“In the home of America’s last active tracks, tradition and uncertainty run neck and neck.”
west virginia
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Heroines Who Take On The Harm
“I came to West Virginia looking for harm. I found resilience, the kind that keeps people alive, the kind that seems nearly miraculous, and the kind that is often overlooked.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Canary
“Christopher Mark, I decided, just had to have some deeply personal stake in the problem he solved. But then I found Christopher Mark’s number and called him.”
Posted inNonfiction
In Pocahontas County, Deep Divisions and a Gruesome Discovery
In an excerpt from ‘The Third Rainbow Girl,’ Emma Copley Eisenberg interrogates various social conditions that might have contributed to a mysterious double murder in West Virginia in 1980.
Posted inNonfiction
Total Depravity: The Origins of the Drug Epidemic in Appalachia Laid Bare
In an excerpt from his essay collection, Australian journalist Richard Cooke reports on the American opioid crisis through the astonished eyes of a foreigner visiting steel and coal country.
Posted inHighlight, Nonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes
When Your Doctor is Also an Opioid Addict
How one doctor beat his addiction to start helping members of his West Virginia community to do the same.
Posted inHighlight, Nonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes
‘Writers tell’: The Devastating Contrasts in Life, Death, and West Virginia
“Twelve years later, I birthed my son on my sister’s death day.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
West Virginia: Still High on Hope
The state with the highest overdose rate in the United States is the front line of the opioid crisis.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Addicts Next Door
Margaret Talbot reports on the opioid epidemic in West Virginia. There, the overdose rate is the highest in the United States and many are fighting to help loved ones, friends, neighbors, and sometimes complete strangers get healthy. Among several sources, she profiles an emergency paramedic who routinely sees to multiple overdoses a day (sometimes the […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Needle and the Damage Done: ‘What kind of a childhood is that?’
The story of Zaine, Arianna, and Zoie Pulliam — three kids under 17 living in South Charleston, West Virginia. Deemed “opiate orphans,” they exemplify a generation of children whose parents have died of drug overdoses as a result of the opioid epidemic.