On this West Virginia Week, we hear from first time voters at Marshall University about what matters to them leading up to this year’s election.
Briana Heaney will tell us about a unique way some people are enjoying the Gauley River’s whitewater rapids.
Plus, we’ll hear about an artistic expression of identity at Shepherd University, and what could become the state’s latest public charter school in Morgantown.
Chris Schulz is our host this week. Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert.
West Virginia Week is a web-only podcast that explores the week’s biggest news in the Mountain State. It’s produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Caelan Bailey, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Jack Walker, Liz McCormick, Randy Yohe and Maria Young.
Around noon, the Ram’s Den at Shepherd University can get crowded. As the main dining hall on campus, it is a place where students often grab a quick meal or hang out with friends.
But last Friday, some students gathered for a different reason. The university’s Program Board — an organization that plans student activities — held an event to commemorate National Coming Out Day.
Each year, Oct. 11 celebrates people who make the decision to self-identify as part of the LGBTQ community. At Shepherd, the day is marked by an annual Pride button-making event, where students can walk away with small symbols of their identity or allyship with the LGBTQ community.
Senior Jackson Heath ran the table this year for Shepherd’s Program Board. But four years ago, he was a freshman stopping by the table after his first couple of months on campus.
“It was just like, a really nice thing where I was like, ‘Wow, I finally like, feel seen. I feel comfortable,’” he said. “This is something that’s happening on campus where I can actually go somewhere and not be scared of who I actually am.”
Shepherd University’s Program Board hosts a Pride button-making event annually for National Coming Out Day.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Program Board staffers printed out as many Pride flags as they could find for last Friday’s button-making event.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Some students say identifying as LGBTQ in West Virginia can be tough, because not everyone is welcoming of their identity. But Heath said seeing Pride buttons on backpacks around campus can remind LGBTQ students they’re not alone, especially when they arrive at college.
Students at Shepherd are not the only ones who display buttons with rainbow patterns on their backpacks. Around their country, many college students make and display similar pins. Some feature a flag for their specific identity under the LGBTQ umbrella, and others state the pronouns a student uses.
LGBTQ identity is not always visually identifiable. But junior Anika Wirt, who helped run the booth, said these pins can signal that someone is an ally without requiring a formal conversation.
“Sometimes it can be awkward to be like, ‘Oh, I am this thing,’”she said. “But, in a way, it kind of broadcasts your identity and says, ‘This is who I am,’ and can help other people see that recognition in the people around them.”
To make the buttons, students cut out a circular piece of paper with a design on it, then place it into a button press between a plastic cover and metal backing. When they apply pressure, the plastic seals over their design, forming a button.
From left, Joanna Schoonover and Anika Wirt staff last Friday’s button-making event in Shepherd University’s dining hall, the Ram’s Den.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The annual activity brings together students with similar experiences, according to Joanna Schoonover, a sophomore with Shepherd’s Program Board. But walking away with a free Pride button also helps students carry that sense of community beyond any single event.
“I’ve seen students have buttons on their bags with them all year round,” she said.
Buttons at Shepherd often come with an Appalachian flair. Some show the outline of West Virginia and slogans like “Y’all means all,” “All are welcome here,” or “No hate in my holler.”
Others feature woodland creatures in front of Pride flags, like a possum in a pink cowboy hat or a deer with the text, “Oh deer, I’m queer.”
Senior Ruby Anderson said it is partly just fun. But it also shows that people can be both West Virginian and members of the LGBTQ community, or that they welcome people with these experiences on campus.
“It’s really nice to walk around and see that other people have queer identities,” she said. “If someone has a pin that’s a rainbow … you know they’re going to be more open to that kind of identity. They’re not going to be outwardly homophobic.”
Plus, Anderson also says it’s simply a way to show she is proud of her identity and her community.
“I just love gay people, and I love being bi and out on campus,” she said.
On this West Virginia Morning, undergrads at Shepherd University visually represent their LGBTQ experience on campus, and an organization tries again for a school charter.
On this West Virginia Morning, undergrads at Shepherd University say a school’s culture determines whether they feel comfortable exploring their identity. Jack Walker reports on students’ visual representations of their LGBTQ experience on campus.
Also, the only organization currently pursuing approval for a charter school in the state held a public forum in Morgantown last week. Chris Schulz reports on what could be the newest charter school in West Virginia.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University and Marshall University School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
Maria Young produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
Films at the tenth annual Appalachian Queer Film Festival stretched across genres.
From a will-they-won’t-they about two college students in Ohio to a short film about weekend parties hosted by trans women in Pennsylvania, the festival brought together stories depicting the breadth of rural LGBTQ experiences, with a particular focus on Appalachia.
Planning Committee Member TJ West said the time spent curating this year’s selection of films paid off. More than 200 people gathered for the weekend-long screening.
The Appalachian Queer Film Festival is an annual event hosted in West Virginia. West said it aims to make LGBTQ people in Appalachia feel represented on screen, while also introducing them to new aspects of the LGBTQ experience.
“We want to make sure that everyone feels like they have a voice at the table,” he said. “There’s a whole gay world out there that they can experience.”
The festival is based upon submissions, with film creators sending their work to the planning team to review. West said the festival also works to showcase up-and-coming talent both in front of and behind the camera.
“One of the most exciting things is being on the board and seeing what the new up and coming queer creators are bringing to the table,” he said. “Because they have new methods. They have new stories.”
