of queer people, Dolly Parton’s was the first Appalachian accent that said to them, “I love you,” and meant it.  

It’s hard not to love someone back who loves you when you’re not loved. 

We’ve made a lot of progress and that progress comes because of brave people like Dolly Parton. She was singing and talking about gay people years before anybody else was brave enough. She’s been consistent in her support of all queer people, gay and trans, and in a world that doesn’t allow conservative women the ability to speak on such things.  

But it’s because she knew how to do it. And it’s because her heart was so big.  

A lot of us have felt this in such a personal way because she carried us. I don’t know how many drag queens I’ve seen do Dolly Parton. In a way, yes, she’s glitter and rhinestones and glamour and all the things, but, also, it’s just like Dolly with butterflies. They’re beautiful and they don’t sting. And Dolly was beautiful and Appalachian and she didn’t sting. And so we felt safe with her. 

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Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. is the author of the novel Tore All To Pieces and the collection Gay Poems for Red States.