This included student directors like Chastity Yocum. A recent graduate of Western Kentucky University’s film production program, Yocum wrote and directed “Longing for the Unfound,” which was screened Saturday and earned an award for best student short film.
This year, the Appalachian Queer Film Festival was held on the campus of Shepherd University in Shepherdstown.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
“Longing for the Unfound” follows protagonist Addie as she feels herself drifting apart from her girlfriend and longs to feel whole again. The film was shot at Nolin Lake in Kentucky, which Yocum said created a connection between a narrative of LGBTQ soul-searching and the natural world.
Plus, filming outside brought moments that were experimental and exciting.
“It was just like that sort of dirty grittiness that you only experience when you’re like a kid going out and playing, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I found something really cool,’” Yocum said.
Austin Lewis, a director from Virginia, screened a film he wrote and directed through his own production company, Remember Tommy Productions.
Entitled “WILDMAN,” the short film follows the story of a trans woman whose estranged father claims to have shot Bigfoot. It was also his master’s thesis at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Lewis said being part of a film festival centered around the LGBTQ experience was particularly meaningful, especially as he got to witness audience members react to his work in real time.
“It’s really special seeing so many queer people being represented on screen, and in an area that you typically wouldn’t expect,” he said. “It’s just been really amazing to see different people in the audience respond to stuff and really find themselves in it.”
“To have someone see it fresh and have them have such a strong emotional reaction — I mean, it makes me have an emotional reaction,” he added.
West, a native of the Mountain State, said he and his colleagues hope the event helps create representation and community-building opportunities for LGBTQ people in Appalachia that they did not have growing up decades prior.
“As what we call a ‘geriatric millennial,’ I came of age in the late 90s and the early 2000s, and this was not on our radar at all,” he said. “If I’d had this kind of viewing experience as a young person, I think it would have greatly facilitated a stronger, more confident sense of self.”
For more information on the Appalachian Queer Film Festival, visit the event’s website.
The Appalachian Queer Film Festival showcases creative works centered around the LGBTQ experience in rural America. For its tenth anniversary this year, the festival is headed to Shepherdstown.
West Virginia native Jonathan Matthews is the event’s co-founder and co-director. He spoke to Eastern Panhandle Reporter Jack Walker about what’s in store for this year’s festival on Sept. 27 and 28.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Walker: To begin, tell us a little bit about the festival.
Matthews: So it’s the Appalachian Queer Film Festival, and what we hope to accomplish is — I guess the obvious goal is to bring films to West Virginia that aren’t usually seen. There’s a lack of queer film across the country, across the world. But I think especially in Appalachia, there are limited movies that are shown in general, and we just want to have that exposure.
But the other part of it — and this may be a less obvious thing — is to bring filmmakers and films from other parts of the country and other parts of the world to West Virginia and Appalachia. To show, hey, we’re different than the stereotypes. Yes, we might have voted overwhelmingly for Trump, but there are a lot of people that are very progressive and have trans and queer rights in mind that are making great art, and this is a space for you here. To show people from out of state how awesome Appalachia is, and to show people that are here, “Hey, this is possible. You can do art. You can do film. And you can make it.”
Walker: How do you curate the slate of films that get shown?
Matthews: We’re just in the second year of being a submission-based festival. Before we kind of selected [films]. A lot of them were friends from film school and from the industry that had queer and trans films out in festivals. We were like, “Hey, we’d love to have your film.” In the last two years, we’ve just gotten on FilmFreeway, which is just kind of like a clearinghouse submission website for film festivals. And we’ve had a ton of submissions. I think we have 33 films this year. We’re a short film festival, and we feel like we have quality over quantity, for sure.
Walker: What kind of topics do this year’s films focus on?
Matthews: The criteria is really just queer content. Or queer, trans filmmakers, producers, writers, directors, that kind of thing. But we really try to program and curate the festival with either Appalachian or rural themes, settings, filmmakers, in mind. We’d love to have the filmmaker be from Appalachia, the film be set in Appalachia, to have queer and trans content that speaks to Appalachia and has a conversation about it. It’s great when we check all those boxes and have the perfect film. Some years there are more of those films than others, and this year’s one where I feel like there are a ton of great films out there.
Walker: You mentioned that a goal of this festival is to create new conversations in and about Appalachia. How have you seen that play out in the past decade of festivals?
Matthews: In years where we’ve had to do the film festival basically by scraping together whatever change we find in the couch, the thing that I think about is somebody telling me once, “It’s so important just to see that your festival exists.” To know, for example, my daughter who’s queer has this thing that exists that makes her feel like she’s part of a community. She’s not an outlier here in Appalachia. There are others of us that support her and support her art. I just think about that all the time. It’s great, what our program is, and people seeing these films. But it’s so important to have “Appalachian” and “queer” in the same title. To have that exist, and that people see that and feel seen. I just think that’s so important. I mean, that’s how I got sold on the festival.
To learn more about the Appalachian Queer Film Festival and how to attend, visit the event’s website.
On this West Virginia Morning, differences in opinion on how to build high ground communities in Eastern Kentucky and a conversation with the editor of a new collection of essays.
On this West Virginia Morning, the increases the risk of flooding in eastern Kentucky has spurred the state to build high ground communities to help residents. But one small mountain town has their own plan for high ground homes.
Also, Inside Appalachia’s Mason Adams speaks with Zane McNeill, the co-editor of a new collection of essays exploring the intersection of queer Appalachian life and the environment.
And, a short look at annual West Virginia symposium enhancing biomedical research in the state’s colleges and universities.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Maria Young produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
